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chrsjxn 5113
Hey everyone,
Chris here with another deck using a card that most people don't really view as one of the greats. In fact, most people probably think of this card as one of the worst, if maybe not as bad as Power in the Earth from last week.
Yup, it's the Palantir, and we're going to have Denethor see if he can scry out a solution to The Steward's Fear.
The rest of the deck is here mostly to help back him up and try to manage the threat that comes from continually using such a powerful tool.
Strategy
Let's talk a little bit about how this deck came to be, and that should get everyone a pretty good idea of what all the cards in it are really trying to accomplish.
Obviously, the genesis of the deck was my intention to use the Palantir in a productive way. Which makes a few demands on the rest of your deck. You need to be able to manage the threat of the Palantir, and you need to have a hero with a pretty disposable action.
Denethor is kind of perfect for that second concern. His abilities don't demand that he participate in any of the other parts of the game, and his statline isn't exactly absurdly strong without a pretty significant investment. Plus there's the thematic win of Denethor staring into the Palantir and trying to avoid succumbing to the influence of Sauron.
The Palantir is definitely going to help draw cards, so the deck should have access to some nice, cheap tools to keep it that way. Elrond's Counsel is perfect for that high-draw, low-cost slot. And since Denethor is leadership, Sneak Attack and Gandalf can sub in, too. Plus Gandalf can do a bit of troubleshooting.
Elrond's Counsel means we need a Noldor, and since we're worried about threat, who better than Glorfindel? And he comes with a few incredibly powerful attachments of his own, so we can double down on that theme. Master of the Forge has therefore earned his slot a few times over.
Which means we need a lore hero, and I'm basically always happy with Bifur. The resource flexibility is huge, meaning we can start with Asfaloth or a Master of the Forge on round one. And later in the game it means we can easily drop an Ent or a Warden of Healing into play as soon as we draw it.
And that's basically the deck. The ally mix is skewed neutral to help with the deck's imbalanced resource generation, and there's a bit of a discard sub-theme to handle the extra copies of unique attachments. And that's just about all the detail I think we really need!
Video Thoughts
This was a bit of a rough one for me, and I'm not terribly happy about it.
The Palantir gives you a ton of extra information about the encounter deck, which allows you to make some seriously informed decisions. But it slows everything down a lot, and it adds a pretty decent amount of cognitive overhead.
Which leads to missing silly things. Like that the cards you saw on top of the encounter deck will turn into shadow cards when you engage enemies.
Needless to say, I think this is a theme I don't really intend to revisit in video form. Though the ridiculous amount of card draw I was able to get in The Steward's Fear is worth another look offline.
Oh well. Can't win them all.
