My "Best of every sphere" deck to defeat Battle of Carn Dum 1.0

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• 1.0

Hi all, this is my first post, and I wanted to join the community for this fantastic game! The challenge was: beat The battle of Carn Dum with cards not newer than the 5th cycle. This encounter deck: -punish you for defending with allies -has many nasty shadow effects -will raise your threat quickly due to lots of high threat cards and event/shadow card related -make you need a lot of attack power (for killing strong enemies, killing Thaurdir, and for battle during the quest phase) -make you need a lot of quest power (it’s easy to get overwhelmed in the first turns) -plays with your discard pile

I needed a way to defend with a hero that negates shadow card. The choice were many but in the end I selected Elrond + A Burning Brand. This is the keystone of the deck. The idea is to give him the burning brand and heal him full with Warden of Healing (with Elrond power you heal +1). This seems simple but counters pretty badly the encounter deck. Just think on the later turns of the game: Thaurdir will attack you at least one time every turn and you will probablycan face another enemy or another Thaurdir attack, but it’s not a problem! You defend Thaurdir with Elrond knowing that his final attack will be 6, you heal full Elrond and you ready him with unexpected courage or heir of Mardil + Steward of Gondor, repeat. Remember that you can also ready warden for 2 resources.

You start with a Battle quest and you really need spirit for threat reduction, plus we are playing vs The Battle of Carn Dum, so..yea I’m bored by him but Glorfindel fits really well here, also for his low treat that helps on the first turns.

You need some resource generator and additional cheap threat reduction/card draw/damage: sneak attack + Gandalf, steward of gondor. Also here some stamples, but this a hard scenario, we are here to abuse every strong combo possible. The choise was for Faramir: the Idea is to ready all those costly allies (some of them will enter play exhausted also) and to boost the initial quest power (that is a battle quest). I really appreciate Treebeard, Skinbark, Legolas, Quickbeam for early quest power and attack capability. Legolas (you will pay him with Elrond) is also very good for card draw; just quest with all, on the engagement ready one big ally, ready and defend with Elrond negating shadow effects, attack with glorfindel+big ally.

Resource management: steward on Elrond, pay neutral ally and leadership ally with leadership resources, keep 1resource on Glorfindel for counter or for playing the next turn unexpected courage and leave as much reasources as you can on Elrond, you will need them for the readying of Steward of Healing.

The play rhythm I use for this quest is different from others, usually I swarm cheap allies and draw a lot of cards to overwhelm the encounter decks, here instead I focus on stall the game, one card drawn from the encounter deck one dispatched. I don’t hurry, I build slowly (i.e. no problem for cards like fortress wall), no problem with cards that deal with my discard pile since I don’t have many cards that go there.

A good start will be (not so difficult since you have multiple copy of the key cards): Turn1: (Light on glorfindel if you draw it), quest with all. Turn2:Steward and big ally in play + counter or weak ally or unexpected courage. Quest with all. Turn3:Start rolling

Thanks to Glorfindel’s threat the strong enemies will not engage you, and you can defend the smaller one taking damage on heroes, you will heal them afterwards with steward. In the first rounds the most important thing is avoid that the staging area threat will become too much. After that, from turn 2-4 you will have 10-14 quest power, 1 reading defender, and 6-9 attack power. When you don’t have burning brand keep the threat lower then 40, use Gandalf/sneak attack mostly for card draw and questing in the beginning.

Feedbacks are really appreciated :)