Beregond, friend of the Noldor 1.0

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• 1.0

@Seastan Does the deck as-is really have enough attack power? It seems like you only use Mithlond Sea-watcher and occasionally Erestor or Galdor of the Havens. Why not include Trollshaw Scout or Elven Spear for Erestor?

Finally, in Erestor decks do you find that 50 cards is enough? I always feel like I'm running out, especially on longer quests. You also seem to have a lot of card draw - Daeron's Runes, Deep Knowledge, Elven-light, even Galdor of the Havens - what is the purpose of all of these cards?

I haven't really build an Erestor deck that I am satisfied with, hence all the questions. I look forward to trying this out and seeing how it does! Thanks for posting it.

@calyx Thanks for the interest! Perhaps the deck seems a bit odd because it is designed with multiplayer in mind, paired with a deck that is about 50/50 attack willpower.

In this deck, you get up to 9 attack (and ranged, too) with the Sea-watchers pretty easily. If more is needed you have Galdor and the Watchers of the Bruinen.

You seem worried about running out of cards. That is actually the point here. Once you empty your deck, Beregond has 3 UC, Brand, Shield, and Helm. You're unkillable. You also have 9+ attack power and 7-13 willpower, depending how many Minstrels you got out. So you handle 100% of the defense, 50% of the attack and 50% of the questing. I think it pulls more that its fair share of the weight, if you ask me.

The problem with WotW is what happens if you draw it early? You have to play it right away slowing you down, or ignore it, in which case what was the point? Or run 3 copies of it to make sure you draw it late in the game as well, and this really dilutes the deck. So I decided to design the deck without a need for it.

I took some time to play around with the draw of this deck and how many cards I could actually play each turn with limited resources. I was absolutely shocked at how many attachments I could get onto Beregond by turn 3.

I couple questions for you:

1. What do you look for in your starting hand? Since you have 10 cards to start with, your starting hand will be the hand that makes you discard the most cards.

2. Have you experimented with putting Will of the West in this deck in order to recycle or play the allies and attachments you either had to discard or kill off?

Thanks so much for taking the time to post this deck as well as all your other decks. This and so many of your other decks are such a huge help to me as a new player.

@BizTheDadHey Biz. I find Erestor decks can be pretty weird when it comes to what you want in your opening hand. Normally I find myself taking a mulligan because my hand is good. As in, if I have 2 Unexpected Courage, there is no way I'll be able to play both, and I'll be forced to discard one. Even if I just have 1, I'm afraid I'll draw into a second with Erestor's first draw. So I normally try to start with a bad hand, oddly enough.

Will of the west could certainly be good here, although you want to run 3 copies so that you draw one of them late. But you'll find once you've run through all your cards that you've accomplished the full purpose of the deck, which is to handle all the defense, and provide a little backup attack and willpower. Reshuffling might not get you too much more improvement.

After testing, I've found the weakest cards in this deck are probably Watcher of the Bruinen and Elven-light, so I'd experiment with swapping those two out. Elven-light is normally amazing, but in this deck you can't afford to use it unless Arwen is sitting at 3 resources, because if you use it and draw into Unexpected Courage without the means to play it, you've really hurt yourself. I think this deck could be paired really well with a deck that focuses on getting a turn 1 Legacy of Númenor.

@SeastanLegacy of Numenor makes a lot of sense. That would really help out given I found the hardest turn with this deck is the first turn.

In my limited testing I found I wasn't using Elven Light at all because like you said, I didn't want to spend the resources. So, I'm gonna try it with Williams of the West to see if that helps with dealing with non-optimal draws.

Also, what do you think about Elven Jeweler as a replacement for Watcher of the Bruinen?

@BizTheDadElven Jeweler would be great substitution! Let me know how it goes!