The Choice of Luthien 1.0

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• 1.0

“For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him when he departs to the Havens: for mine is the choice of Luthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter.”

Hi everyone! This is an unorthodox but thematic deck that I have been having great results with, focused on Aragorn and Arwen Undómiel going on epic adventures together.

To help our lovely couple is Gandalf, who provides an incredible array of stats and the ability to not exhaust while questing. The downside of +2 threat per turn is entirely mitigated by Aragorn's once-per-game ability to drop our threat down to 21, since the other players will hit 50 long before we will. Similarly, our ability to reset our threat means that we can afford to make use of three copies of Heirs of Earendil to help us quest past when the locations start piling up in the staging area. Note that the location is simply discarded, not explored, which means that Heirs gets around effects that prevent progress being placed on locations in the staging area as well as when-explored effects.

We can use Elf-stone to easily get Gandalf into play, since five resources is pretty expensive. Meanwhile, a large portion of our deck is dedicated to making Aragorn and Arwen not exhaust to quest through Strider and Light of Valinor, opening up Tale of Tinúviel as an effect usable in any phase. We also have Lembas, Unexpected Courage, and Desperate Defense for even more readying. Blood of Númenor, A Burning Brand, and Protector of Lórien can turn Aragorn into an effective Sentinel defender, and Elven-light and Daeron's Runes help us find the pieces to get our couple going.

Since Strider gives us three "ally slots," we can fill them with not only Gandalf, but two excellent additional allies in Glorfindel and Ioreth. We also have Ranger of Cardolans as support, since they don't interfere with Strider because they only appear during combat. Feel free to change out these card slots to taste; I particularly like Elladan and Elrohir myself in scenarios that involve lots of Orcs. Finally, note that Narya can be attached to ally Gandalf, meaning that we can exhaust Narya and Gandalf to ready Gandalf and any other ally and boost their combat stats.

If you're looking for a deck that can provide a solid amount of Willpower and featuring our wonderful human-elven couple, give this deck a try!