I had previously discussed building two Silvan decks that work together in 2-player games here: http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/104951-two-handed-decks/?p=1250497

I decided to go ahead and actually build the decks and they seem to be working great. I haven't tried them on very many scenarios, but they decimated the few that I did try them on. I'm planning on running them through their paces using Ian's Testing Regimen .

I tried to keep the decks mostly thematic and focused on Silvan with a splash of Noldor, but there were a few less than thematic choices in the decks. Steward of Gondor and Horn of Gondor can typically be taken out and the decks will do alright, but I have hit a few walls without the extra resources.

Without further ado, here are the decks

Heroes (starting threat: 29)

Celeborn

Glorfindel (Spirit)

Elrond

Allies (17)

3x Naith Guide

2x Orophin

2x Imladris Stargazer

2x Arwen Undomiel

3x Silvan Refugee

3x Galadhrim Minstrel

2x Silvan Tracker

Attachments (15)

3x O Lorien!

3x Steward of Gondor

3x Light of Valinor

3x Protector of Lorien

2x A Burning Brand

2x Vilya

Events (18)

3x Feigned Voices

3x Valiant Sacrifice

3x Island Amid Perils

3x A Test of Will

3x The Tree People

3x Daeron's Runes

Sideboard

- Asfaloth: can replace A Burning Brand or Protector of Lorien on quests with more locations and fewer big enemies

- Daughter of the Nimrodel: If there are a lot of enemies with 4+ attack in the quest, she can be swapped in and used to heal Elrond since he is the only one able to defend the big guys consistently.

Strategy / Theory

This is the heavier questing deck. Each of the heroes has 3 willpower, so you can quest pretty hard right off the bat if you need to. Light of Valinor and Naith Guide let them quest freely. Celeborn has the weakest other stats of the three of them, so if you have the choice, you'll want Elrond and Glorfindel questing without exhausting because they can contribute more in Combat.

Glorfindel is the main attacker and Elrond is the main defender. The other deck has a lot of Ranged characters and readying, so it can help Glorfindel out when needed. Arwen, A Burning Brand, and Protector of Lorien are there to make Elrond a super defender and the Stargazer is there to help with the Vilya engine, which isn't always needed, but adds some nice power to the deck (hence the 2x of each). She can also make sure The Tree People or Galadhrim Minstrel hit their marks.

Elrond's ability to help pay for any ally also comes in handy for letting the other deck use O Lorien more often. Steward of Gondor is meant for Elrond due his ability to help pay for everyone.

Daeron's Runes and Protector of Lorien will help get rid of the extra copies of the uniques.

Now for the second deck.

Heroes (starting threat: 27)

Legolas

Haldir of Lorien

Galadriel

Allies (19)

2x Rumil

3x Galadhon Archer

2x Silvan Tracker

3x Galadhrim Minstrel

2x Henamarth Riversong

2x Lorien Guide

3x Silvan Refugee

2x Defender of the Naith

Attachments (14)

3x Rivendell Blade

3x Horn of Gondor

2x Rohan Warhorse

2x Wingfoot

2x Unexpected Courage

2x Nenya

Events (20)

3x Feint

3x Hands Upon the Bow

3x Foe-hammer

2x Pursuing the Enemy

3x Daeron's Runes

3x The Tree People

3x Island Amid Perils

Sideboard

- Elven Mail: Another boost for Elrond. Can also be given to Celeborn. I don't think anyone else should be defending. Can probably replace Rohan Warhorse.

- Daughter of the Nimrodel: Once again she can help with keeping Elrond alive, but I think you can have one deck use the Daughters and one deck use the Trackers, since the trackers themselves have 3 hitpoints and can also heal Celeborn, Legolas, Haldir, and some of the allies with a few hit points.

- A Test of Will: If there are a lot of nasty effects, then you can replace Hands Upon the Bow and have 6 copies between the two decks. You might actually have one when you need it then.

Strategy / Theory

This deck is more focused on combat, but with Galadriel's ability to let allies quest for free on their first turn, Galadriel with Nenya, Silvan Refugee, Haldir with Wingfoot, etc. you can muster a decent amount of willpower from this deck too.

Action advantage is a staple to these decks and there is a lot of help in that department from this deck. Rohan Warhorse allows you to use Legolas multiple times, Wingfoot (plus Henamarth) let you quest and attack with Haldir, and Unexpected Courage lets Elrond and Galadriel use their rings more often. Defender of the Naith can get a few defends off against the weaker enemies, especially on his first turn. He's kinda expensive and isn't a great defender without the first-turn boost, so try to hold him in your hand until you expect to see several enemies with 4 attack or less.

You can avoid a lot of attacks with Feint, Feigned Voices (the other deck), Hands Upon the Bow, Haldir, and some nice direct damage from Rumil, Galadhon Archer, and Pursuing the Enemy.

