I'd been thinking about hero roles earlier; ideally, you want one hero for questing, one for attacking and one for defending, unless allies are going to be taking care of one or more. Using the core set heroes, the ideal setup for this would seem to be Éowyn for questing, Legolas for attacking and Denethor for defending. I was quite surprised to realize that this adds up to the same starting threat as my Amazons deck! So when we got On the Doorstep with its stack of archery-themed Tactics cards, I finally decided to have a go at building an alternate deck. I'm calling it Pelennor, since they were all there, even if it does make attaching A Burning Brand to Denethor a bit macabre.
In its first outing, the deck fairly breezed through Passage through Mirkwood. I got a lucky initial draw of Henamarth Riversong, Blade of Gondolin and Unexpected Courage, which got the Legolas machine set up, and Arwen showed up soon thereafter, along with A Burning Brand for Denethor. We didn't even have to fight Ungoliant's Spawn, and made short work of the quest. As always, A Journey Down the Anduin was a different kettle of fish. We dealt with the Hill Troll all right, but the second quest phase sunk me when I failed to draw either Blade of Gondolin or Arwen. After these initial attempts, I added some card draw and more weapon attachments to power the various weapon-related events, to produce this:
Pelennor, or the tri-sphere experiment
52 cards; 15 Spirit, 22 Tactics, 12 Lore, 4 neutral. 3 heroes, 17 allies, 19 attachments, 10 events, 3 side quests.
Éowyn
Legolas
Denethor
Allies: 17 (2/6/6/3)
Arwen Undómiel (TWitW) x2
Vassal of the Windlord (TDM) x2
Winged Guardian (THfG) x2
Dúnedain Hunter (TLR) x2
Gléowine x2
Warden of Healing (TLD) x2
Henamarth Riversong x2
Gandalf (Core) x2
Gandalf (OHaUH)
Attachments: 19 (5/10/4)
Unexpected Courage x2
Ancient Mathom (AJtR) x3
Support of the Eagles (RtM) x2
Great Yew Bow (OtD) x2
Blade of Gondolin x3
Rivendell Bow (TWitW) x2
Black Arrow (OtD)
Burning Brand (CatC) x2
Protector of Lorien x2
Events: 10 (5/5)
Test of Will x2
Elrond's Counsel (TWitW) x3
Foe-hammer (OHaUH) x3
Straight Shot (OtD) x2
Side quests: 3 (1/1/1)
Double Back (EfMG)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)
Gather Information (TLR)
Ideally, I'm looking to get a massive stack of attachments on Legolas: Unexpected Courage, Support of the Eagles, Great Yew Bow, Rivendell Bow and Blade of Gondolin. Should all this ever come together, it would generate a strength 7 attack into the staging area (8 against orcs), as well as a regular attack through Unexpected Courage. Meanwhile, Éowyn quests and Denethor defends. I'm sorely tempted to break with our buying chronology and buy Treason of Saruman just so I could give Éowyn Herugrim!
There are very few allies, so obviously the deck will struggle with multiple enemies and questing. It's possible the eagles are an extravagance I can't really afford, and should be replaced with more useful allies, but hell, I want to try this.
**
Having previously failed at A Journey down the Anduin, that was obviously my first step with the revamped deck. I got a fantastic starting hand, with a Blade of Gondolin, Great Yew Bow, Gléowine, a Warden of Healing and Gandalf. The card I revealed in staging was a Hill Troll, so we got off to an unusually single-minded start! A combination of East Bight, Despair and Misty Mountain Goblins kept our questing going solidly nowhere, but I got both Great Yew Bow and Rivendell Bow on Legolas, which let me do a couple of points of damage to the troll in the staging area. A Goblin Sniper also showed up, and I had the immense satisfaction of dispatching him immediately.
By the time my threat hit 30, I had A Burning Brand and Protector of Lórien on Denethor, who defended easily, leaving Legolas and Gandalf to finish the troll off. Some Dol Guldur Orcs inconveniently popped out of the encounter deck on that turn, but Straight Shot saw to them. Having Gandalf hang around had raised my threat a bit, so I took a moment to Double Back before moving on to the second stage. I do really like side quests!
Another valuable Lost Realm card in this deck is Dúnedain Hunter. He was included to find enemies to feed Legolas's progress-generating ability, but he also combos nicely with scrying, as offered by Henamarth and Denethor. For example, when we were slogging through the East Bight in the first phase with an empty staging area, I used Henamarth to check what was coming next, and found The Brown Lands. The threat of five would have caused us a severe delay, so I played Dúnedain Hunter instead, finding us a relatively benign enemy to defeat and reshuffling the encounter deck.
