- the Lord of the Rings, book II, chapter V
John Howe: Grima Wormtongue, no year given.
**
I have some unusual friends. One of them has never read the Lord of the Rings, but having seen some movies named after it, they were quite taken with, of all characters, Gríma. As it happens, I'd been toying around with the idea of building a Gríma deck for some time, so obviously I took advantage of the opportunity.
Grìma is one of the few heroes in the game to have a deck type named entirely after himself. His ability to lower the cost of cards at the cost of threat for everyone makes him a powerhouse in solo play, and a somewhat unwelcome visitor in multiplayer. Combined with Keys of Orthanc, he can effectively play a two-cost ally per turn for free.
Having Gríma and a whole bunch of Doomed cards around is going to mean lots and lots of threat. What we need, then, is a hero who can do something to counteract that: Lore Aragorn.
An additional bonus is that in multiplayer games, Celebrian's Stone will give Aragorn a Spirit icon, letting us play Desperate Alliance, which may make other players a little less upset by their skyrocketing threat. Aragorn also lets us make use of the Sword that was Broken, which is not only excellent in general, but also very handily gives him a Leadership icon for extra resource smoothing.
Our third hero needs to be from the Leadership sphere, because some of the crucial Doomed cards I want to try out here are in Leadership. We could really use a defender, and luckily enough, there's an arguably perfect thematic choice available: Erkenbrand.
We'll be hoping to get Self Preservation on him so he can take a hit and keep on using his shadow-cancelling ability. The combined threat of 31 is a bit high, but we'll see how it goes.
With the heroes chosen, it's time for the deck itself. The point of this exercise for me is to try out the various Doomed cards, so we'll start with those. From the Voice of Isengard, we have Deep Knowledge for cards, Legacy of Númenor for resources and The Seeing-Stone to find other Doomed cards. For allies, we get Orthanc Guard, Isengard Messenger and, of course, Saruman.
To keep the Doomed theme going, I also included Herald of Anórien and Mirkwood Pioneer, and used the latter as a dubious thematic justification for throwing in a card I'd wanted to try out, i.e. Mirkwood Explorer. A final event was Waters of Nimrodel. The allies were rounded out by the geographically appropriate Gléowine, Warden of Helm's Deep and some good old Snowbourn Scouts.
**
52 cards; 16 Leadership, 26 Lore, 10 Neutral; 26 allies, 13 attachments, 12 events, 1 side quest. Starting threat 31.
Erkenbrand (TAC)
Gríma (VoI)
Aragorn (TWitW)
Allies: 26 (12/11/3)
Warden of Helm's Deep (TAC) x3
Herald of Anórien (TTT) x3
Orthanc Guard (VoI) x3
Snowbourn Scout x3
Mirkwood Explorer (TTitD) x3
Gléowine x2
Isengard Messenger (VoI) x3
Mirkwood Pioneer (TNiE) x3
Saruman (VoI) x3
Attachments: 13 (7/2/2/2)
The Sword that was Broken (TWitW) x2
Celebrian's Stone x2
Roheryn (FotW)
Steward of Gondor x2
Self Preservation x2
Keys of Orthanc (VoI) x2
Ring of Barahir x2 (TSF)
Events: 12 (3/6/3)
Legacy of Númenor (VoI) x3
Waters of Nimrodel (TAC) x3
Deep Knowledge (VoI) x3
The Seeing-stone (VoI) x3
Side quests: 1
Gather Information (TLR)
Multiplayer sideboard:
add Desperate Alliance (OtD) x3
**
Our first trial run was Passage through Mirkwood, with the Doom deck and my Amazons, both to test the deck and introduce the game to a new player. We had no real trouble at any point, and after some straightforward questing, Saruman dropped by to see to Ungoliant's Spawn. We next joined Team Boromir for a three-handed swing at Hunt for Gollum, which also went pretty smoothly. Incidentally, this was the first time I got to use Súlien, and she was excellent at dealing with a staging area full of locations. Both Erkenbrand and the Wardens of Helm's Deep were excellent. As sometimes happens in this quest, we found a grand total of one single copy of Signs of Gollum, which ended up going on Loragorn, because by then Gríma's questing army, bolstered by the Sword that was Broken, was steamrolling through the quest.
Because we managed to deploy such an impressive questing horde in such a short time, I'm actually thinking I need to add Faramir to make it even sillier. Speaking of silly, Trouble in Tharbad is excellent fun with a Gríma deck.
The first time we ran into any trouble was when we tried Voyage Across Belegaer. We set off three-handed with Gríma, my Amazons and our Beorn deck, and at first, everything went smoothly; we were thrown off course by some treacheries, but managed to clear a pile of locations, and Gríma's gang and the Beorn deck sank a Scouting Ship. It's quite entertaining to visualize how Beorn's sentinel defense works at sea. Then, however, we got into trouble. First, we hit a storm, with Winds of Wrath decimating our allies and Thrown Off Course doing, well, just that. To top it all off, a Scouting Ship also engaged us. Still, we survived - only for the next staging step to bring us two Light Cruisers and another Scouting Ship. Unfortunately, Gríma's antics, a Legacy of Númenor and some Deep Knowledges had left our threats high enough that all of them engaged us, and in the ensuing battle, all the heroes of the Beorn deck died, and Gríma's ship sank, ending our journey. That was the first time the increased threat got us into trouble we couldn't get out of.
**
So what have we learned? Certainly that having Gríma along makes for a somewhat different game. Funnily enough, we've mostly had the Gríma deck along in three- or four-player games of either the Grey Havens, the Dream-chaser cycle or the Sands of Harad, where threat hasn't actually been that big of a deal; the increase in threat has been somewhat offset by the faster buildup that cards like Deep Knowledge and especially Legacy of Númenor offer. Obviously decks relying on low threat, like hobbits or Dúnhere, will be completely hosed by the rising threat, but so far, in multiplayer games we've found Gríma makes less of a difference than we might have expected.
Anyway I would most definitely recommend trying a Gríma deck. It's excellent fun, and you really get all the key components from one deluxe expansion. Here's ours in its final form:
53 cards; 25 Leadership, 16 Lore, 10 Neutral, 2 Spirit; 25 allies, 14 attachments, 12 events, 2 side quests. Starting threat 31.
Erkenbrand (TAC)
Gríma (VoI)
Aragorn (TWitW)
Allies: 25 (14/8/3)
Faramir x2
Warden of Helm's Deep (TAC) x3
Herald of Anórien (TTT) x3
Orthanc Guard (VoI) x3
Snowbourn Scout x3
Gléowine x2
Isengard Messenger (VoI) x3
Mirkwood Pioneer (TNiE) x3
Saruman (VoI) x3
Attachments: 14 (7/2/3/2)
The Sword that was Broken (TWitW) x2
Celebrian's Stone x2
Roheryn (FotW)
Steward of Gondor x2
Self Preservation x2
Keys of Orthanc (VoI) x2
Song of Kings (THfG)
Ring of Barahir x2 (TSF)
Events: 12 (3/6/3)
Legacy of Númenor (VoI) x3
Waters of Nimrodel (TAC) x3
Deep Knowledge (VoI) x3
The Seeing-stone (VoI) x3
Side quests: 2
Send for Aid (TToR)
Gather Information (TLR)
Multiplayer sideboard:
add Desperate Alliance (OtD) x3
**
As a sort of followup to this, I'm seriously considering a Gríma-Na'asiyah-Kahliel deck...
No comments:
Post a Comment