Henamarth + Wingfoot + Haldir is pretty fun. It's only 2 additional willpower, but it's enough to be worth it, and being able to really take advantage of encounter scrying is a lot of fun. Much more useful than simply knowing half of the cards you'll see revealed this round.

Anyway, those are the decks. Let me know what you think.

Cooly cool decks! I'm just waiting for the cycle to finish so we'll have pretty much all silvan cards available for the time being and then build some decks, but I really like these decks!

Not a real question about tr decks, but since you're proxying Orophin, we don't know what his ability is yet, right? Are you playing him with the 'silvan ally back into hand response when played from hand'? Or without any response? Just curious.

Thanks for sharing the decks!

We've done a lot of speculation and after a lot of testing, I've come to the conclusion that Orophin returns a Silvan ally from your discard pile to your hand. It was the only wording that we could think of that matched the alignment of the text shown in the images: http://1drv.ms/1v5jG5e

It hasn't come in handy all that often, but even if you exclude his ability, he's way better than Silverlode Archer.

Nice! I too run Elrond/Celeborn/Glorfindel for my Silvan deck, though I include more allies and haven't proxied anything yet. Orophin will definitely find its way in there, and possibly ally Galadriel unless I drop Glorfindel for her hero version. Silvan Tracker + Elrond certainly is a key healing mechanic here.

I don't think I've ever used Protector of Lórien but when I think about it it seems pretty good.

I haven't heard of any ally Galadriel. Have you? I kinda hate the reliance on Noldor in these decks, but they serve some very good purposes. I wouldn't say that I want an ally Galadriel thrown in without knowing that she'll serve a good purpose since she isn't Silvan (and obviously I use the hero).

EDIT: nevermind I see the post about her now. Obviously, I still can't have her in any of these decks, since I'm using the hero version, but she is very nice. 3 resources for 3 willpower in the Leadership sphere is pretty good already, but being able to fetch and play an attachment too? Awesome. I'm sure she'll end up in plenty of other decks, so I don't need her here.

Too bad she's a "play from your hand" instead of "enters play" card so we can't sneak attack her. I guess I'll just have to use tactics too and give her Born Aloft so I can use her again.

Just wondering how your decks went with Into Ithilien? (Ian's testing).. Blocking Wargs vs 1 hit point Silvan's, Celador taking wounds when characters leave play... not great for Silvan decks as far as I can tell

Personally I keep getting stomped on - I'm running the same heroes but in a different combination

The blocking wargs vs silvan archetye part is a very good point but who gives a **** about Celador! If he stays in play you advance to the impossible stage 3 instead of stage 2!

lol... less impossible than stage 2 if you don't have many shields... might I need more shields... seems so... well Gondorian!

The next step being stewards fear sill quite manageable despite zealous lurking around giving his best blocking wargs impersonation (but failing)... first game simple... second game got location locked... drawing zealous traitor on three separate occasions didn't help... Ian seems to have picked a couple of great anti 1 hit point character quests...

I still havent had the chance to play these again to try them against Ian's list of quests.

My only question is why do tri-sphere? Seems easier to do two Duel sphere decks and save yourself some resource frustrations

Tri-sphere works pretty well for Silvan decks because they have a lot of cheap cards and O Lorien. Also I feel like The Tree People and Galadhrim Minstrel are too powerful not to have in all Silvan decks; they make the decks hum. Finally, I wanted Legolas and Haldir in the same deck to help power up Rumil and I wanted to keep that deck's threat level low cuz of Haldir's ability, so putting Elrond with them would have been bad for the deck.

My only question is why do tri-sphere? Seems easier to do two Duel sphere decks and save yourself some resource frustrations

I agree with Joezim007. Cheap cards... including a number of great 0 cost events and O'Lorien goes a long way in offseting the resource disadvantages of tri-sphere Silvans - so far at least. Found that Horn of Gondor generates a LOT of resources too.

(I have also been running dual Silvan decks; 1 dual sphere and 1 tri sphere... different hero combinations to Joezim007 but use a lot of the same cards and resources aren't the problem - at least not for me. lots of 1 hit point allies are far more problematic depending on the quest)

I am loving the Silvan concept right now, much more than I thought I would. But the one hit point on the Silvan allies is definately a weakness. I would have much prefered two hit points because certain treachery cards have wrecked my deck because of the fragile elves. I put Elven Armor on Defender of the Naith and that card becomes a beast. Right before she is killed I pop her back to my hand and then replay the Defender and armor again.

I hope you are talking about a new copy of Elven Armor because I believe that the attached one would get discarded.

