You're Eldar Than You've Ever Been (& Now You're Even Eldar)

User ff0x has a fun deck titled "Ever present Lords of the Eldar" whose goal is to speed through the deck as quickly as possible and reach the point where it's just playing 2 Lords of the Eldars a round. It's a very fun and interesting deck. It also made me think "Why stop at two?"

This fellowship is designed to quickly burn through both decks and reach a point where it's cycling Lords of the Eldar up to seven times a round-- up to six by the Arwen/Galadriel deck alone. How does one deck play 18 resources worth of events in a round? 2 natural resources, +1 from Arwen, +6 copies of resourceful, +2 from Steward of Gondor = 11 resources a round. Then, once Lords of the Eldar has been played twice, Zigil Miner is activated, giving two more resources and putting them right back into the discard and leaving you with seven resources. Another two plays, another activation of Zigil Miner, and you've got three more resources. Another play, a third Zigil Miner, and not only did you play Lords of the Eldar five times, you actually finished with an extra resource out of the process- meaning theoretically you can play it a sixth time every third round.

(NOTE: I have been reminded that Resourceful can only been played on heroes you control. As a result, swap out one Lords of the Eldar, one Dwarven Tomb, and one Unexpected Courage from the Galadriel/Arwen deck for a trio of Desperate Alliances so you can still get the extra resourcefuls on.)

Once the Glorfindel/Erestor deck is out of cards, it can add some meager contributions of its own. Provided you got a Song of Travel on Erestor while burning through your deck and you open the round with a resource already in place, you can play a Lords of the Eldar and Zigil Miner it back away, returning to your starting state and setting up another play next round.

The game then becomes a matter of racing through the decks as quickly as possible. The Galadriel deck should mulligan for her Mirror, as not only will it let you search for your combo pieces, it will also let you burn through an extra card every round. Master of the Forge and Galadriel herself can also get more cards out of your deck. Once Arwen is amassing a huge pile of resources from all of the Resourcefuls, a Protector of Lórien and Elven-light will get you through your deck in just a few rounds. Even faster is to dig out the Longbeard Sentry (who is played via A Good Harvest or discarded and revived with Stand and Fight). He'll let you toss the top two cards of your deck every phase; there are seven phases to a round (resource, planning, quest, travel, encounter, combat, refresh), and each has at least one action window, so that will get you through 14 cards a round.

The Erestor player can't burn through his deck nearly as quickly, (a phrase you don't expect to hear), but will help speed up the Galadriel player's process. Message from Elrond can pass Good Harvests to get Steward in play, Elrond's Counsel or Vanish from Sight to get back into secrecy, or even just give an extra card for Arwen to discard. Another sneaky benefit? If there's a card that you can't play yet but don't want to discard, you can hand it off and at the end of the round it will get shuffled back into your deck.

Also, don't forget that Imladris Stargazer works across the table; one deck can play a Zigil Miner on turn one, the other deck can play a Stargazer, and you can take advantage immediately. Also, Arwen Undómiel can pass a resource to either Glorfindel or Erestor, meaning anything that costs 2 or less can be played at any time, (which is literally every card in the deck except for the Lords of the Eldar, provided you're still in secrecy). The biggest priority, of course, is the Resourcefuls. There is never any excuse to have one and not play it, provided you're still in secrecy; even if all three appear in your opening hand, you can (and should) still play all three.

What can you do with seven Lords of the Eldar in a round? Well, for starters, you could have Glorfindel quest for 10 and then, thanks to Fair and Perilous, attack for 20 in combat. Once your decks are gone you have no more need for scrying, so you could always quest / block / attack with your Imladris Stargazer, who suddenly finds herself beefier than Beorn.

(Oh, by the way; those Harbor Masters start with a base defense of 8 every round, thanks mostly to all the Resourcefuls. That easily hits double digits once the Lords of the Eldar starts hitting the table. In quests with nasty shadow effects, consider adding a copy or two of A Burning Brand.)

Do you think seven Lords of the Eldar in a round is overkill? (It is.) You can always instead put those resources to work elsewhere. A Lay of Nimrodel can burn through quests in a hurry, (or, if paired with Fair and Perilous, produce some pretty stunning attack scores). Stand and Fight is a great way to get allies into play, provided partner decks are capable of discarding them first (something that's no problem for the paired Erestor deck).

Other than using some very popular heroes, the fellowship is also very multiplayer-friendly; the only non-hero uniques are Glorfindel's toys, Galadriel's toys, and Steward. Tell your buddy to bring a Noldor deck that doesn't include Galadriel, Arwen, Erestor, or Glorfindel and enjoy the look on his face once he realizes what you're up to.