Hello fellow card floppers,

I need some help with finding a third deck to supplement the two other decks my friends play with for a 3 player campaign of the LotR saga. We went through it fine until we met the Balrog, where some evil chaining of treacheries left of short of completing the quest by a small margin.

The first deck used is a 2xleadership 1xspirit dwarf deck, the second is a tactics lore with Bard and Bain for ranged and lore Glorfindel which was replaced with Haldir as my deck had spirit Glorfindel. I used the following:

HEROES (3):

Elrond (Lore)
Denethor (Lore)
Glorfindel (Spirit)


ALLIES(26):

Leadership:
1x Erestor
1x Faramir

Lore:
3x Master of the Forge
3x Erebor Hammersmith
3x Warden of Healing
1x Anborn
1x Gildor Inglorion
1x Haldir of Lorien

Spirit:
3x Zigil Miner
3x Imladris Stargazer
1x Arwen Undomiel

Tactics:
1x Beorn
1x Landroval

Neutral:
3x Gandalf (Core)


ATTACHMENTS (21):

Lore:
3x Asfaloth
3x A Burning Brand
3x Ranger Spikes
3x Poisoned Stakes

Spirit:
3x Light of Valinor
3x Unexpected Courage

Neutral:
3x Vilya


EVENTS (3):

Spirit:
3x A Test of Will

( source )

I used Denethor as a powerful defender with burning brand, the HP boon from the first stages of the saga and Dunedain warning from the dwarf deck.

Now my problem is, that I feel the deck to be too unreliable/too slow for multiplayer (as it is meant to be a single player deck with heavy denethor use for scrying - which is less effective in multiplayer). Getting opening hands without any of the attachments, arwen not showing up, no vilya or no light of valinor for whole games, sometimes just leave me sitting there as not helping much, but responsible for flipping a third card from the encounter deck.

My vision is a deck that can still fulfill the defender role, possibly with more consistent sentinel ability than a single arwen does provide, and has access to a test of will and preferably still the burning brand.

Do you have suggestions on improving the deck towards more consistency or a completely different road (I am not set on anything really) - the other decks do not block most unique allies or attachments, even Steward of Gondor is available afaik?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

what is your card pool?

Oh, yeah, forgot that. Everything released plus a second core set.

Ok, incoming......

I cannot imagine a spirit / lore deck without 3 Daeron's Runes and 3 Hasty Stroke in it. You already mentioned two issues in your post where the above cards would help immensely. Never leave home without them. I'd strongly advise you to add 3 Deep Knowledge, as well.

I always felt card-draw counter-intuitive to putting them into play via Nenya, especially when you draw into the off-spheres and also have gildor in hand which prohibits you from ever playing them.

A few modifications I made for the last round we played: I upped the Arwen count to three and removed Erestor and Anborn for that, then I switched 3 Zigils for 3 Miners of the iron Hills to be able to remove those pesky burden attachments. It worked out better already, and we made it through the adventure by killing the Balrog and finishing the last stage with two players threating out in subsequent rounds and the third player finishing off with exactly 49 threat. Very close but absolute fun