The Silvan Doubles I've tried so far are:

Celeborn/Mirlonde/Haldir and Galadriel/Glorfindel/Legolas

The Spirit Tactics deck isn't that great yet because it lacks the new Silvan allies for both spheres.

What I ended up doing is turning it into Glorfindel/Beregond/Legolas so there would be a consistent defender on the team and making it an Eagles focused deck (Ranged Eagle helps Rumil). Works pretty well.

It would be nice to get Haldir and Legolas together. Maybe swap spheres so it's Lead/Sp and Lo/Ts

@ joezim007 : I have been playing wrong. Thanks for the clarification!

Finally got around to playing again. I played The Morgul Vale (alternative to The Three Trials; I did this because I've never played TMV and I'd like to complete that cycle before moving to later cycles). I lost the first two times, but won the third game:

1. First loss was mostly because I went in blind and just sped through the bosses. When I got to the third stage, it also revealed Lieutenant of Mordor and several other enemies and my heroes had gotten piled up with damage from archery (got 2 Orc Arbalesters out very early for 8 damage per round) and so I was losing heroes very quickly and was not able to attack back. The biggest reason I was able to move quickly in the beginning was because of 2 Feints and a Feigned Voices let me blow past enemies for a little bit.
2. Second time I pretty much lost in the 2nd round just because of an Orc Arbalesters card (4 archery) and The Master's Malice threw tons of damage around right away. Not a good quest to go into with 2 tri-sphere decks.
3. I won the third game because I was able to take things a bit slower and build up a massive army of allies. I had 12 allies out at the end of the game, and I had even more earlier. Got a score of 159. I was also able to get a Silvan Tracker out early to keep the archery damage away. It was nice to see the Galadhon Archer's and Pursuing the Enemy's direct damage really come into play, too. Several times I had enemies with 1 hit point left on them that they took care of and Galadhon Archer actually finished off the Nazgul of Minas Morgul.

9 completed rounds = 90
Total combined Threat = 68
Total damage on Heroes = 4
Cost of dead Heroes = 0
Victory points = 3
TOTAL SCORE = 159

OTHER NOTES:

I'm kinda perplexed by the inability of my weapons/warhorse to show up most of the time. I will be adding the Galadhrim Bow from Nin-In-Eilph to the deck soon, but not sure what changes will happen.

I think I'll do The Steward's Fear next (I've played this one a couple times but haven't beaten it yet) and see how it fares with all those locations. Hopefully I can get an Unexpected Courage and Nenya on Galadriel early to help prevent location lock.

The Steward's Fear is proving to be a tough challenge for this deck thus far. I've only played 1 game against it thus far. I didn't make any changes to the deck, so the only real location control I had was Legolas. The Lorien Guides didn't show up until really late, and they still didn't help much. I got location locked on stage 3. There was about 18-20 threat from locations in the staging area and I was able to mostly consistently muster 24-28 willpower, which made it difficult to get any progress (the plot was the one that made me reveal an extra card each round during staging). Since most of the locations were still in the staging area, I kept revealing enemies and treacheries that liked picking off my 1-hit point allies like crazy. These weak allies makes it really really hard to build up against this quest. Of course, Galadriel was holding the Horn of Gondor (she has 2 spheres with Nenya, so I figured it'd work best on her). I kept drawing Tactics cards and she ended up with over 20 resources by the end of the game.

After 14 rounds, I just stalled and threated out.

I made some adjustments, most notably adding Asfaloth to the Celeborn deck and A Test of Will to the Legolas deck so that I could deal with the locations and nasty treacheries more easily. I started a game but didn't have time to finish it and I was playing on OCTGN and had to shut down my computer so I couldn't just leave it for later. I got Asfaloth into play on round 2 and it was working well to clear the locations... but you really have to be careful when clearing them because you don't want too many of those enemies popping out at once. So it's probably in your best interest to only use Asfaloth on locations without the Underworld trait to keep the stage clearer, and wait on clearing the Underworld locations until you find that you can handle more enemies than what is currently in the staging area, otherwise you can't muster enough defense, so allies keep dying again. Also, the more quickly you explore those locations, the more often you'll see Zealous Traitor, who will kill most of your allies simply by engaging him, and of course his engagement is so low that you can never avoid engaging him.

Hopefully after tomorrow I will have been able to play a full game with the side board cards included and with the new strategy in mind so that I can win a game or two with the deck and let you guys in on it.

Full attempt number 2 against The Steward's Fear was a success, and with that I've finally beaten the entire Against the Shadow cycle. Now I just need to man up and play Into Ithilien and The Siege of Cair Andros.

