48 - The Weather Hills (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!

Since I had used all of the new Tactics and Leadership Dunedain in the last quest, I figured I would build around being able to use all of the new Lore and Spirit cards for The Weather Hills. I had only used Idraen once before, but since this quest requires constant clearing (and revealing) of locations, she seemed like a natural fit. Elrond + Warden of Healing seemed pretty necessary with all of the weather effects, so I had to choose between Galadriel and Beravor for my last slot, ultimately deciding that I needed the additional willpower boost that Nenya can provide (not to mention the added bonus that this is the first published deck on RingsDB that uses this hero lineup).

There are a ton of low attack enemies in the deck, so keeping a few engaged and a few trapped with Forest Snare ended up being perfectly acceptable to fuel even more card draw with Sarn Ford Sentry and boost up the Warden of Annúminas to help out with questing. This freed up Gléowine to help the other deck draw some additional cards.

The combat deck is pretty much entirely built around Sentinel defenders and Ranged attackers. With an Unexpected Courage Legolas can effectively be attacking for 6 by himself (7 with Ranged), which can kill most of the enemies in this quest. Adding in either Idraen or some other Dunedain ally and it can take out the beefier ones as well. This can really help by putting some extra progress on the active location due to Legolas' response. I also threw a Rivendell Blade and Bow of the Galadhrim onto a Galadhon Archer to add even more Ranged damage to the party.

This is my second time using Erkenbrand, and I can already tell that I'm going to have a hard time leaving him out of future decks. Lembas is a natural fit on him, allowing him to heal up and ready to defend again. Between him, Aragorn (using his own response and Wingfoot to ready), Defender of Rammas and Warden of Helm's Deep I was never at a loss for a defender, even when revealing the Cornered Orcs that attack immediately. Early game willpower and location lock did prove to be a minor issue, but I won 3 of the 5 games I ran this deck at The Weather Hills, including one where I didn't see Nenya until very late.