The antlered crown fellowship

Gauze 67

Description

This is a fellowship to (try, at least) tackle the last adventure of the ring-maker cycle. It's been conceived to be played on a progression style (even though I only own a core set and the adventure packs of the mirkwood, heirs of númenor and the ring-maker cycles).

Erkenbrand is the main defender on the board, so he should get as many copies of Dúnedain Warning as possible, as well as Self Preservation, this way he can tank the most powerful attacks, making the most of his centinel. Gríma and Théodred provide some resource smoothing and willpower. The deck is dependent on Treebeard and ents for defence and especially combat, as it will engage most of the enemies. The rest of the cards in the deck support the heroes' roles, offering some questing, healing, staging area control and defence power.

On the other hand, Éowyn is, obviously, the main quester and should get as many willpower boosts as possible in the form of Celebrían's Stone and Dúnedain Quest in order to free ents from questing. Dúnhere equipped with a Spear of the Mark or two and a Rohan Warhorse will blast the staging area as long as your threat is low enough. However, Éomer is the stellar attacker. He is the main target for Rohan Warhorse, Firefoot, Dúnedain Cache and Dúnedain Mark to attack across the table. He should also get Keys of Orthanc to earn extra resources that will help him afford tactics cards.

Rohan allies and events should be more than enough to explore locations every turn and place your progress tokens on the main quest. You can also ditch tactics allies to fuel Éowyn's ability if you can't gather enough resources. They may be paid for later on the game by means of Stand and Fight. For this reason, Steward of Gondor is best placed on her.

There's not much card draw in these decks (hardly any in fact), as the adventure punishes players very hard for having an excess of cards in their hands. Try to mulligan for as many key attachments and allies mentioned above as possible.

In the last quest stage you should try to travel to the location that enters play on the same turn as it is revealed and explore it fully on a single next turn. To do so, keep a Feint or a chump for the Chief and use Éomund to defend him the turn the location is explored. Thanks to his ability, all Rohan characters ready, allowing you to gather as much attack power (and quite likely even more) as you need to dispatch him on one turn. All of this means that the boss should be preferably engaged by the spirit-tactics deck. If the Éomund combo is not available, the ents (together with Éomer if he has been granted the Ranged keyword) will do the same job.

Keep an eye on healing and your threat and try to play as many cards as possible every round or discard cards in exchange of willpower, so that you keep a small hand every turn. It's a key issue not to linger on the quest stages, so that you can avoid the nasty enemy-engaging/revealing effect due to time counters being discarded. Because of that, you should focus on amassing a large amount of questing willpower. Sneak attack Gandalf or fully pay for him to this purpose (and use his ability to your convenience) and use Gríma's doomed effect to boost the Isengard Messenger and ready the Orthanc Guards.

I hope you'll enjoy the decks and the adventure!

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