This is a deck I built up mainly to tackle the HoN + AtS scenarios, but it proved pretty good even against other quests.

It is a Solo deck but it can be adapted for 2-players, paired with a Spirit heavy (best if mono) deck.

It works well against Peril in Pelargir, Into Ithilien and even the Siege of Cair Andros.

Of course, packing no treachery cancellation, it is especially vulnerable to treacheries (The Master's Malice above all).

The only quest it struggles against is The Morgul Vale, since starting at 31 means there is not even a single round to setup before egaging Murzag. While it is usually easy to defeat Stage I and Stage II, without a bit of setup the Nazgul + ridiculous amount of threat in the Staging area will kill you.

The other caveat I have is the Steward's Fear, which I was unable to try due to the fact I do not own it.

This deck also fared well against the RM cycle, demolishing a tough quest such as The Three Trials.

Doomed Numenoreans


Heroes (3)

Boromir (T)
Aragorn (Lo)

Theodred


Allies (19)


2x Gleowine*
3x Master of the Forge
3x Wandering Ent
3x Booming Ent
2x Treebeard*
3x Envoy of Pelargir
3x Gandalf*


Attachments (17)

3x Gondorian Fire
3x Gondorian Shield
3x Steward of Gondor*
3x Celebrian Stone*
2x Sword that was Broken*
3x Blood of Nùmenor


Events (14)

3x Deep Knowledge
3x Daeron's Runes
3x Feint
2x Legacy of Nùmenor
3x The Seeing Stone

Strategy

In the early game you count on Boromir and Doomed cards to have a quick start and keep enemies at bay, knowing that you have Strider's ability at your disposal.

With a bit of luck you are able to muster a small army of allies to help with card draw and combat/questing (ents). In the meanwhile, due to the amazing amout of card draw you should be able to quickly set up Boromir for some heavy Gondorian Fire usage, at which points enemy become much less fearsome.

It is a well-rounded deck able to handle many aspects of the game very well and not reliant on a specific card to appear (the aforementioned Gondorian Fire is not vital due to the Ents and the awesome attacking values of the Heroes).

Theodred is particularly useful in this deck, allowing you to quickly play important cards such as The Sword that was Broken or powering up Boromir for Gondorian Fire in case the Steward of Gondor didn't show up.

While not the most powerful deck around it still is pretty good and I have a lot of fun when playing with it.

Note that I do not have included Sneak Attack since I find SA+Gandalf combo to be boring and unbalancing: when I managed to pull it out it made my victory feel hollow. If you want, however, you can easily add 3x copies of SA in. The additional threat reduction would make this deck much more powerful.

Also posted on BGG.

Great deck !

I have some questions :

- No Captain of Gondor ? On Boromir tactic, it's powerfull.
- No WingFoot ? On Aragorn Lore, it give untap.
- No Heirs of Mardil ? With Theodred or Stewart of Gondor, it give untap for Theodred or Boromir (instead of increasing threat).
- Just for fun, no ring of Barahir for Aragorn

- Just for more Fun, Palantir ?

Hi!

Thank you

Captain of Gondor is good but not really needed: being unique forces me to put at most 2 copies and still risk having a dead card in hand. There are 3 Celebrian Stones, sure, but those serve to play Blood of Numenor which provides a much greater boost than CoG. For defense, gondorian discipline is a better choice: usually you'll be hard pressed only in the first few rounds, after which the engine will probably up and running, so a card with 0-cost seems a better choice to me; it's all about speed, really.

Wingfoot and Heir of Mardil were both in the intial versions of this deck. The first one looks useful in theory but I oftentimes found myself playing it and not needing it: at the beginning of the game you can afford threat gain from failing quest if you really need to keep Aragorn back for fighting, while later on Ents+Gondorian Fire usually do the trick. In addition to this it is not 100% reliable (saying "enemy" helps you if one is coming down from the encounter deck but doesn't help you much if you have already engaged a big one in the previous round and need Ara to kill him off: in this situation you cannot afford guessing wrong). All in all I find it takes away from the focus of the deck, so I advice first trying the deck without it; then, if you really think it'd help, you can add it in.

