Double Core Deck Challenge

2 LOTR LCG Core Sets

4 Decks

200 Cards

Madness!?!?

Hey,

Jeremy here. This is the introduction to a multi-part series on Lord of the Rings Living Card Game, by Fantasy Flight games. First, the least interesting part of the series... who am I?

No, I'm not an amnesiac. I'm a long time gamer from the frozen tundra of the Dakotas. I fell in love with roll playing games and collectable card games in middle school... programmed a dice rolling program on my TI-83 so that we could play D&D and the West End Starwars games between periods in High School (dice were banned from the school... I guess the principal thought that we had craps games going between the stacks in the library when his back was turned). I played Magic: The Gathering, the Decipher Starwars and even the Star Trek card games up throughout college. Once I joined the productive workforce and physically moved away from my gaming group I had to make do with computer games. Now, I've married a wonderful woman who lets me paint and play with tiny toy soldiers and sometimes plays board games with me. Ahh, domestic bliss, but like I said 'uninteresting'.

Now, that lovely woman got me Fantasy Flight's LOTR LCG for my birthday about 6 months ago. We played some games with the starter decks but quickly lost interest. Eventually, I stumbled upon the WWPD Fellowship podcast, which rekindled my interest. Unlike someone else I could mention, I didn't immediately go out and buy everything... I did find a second core box in the bargain bin at my Friendly Local Gaming Store. That purchase prompted this series and a fundamental question:

Can you build 4 playable decks from 2 core sets?

Ground rules:

1. Three Hero, Standard 50 card tournament decks, no more than 3 copies of any one card.

2. All 4 decks must be playable at the same time (no sharing of cards). There are a few fans of both Tolkien and card games that I want to introduce to the game... and I'm the kind of gamer that likes to have things ready to go for them when they come over.

3. Only using the cards from 2 core sets.

4. All 4 decks should be fairly comparable in power. Nothing ruins a cooperative gaming experience like feeling that you can't contribute meaningfully to the teams success.

Deckbuilding

From my Magic days, I'm a tinkerer when it comes to deckbuilding (60% Johnny, 40% Spike according the Magic the Gathering psychographics). I was the first in my group to really dig into the mechanics of building decks, ratios and hand statistics with the goal of figuring out how exactly to make a Bosium Strip work (it didn't). Call me a nerd if you want... doesn't bother me, I am what I am. Keep in mind, that we are talking about a time before the explosion of the internet and the popularization of terms such as 'card advantage' and 'tempo'. (Hall of Beorn is an excellent resource for exploring those terms in relation to LotR LCG).

I'm going to take a very analytical approach to building this deck. By no means is this the only way to approach a deck... it isn't even the only way that I approach building a deck, but it does allow me to discuss a lot of the details that novice deck-builders often miss.

The first item if the proportion of card-types. Prevailing wisdom online is that you should aim for a 2:1:1 split of Allies, Attachments and Events in your player deck. This makes a lot of sense... Allies and attachments are generally more useful as they give you benefits in every turn that they are in play. Events, on the other hand, are powerful but one-time-use items. Attachments also have the downside of needing to be attached to a character and will leave play if the attached character dies. The 2:1:1 ratio is just a guideline, however. Given the size of our cardpool, it may well be impossible for all three decks to get even close.

Secondly, we'll need to keep an eye on is the proportion of the spheres in our deck. A mono-sphere deck is super simple, but after removing every copy beyond the third we only have 40 card decks (which is against the tournament rules). Our decks must use a minimum of two spheres.

In a two sphere deck, the ratio should be something like 2:1 with a majority of player cards coming from the sphere which contributes the most Heroes. This can be modified by certain attachments or abilities of the Heroes. Below is a chart to help us to think about those ratios.

2 Hero Sphere (30 total)

1 Hero Sphere (20 total)

Allies (25)

15

10

Attachments (12.5)

7.5

5

Events (12.5)

7.5

5

Tri-sphere decks are certainly possible, but I worry about stretching an already sparse card pool too thin. We just don't have enough of the best cards to build four tri-sphere decks, although I may examine solo or double tri-sphere decks at the very end of this series.

A final thing to keep in mind is the cost of the player cards. In general, a deck that has more resources from a certain sphere can support cards with a higher casting cost from that sphere. Beorn is like having a 4th hero on your side... but with a cost of 6 tactics he doesn't belong in a deck that doesn't have at least two heroes from the tactics sphere.

Leadership Deck Part 1

Welcome back to my Double Core Challenge.

To briefly review, my goal is to make four reasonably balanced, tournament legal decks from just the cards in two Core Boxes of the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games.

First came the big sort. For each of the spheres, I split up to three of each card into a main pile. These forty cards will make up the core of our starting deck. All of the 'left-overs' went into a second pile, from which I'll be able to safely include into other decks without degrading the power of the sphere's main deck.

Leadership Deck Inspiration and selecting Heroes

So the card that strikes me right away is Celebrian's Stone. Between the ability to boost a hero's Willpower and the ability to allow Aragorn to fuel both Spirit and Leadership cards. That means questing and using Aragorn's ability to get the most out of him. Extra activations and resources seem to be the theme of the deck that we are trying to build... What other heroes can support Aragorn in this role?

Gloin - definitely adds resources, but they can only be for Leadership cards. Low threat, but also relatively low stats.

Thodred - here is a winner! His ability helps fuel Aragorn's ability by giving him the resource token when he might not otherwise have it. His stats aren't anything to write home about, but he needs to one of several heroes committed to the quest anyway... he will not be defending or attacking anyway.

