Mono mono mono mono spirit
MarekZegarek 74
Description
Here is my first take on four only spirit decks that should work together. I have to say that it was crazy difficult to make that list trying to cover every aspect of the game, but i think it's a good start.
Fist of all - Heroes
I wanted to inculde all ranged and sentinel characters available so Legolas, Lanwyn, Beregond and Théoden. Then I took a shortcut including Seastan's deck - Caldara 2.0 (modifying it slightly to get rid of non-spirit cards) and two obvious positions (at least for me) - Glorfindel and Éowyn. Éowyn gonna be so important allowing to discard those Elven-light and providing huge questing as a single character. But finally we got to our last heroes and since I still wasn't sure about defending capabillities of those decks I decided to include Frodo Baggins, Merry on the other hand allowed me to make secrecy deck and Eleanor landed last with her great ability and low threat.
Discarding everything
I decided to take advantage of discarding mechanics that comes with spirit, fisrt of all we got swarm of Zigil Miner with addition of Imladris Stargazer and Elven-light. That combination of cards give us card draw and resource acceleration, also works great for Caldara deck. Also, there are several heroes that can recycle those Elven-light so they should be able to keep coming over nad over again.
Then we have things that boost our main protector of the game - Beregond. Desperate Defense, Blood of Númenor boosts his defence and with Unexpected Courage and Miruvor keep him up for additional defending. I tried to take advatage of Renewed Friendship just because it's a very versatile card that I do not see that often. I think the biggest problem gonna be the archery damage, my only response was to put high HP allies in every deck, but with no healing that's for sure gonna be a soft spot for those decks.
Cancelations
Since we are in A Test of Will territory there are few classic cards along with Eleanor that can make our day easier. In every deck there is also threat reduction in form of either Elrond's Counsel or The Galadhrim's Greeting, there are couple more cards to keep threat low and they have other uses too since I tried to keep everything versitale.
Summary
I really think that this list is a good start but need a lot more polishing to be great, it's a nice chalenge to make four decks that works together. Please share your thaughts, I would really appreciate a feedback from more experienced players. Cheers!
What a fun idea! And it's nice to see the card pool can now support a venture like this with useful cards to spare. You wanted feedback, so a few thoughts/ questions:
~Why not three tests of will in each deck?
~Who does Light Of Valinor go on?
~I'm not sold on the value of Renewed Friendship, especially if everyone is playing it. What makes you want to include it?
~Helm! Helm! is a great call! Sneaky combat option for spirit. In a similar vein, with all this questing I bet you could find some success with Ride Them Down.
~Inspiring Defense is fun. You could even pay the leadership cost from Cirdan's pool with Narya!
~I like your overall plans behind the Best Friend and Rohan decks, but I'm not sure how useful the secrecy deck is. Other than Resourceful, you're not getting much out of being in secrecy using just Spirit. I'm sure you could try a number of different things for a fourth deck, but my recommendation would be an OHaUH Gandalf deck, with his toys thrown in. You could also use Good Meal with the hobbits to bring in some of the more expensive spirit events, like the fantastic Light the Beacons or Stand and Fight.
~If you decide to forego secrecy altogether, Galadriel in place of Glorfindel would allow you to help out the decks that haven't found Elven Light yet. Ally Glorfindel could go back into Caldara 2.0 then.
I could go on, but that's plenty of food for thought. I hope you play with these sometime---it's a great idea. I may have to talk some friends into trying out something similar sometime. :)