Heir of Mardil: if you stick it on Boromir you'll have minimal advantage, while if you stick it on Theodred you will be limited in using his ability (plus is 2 ATK is not that great). In addition to this there are already three important Leadership cards you want to save resources for.

It's not bad and I considered adding a copy or two back in but I'd be hard pressed to remove something: I guess if there is something disposable in this deck it is the Celebrian's Stone + BoN combo which is useful but slow. Still, I'm not sure whether it would be worth it to remove these cards to gain a little bit of attack power/indirect threat reduction; think I'll have to try it again to answer the question.

Ring of Barahir would be more or less worthless in this deck, but for fun it can surely be put in.

Same with the Palantir.

I think is really good deck. But you need sneak attack for sure. If you play Nightmare you will suffer with out sneak attack. I like your deck. Wonna try it?!

I dont really understand for what you need Celebriam stone and Seeing stone?

Also why dont use hobbit version of Gandalf?

The Seeing-stone is a very good card for a deck like this. It lets you find Legacy of Numenor if you need resources or Deep Knowledge if you need to dig for some other card. In my decks I like to use it to fetch more situational doomed cards like Power of Orthanc or The Wizards's Voice. In fact, I would probably test The Wizards's Voice (I hate that there is typo in that title) in place of some/all copies of Feint so that you can save even more of your resources on Boromir.

I see. . I try to use it before un some decks but with a goof draw I never really need it.. However I like to try something new si I will try your deck and see what happen

I think is really good deck. But you need sneak attack for sure. If you play Nightmare you will suffer with out sneak attack. I like your deck. Wonna try it?!

Wow, thank you very much!

Celebrian Stone is there mainly for WP boosting since this deck is weak in that department until Aragorn gets his Sword, but it also enables you to play Blood of Numenor which is a very good card if you can have it up and running. For quicker quests it's probably not worth it.

The hobbit version of Gandalf is very powerful, but I'm not sure it would help this deck a lot: you want to reset threat after the first round or second at most, after which threat is a precious commodity that you "spend" to use Boromir. Core Gandalf is there mainly for the purpose of gaining extra actions. Sneak Attack would undoubtedly make this deck much more powerful, since gaining 5 threat reduction for 1 Leadership res and 1 card would be absolute bonkers. As I said I do not find that combo very funny so I prefer playing without: I often have the impression Gandalf+Sneak would make or break the game. Surely, against NM I would feel myself justified to put it in.

EntMoot,

Yes, the Seeing Stone is very very useful: its main usage is enabling me to play Legacy of Numenor in the first round most of the time, but it canalso be used to fetch Deep Knowledge if I ran out of cards. It's its flexibility + deck thinning effect that I appreciate the most.

On the other hand, after re-reading my post I find it strange I did not mention the Wizard's Voice because I consider it a good sideboard card for this deck; probably because after trying it out I found the doomed 3 cost too steep for what it offers. In addition to this finding the resource to play Feint is almost never a problem as there's plenty of resource generation effects.

However I found the Wizard's Voice very useful for those quests in which enemies are very big and shadows have effects that can punish you even if you chump - I'm mainly thinking about the Morgul Vale, but there are others.

Thank you both for your interest and let me know how it went!

I'm currently working on another version of this deck with more card draw (Word of Command, Peace and thought) to reduce copies of the uniques and have more consistency. I'll post it here as soon as it's done and tested.

Also, I might have to add that I do not own saga expansions so I tend not to use cards from those unless I know for sure some are very powerful; Cram for example would be a good addition after increasing card draw.

Your answer is really straight and logic. You convincee try seeing stone….

..After a few tests, I give you..

Peaceful Doomed Numenoreans

Allies (12)

1x Gleowine

3x Wandering Ent

3x Envoy of Pelargir

2x Treebeard

3x Gandalf

Attachments (16)

3x Steward of Gondor

3x Cram

2x Celebrian Stone

2x The Sword that was Broken

3x Gondorian Fire

3x Gondorian Shield

Events (22)

2x Word of Command

3x Peace, and Thought

3x Deep Knowledge

3x Daeron's Runes

3x Sneak Attack

2x Legacy of Numenor

3x Feint

3x The Seeing Stone

Still needs some testing and tweaking, but I'm confident it's an improvement over the base version.

