Deck Tech: Off to a Good Start 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey everyone,

Chris here with a deck that really wants to hit the ground running. Well, hits the ground questing, but that's close enough!

And I'd love to say we've got a cool theme, or some unusual card interactions to help us get there. But that's not this deck. But that's just not this deck. This deck is all about stats.

Strategy:

Let's talk about hero roles, because the allies are very straightforward.

Éowyn is a big quester, and a bit of an emergency button. Generally she's going to quest, with the option to ready her for a big attack against a boss or a Troll. And you shouldn't hesitate to use her early if you need the big swing. The allies pull a ton of weight when you get later in the game.

Arwen Undómiel always quests and pumps resources to Erestor. The deck is very lore heavy, so you will almost always want to send the extra resources his way.

The biggest exception to that is that you generally want to keep one resource on Arwen at all times. Ethir Swordsman is a huge ally for the deck, and if you don't have the resources to pay for it, you're losing quite a bit of questing power.

Lastly, Erestor is our massive draw engine, and we want to set him up to defend one attack safely every round. Protector of Lórien and A Burning Brand let you boost his defense and guarantee that you aren't burned by a bad shadow effect. Ioreth can heal him to full every round, if you need it. And Light of Valinor will let you quest in addition to a defense.

Erestor is also our Steward of Gondor target, because we're abusing Ents and Outlands allies to get cheap stats on the board.

I do have sideboard cards this time around, which I don't usually do, but these specific options feel worth mentioning for a more spiky deck like this. Elven Jeweler and Elven Spear are your prime cards to swap out when you're sideboarding, but all of these cards are good for specific things.

Elven Jeweler helps you get off to a strong start, when your hand is full and you don't have the resources to pay for everything. Elven Spear is like Protector of Lórien, except for Battle questing. It's hard to use it to boost combat with our heroes set up the way they are. Song of Kings helps you get Steward of Gondor into play, if you aren't lucky enough to draw into it in your opening hand. And Eregion Survivor is basically a better Wandering Ent.

Stats like that used to cost 4 resources, and you can do a lot worse than spending 2 for them now.

Video Thoughts:

This video, which you can watch on youtube here, is a replacement for a super janky deck that ended up having some recording problems. And playing this deck reminded me how fun it is to play a very fast, powerful deck.

(The scrapped video was a dredge style deck, dumping a ton of cards into the discard pile, and then recurring them with Dwarven Tomb and Stand and Fight. I'll get back to it some day.)

But I was very happy with how this deck turned out in Treachery of Rhudaur. Most of the solo decks I've played have gotten zero or one of the clue quests complete, so this deck's willpower stands out.

And Éowyn nearly single-handedly takes care of the damage you need on Thaurdir.

Enjoy the video and the deck. Thanks for watching!