That's it! It's the end of the road for the "regular" cycles, and Ulchor is waiting for his revenge!

Contents

For our complete run-through, see:

1. The Hobbit Saga
2. Core Set & Shadow of Mirkwood Cycle
3. Khazad-Dûm & Dwarrowdelf Cycle
4. Heirs of Númenor & Against the Shadow Cycle
5. The Voice of Isengard & Ring-Maker Cycle
6. The Lost Realm & Angmar Awakened Cycle
7. The Grey Havens & Dream-chaser Cycle
8. The Sands of Harad & Haradrim Cycle
9. The Wilds of Rhovanion & Ered Mithrin Cycle
10. A Shadow in the East & Vengeance of Mordor Cycle
11. Thematic Campaign ~ From Bag-End to Rivendell
12. Thematic Campaign ~ Fly you Fools!
13. Thematic Campaign ~ A Red Sun Rises
14. Thematic Campaign ~ To Mordor
15. Thematic Campaign ~ The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
16. Thematic Campaign ~ The Hour of Doom Hangs Still
17. Thematic Campaign ~ We Wants It, We Needs It

The Fellowship

Since we started with the Hobbit Saga, I had always strived to use new archetypes and heroes we hadn't used before. I had to make an exception for this final cycle. The cycle is very demanding in many many aspects, and the Rohan decks I had built at first were not up to the task. The Rohirrim are probably the most incomple trait in all LOTR LCG (I mean, ok, you can't exactly make a hundred different Woodman decks, but at least the few we have are quite strong) and we'll greatly benefit from The Children of Eorl Deluxe Expansion designed and developed by AleP, in which I'm happily taking a part.

Ring of Bahadriel

A very straightforward Forth, The Three Hunters! deck. Of course, this isn't the best sphere to get you Restricted attachments, but there enough to get you there and with Galadriel, Mirror of Galadriel+Silver Harp, Ancient Mathom and Arwen Undómiel/Éowyn+Elven-light your card draw should be insane.

You have a lot of cards true, but they're all 2-ofs (except for the super important ones) so it does not clutter your deck/hand and still gives you cards to ditch to Éowyn, the Steed of Imladris, Mirror of Galadriel (at random but you never know, and you can retrieve whatever you don't want to lose with the Silver Harp) and Arwen Undómiel.

As usual with a Forth, The Three Hunters! deck, I'm giving below the ideal line-up of attachments:

• Galadriel with The One Ring, Nenya, Mirror of Galadriel, Silver Harp, Silver Circlet x2, Magic Ring, Ring of Barahir, Well Preserved and Thrór's Key. Helps you with drawing/ditching, she has 11 and as such can take one or two undefended attacks per turn. She also has 9 that she can lend to Éowyn primarly.
• Éowyn with Silver Circlet, Snowmane and Herugrim. She will be questing for 9 , readying and attacking one enemy for 10 (values climbing up to 18 or 19 if you trigger Nenya on her during the appropriate Quest or Combat phase (beware the effect "only" lasts until the end of the phase).
• Arwen Undómiel with Windfola, Silver Circlet, Silver Harp (or double the Steed), as well as Strider. She would be questing for 9 .

The Steed of Imladris are there... to get you there! They are cheap and you won't always obtain the best line-up.

Multiplayer notes. You have the supporting rules, so don't be selfish:

• Every Unexpected Courage go to Beregond
• Galadriel's ability should also help the deck draw cards and control threat, unless your starting hand is terrible (for instance don't have any Nenya or Elven-light)
• Spread the love with Ancient Mathom

The deck is not resource intensive, so draw as much cards as you can with your Mirror of Galadriel and Elven-light, it goes exponentially.

Ideally, you can draw your whole deck and then recycle a couple times the most important cards in your discard pile. There was a game where I played Elrond's Counsel eight times, 3 normally, 3 more with Will of the West and 2 more with the Map of Earnil.

I really like South Away!+Ancient Mathom to avoid nasty travel effects in the mid-game, as well as Backtrack, a card I don't see played often but which is very very good.

The Hour of Wrath

Played like a standard mono-. This is my first Forth, The Three Hunters! deck and I'm really satisfied. Armor and Weapons are usually cheap and even more when Beregond is on the table. The least I can say is that this deck is not resource-intensive, freeing you for playing all those yummy powerful events.

And of course, healing. Healing in , yep.

As usual, best line-up for a F3H deck, as a guideline to play the deck:

• Beregond with a Gondorian Shield, Spear of the Citadel and Citadel Plate + Captain of Gondor and Unexpected Courage x3
• Legolas with a Rohan Warhorse, War Axe and Bow of the Galadhrim + Arod
• Aragorn with a Rohan Warhorse, War Axe and Warrior Sword Of course, there are many combinations possible, especially when you slap Golden Belt somewhere and then open possibilities for insanity. (A tip to the player of this deck: those Golden Belts are also nice for the deck).

Thorongil

Thorongil has 3 eligible targets depending on the scenario:

• Éowyn in case early game, you don't have Herugrim and need to kill off something,
• Beregond is an idea, you can lower the deck threat. Beregond becomes available as a but a Silver Circlet or Steed of Imladris isn't exactly useful here...
• Aragorn is the natural pick if you want to benefit from a built-in effect, quest like crazy and still be up and ready for the Combat phase. The sentinel keyword is also quite nice.
• Aragorn will although probably be your prime choice, since his ability is insane and virtually solve any issue the might have with threat.
• Aragorn or Legolas have no purpose here.

Run-through

• The River Running: 0/6 with our Rohan decks, 1/2 with the Fellowship above
• Danger in Dorwinion: 1/1
• Temple of Doom: 1/1
• Wrath and Ruin: 1/1
• The City of Ulfast: was of course unwinable with those decks (you'll see why once you play it). So we had to revert to specific decks
• Challenge of the Wainriders: 2/2 (yeah, we played it twice and won twice, because I thought we had made the piloting tests wrong the first time, but we actually did not)
• Under the Ash Mountain: 1/1
• Land of Sorrow: 1/2 until Beorn told me I couldn't have played Thorongil from the deck on Aragorn, so we had to replay it and breezed through it again.
• The Fortress of Nurn: 1/7, with the following notes:

1. The first two times around, we didn't have Straight Shot which is of tremendous help in this scenario (lots of 1 enemies)
2. I increased the rate loss by +20%, because I decided we couldn't win if The Armies of Mordor was not one of the objectives under a Castle side quest (it was always the first we chose, because it's the easiest, and Straight Shot doesn't damage those enemies). Actually, I still setup the quest each time properly and this case only appeared once...
3. Backtrack is amazing in that quest. Place progress tokens on the quest 1B, then remove tokens to clear a nasty location, avoid the Travel effect and on the next turn, be able to quest again on 1B, where you couldn't normally quest if you had already 3 tokens. Main target for this effet is the 4- location that prevents you from damaging enemies in the staging area. This is important since Hands Upon the Bow circumvents The Armies of Mordor. Beware although of that location preventing you from placing progress tokens anywhere else than itself.
4. Legolas placing tokens on the quest was always one of my favourite effect in the game. It's been really helpful all cycle, and even more so in this quest so you're never location-locked.
5. Don't play The One Ring or Well Preserved in that scenario. The combo is much more difficult to pull out, you lose a Restricted attachment, but being eliminated at 40 threat if The Tower of Barad-dur is in the staging area makes it near impossible.