This is one of the more complex decks i have designed. Every card is critical to the functioning of the deck. It relies heavily on the istari allies, and it is great for getting both Gandalf and Saruman in play togehter many times through out the game. This deck is not meant to crush the most difficult scenarios, it's fun on the easy to moderatly difficult scenarios.

This deck is fast, so fast that in one game I had drawn my whole deck after the second round. But normally by the 4th or 5th round you will hae gone through your whole deck and possibly won. The deck uses the doomed mechanic, Grima, and Aragorn. Mirlonde is for the low starting threat of 26.

Here s the deck with stratefy below.

Hero (3)

Aragorn (TWitW) x1

Gríma (VOI) x1

Mirlonde (TDF) x1

Ally (9)

Saruman (VOI) x3

Gandalf (Core) x3

Isengard Messenger (VOI) x3

Attachment (19)

Ranger Spikes (HON) x3

Keys of Orthanc (VOI) x3

Steward of Gondor (Core) x2

Song of Kings (THFG) x3

Love of Tales (TLD) x3

Scroll of Isildur (TMV) x3

Sword that was Broken (TWitW) x1

Resourceful (TWitW) x1

Event (22)

Daeron's Runes (FoS) x3

Lorien's Wealth (Core) x3

Mithrandir's Advice (TSF) x3

Deep Knowledge (VOI) x3

The Seeing-stone (VOI) x3

Legacy of Númenor (VOI) x3

Sneak Attack (Core) x3

Rumour from the Earth (RtM) x1

Strategy:

For the opening had. The most important card is any type of Card Draw. Deep knowledge is the best to see. The plan is to just keep a chain of card draw and once song of kings is attached to get some resource acceleration to keep draw going with Legacy of Numenor, Keys should get attached, even Love of Tales can help give a resource edge when playing the 2 song cards. I like to hold the last 2 song of kings until all love of tales are attached, this will provide 4 resources.

For card draw the best comonation is Deep knowledge for 2 cards, then Scroll of Isildur for 1 resource to Draw 2 more, and put DK on the bottom of the deck, then play The Seeing Stone retrieve DK and draw 2 more cards. 6 cards for 1 resource! And it is likely with the six cards drawn will provided more card draw and resource production. If all goes well you will b in the mid 40's for threat and will probably have to reset after the first round with Aragorn. I've been at 48 threat after this deluge.

Okay, so the most imortant thing before the first quest phase is to get ranger spikes in the staging area. Surge could be an issue here, and if your threat is really high doomed cards. I have included Rumour in the Earth to plan for this, and for the cost of 0 it works nice in the deck i will pay the cost to keep it around for future use if possible. By now you should at least have a 1 or more copy of each of the Istari ally and hopefully a sneak attack or 2. sneak attacks are for the early game if something upredictable happens, or for whatever. Use them on Gandalf since Saruman will only remove a hill troll from the staging area while he is in play, when he leaves play after questing your screwed.

By end game which is, like round 4 or 5, you want to make sure you have SoG, Resourceful, and Keys attached to the hero of your choice, but I usually attach them to Grima. Once you have gone through your deck the only playable cards in your hand will be Gandalf and Saruman, which you will be able to play together each round for the next 3 rounds if need be. If you dont win the game in 3 rounds your finished, since you have no allies to play, and all your istari allies are in the discard pile.

The other thing to manage is willpower questing and the Isengard messanger fills the void nicely. He will be questing for 3 every round and 4 when TStWB is in play. I did have Faramir ally in the deck but I replaced for Rumour in the Earth since I found willpower to be sufficent.

The deck can occasionally hit a dead end in draw,, so it might not go the way i described all the time but most of the time it does. It is a pretty high risk deck, and if you are the type of person that likes to push your luck you might like to give this a try, since you'll be faced with how far to go with threat, resource use and card draw while making sure you can be prepared for what the first round brings.

Thoughts?

Edit: this is a solo deck

seems intriguing. gonna give it a shot

Sounds cool! Should to try it

Sad Radagast.

I haven't tried this deck yet (still have to get my darn Voice of Isengard box), but I've been thinking for a while... You need to make a blog, Tracker! You make possibly the best decks for this game, it'd be great to have a "deck database" with some startegy comments on your part. Don't even need to be articles per se, but just the first posts of your deck threads, and it would be awesome. Just an idea.

I haven't tried this deck yet (still have to get my darn Voice of Isengard box), but I've been thinking for a while... You need to make a blog, Tracker! You make possibly the best decks for this game, it'd be great to have a "deck database" with some startegy comments on your part. Don't even need to be articles per se, but just the first posts of your deck threads, and it would be awesome. Just an idea.

Maybe not the best decks in terms of crushing every scenario, but I find them to be pretty good decks that are fun and interesting to play at least.

I have considered a blog, but more like a database as you suggested, it would be nice to keep these decks together in one place, and that could be a neat resource for players to check out.

The other popular blogs for Lotr LCG are excellent and do such a great job of covering a vast array of topics, and it would be tough to find a stone they have not turned over. So, I am all about the decks, although one thing that I would like to expand upon, if I do this would be to reveal a bit more about the process of how a deck starts out to what it finishes up like, and then show how it continues to change with new player cards in the future. Since posting a deck seems like a static entity, it never quite conveys how the deck evolved to be what it is and then what it becomes as time goes on. I think that could be quiet interesting to some readers, since i think the reader will not only get to try out a new deck but get more ideas on deck construction that can be used when building their own decks. I think Beorn and Ian at TftC do this a bit already, I'd just be doing it in my own way, I'd also like to do a play through video for each deck just to show a viewer how the deck is intended to work in real time. But I need to set myself up with better equipment for that.

Anyway, it's certainly a possibility, but even if I set it up, I probably would still post the decks here and at BGG, since i don't want players to have to put another site to check on their list. Any additional information beyond the list and the basic strategy of the deck would then be at the site along with a video if available.

Any opinions or suggestions about this would be helpful.

I think this is a great idea!

It would be neat if some core decks got updated when new cards came out and you could see the evolution of them.

The problem now is that there isn't one place to easily see a list of the decks you've done.

Short term how about posting a new topic 'Trackers decks'. Simply listing all the decks that you have created and linking them page where you posted the deck. (You could reserve a heap of future posts and edit them later with the How to's). Not a great long term option...

ie

• dunheres-super-secret-ride
• grimas-doomed-outlanders-mono-lore-solo

Tried this deck over the three VOI quests (I know, shouldn't use Grima on the first one...) and it was loads of fun. It struggles a bit against To Catch an Orc, unless Mugash comes out early, but it eats alive the other two. I've never really had such an insane card-draw going before, and the chaining with Grima and doomed is formidable. Not sure I'll use the deck much more, but it's very fun to play! Cool idea!