"Fourth, Four Hunters" (Noldor) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

I've never made any decks with Beyond the Original Bargain, so wanted to give it a try. This combines the obscene power of Bond of Friendship with the awesome might of Forth, The Three Hunters! to produce Fourth, Four Hunters (see what I did there?).

The children of Elrond already make for an extremely powerful 3 Hunters lineup, so slapping Erestor in to provide extremely good card draw more than makes up for having to find additional Restricted attachments before flipping the contract. Additionally, adding a fourth hero means more Hit Points on the board and a higher ceiling for questing, each of which makes the already good Three Hunters even better. It also means the contract will heal 4 damage per turn, so it's even easier to absorb archery.

You could swap Arwen Undómiel for Glorfindel, but I actually like starting in Valour because it immediately supercharges the Valiant Swords, Shining Shields, and Open the Armory. Arwen is also, obviously, good for smoothing your resources to ensure you can play as much of your hand as possible before Erestor burns it at the end of the round. She also really helps you play the 2 Cost Asfaloth and Steward of Gondor whenever you draw them, and can build up either of the Twins' resource pools depending on whether or not you think you'll need more attacks or defenses.

The deck is pretty straightforward to pilot... put attachments on the Twins and watch them go brrrrr in combat. Elladan can regularly reach 10ish Attack, and Elrohir can obtain 9 Defense with options to spike via Protector of Lorien or the Relic.

If you give Light of Valinor to Elrohir and Steed of the North to Elladan, they can both safely quest without eating into your combat prowess, giving you maximal willpower contributions. Once the contract is flipped this deck is easily capable of questing for 20+ Willpower.

PS: Helm of Secrecy is an extremely swappable card. I just include it in case you want to run this deck against a ton of different quests. In those rare quests where Erestor is an extreme liability, you can swap him out. Also, if you hit a point in the game where you don't want to keep burning your hand away, you can swap him (Galdor is a great choice) to retain your hand. You can also swap Arwen to Glorfindel in a quest if you need to supercharge Asfaloth.