The Birds and the Bees 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This deck is part of my Arrows From The Bees fellowship, designed to proactively ease the burden of combat and questing. This deck focuses on using Hirgon to play cost-effective who can clean up enemies in the staging area before they get a chance to engage anyone.

Opening hand

There are a couple of combos with the other decks that have a lot of parts, the more of which you start with the better: Song of Battle is included so that heroes in the other decks can play with this deck's neat toys, Support of the Eagles and Spear of the Citadel. Fastred really likes to have the Support of a Winged Guardian (which you use the eagle's 4 without having to pay to keep it in play), and Haldir of Lórien and Argalad really like Vassals of the Windlord (again, letting it's beefy 3 stick around). Haldir eventually becomes swoll off of Legacy Blades, and Argalad is able to fully negate most enemies' with just his two attack, so I prefer seeing the Winged Guardians. Spears of the Citadel go good on Fastred (especially if he has Sentinel from ally Arwen, but also combo well with your own Gondorian Spearmen.

Don't worry if you don't start with your side quests in hand, the other decks have ways to fish them out.

Questing

I typically quest with all three heroes, especially early on. With 7 from this deck alone, questing is pretty safe even before all of the fellowship's tricks come into play. All of the decks in this fellowship are fairly low threat (and the blue-green deck runs a few cards to reduce threat across the board), so holding back a ton of blockers is not usually necessary. You want to be slamming down a cost-reduced minion with Hirgon each round, and he can act as a king of safety net, letting you play a blocker from your hand after sending the team to quest.

Don't be shy about using the secondary effect of Hirgon's ability, raising your threat to juice the minion that Hirgon puts into play. A 2-cost, 4- Knight of Minas Tirith is a pretty good deal, in my book. The blue-green deck packs a few methods of lowering player threat, should it become an issue.

This deck really shines when a bunch of enemies have been revealed from the encounter deck during questing. In the action window before questing is resolved, any Beorning Beekeepers that you have can blow themselves up, or Meneldor's Flight/Born Aloft can return a Descendant of Thorondor to your hand to put 2 damage on any particularly durable enemies. Enemies removed this way to not contribute their during quest resolution, and any that are left have already been softened up by Thalin.

When quests need to be a cakewalk, both this deck and the mono-green deck can play Wait no Longer and Gildor's Counsel to only reveal 1! encounter card during questing.

If any Treacheries put damage on characters, Hirgon makes a good target, as Gondorian Discipline and Honour Guards can soak that damage right up.

Combat

Combat may not happen altogether; the mono-green deck has multiple means of raising enemy engagement costs, and they may request that some resources be held in reserve for Arrows from the Trees. Should enemies engage, however, a Gondorian Spearman with a Spear of the Citadel should make short work of most remaining threats. Honour Guards and Gondorian Discipline can keep the Spearmen alive if damage does get through to them.

Descendants of Thorondor make great chump-blockers, as when they die, they hit an enemy in the staging area (Fastred in the blue-green deck can ensure that a target exists).

If a particularly durable enemy comes along, Éowyn can always power up to smack it right good.