Pelennor Fields Heroes 1.0

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• 1.0

This is my attempt at building a thematic Pelennor Fields deck (that is still competitive). I'm using only cards from the Core Set and Saga Expansions for this deck. Only unthematic parts of it are Beorn and Galadriel (although I like to think of Galadriel as offering assistance from afar), and Theoden is missing (I'm planning to swap Aragorn out for Theoden and including Fellowship Sphere Aragorn as the fourth hero when playing the saga expansions).

I've tested it against two quests so far, Journey Down the Anduin (won easily), and Battle of Lake-Town vs. Smaug (yes super unthematic -- think of it as an alternate history, ie. what might have happened if Gandalf and Thorin never met at the Prancing Pony), which the following describes.

The basic strategy:

• Turtle while getting lots of allies out to chump block Smaug if and when he attacks
• Stick Steward of Gondor, Citadel Plate, and Celebrían's Stone on Aragorn to pay for stuff from Leadership and Spirit spheres, and up his hit points to use as backup defender if and when chump blocking fails
• Lots of treachery and shadow card cancellation (A Test of Will, Hasty Stroke, Sterner than Steel)
• Trigger Faramir, stick Arod on Legolas, and use as many characters as possible to quest heavily in first two quest stages to get through to stage 3b (leaving at least 2 chump blockers/defenders ready during questing if possible, plus Aragorn can ready to defend as well if necessary)
• Hold off on advancing quest to 3b until you have the requisite board and hand state (the right number of allies -- see below, and at least Grim Resolve as well as a bunch of treachery and shadow cancellation cards ideally)
• This strategy obviously requires a lot of card draw to get the right cards and attachments out, so Gandalf, ally Galadriel and Valiant Sacrifice really gets the engine rolling especially with allies regularly leaving the table
• Build up enough attacking power to take out Smaug with one attack. When ready, advance to stage 3b, quest, absorb an attack, then play Grim Resolve to ready all characters after defense phase, and strike.

Smaug has 20 hit points and the highest Smaug defense (Smaug the Mighty) is 9, so we want our attack to total 29 or higher. Ideally:

• Attach two Dagger of Westernesse to Eowyn to use with her +9 ability = 12-14 attack (depending on threat status)
• Beorn trigger ability = 8 attack
• Gandalf = 4 attack
• Aragorn = 3 attack
• Merry = 1 attack
• Faramir = 2 attack
• Whatever random allies happen to be on the table
• TOTAL = 30-32 attack minimum

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Basic game report:

• Mulliganed to get Steward of Gondor
• Turtled and regularly got allies onto table
• Quested well and chump blocked until end of Phase 2b, delayed finishing quest (and reduced burn damage on Lake-Town) until Grim Resolve showed up, also Galadriel showed that Gandalf and Hasty Stroke were next cards up.
• Board state: Allies on table at this stage were Faramir and Beorn. Aragorn was equipped with Steward of Gondor, Celebrían's Stone and Citadel Plate, Éowyn did not have her Dagger of Westernesse but she did have an Unexpected Courage, Merryhad a Citadel Plate and Unexpected Courage.
• It was going to be very close, but as I knew I didn't have any chump blockers coming up (and I knew Smaug the Mighty had already come up twice) I had to take my shot or else start losing key allies/heroes, so I crossed my fingers, quested successfully and advanced to stage 3b.
• During planning phase, drew and played Gandalf to draw 3 cards, which put Hasty Stroke in my hand, which was crucial to the result.
• Smaug drawn was (thankfully) Smaug the Terrible (defense 7) so Éowyn not having the daggers did not end up impacting the result. Quested successfully.
• Smaug engages. Shadow card drawn is Esgaroth Wharf, which is a TERRIBLE Shadow card -- "Attacking enemy gets +2 attack, then makes an additional attack" -- and would have decimated my entire ally pool, which is where I played Hasty Stroke to cancel the shadow effect and defended successfully with Gandalf (7 attack vs. 4 defense for 3 damage)
• I then extended the combo with Grim Resolve to ready all characters, triggered Éowyn and Beorn and rushed Smaug with everyone:

Aragorn = 3, Éowyn triggered = 10, Merry = 1, Beorn triggered = 8, Gandalf = 4, Faramir = 1, TOTAL = 27

vs 7 defense = 20 damage, which just so happens to be Smaug's total hit points (20)!

(Lake-town only had 20 burn damage and Victory Display had 32 points so cleared that victory criteria with room to spare.)

--

A very, very tight victory which depended on skin-of-the-teeth, perfect timing, exact scoring turns towards the end, which tells me that this deck would not be all that consistent vs. this quest. Having said that, it is 1 from 1, and a skin-of-the-teeth victory feels very thematic when one is battling Smaug -- it SHOULD be very close!

I plan to try this deck with a bunch of other boss battle type quests and will report.