The second quest phase went surprisingly smoothly. We went in with a clear staging area, and despite a couple of surges from Eastern Crows and a Wolf Rider, we made good progress. My second Straight Shot got rid of the Wolf Rider, and the crows were easily dealt with through Great Yew Bow. I always forget how annoying Eastern Crows are when you don't have Thalin around. On the other hand, a card like Gladden Fields really highlights how useful Legolas's ability is: with an enemy to destroy, you can safely travel to it, knowing that it won't be increasing your threat because Legolas and the Blade of Gondolin will clear it.
In the end, our trip down the Great River ended almost anticlimactically: after the last staging step, we had a couple of Necromancer's Passes and a Banks of the Anduin in the staging area, but no enemies. We won! Even though we'd gotten off a bit easy, we were prepared for worse: again, I even had Support of the Eagles and a Vassal of the Windlord in play, which were never needed.
Even though I've managed to beat it with both decks, winning at Journey down the Anduin still feels a bit special after all that time bashing my head into it in the early days. I'm really happy with my deck: it's probably incredibly inefficient and one-dimensional, but I love playing it because it's so much fun.
**
As we were playing around with our new decks, we added Heirs of Númenor and The Steward's Fear to our collection. I do love how cheap the LotR products are! I'm obviously considering a Gondorian Shield for Denethor, but can't figure out what to leave out. Quite disappointed that you can't get Spear of the Citadel on him! It seems thematically wrong to restrict it to Tactics characters.
Defender of Rammas would also come in handy; the Winged Guardians are only there to power Support of the Eagles, since I can't afford to keep throwing my only Tactics resource at them. This actually makes so much sense that I made the change immediately. I've been taking more undefended attacks than I'm comfortable with anyway.
I also removed one Blade of Gondolin and added two Gondorian Shields; we'll see how it goes! Buying the Road to Rivendell adventure pack later caused a minor deckbuilding crisis, in the form of Rivendell Blade.
Seeing as how my deck is already at 53 cards, I don't want to add anything, so the choice comes down to Blade of Gondolin or Rivendell Blade. For something like We Must Away or Conflict at the Carrock, Rivendell Blade would be a no-brainer, but I'm quite fond of that extra progress token, especially since so many locations seem to require three progress. The +1 attack bonus against orcs should also come in handy in Khazad-dûm!
For my next solo attempt, I decided to tackle The Hunt for Gollum. Sure, it's a fairly easy quest, but I'm still trying to get a feel for this deck, so trying something different ought to help. I got Great Yew Bow and Rivendell Bow on Legolas, as well as Unexpected Courage, but Hunters from Mordor made a very good case for Rivendell Blade! I was quite tired, so my playing was a bit sloppy; for instance, I almost certainly should've left the Hunters in the staging area for a bit, because the +1 attack from Rivendell Bow would've helped! Questing was a bit slow again, but we got the job done.
**
Meanwhile, my partner had put together a Dwarf deck and succesfully beaten both Passage and Journey with it. Here it is in its more or less initial form:
56 cards; 26 leadership, 26 Lore, 1 Spirit, 3 neutral; 3 heroes, 17 allies, 14 attachments, 20 events, 2 side quests.
Bifur (Kd)
Dáin Ironfoot (RtM)
Balin (OtD)
Allies: 17 (5/9/1/2)
Brok Ironfist
Fili (OhaUH) x2
Glóin (OtD) x2
Daughter of the Nimrodel
Dori (OhaUH) x2
Erebor Hammersmith x2
Miner of the Iron Hills x2
Warden of Healing (TLD)
Erebor Record Keeper (Kd)
Kili (OHaUH)
Gandalf (Core) x2
Events: 20 (13/7)
Campfire Tales (THfG)
Durin's Song (Kd) x2
Ever Vigilant x2
Fresh Tracks (TLD) x2
Sneak Attack x2
To Me! O My Kinsfolk! (OtD) x2
Valiant Sacrifice x2
Ancestral Knowledge (Kd) x2
Radagast's Cunning x2
Secret Paths x2
Strider's Path (THfG)
Attachments: 14 (6/8)
King Under the Mountain (OtD) x2
Steward of Gondor x2
Cram (OhaUH) x2
Forest Snare x3
A Burning Brand (CatC)
Legacy of Durin (TwitW) x2
Protector of Lórien x2
Side quests: 2
Scout Ahead (TWoE)
Gather Information (TLR)
It's a kind of Barbican dwarf swarm: exactly like your regular dwarf swarm, but with all the swarm taken out. But apparently it worked, to an extent, so there you have it.
We decided to try our alternate decks in co-op, and what better place to try out a dwarf deck than the Dwarrowdelf? Starting with Into the Pit, I genuinely believed that we wouldn't get past East-gate, let alone further in the quest, but I was wrong! In fact, we rolled through quite effortlessly, despite my partner managing to play a grand total of two (2) allies from a dwarf swarm deck. Which did let us clear Dreadful Gap in one turn, though! Defender of Rammas proved excellent, especially with Arwen's bonus and Balin's shadow-canceling ability standing by.
