The Swords of the Noldor 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

I've enjoyed exploring the current Noldor possibilities over the past few weeks and this is a fairly well rounded deck I've settled on playing. I've tested it through a good bit of the Dreamchaser cycle and beaten Attack on Dol Guldur with it! My previous Noldor builds haven't be viabale solo because they struggle with combat, but the addition of some Tactics cards seems to help a lot.

While this style of deck can be fiddly and slow (looking at you Gandalf-guy!), I've found the Noldor and can be built up several different ways and they always have fun decisions available and take some finesse to run properly.

Opening Hand

The opening hand is hard to judge with Erestor and Cirdan around because you'll be drawing an additional 4 cards after you choose to mulligan or not. Almost any openin hand with To the Sea, To the Sea will get you by. Getting that into play turn 1 ensures you're able to use that fast hand of 10 cards well on turn 1, hopefully to get Galdor or Glorfindel out right away. The Elven Jewelers are a good turn 1 drop as well.

Best case scenario you will play Light of Valinor and To the Sea on Círdan the Shipwright, play Galdor of the Havensor Gildor Inglorion and an Elven Jeweler, toss Glorfindel and a Elven-light to the discard and hopefully you haven't seen copies of Narya or Will of the West. While not ready to be thrown into the most intense combat, the deck is well set to produce plenty of willpower and ramp up combat strength fairly quickly.

Basic Play

Cards in hand make the engine work, so setting up the Cirdan/Galdor/Silver Harp/Elven Light combo is priority.

Every turn draw 1 normal card, 3 Erestor cards and 1 Cirdan card. Discard a card to Cirdan, trigger Galdor for another card, then return the discarded card with Silver Harp, play a Elven Light and discard it to Arwen: you can start each planning phases with 7 cards and 3 new resources.

Combat becomes fun when Narya hits the table. Defend with Guardian of Rivendell, trigger Narya to ready him and Glorfindel so the Guardian is defending for 4 and ready to hit back with a total of 7 . Add Raiment of War and Rivendell Blade to them and the numbers get better. Layer Lords of the Eldar on top and it's great. Guardian of Rivendell buffed by Narya, Lords of the Eldar and Raimant of War is an incredible defender! Talk about Buff buff!

Song of Battle should go on Erestor or Arwen although it's not a big deal since Arwen can shuffle resources around a bit. The Rivendell Minstrel is there to help grab that song faster and get the combat prowess up and running.

While Master of the Forge is Noldor and can help grab weapons and the key attachments if they aren't showing up, his best contribution is shuffling the deck after searching so you can draw into Lords of the Eldar faster after putting it on the bottom of your deck.

The suite of "top of your discard" allies are helpful and potentially very powerful, but not as reliable as the Guardian/Glorfindel combo. It's feasible to defend a couple times with the Warden of the Havens with a sentinel 3 , then discard an ally from hand to ready Glorfindel and then have your Mithlond Sea-watchers ready to ranged attack for 3 as well.

You will need to recycle the deck with Will of the West fairly quickly. If you draw both too quickly, you could use Gildor's action or Silver Harp to save it for a turn or two.

In the unfortunate case where you end up with no deck, you can still play Lords of the Eldar every turn provided you have a Silver Harp in play!

Weaknesses

The deck starts with plenty of but takes a few turns to start actually killing things. The relatively high starting threat might make that difficult early game.

It's hard to effectively play cancellation cards like A Test of Will and Hasty Stroke so some of the nastier treacheries and shadows might smack you around a bit.

Variations

Adding Steward of Gondor would make the deck massively better as it's usually itching to play cards but limited by resources. I've been trying to wean myself off Steward when possible and it functions without it.

The "top of the discard" allies could be dropped in favor of the new Elladan and Elrohir allies. They can turn into combat monsters too with the various bonuses possibly in the Noldor world. If you're playing against orcs, they're worth it!