A Stream of Songs for the Noldor Scout 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Concept

This is what I call a stream of songs deck, i.e., a mono- song deck leveraging the insane card draw and fast start of Erestor and Galdor of the Havens to set up the “song-based economy”, namely Love of Tales and To the Sea, to the Sea!. Since you may draw up to 6 cards per turn with Erestor, Beravor and Gléowine (not even counting Elven-light), it is a good deck to showcase Lindon Navigator, whose non-exhausting capability means he’s always available for Guarded Ceaselessly (essentially questing at 4 ) (also note that Guarded Ceaselessly’s action is not limited, so you can use several scouts to repeatedly reduce the threat of a single location), Expert Trackers and Tale of Tinúviel (which happens to trigger Love of Tales).

This is also a self-thinning deck, meaning that you will go through it multiple times (3 times on average during my tests), through a combination of big card draws and Will of the West. The deck gets denser with events every cycle, as cheap allies and attachments get played and removed from the deck. To ensure you go through the whole deck every time before playing Will of the West, Dúnedain Pipe is used to put any copy of Will of the West on the bottom of the deck at the first opportunity. The self-thinning nature of the deck explains why certain cards such as Elrond's Counsel have only one copy: it’s because they will be drawn 3-4 times as the deck gets recycled.

The heroes

Besides the aforementioned Erestor and Galdor, Beravor brings card draw, and, almost as importantly, the Dunedain/Ranger traits which allow the all-important Dúnedain Pipe and enable the Noldor/Dunedain synergy of Tale of Tinúviel and Heirs of Earendil.

Support cards

Although it is only included once, Miruvor is an important card in this deck because it allows repeated use of stats boosted by Tale of Tinúviel and Lords of the Eldar. Elven-light is both card draw and economy thanks to To the Sea, to the Sea!. Arwen Undómiel is your defensive cornerstone, and works in tandem with Tale of Tinúviel to make of Beravor a super-defender when equipped with A Burning Brand. The Evening Star is a natural fit for a self-thinning deck with discarding and recycling capabilities. Elven Jeweler allows you to have at least a semi-decent planning phase despite bad draws. Together with Imladris Caregiver and To the Sea, to the Sea!, it can be used as one of many ways to empty your hand in order to trigger Galdor of the Havens’s action or put Elven-light into the discard pile. Hope Rekindled is only here to trigger Love of Tales without incurring any upfront cost.

How to play the deck

The first priority is to put in place the song-based economy. The cards to play as soon as possible are Love of Tales, Song of Travel, To the Sea, to the Sea! and Dúnedain Pipe. Those cards should be the ones you keep in your starting hand before doing Galdor of the Havens’s improved mulligan. The Noldor all-stars are also there, including the Elrond bros, Glorfindel, and Gildor Inglorion, mostly paid with cards thanks to To the Sea, to the Sea!. Gildor’s ability can save your bacon, allowing you to fetch the one Tale of Tinúviel or A Test of Will you need.

Don’t forget to play the last drawable copy of Will of the West if you can’t delay it with Dúnedain Pipe, or the deck will come to a halt...

Testing

This deck stomped a few Nightmare quests, including Passage Through Mirkwood Nightmare, Hills of Emyn Muil Nightmare, and the first 2 quests of Khazad Dum. The third Khazad Dum quest, Flight from Moria Nightmare, gave this deck a hard time because of the insane shadow effects (such as discarding the defender). That’s why this deck features both A Burning Brand and Silver Lamp.

This deck takes some practice to play optimally, but it’s reliable and can smash a lot of quests with unusual flair.