Dwarves and their friends (core + starters progression - 3x)
fiffox 74
Description
This Fellowship uses cards from the Core set and the starter decks. The deck pool is limited but the fellowship has been tested against the core set scenarios and the Dark of Mirkwood and it works pretty well.
Intentionally, the first two decks use heroes from the Core set and are dual- and not tri-sphere because in our group 2 players were almost entirely new to the game. The last deck is a modification of the Dwarves starter deck where Gloin has been added to boost resource generation. In principle Narvi's Belt could be added, though I found that it's not always useful so I saved the slots. For additional comments on the Dwarves deck, please refer to Modified Dwarves starter deck (Leadership Lore)
The first deck lacks in resource generation, so it's important that Théodred donates some resources to counterbalance this. In some cases Steward of Gondor can also placed on one of the heroes, but of course Éowyn is an obvious candidate for it (since players can use her to discard allies and she can play off-sphere allies with Stand and Fight).
The idea of the Fellowship is rather straightforward:
- the first deck deals with combat, card draw and healing. It has some nice direct damage angle which can help while waiting for Legolas to become a killing machine.
- The second deck controls the event deck, deals with questing, and supports the combat. The Théodred + Aragorn combo is pretty useful, especially in the first rounds to allow the latter to deal with enemies while also helping with questing. Celebrían's Stone is pure gravy and helps a lot to pay for expensive allies. The deck has decent card draw, though it can use some help from Beravor or Gléowine at times.
- The Dwarves deck is there to swarm allies while exploiting some nice mining cards tricks.
Overall, when played this fellowship felt really good: a lot of interaction across the table (including due to many ranged and sentil characters). It could be somewhat "optimized" by playing more dwarves characters, but it was really fun with the current lineup.
Thanks for any comments!