Build me an Army worthy of Gondor

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Assault on Osgiliath, Leadership deck 0 0 0 1.0
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Mormegil 3062

Now that Dwarf-Swarm is a little bit nerfed by the We Are Not Idle errata, I truly believe that Gondor (next to Outlands) takes the award for swarmiest archetype out there. They have a lot of cheap allies, global buffing, incredible resource acceleration and reliable card draw.

While you are certainly able to build a Gondor based deck with lots of different hero line-ups, I found this lineup the most thematic and also very powerful. Denethor allows for a kickass start and can trigger Heir of Mardil, Faramir can be used to ready you strongest allies like Treebeard or the Knights of the White Tower and Boromir is your Gondor-Dáin. Steward and the Rod usually go on Denethor, Steed of the North on Faramir and Heir of Mardil and Visionary Leadership on Boromir. Move a resource with Denthors action to ready Boromir with Heir of Mardil.

Visionary Leadership is your second priority after Steward of Gondor. Steward just accelelarates your game hugely (and can be turned into card draw with the Rod) so I would mulligan for it. Captain's Wisdom on Denthor can be a nice compensation though. AVGT helps with the swarm. With all the resources you should be able to pump out at least two allies per round, even more if you have AVGT.

Concerning the sideboard, Gandalf + Sneak Attack is often a good include, especially in quests where threat becomes "a thing". Threating out happened to me while testing, Gandalf should help with that in some quests. The other cards in the sideboard come down to personal preferance and playing style. Someone like Errand-Rider can become really useful in multiplayer for example.

Overall, a powerful, thematic and fun Gondor deck. Tested it against several normal and several nightmare quests. The deck does fine in solo, but your lack of questing power before you get out Visionary Leadership can really hurt you. Mid- to lategame however, the deck becomes a questing machine. It's global boosting makes it in general a great option for multiplayer in which the deck performs even better than in solo.

Enjoy the deck!!

5 comments

Nov 26, 2017 FolcoBoffin 304

I really like this deck. It never occurred to me to use A Very Good Tale in a gondor deck. Thanks for the information.

Nov 26, 2017 Mormegil 3062

Thanks for the positive feedback, it's always welcome!

Nov 28, 2017 xDIABOx 91

The Dwarf Swarm wasn't nerfed. We Are Not Idle was a win-more card in that deck. You'd only abuse that card when the board is pretty much set. It didn't helped in the early game and it didn't break the late game. It was a good resource provider (not the best in the game) with an in-built cantrip.

What makes the Dwarf deck good is the same engine that makes this deck good: Steward of Gondor + A Very Good Tale

While these two cards still exist as they are you can throw in any combination of spheres, allies and whatnot and take huge benefit from that.

Outlands?! Steward of Gondor + A Very Good Tale

Dwarves?! Steward of Gondor + A Very Good Tale

Gondor?! Steward of Gondor + A Very Good Tale

I even made a Good Stuff deck over a mono- Heroes with this same engine.

Now about the deck, where's For Gondor! and Strength of Arms? Those cards need to be in a swarm deck.

And Reinforcements since you're into mono-

Also Lord of Morthond to recycle A Very Good Tale and some juicy targets like Gandalf to benefit from a dual-Citadel Custodian + A Very Good Tale

I also dislike Faramir over Faramir. The core set version for this deck is waaaaaay better! You'll have multiple guys with small and then Faramir bumps the team. That is something worthy to take on a spam-like deck. And Faramir would also be a good target for the A Very Good Tale engine.

Nov 28, 2017 xDIABOx 91

When I mentioned Lord of Morthond I was writting about Tome of Atanatar instead! :P

Nov 28, 2017 Mormegil 3062

@xDIABOx Thanks for taking the time for providing such an extensive feedback. I agree that Steward plus AVGT is one of the key pieces of every swarm deck.

Concerning We Are Not Idle, I have to disagree with you. It plus Lure of Moria could net you as much resources as you have dwarf characters minus three (for paying for lure) which was pretty insane. I often played We Are Not Idle plus Lure of Moria on turn two or three with a Dwarf deck to basically gain four or more resources (even including the three you have to pay for lure) which is just bonkers good. Limting it to heroes is definitely a huge nerf in my books and my Dwarf Swarm decks, while still doing fine, have been severely hit by that errata (which I consider good since they were pretty bonkers). I would agree that Steward is still better resource acceleration than WANI since it is more consistent though.

For Gondor and Strenght of Arms are cards that are certainly includeable (the latter even being in the sideboard) but they would take the place away from some of the allies which I found more valuable than a 1-time-effect. You want to save them for the big moments but you need to have a lot allies on the board for them being worth it so they would be often be dead cards earlygame and would thus slow you down tempowise. In multiplayer, it's a different matter since they work globally so I would maybe put them in then.

Reinforcements is not worth the include in my books. Most allies are dirtcheap anyways and the expansive ones are easy to get out with all the resource acceleration.

Tome Atanatar is actually a great idea. Not sure if it is worth it since AVGT is the only great target for it. I will give it a go but it might hurt the consistency of the deck a bit. I'll have to see but an interesting input.

Well, once again thanks for the feedback and the suggestions. Have a good one!