Eowyn - our horse maid is an awesome card, but it doesn't go well with Aragorn's key ability. Besides, using her ability would require her to quest... something that Aragorn has to do already. Besides, this deck doesn't really have any sort of card drawing abilities to make the most of her ability. Let's save her for another deck.

Eleanor - another wonderful card. Her ability to replace treachery cards with other cards is an ability that is hard to miss. Her 2 defense is pretty good as well, but the timing of her ability may mean that it will be our allies on the defense rather than her.

Dunhere - a great card for attacking... especially early game. All offense, and plays well with the decks questing and attack theme, although it would leave Aragon in the defending position... something that he isn't as good at.

Thodred seems like an automatic include... since I want to run both Leadership and Spirit that will leave Gloin out. Of the Spirit heroes it does come down to either Eleanor or Dunhere. Eleanor would need to play defense to Aragon's offense, and it would give us a way to deal with some of the nastiest cards the encounter deck can deal. Dunhere is all offense... while Aragorn would be good on defense he's better on offense. It's a bit of a toss-up but I'm going to start with Eleanor. After playing a few games, maybe I'll switch them around and see what happens.

Allies

Normally, I'd run three copies of Gandalf in each deck, but since I only have eight of him total, I'll start by putting only 2 copies of him in each deck. Once again, this is something that may change... in particular, this deck will likely have the resources to get him out more often and so may end up running the full three copies. Who can say at this point?

I'm going to start by looking at my one-of allies. Since I have two core sets to work with, I'll have 2 of each of them.

Leadership gives me Brok Ironfist. Brok is a fine card and one that I don't have a problem including in this deck but his ability is wasted here. I don't have any Dwarf heroes in this deck... he gets to sit out for now.

Allies from leadership that I can have 3 of (keep in mind the three of each card limit... some of these I have 6 of, and others I have 4 of... in either case I can only use 3): Snowbourn Scout, Guard of the Citadel, Silverlode Archer, Son of Arnor, Faramir, and Longbeard Orc Slayer. Other than Faramir, none of them are particularly good at defense... something we may need if a nasty Treachery card comes up and exhausts Eleanor. Faramir is particularly good, because he can exhaust to increase our questing Willpower. All of the others have their uses, and I'm not too worried about paying their costs. Son of Arnor is particularly good with Aragorn's strong attack and since we don't have much for Range to help out our teammates.

Allies from Spirit include Wandering Took, Lorien Guide, and Northern Tracker. I don't see the point of the Took... he just seems like a waste of a card. Both Lorien Guide and Northern Tracker go really help to manage locations and I'll want as many of these as I can get on the board. I'm somewhat nervous that I'm taking all of Spirit's best allies.

Here is what my allies look like at this point:

· 2x Gandalf

· 3x Snowbourn Scout

· 3x Guard of the Citadel

· 3x Silverlode Archer

· 3x Son of Arnor

· 3x Faramir

· 3x Longbeard Orc Slayer

· 2x Lorien Guide

· 1x Northern Tracker

That makes a total of 23 allies... some cutting could happen here if we need to. The ratio isn't exactly what we were shooting for... we have two neutral, 18 Leadership allies and only three spirit allies.

Attachments

Leadership has two very important attachments, Celebrian's Stone and Steward of Gondor. Celebrian's Stone is the focus of our deck... in spite of it being unique I'd run three if I had them. The other, Steward of Gondor is a powerhouse for resource generation. My only concern with running three is that they are unique... any extras become dead cards in your hand. They also prevent your teammates from casting it as well.

Spirit has us spoiled for choices with no less than three attachments... once of which is as big... if not bigger than Steward of Gondor. That card is Unexpected Courage, of which we only have two of. This card is the cat's meow... the bee's knees. It is all that and a bag of chips and I'm going to skip putting it into this deck. I'll have another deck to build with Spirit (and 2 spirit heroes) and I can't take all of their best cards and put them in here. I will find room for The Favor of the Lady... it feeds nicely into our questing shtick with this deck. The third attachment Power in the Earth is just alright.

Here are what attachments I'll be playing:

· 2x Celebrian's Stone

· 3x Steward of Gondor

· 1x Favor of the Lady

· 1x Power in the Earth

Seven total is way short of the twelve that we were aiming for... the internal balance of the attachments is about right however and we can easily make up the difference in the next group of cards.

Events

I'm looking for somewhere in the area of 16-18 event cards in order to reach my tourney deck goal. Both Leadership and Spirit have really good events, so I think that I'll be there.

First off is Grim Resolve. It's the one-of Leadership event and it allows all characters to ready... super powerful and expensive. I have no doubt that this will be a good card for this deck as we should have the resources to cast it. The rest of the Leadership events deal continue the trend of getting extra actions, except for For Gondor. For Gondor is special among leadership cards in that it adds to combat power... which is very useful, and we also have a fair number of Gondor cards which would benefit from the added defense.

Events is Spirit's strong suit... and we need to be careful not to steal all of their best cards. That still leaves us with plenty to choose from, such as Strength of Will, Hasty Stroke, A Test of Will, and A Light in the Dark Besides... I only have so much room in my deck.

Events in my deck at this point:

· 3x For Gondor

· 3x Ever Vigilant

· 3x Sneak Attack

· 3x Valiant Sacrifice (the deck's only card draw)

· 3x Common Cause

· 2x Grim Resolve

· 3x Stand and Fight

· 1x Will of the West

· 1x Strength of Will

· 1x The Galadhrim's Greeting

· 1x Hasty Stroke

· 1x A Test of Will

· 1x A light in the Dark

Twenty-six total events... somewhat off of our goal but you have to work with what you have. Twelve Leadership events to nine Spirit, which makes up for our imbalance in allies. This is an area that will definitely need some trimming.

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved