Warriors of the West v2

A fellowship made up of two decks that aim to be as strong as possible while still staying as thematic as possible with certain compromises. A very standard combination and team up of a combat based and willpower based deck. Both decks however are capable of holding their own in combat or while questing and together compliment each other in both of these areas. The decks use strong Sentinel defenders on either side of the board and strong shadow discard/cancellation alongside powerful offensive characters and attachments to lock down combat and strong mustering and willpower boosts through cards like Vilya, Faramir ally and StwB to breeze through questing once the decks get going.

Sometimes they can be slow to start especially if you don't get ideal starting hands but cards like Gather Information, Galadriel ally and Galdor hero allow you to draw and/or fetch cards much faster to fill in the gaps you can't play or don't draw. With strong ideal starting hands they are extremely powerful right off the bat but either way you can get there so long as the early game isn't overly punishing.

Almost every possible area is covered including healing, location control, encounter cancellation, shadow cancellation, threat control, engagement effects, readying, card draw and resource acceleration and between the two decks there is little that stops them in their tracks except for quests with strong attachment hate or strong card draw and/or turtling hate (mainly quests with Dunlending enemies). There is a full breakdown of each deck in each of their pages.

I don't play nightmare very often these days but am going to try and start again soon as I really enjoy playing with these decks and they are fairly powerful, hopefully powerful enough to get occasional wins in nightmare! Similarly for Saga quests I have beaten all available saga quests to date with heavily modified versions of these decks (the older completely different versions using Elrohir and Elladan heroes) but have not played any of the Saga quests with these new versions at all yet. I will be doing so in the near future and will post results here.

Any feedback or suggestions are more than welcome and definitely let me know if you give the decks a try.

I am attempting Cycles one at at time from start to finish to test how many attempts it takes me to beat each quest with the decks.

Voice of Isengard and The Ring Maker

• The Fords of Isen: Beaten first attempt. I was able to use the hand size hate and forced card draw from this quest to my advantage with both decks by playing cards quickly and destroying enemies even more quickly. Surprised at how easily this game went.
• To Catch an Orc: Beaten on the second attempt. First attempt I let the trigger on Stage 2 go off way too early and was swamped with threat in staging. Second attempt I dominated though and Mugash and his Guard appeared super late so I had a ridiculous board state set up for both decks by that point.
• Into Fangorn: Beaten on the second attempt. During the first game threat in staging grew as I struggled to build willpower or progress, I conceded before things got worse. Second game I destroyed the quest slaying many Huorn's as I went.
• The Dunland Trap: Beaten first attempt. Chief Turch stood alone at the very end.
• Trouble in Tharbad: Beaten on the first attempt. Easily destroyed Bellach in one hit without him ever making an attack.
• The Three Trials: Beaten on the first attempt. Gimli fell to a nasty shadow effect on the second last turn but I quested to victory the next turn so this didn't matter.
• The Nin-in-Eilph: Beaten on the first attempt. Had the awful Stage 2 that only allows each player to play one card so I let that turn into a different stage 2 (no resources or card draw from player effects) and built up my board state. Other than Aragorn falling to a nasty shadow effect that killed the defender (1 damage to defending character) and turned one of the Marsh-Dwellers attacks into an undefended one it was fairly cruisy.

Lost Realm and Angmar Awakened

• Intruders in Chetwood: Beaten first attempt
• The Weather Hills: Beaten first attempt
• Deadman's Dike: Beaten on the third attempt. Need a good start to beat this one.
• Wastes of Eriador: Beaten on the second attempt. So much threat gain in this one so you can threat out if you don't beat it quick.
• Escape from Mount Gram: Beaten first attempt. Elrond got lucky and rescued Arwen first turn and managed to help Aragorn to safety. Only Legolas was left behind in the end.
• Across the Ettenmoors: Beaten first attempt.
• Treachery of Rhudaur: Beaten second attempt. Got unlucky the first time with non-stop Cursed Dead which eventually overwhelmed me.
• Battle of Carn Dum: Beaten on the seventh attempt. Got very lucky with encounter draws on the win I eventually managed. Few sorcery cards allowed me to build up forces only having to face Thaurdir's attacks a couple of times before I got to stage 2. A board wipe towards the end put me in a very precarious position but I just managed the win. Arwen fell to an undefended attack on the second last turn. Got lucky getting a win against this quest and this was the second ever win I've managed.
• The Dread Realm: One loss so far.

Print on Demand

• Massing at Osgiliath: Beaten first attempt. Smashed this one easily!
• Ruins of Belegost: Beaten on the third attempt with extreme luck. Very impressed the decks were able to beat this one.

Hobbit Saga Quests

• Battle of Five Armies: Beaten on the second attempt! Had insanely good starting hands however and got Vilya+Stargazer set up early. Once I had a safe level of progress on all three stages it was a cakewalk. Smashed Bolg's face in with ease at the end after dispatching his bodyguards the same turn they appeared. (Only played this quest because the movie was randomly on TV and I got a hankering to play and beat this quest because of this)

Nightmare

• The Seventh Level: Beaten first attempt. Almost got overwhelmed twice but managed to hold on and beat back a horde of foes.