35 - The Fords of Isen (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!

Now that my card pool is starting to expand quite a bit, I can start branching into making some more thematic decks focusing on traits if I want to. I decided to make a Gondor deck and a Rohan deck to run at this quest, and while they certainly aren't as powerful or consistent as some of the previous fellowships I've used, I had a lot of fun playing with them. The biggest issue with this quest is how badly it punishes card draw and having cards in hand, so I wanted each deck to have very few situational combos, and just be able to play pretty much everything as I drew it. There are a few shenanigans that can be used with some combination of Mutual Accord, For Gondor!, We Do Not Sleep, Astonishing Speed and Forth Eorlingas! if the situation calls for it, but most of the time it's best to have as few cards in hand as possible. Again, since both decks will spend most the of the time top-decking we can't really rely on the combos, but it can be fun if it works out correctly near the end of the game.

I had only used Dunhere once in this series, for Conflict at the Carrock, and I really enjoyed him, so I figured I would try to build a little bit around his ability now that there are more tools available for him to use. If he can get Spear of the Mark and Dagger of Westernesse he can easily clear out enemies that stay in the staging area, either through low threat or from the other decks traps/Fresh Tracks. Arwen Undómiel is the key card in this deck, allowing for Denethor to have Sentinel with his A Burning Brand. With some readying he should be able to hand most defense for both decks, and the low cost allies can chump, giving Eomer his boost to kill enemies that the Rohan deck can optionally engage.

The Gondor deck should have Boromir as Steward, plus Visionary Leadership. Denethor can get Unexpected Courage and Gondorian shield from across the table, though neither are 100% necessary. Steed of the Mark is a good play on Faramir, allowing him to quest and then hit with his ranged attack, and Boromir can get Gondorian Fire to allow him to make use of the glut of resources to take out some of the bigger enemies if needed.

All in all, this was a really fun fellowship to build and play with, it also allowed me to use a ton of cards (mostly Rohan specific from the first cycle) that I hadn't used yet in this series. I could definitely see these decks working quite well against a few other quests if I was able to add some card draw and didn't have to worry about all of the Dunland enemies, I'm sure I'll revisit this sort of theme at a later date.