Double Burglar Decks

Jtothemac 477

Description

It's been confirmed that multiple players can run the same contract. With this in mind, these decks become all about clearing locations and maximizing the boons. These decks turtle a bit, focusing on clearing locations, getting loot into play, and getting the side quests cleared. Yes, there is now a +2 quest point hit on active locations, but what you will find is that these decks do not struggle with questing. Haldan gives you an extra 2(!!) cards per turn, while the Gondor/Rohan side will focus the attention on triggering abilities and bringing in chumps while we wait for the big weapons to come in. With two burglar decks, your chances of drawing combat weapons increase significantly. There will be some repeats that you need to account for, but these are few and far between.

I would suggest to pull in Rally the West as your starting side quest and try to clear that out as soon as possible. Once you do, you will not even feel the +2 quest point hit, as thurindir makes up for it himself. The Forest Road Traveler's become absolute beasts in this game, with basically a 3,3,3,2 score throughout the game for only 2 cost.

We're all about clearing locations and getting more of them into play, if possible. Strider's path is the best card in this fellowship, especially when you are looking for locations.

This fellowship isn't great against certain quests, especially ones that punish chumping and ones short of locations. Some tweaking needs to occur depending on the challenge. Overall, however, the sheer strength that is brought in the end game with these decks are incredible, and this is definitely the fastest card draw I've seen shy of a Erestor deck.

4 comments

Jan 29, 2020 Jwahind 1

Just wondering about elf-stone in the Summon the Army! Deck. It will be ‘guarded’ behind the active location, and once you’ve cleared the location to be able to use it, there will no longer be an active location for you to attach it to so you would need to take it into your hand. As that deck has no lore heroes, how will you manage to play it? (I’m also wondering how you’ll manage to play the leadership and lore allies in this deck - are you just making use of put into play effects which mean they only stay on the battlefield for the one round?)

Jan 29, 2020 Jtothemac 477

Excellent questions/comments!

So perhaps I'm being a little liberal with this view but my interpretation is such that since Elf-stone is attached to the active location when it is looted, its trigger goes off when the location is cleared. If that is ultimately ruled to be illegal play, then I will remove that and replace it with the new guarded stone coming in the third pack.

As with the lore allies, they are mostly for the play effects, but once "the storm comes" is cleared, they can be played normally. I would say that otherwise the summon the army deck does not play the traditional way until that side quest is cleared -- once cleared, it is a very versatile deck. Until then, theres a lot of jumping in and out of play, which is a lot of fun.

Jan 30, 2020 Jwahind 1

Well, the decks look really interesting - I love the idea of the no attachments but loot decks. Currently trying to beat the Numenor cycle quests, I'm only about 5 years behind but they've motivated me to do a bit of deck building research, which is how I found your post!

Jan 30, 2020 Jtothemac 477

If you end up testing this vs numenor, please comment back and let me know how they fair. My buddy and I play tested this versus the 2 player expansion and we crushed the scenario in epic fashion. We are saving the numenor quests for last as we have heard they're the toughest scenarios. If they do well for you I'd love to try them out myself.

They're really fun decks to run.