26 - The Steward's Fear (Progression Series)

This is another fellowship continuing on in my goal to play through all of the quests in release order to learn how all (or most) of the cards interact with one another. The first fellowship for the quests in the core set can be found here, and it contains a slightly more detailed overview of what I'm going for with building these decks. As always, any feedback is appreciated so that I can continue to learn more!

This was a super fun quest, maybe in part to having a big change of pace from Hobbit Saga stuff. The Underworld Mechanic was really interesting, and it was a very different experience depending on which plot and villain show up in the later stages. The first deck that I ever built (aside from some core starter sets) was an Outlands deck, so it was fun getting to revisit that archetype and play with it again. Despite not having some of the great cards that show up later (hi, Erestor), the Outlands deck can really do a ton once it gets rolling. Theodred and Beravor are there to help Hirluin get as many allies into play as fast as possible, which can end up questing through pretty much anything once Faramir and the Ethir Swordsmen get on the board. Zealous Traitors can be really bad if the Anfalas Herdsmen aren't out, but the other deck should be trying to snag them when it can.

The defense deck is pretty much just there to support the Outlands deck. Eleanor can cancel some ill timed treacheries, and Beregond when fully armed can handle quite a few attacks with 7 defense thanks to Arwen. Once Glorfindel gets Asfaloth from the other deck, he can combo with the Northern Trackers to whittle away at the stacks of locations that tend to pile up in the staging area. A Watchful Peace and Thror's Key can help out with some of the issues that locations cause as well.