Angrenost, Ally of Rohan 1.0

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• 1.0

Angrenost, or Isengard in Rohirrim, has always been an iconic place of strength and power. Established by Elendil in the Second Age to guard the northern flank of Gondor, it was eventually given to Saruman for a dwelling place, and in time became a place that opposed the Free Peoples. However, before the events of the War of the Ring, Saruman did much good against the evil of Mordor from this fortress. There was friendship between him and Rohan, and together they guarded Gondor against the powers in the East.

This deck was designed with the forbidden power of Isengard and its inhabitants in mind, and is focused on accelerating your board state through the Doomed mechanic. The main difference, however, is that this deck is not a solo deck. It is in fact a combat deck in a Doomed fellowship!

Your primary goal is get both yourself and your ally's deck set up with appropriate questing and combat power, and then leaving your threat high to engage enemies while the quest deck resets their threat with Aragorn (refer to that deck's description for actual play mechanics). Gríma is an absolute house in this deck, providing additional resources and at least one trigger for your Isengard Messengers every round. Erkenbrand, despite his relatively average defense, becomes a much more viable defender with Armored Destrier attached and some healing in the form of Lembas (from the ally deck) to back him up. Éomer leads the charge for you in combat, and the deck intentionally features multiple allies that leave play in order to help him take down even the toughest enemies.

The attachments in the deck are mainly focused on setting up your heroes to make them perform their respective roles better (Firefoot for Éomer, Armored Destrier for Erkenbrand, and Keys of Orthanc for Gríma in most cases). Favor of the Valar is included in the deck because, while you do have access to the other deck's Aragorn via Desperate Alliance, your ally is not guaranteed to draw it. @WingfootRanger and I have won multiple games where I was sitting on 46-49 threat, with Favor of the Valar attached to counter threat raise effects from the encounter deck. It is excellent in a strategy like this. The last attachment, Sword that was Broken, obviously goes to the ally deck on Aragorn to push it into a questing powerhouse.

The deck events mainly focus on accelerating your board state with a lot of resources and card draw. It was not uncommon in our test games to gain 12-14 threat on round one through playing multiple copies of Legacy of Númenor and Deep Knowledge. While this obviously presents some first turn risk, and isn't always the right play (quest dependent), if you can pull it off you end up with many options for both yourself and your ally deck to make the threat gain worth it. I have included two copies of Horn's Cry in the sideboard that you can substitute in for The Wizards's Voice if you would rather have a Valour action that more Doomed. I did not personally test this, but I can see how it would be a fun option to utilize in the right situation.

This fellowship was a ton of fun to design and is even more fun to play. It's a very high risk, high reward playstyle with interesting decisions to make early in the game. For more information on the actual fellowship and a list of the scenarios we tested the decks against, please refer the linked fellowship description. Feel free to add your thoughts and comments below. Thank you to @WingfootRanger for taking on this idea of mine with me and helping me turn it into something productive!