Unusual Allies in Ithilien

Description

The two decks describe how to play attachments etc., but these two decks work surprisingly well together to get out powerful Harad allies while controlling enemy engagement with traps and Fastred. It was nice to get back to using Elrond again!

2 comments

Oct 23, 2017 dalestephenson 1872

I like using Silver Lamp on Fastred to set up the best use of Jubayr. With only two copies of Jubayr, do you ever have trouble finding him?

Oct 24, 2017 monkeyrama 21

I've not had any trouble finding Jubayr so far, although this particular fellowship has only played about 5 games. I've beaten The Black Serpent in 2 out of 3 games. I think of all the 5 cost Harad allies, Jubayr is the only one to need 3 copies, and I could drop 1 Southron Refugee to make space (both decks need to lose one card as it is, but it's hard to choose what to lose - maybe a Great Yew Bow, since only 1 character ever gets it, and it's not that essential). Elrond's deck has decent card draw, and is effectively drawing 2 cards per round once Vilya is going, plus the Stargazers allow the right cards to come up at the right times.

Silver Lamp and Jubayr is great (like Seastan's deck that used Silver Lamp and Armoured Destrier). The best use is when 4 or 5 enemies engaged with Fastred's deck then you can let 1 go through undefended either because there is no shadow effect or because it's discarded, and then choose your defenses with the rest. Fastred has surprised me with how good he is.

The original version had Frodo, not Merry, as I was going for a '3 Fs' theme, but his ability worked contrary to the deck's strategy: I don't want to raise threat but lower it on that deck, and Frodo's extra defence was not worth the extra threat. Merry is a classy hero.