12 completed rounds = 120
Total combined Threat = 79
Total damage on Heroes = 0
Cost of dead Heroes = 0
Victory points = 3
TOTAL SCORE = 196

I may have cheated a tiny bit: For a round (maybe 2) I forgot to reveal the extra card for the Unholy Alliance Plot . Also, I'm not sure if I forgot a threat raise or 2 from that nasty Local Trouble condition attachment. That card really hurts that deck because Elrond + Vilya are so awesome but it doesn't pay to use it with Local Trouble attached.

This game probably would have been easier if I had Asfaloth out before round 8. I also never saw a single weapon. Technically, that's not true; I saw weapons several times when using The Tree People or Galadhrim Minstrel, but never drew one. Luckily, most enemies are rather weak defensively in this quest so I really didn't need the blades.

Thankfully I drew Nenya on the second to last turn so I could make my big quest push possible. Interestingly enough, it still wasn't the quest push that finished the game: it was actually Legolas' ability that added the final progress to the quest. Oh how I've missed Legolas. When I first starting playing I made a pair of decks to play together and Legolas was in one of them. I loved him sooo much. Then I went for months trying other decks and specifically avoiding Legolas so I could experiment with other heroes. Legolas shows up in these decks, though, and I'm happy again.

One more attempt of The Steward's Fear remains and I'm not looking forward to it. This quest takes forever!

Breezed through The Steward's Fear on the 3rd attempt:

9 completed rounds = 90
Total combined Threat = 71
Total damage on Heroes = 2
Cost of dead Heroes = 0
Victory points = 2
TOTAL SCORE = 161

I severely lucked out with Zealous Traitor and A Knife in the Back; They either showed up early when I had 0 or 1 allies on the player it affects or the treachery showed up as shadow cards or when I was ready with A Test of Will. My plot card was Up In Flames, so I kinda wanted to quest hard and fast when it showed up. I only ended up getting 2 tokens on it. After the first turn with it, I ended up turning over 2 clue cards from under the active location, so I just used them to move on to the next stage, revealing The Hand of Castamir as my Villain . I immediately engaged him and destroyed him since no other enemies were around. I would have been able to take care of him even if 1 or 2 more enemies showed up. The attack power is ridiculous in these decks, mainly in the Legolas/Haldir/Galadriel deck, especially once the weapons and some tactics allies have hit the table. The next round I gave one last quest push with 28 committed to the quest, which cleared it easily (only needed 22).

Interestingly, I rarely activated Legolas' or Lorien Guide's ability because I wanted to control when the active locations left play due to the underworld cards filling the staging area with more threat if done at the wrong time.

Anyway, testing is half done and it is sitting at a 50% win rate, though it'd likely be higher if I knew how to handle The Morgul Vale the first time and if I had remembered to include the sideboard changes for the first game of The Steward's Fear. No biggie though. Now we're moving on to the intimidating Into Ithilien.

Looking ahead, I'm going to need to keep the Alternate version of the red deck because I need as much cancellation as possible. I will NOT be using the Asfaloth variant of the other deck. I shouldn't be needing that location control this time.

I'm definitely going to want to try to skip stage 2 and keep my threat low for stage 4 because these decks severely lack defense. Haldir should have some fun in stage 3, though, and hopefully I'll be able to get Legolas in on the action as well with Hands Upon the Bow. Even Galadhon Archer may be able to contribute.

Anybody else have any pointers before I throw myself beneath the feet of a Mumak?

Er Roll well!

I haven't had lot of time to play but when i did take a run at this quest I would have skipped the second stage for the same reason... if I had ever got there...

Unfortunately Blocking Wargs made an appearance or two in the first couple of rounds in all but one of my duel Silvan deck attempts... and twice in the rounds that I had a test of will... it became a Silvan massacre even without a mumak showing up...

So my only advise is to mulligan if you don't draw at least 1 Test of Will!

Good idea. I was considering that. There are a LOT of nasty When Revealed effects in this quest.

Okay so finally played though the four quests with my 2 handed silvan decks - posted in PyschoRocka's two handed post.

Journey down the anduin 3-1 so long ago I don't remember why I lost, it was really early on and I folded.

Into ithilen 0-4 - blocking wargs, couldn't get past stage one. I have modified my deck slightly might try again. Might not

The stewards fear 3-1 location lock.

The tree trials 3-1 again location lock during the trial where you can have a maximum of 5 allies in play. Much prefer this trial/barrow location early on. Technically I threated out in final trial where the three guardians reappeared. But it was the trial perseverance, had the boar chap I wasn't allowed to kill and The cave barrows surrounded by multiple ancient forests, cursed forests and I think tangled forests where my threat ballooned. Made it to the final trial where I managed to Destroy 1 and wound the other two guardians. Going into the staging... Both decks have 49 threat... First encounter card drawn has doomed 2... Fun quest though

I'm curious to know how you went into ithilen?

Chuckles: you know about the blocking warm errata right?