I got neither Great Yew Bow nor Blade of Gondolin, and despite drawing both copies of Support of the Eagles early on, neither bird saw fit to make an appearance. This didn't really matter, though, since Rivendell Bow did come in handy: a goblin would show up from the encounter deck, a dwarf would defend it and Legolas would shoot it. Unexpected Courage also made an appearance; I played one on Legolas and the other on Dáin, since Defender of Rammas was already in play by then and Burning Brand hadn't made an appearance. Despite some of my key cards being conspicuously absent and the dwarf deck not having any allies in it, we did get a bit of luck when we drew a whole sequence of essentially meaningless treacheries when East-gate was active, and everything went quite smoothly from there. I was honestly surprised!
I was less surprised when we were soundly defeated by The Seventh Level. The laziest quest in the expansion, it throws a never-ending stream of goblins at you. If you can destroy them as they emerge from the encounter deck, the quest is trivially easy; if not, you have no chance. With my deck thin on allies, we were always going to struggle against the massive deluge of enemies. I was too nice about this quest in my earlier post; it really is terrible. Thinking positively, I suppose it's just as well that Balin never found out he was dead! Pretty much the same thing happened in Flight from Moria.
**
Here, for the record, is the final version of my deck after these adventures:
Pelennor, or the tri-sphere experiment
53 cards; 15 Spirit, 23 Tactics, 12 Lore, 4 neutral. 3 heroes, 17 allies, 20 attachments, 10 events, 3 side quests.
Éowyn
Legolas
Denethor
Allies: 17 (2/6/6/3)
Arwen Undómiel (TWitW) x2
Defender of Rammas (HoN) x2
Vassal of the Windlord (TDM) x2
Dúnedain Hunter (TLR) x2
Gléowine x2
Warden of Healing (TLD) x2
Henamarth Riversong x2
Gandalf (Core) x2
Gandalf (OHaUH)
Attachments: 20 (5/11/4)
Unexpected Courage x2
Ancient Mathom (AJtR) x3
Support of the Eagles (RtM) x2
Great Yew Bow (OtD) x2
Blade of Gondolin x2
Gondorian Shield (HoN) x2
Rivendell Bow (TWitW) x2
Black Arrow (OtD)
Burning Brand (CatC) x2
Protector of Lorien x2
Events: 10 (5/5)
Test of Will x2
Elrond's Counsel (TWitW) x3
Foe-hammer (OHaUH) x3
Straight Shot (OtD) x2
Side quests: 3 (1/1/1)
Double Back (EfMG)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)
Gather Information (TLR)
And here's the dwarves, with a bit more swarm thrown in:
Bifur (Kd)
Dáin Ironfoot (RtM)
Balin (OtD)
Allies 21 (4/14/1/2)
Fili (OhaUH) x2
Glóin (OtD) x2
Daughter of the Nimrodel
Dori (OhaUH) x2
Longbeard Map-Maker (CatC) x2
Erebor Hammersmith x3
Miner of the Iron Hills x3
Warden of Healing (TLD)
Erebor Record Keeper (Kd) x2
Kili (OHaUH)
Gandalf (Core) x2
Events: 16 (13/3)
Campfire Tales (THfG)
Durin's Song (Kd) x2
Ever Vigilant x2
Fresh Tracks (TLD) x2
Sneak Attack x2
To Me! O My Kinsfolk! (OtD) x2
Valiant Sacrifice x2
Ancestral Knowledge (Kd) x2
Strider's Path (THfG)
Attachments: 12 (7/5)
King Under the Mountain (OtD) x2
Narvi's Belt (Kd)
Steward of Gondor x2
Cram (OhaUH) x2
A Burning Brand (CatC)
Legacy of Durin (TwitW) x2
Protector of Lórien x2
Side quests: 2
Gather Information (TLR)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)
**
On the whole, coming up with a brand-new deck was a lot of fun, and familiar scenarios become all new again when you face them with a totally different deck. I definitely want to try this one again, but I'm also looking forward to putting together more decks: definitely a Lore deck with Rossiel and Mirlonde, and almost certainly a Rohan deck, probably Spirit/Tactics. I've enjoyed playing my regular Spirit/Lore deck, and Tactics is good fun. The only sphere I can't really bring myself to be particularly interested in is Leadership. On the topic of spheres, I do have to say that I'm massively disappointed that all the female heroes so far have been in Spirit and Lore. I suppose they're waiting for the appropriate saga expansion before coming out with Tactics Dernhelm, but would it really be too much to ask to have at least one Leadership lady?
That's it for our alternative adventures for now; next time, some more alternative decks, and then the Amazons and Team Boromir return for the Dwarrowdelf cycle.
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