[PLT] Deadmen's Dike 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is a deck built from just Core Set + The Lost Realm cards for Path Less Traveled, an ongoing series on my blog, Darkling Door.

Played Against: Deadmen's Dike

Maneuvering the deck

This deck does its best work when I can keep my threat low, allowing me to pick my targets carefully.

I handle defense through chump blocking, or by using events like Feint or Quick Strike to avoid enemy attacks altogether. Ideally, I'd like to dispatch Enemies in the same round that I engage them since this deck doesn't have a lot of defensive options to spare. When in doubt, a well-timed Gandalf can usually blow anything out of the water if I'm worried about having to tank it multiple turns in a row.

Between Faramir and Éowyn, I have pretty good questing potential, especially for a deck built out of mostly Core Set cards. Whenever alone isn't enough, I can pick off one of the smaller Enemies and trigger Legolas' ability to help fill in the corners, too.

This deck has plenty of resource acceleration: Théodred generally quests every round, netting me an extra resource on either himself or Éowyn (as needed). I play Horn of Gondor and Steward of Gondor opportunistically simply based on whatever cards I happen to have in hand at the time.   As long as I manage to get enough down on the table and keep my threat low enough to engage Enemies strategically rather than reactively, this deck does a pretty good job at clearing a path to victory.

► For more analysis, check out my blog post on this quest.