Exploitation of Miners 2.0 4.0

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"I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide..." This deck was too much fun to disassemble, so it went through a few edits as I played it more. The additions are: Bilbo Baggins, Steward of Gondor, Narya, and A Test of Will. Most of the changes were made to streamline the deck's performance by including additional resource gain and removing off-sphere cards that would tend to sit in my hand for too long. That, and Bilbo is a natural fit for a deck that relies on its pipes. Treachery cancellation is always important, and what's a few more cards anyway, with this much draw? For the sake of preserving the deck, I I placed the removed cards into the sideboard to swap in and out as you like.

See the original version of this deck being played on COTR's Twich stream here and read their spotlight article here.

This is my take on a Dwarf mining deck, but with help from Gandalf to provide some much-needed light to dig by.

Gandalf's ability allows you to view and play the top card of your deck once per phase. Combine that with low-cost cards, deck-grinding, and when discarded effects from dwarf miners, and you end up with a deck that is going to give you a lot of options each turn. The goal is to use mining to set up the top card for Gandalf, and to use Gandalf to set up the top card for mining. This one is a lot of fun to play, and is not recommended for beginners.

The cards you're looking for in your opening hand are Wizard Pipe, Expert Treasure-hunter, and possibly Zigil Miner. The pipe will help you get Expert Treasure-hunter into play, which will prime the card draw engine. Zigil Miner will guarantee at least 1 resource per activation and clear off unwanted top cards.

Tips/Combos

-Expert Treasure-hunter will discard Hidden Cache, which will drop resources prior to you drawing it. Wizard Pipe it back onto the deck for the next quest phase if you need more resources. You can also play to draw away that useless top card so Gandalf has something he can use his ability on.

-Well-Equipped is a welcome sight when you have Armored Destrier, King Under the Mountain, or Steward of Gondor sitting on top of your deck.

-Use Expert Treasure-hunter on Ered Luin Miner, but don't call Ally. He'll pop into play for free rather than going into your hand.

-Use Miruvor to smooth resources. Play it on Dain Ironfoot or Nori. Have one of them gain a resource, send it to the top of the deck, and have Gandalf play it again. Play We Are Not Idle and exhaust that hero to generate another resource. Discard Miruvor to ready up and give you one more resource.

-Flame of Anor pops an Ered Luin Miner into play while readying Gandalf with +3 attack.

-You can sneak Bofur into the quest from the top of your deck, and then he sneaks into your hand after questing successfully. (Effectively a free draw and +2 to the quest total for the cost of 1 resource)

-Keep your Dwarf Pipe ready in case Will of the West gets knocked off the deck. You're going to need it to reshuffle that discard pile at least once.