Doughty Pipe Smokers 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Prince Imrahil sure is a cool hero, but how can he be even better? With a few smokes from a Dúnedain Pipe! In Prince Imrahil decks, it is not unusual to draw those sweet allies that are better kept in the deck rather than in our hand. Draw too many of those, and Imrahil may come up short when he goes looking for aid. A common fix for this is to just stuff the deck nearly to the brim with eligible allies so that his ability rarely misfires, but that might not leave much room for variety. And so this deck is based around an approach that will actually make Imrahil's ability more consistent over the course of the game.

The Heroes

Prince Imrahil is the centerpiece of the deck, fetching allies to temporarily bring into play for the cost of resource. It is a great ability that allows a player to almost play as though they had Sneak Attack every round while also accumulating allies as normal. So that's helpful for keeping a tight lid on combat, not to mention the orc-sundering awesomeness of getting Beorn for cheap. Amarthiúl is a great defender and attacker, and has innate sphere flexibility on top of it. His versatile quality really shows when Imrahil pulls out a defensive ally rather than an offensive one, but then Amarthiul can still attack as well as any offensive hero anyway. Thurindir comes bearing his side quests and access to and card draw, and he is generally the hero sent to the quest each round.

The Deck

In the opening hand, Gather Information will be chosen as the side quest of choice per Thurindir's ability, which will be used to fetch Steward of Gondor so that Prince Imrahil isn't stuck spending his only resource to muster allies. Of all the side quests, Gather Information seems to be one that other players will rarely object to in multiplayer. Other cards such as Dúnedain Warning (for Amarthiúl) and Dúnedain Pipe are welcome sights too. Doughty Ranger is also important, because with the Ranger trait Imrahil has a few more valid targets for his ability (namely Yazan and Vigilant Dúnadan). Steed of the North is also a great way to get Thurindir to contribute some attack in the combat phase and vice versa for Doughty Imrahil so he can quest and attack. Dúnedain Pipe though is what allows for the trick of this deck. Because we don't want too many of those allies that we would rather pop into play via Imrahil and would rather they stay in the deck, the pipe let's us do exactly that. Putting an ally card on the bottom of the deck ensures that it will later be shuffled into the rest of the deck as a result of using Imrahil's ability (which shuffles the deck). You can keep those allies cycling back into the deck for later use while drawing cards, all for a few pensive puffs of Dunedank! Thus, Imrahil's ability gets more consistent after weeding through your deck and seeding it with big allies, and it will be packed with good targets for Imrahil's ability by the mid to end game. Persistently recycling Beorn or a Marksman of Lórien can do wonders for handling combat!

Concluding Thoughts So the pipe is an excellent tech to complement to the Imrahil strategy and frees up deck space to include card draw and cards such as side quests which can provide powerful benefits all around the table. It also turns the deck itself into a sleek machine that reliably offers quality allies for Imrahil to fetch. But most of all, the deck was fun for me to refine and play. It's hard to beat bouncing Beorn in and out of play after all!