Team Meaty

===================================

Builder's notes: For several months, I have been trying to come up with a deck for two-handed play with my Gandalf/Dwarf mining deck Exploitation of Miners. A couple of my attempts were a Gimli/Legolas buddy deck with an Erestor draw engine and the other was an Elrond/Glóin/Bifur dwarf swarm. You can find those fellowships here:

(http://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/3789/pantry-raiders) (http://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/2558/erebor-unbound)

I was happy with the latter until We Are Not Idle was errata'd, which was supposed to use allies to pay for Lure of Moria, then ready them up. So, after a few more attempts and obvious inspiration from AtaruSlash's Tower of Pain, I came up with "Team Meaty".

So, with no shame - here's a fellowship full of player card exploits that should be a lot of fun to play (and if I ever get into three-handed Fellowships, I'm going to add a throw-down-and-die deck like pokie's Suicide with Friends).

====================================

Below are descriptions of how both decks should work. If you're already familiar with these deck types, skip ahead to the description on Fellowship Synergy.

Mining Deck

Gandalf's ability allows you to view and play the top card of your deck once per phase. Combine that with low-cost cards, deck-grinding, and when discarded effects from dwarf miners, and you end up with a deck that is going to give you a lot of options each turn. The goal is to use mining to set up a playable top card for Gandalf, and to use Gandalf to set up an ideal top card for mining.

The card you're looking for in your opening hand is the Wizard Pipe, so you can put those Ered Luin Miners and Hidden Caches on top of the deck where they belong. There's a whole variety of ways to knock them off the top when the time is right. Here are a few to get you started:

-King Under the Mountain discards one card off your deck, and draws anoter. Your choice.

-Expert Treasure-hunter goes first onto Nori. Its ability will discard Hidden Cache from the top of your deck after questing, which will drop resources prior to your drawing it. Wizard Pipe the cache back onto the deck when you're ready for more resources.

-You will always get at least a single resource from every Zigil Miner activation. Sometimes you'll get 2, and with two Hidden Caches, you're looking at 6! Ready them up with Narya at the end of combat for even more resources.

-Well-Equipped is much easier to play when you can see that Steward of Gondor, King Under the Mountain, or Armored Destrier sitting on top of the deck. Steward should go onto Nori, since this deck requires a bit more than .

-Keep your Dwarf Pipes ready in case that critical card gets knocked off the deck. You're going to need it to reshuffle that discard pile at least once, so I threw in three copies of Will of the West. Will's also a good card when you don't like what's sitting on top and you need a quick shuffle.

-Take advantage of Dain Ironfoot's high defense with Armored Destrier. He can block an attack and still be ready to keep his critical passive ability active. (Hint: Gandalf's Staff will swipe off that first shadow card, and the Destrier can remove the second)

-Sure, the dwarves get a lot of attention, but don't forget you're also playing with Gandalf! With Narya on his finger, he's going to smooth out resources and ready/buff those already powered up dwarf allies.

None of my Gandalf decks exclude Miruvor, which can almost be as useful as his staff! Here are some tricks:

-Use Miruvor to smooth resources. Play it as you would normally on Dain Ironfoot or Nori. Discard it to have one of them gain a resource, send it to the top of the deck, and have Gandalf play it on one of them again with his resource. (Bonus - Play We Are Not Idle and exhaust that Dwarf hero to generate yet another resource, then discard Miruvor to ready up and give you one final resource.)

-Send Miruvor to the top of the deck when it's already showing a 1-cost card, and have the Zigil Miner miner knock both off for an additional 2 resources!

-Use Well-Equipped to knock it off the top of the deck and onto a dwarf hero.

-Additional tricks:

-Flame of Anor pops an Ered Luin Miner into play while readying Gandalf with +3 attack. Now between Gandalf and your new ally, you have 8 to deal out.

-You can sneak Bofur into the quest from the top of your deck, and then he sneaks into your hand after questing successfully. (Effectively a free draw and to the quest total for the cost of 1 resource).

Healing Deck

This deck capitalizes on Dain Ironfoot's passive bonuses on its allies while taking advantage of Elrond's healing to turn Glóin into a Super Mario coin block and Treebeard into a killing machine. In effect, healing becomes its own resource in this deck.

Instead of being a defender, Glóin quests and takes undefended attacks. To keep him alive, use Ent Draught to keep his HP pool high and Dark Knowledge to see what shadows are safe to let by. With a copy of Song of Wisdom, the resources he'll generate can ready Warden of Healing repeatedly to heal him and other characters - namely Treebeard. Gloin will also get a copy of Heir of Mardil so that he can ready up for an attack after gaining resources from damage, so he can work alongside Treebeard for maximum .

-Elrond or Treebeard get copies of A Burning Brand and can quest/defend interchangeably. Early on, I usually quest with Elrond and leave Treebeard ready for either defense or attack. Elrond can join the combat once a suitable pool of heavy questing allies are ready to take his place.

-Lembas goes best on Treebeard, as he can defend an attack, take some extra damage to power up, spend Lembas to heal, ready, and squish.

-Use Master of the Forge to find critical attachments quickly.

-Everything else is pretty straightforward. The dwarf allies are / buffed by Dáin Ironfoot and should make questing/killing a breeze.

-Feel free to swap out those two Dúnedain Remedy cards for sideboard cards if there's a particular need in the quest. There's already plenty of healing to go around.

Needless to say, this deck fares particularly well with archery quests.

Fellowship Synergy

Just some random tips to make the decks play well with each other:

-Remember that Dwarven Sellswords can be paid by either player; whoever is generating more resources at the time should be feeding these valuable allies with resources.

-The mining deck can also benefit from a copy of Dark Knowledge on Dáin Ironfoot, that way he knows how best to use his Armored Destrier.

-Speaking of Dáin Ironfoot, got extra copies of Song of Wisdom, A Burning Brand, or Ent Draught sitting in your hand? Send them his way.

-Use Gandalf's Staff from the mining deck to sweep nasty shadow cards away from a defending healing deck. Another option - though a bit more tricky to set up - have Dáin Ironfoot buffed by Armored Destrier/Arwen Undómiel block Healing's first enemy, and then Glóin can take the unblocked second attack with no shadow card.

-With regards to threat, the mining deck fares pretty well on its own using Nori's ability. Use The Galadhrim's Greeting on the healing deck.

-The healing deck can play its second copy of Favor of the Valar on the mining deck for extra threat out protection. Use Erebor Hammersmith and/or Will of the West to recycle Favor.

-Erebor Record Keeper can handily ready Dáin Ironfoot if you need to restore his passive ability.