Raising an Army 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

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

Theme: The army of Gondor

Played Against: Nightmare Assault on Osgiliath

"This then was the end of the debate of the lords: that they should set forth on the second morning from that day with seven thousands, if these might be found; and the great part of this force should be on foot, because of the evil lands into which they would go."

—The Last Debate, The Return of the King

Strategy

This deck dumps down a massive Ally army quickly, then leads that army to victory.

Each Hero facilitates this goal in a different way. Hirgon gives me a discount on my Allies, and Mablung gives me extra resources to fund my army. Prince Imrahil functions as a kind of pseudo-card-draw (since the deck lacks draw otherwise) filling in the corners by providing me with extra or defenders as needed.

I usually mulligan for one of the Allies with 3 (Knight of Minas Tirith or Boromir) because they're the fastest way to build towards being able to kill an Enemy every turn. Ideally I'd like to get out a strong defensive Ally quickly, too, but that's less important since Prince Imrahil can always provide a chump blocker on-demand.

The Heroes almost exclusively quest—the Allies are capable of carrying the Combat phase on their own. There are a handful of Allies in the deck with 1 that can help out during the Questing phase as well; most of them aren't very cost-efficient, but in mono- you have to take what you can get. In general, though, I just stall until I manage to find a copy of Trained for War or Delay the Enemy, which I try to time effectively to make big quest pushes.

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