Authority Not Given 1.0

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• 1.0

'Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death,' answered Gandalf. - Return of the King

Here we've got a pretty run of the mill Aragorn Voltron deck, while is still keeping some thematic nods to the books, though the original conceit of the deck was based on the Gandalf's line "Authority is not given to you to deny the return of the King, Steward!" which isn't from the original books but from the movie.

Opening Hand:

The deck's got Steward of Gondor in it, getting it in your opening hand, with the facility to play it (coughDenethorcough) on the first turn means, you're essentially playing in "sleazy mode" (1 extra resource per hero, without removing the easy mode encounter cards). People can argue that the card isn't overpowered or broken to their hearts content (these are usually the same people that treat easy mode with some derision, while simultaneously playing their Steward, Magic Ring, Necklace of Girion decks), the card warps the basic rules of the game more than any single card in the card pool, especially true the earlier it appears and it can "fix" any deck that isn't quite firing on all cylinders simply by making space for 3 copies of it in the decklist.

There's a few fail-safes baked into the deck in case you don't see Steward of Gondor in your opening hand or after your mulligan. Denethor has enough resources to pay for a Sword that was Broken or Galadriel which will either fix your early game willpower issues or get you a free Steward from the ally Galadriel ability.

We can throw a card to Arwen Undómiel to give Aragorn the resources to play Master of the Forge and still have Denethor's resources to pay for a Steward in those top 5 cards.

At the Table:

Once Steward of Gondor hit's the table the deck pretty much plays itself (shocker) your only real decision is where the Steward is going. If you've drawn a Sword that was Broken early, you might as well put it on Aragorn, he'll have the leadership icon from the sword so he can pay for all your expensive leadership cards, as well as getting an extra resource from Arwen Undómiel AND Denethor every turn.

If you don't see Sword that was Broken play it on Denethor, that way you can just throw your leadership cards on the table as you draw them and you're not sitting there waiting for Aragorn to get his leadership pants on to play the cards clogging your hand.

The deck is very consistent right out of the gate, but is also flexible enough that there isn't one "good start" for the deck, you'll always have 2-3 options of how to play out your opening hand.

Denethor can defend in the early game, transitioning to Aragorn with A Burning Brand and hopefully a Blood of Númenor in the mid-game. Wingfoot and/or Magic Ring can keep him ready while still leveraging his ridiculous willpower bonus to questing. And even if you don't draw into the blood for a defense boost you have the option of Ring of Barahir and the healing provided by Ioreth and Warden of Healing to just face tank any damage.

You've got plenty of card draw between Elven-light, Daeron's Runes and Heed the Dream to pull out exactly what card you need to help deal with the encounter deck's board state, Glorfindel and Quickbeam being particularly good targets to dig for as you can suffer for attack power especially early in the game.

Sideboard:

In a multiplayer setting you could sub in the Deep Knowledge for some of your card draw to give everyone at the table a little boost to their hand, and Desperate Alliance can be dropped in for the Galadriel's Handmaiden's to share Aragorn around the table for some threat reduction to offset those Knowledges.