Gondor Calls for Aid 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is a thematic deck built for an ongoing series on my blog, Darkling Door.

Theme: Gondor seeks aid from Rohan

Played Against: Nightmare The Steward's Fear

“Time is short. See! The beacons of Gondor are alight, calling for aid. War is kindled. See, there is the fire on Amon Dîn, and flame on Eilenach; and there they go speeding west: Nardol, Erelas, Min-Rimmon, Calenhad, and the Halifirien on the borders of Rohan.”

—Gandalf, Minas Tirith, The Return of the King

Strategy

This is a thematic take on the classic Caldara deck.

There are a lot of moving pieces that this deck needs to start operating at peak efficiency:

• Snowmane + Herugrim go on Éowyn, after which she can clobber Enemies like nobody's business
• Sword-thain + any Unique Ally (my favorites are Emery and Elfhelm) to allow Caldara to bring back a third Ally when she triggers her ability
• Prince Imrahil to effectively turn the loss of Caldara into no loss at all

When I'm deciding whether or not to mulligan, these are the cards I'm looking for. I'll generally keep any hand with at least two of my required puzzle pieces, or a hand with only one of them if the rest of the hand looks pretty good otherwise.

It can take a while to assemble all of the pieces, but that's what Beregond's ability is for. Hopefully he can engage something small early on and just tank it round after round, keeping threat pretty much static. With a little luck, I should be able to keep things under control long enough to assemble the necessary pieces to fuel my deck's engine.

Card draw is one of the deck's biggest weaknesses. There aren't many draw options in to begin with, but with the added constraint of my chosen theme the pool is even narrower. I do have a few cards in the deck that help me get at what I'm looking for, though:

• Westfold Horse-breeder helps me fetch Snowmane if I haven't found him yet, or thins my deck of extra copies of Snowmane so I don't waste time drawing them
• Mustering the Rohirrim can be used to fetch a Unique Rohan Ally if I have Sword-thain in hand, or any other Rohan Ally if I'm just looking to fill the discard pile to fuel Caldara's ability
• Gather Information is frequently useful for fetching whichever card I didn't manage to draw into
• Most of the game I'm operating with four Heroes, so paying full price for Gandalf's card draw isn't usually too much of a burden

I find that I can usually sack Caldara about twice per game. The first one typically brings out my most expensive Allies with two to gain some ground in the combat phase. I generally try not to do it until I at least have Sword-thain in play. Sometimes I bring Imrahil in from the discard pile, other times I'm able to stall long enough that I can get the whole engine set up before I use Caldara the first time. The nice thing about her ability is that it can be used reactively—if I get a particularly scary Enemy, or am starting to feel Location locked, I can trigger her ability to get some help right away, even if I haven't managed to find all the pieces of my combo yet.

Later in the game I usually scrounge up a copy of Fortune or Fate, resurrect Caldara, and then immediately discard her again to either replenish lost defenders (like the ever-useful Háma) or bring out some more willpower to help close out the quest.

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