Update: I put this deck to the test against Into Ithilien (1/1), the Siege of Cair Andros (3/3, the second one with a score of 80), Conflict at the Carrock (2/2), Conflict at the Carrock Nightmare (3/3, best score 70 after 4 completed rounds!). It ran very well, I also tried Captain of Gondor instead of Cel Stone and Gondorian Discipline instead of Cram and I think the extra defense these cards provide is very useful.

Curious if Close Call would be better than Gondorian Discipline. It fits with your deck, can be searched for via The Seeing Stone and isn't limited in the amount of damage it can heal. Of course, most quests won't need more than 2 cancellation, so maybe it would just be an alternate.

With Sneak Attack + Gandalf there is enough threat reduction, so Close Call might be a good option. Still, it would be better only.to.remove 3+ damage and it would cost me 3+ threat, so it seems expensive for what it does, compared to Discipline.

Btw, the Morgul Vale is still troublesome for this deck. Killing the first two bosses is easily accomplished but the Nazgul is killer, since 3-4 rounds to kill it is too much, for many reasons (lack of chump blockers, horrible shadows, game ending treachery).

I think that quest requires a control approach to be beaten consistently: Elrond+Vilya with Spirfindel worked very well; mono Spirit with Galadriel too(even if it takes many rounds, you're in control the entire game).

Try this deck already. Is fun to play but against certain quest you cannot win. Anduin for example almost impossible to win wuth so high starting threat. But I like the idea, maybe need to improve something here

I'm glad you liked it! have you tried the base version or the updated one? because the base version had a hard time with Journey, whereas the updated one can win it without problems, even against nightmare version, mainly due to sneaky Gandalf providing additional threat reduction (and Peace which makes it much easier to have both pieces of the combo).

Against quests with higher wp requirements Visionary Leadership and swapping out Ents for Warden of Healing and Herald of Anorien works very well.

Which other quests have you found impossible to defeat with this deck?

Any suggestions to improve it? :-)

I try your updated version but with some of my changes. I win Forest quest quest where lot of trees root and nothing else(pod quest for frodo saga) , Abduin I cannot win as I say before. I didn try other quests but I will try more

It' strange you cannot win Anduin, I usually have no problems with it: the Hill Troll is big but the deck doesn't lack attacking power, and for stage 2 I usually have the Sword so I sprint past through it.

I'm curious too. What is the first few turns against the troll like? I haven't tried the deck out but what kind of hand are you looking for?

I assume at least a Gondorian Shield, block the troll with boromir. Boromir takes 2-4 damage with a possible wolf rider attack. Ready him with +1 threat, attack with all your heroes for 5 damage. Then do you hope next round for a chump blocker? Then swing with all your heroes again to kill the troll?

Or are you hoping for early feints or something?

Then do you try to reset your threat to 31 to make sure those nasty 35 threat treacheries don't hit you?

I play nightmare… things is much worse there… is not inly a troll is a problem

Ok, I'll try to make a post with a game report and some strategy as soon as I have some time. :-)

Ok, I went through Journey along the Anduin and took detailed notes so that I could write a faithful report. I'll cut things a bit to otherwise writing it will take forever, but feel free to ask if something isn't clear.Here it is:

Starting hand: 2 Feint 1 Gandalf 1 Cel Stone 1 Deep Knowl 1 Captain

Mulligan: 2 Legacy of Num 1 Feint 1 Sword twB 1 WEnt 1 Cel Stone

Staging: East Bight, Hill Troll

T1: draw The Seeing Stone

TSS+DK. 34 Thr, draw Shield, Captain.

Play everything in hand except Stone and Feint. 42 Thr

Commit Boro+Theo (4).

Reveal Banks of And. +1 Prog

Feint Troll, inflict 4 dmg (Boro+Ara)

Refr: 44 Thr

T2

Draw TSS (threat too high to use it now)

Play Stone on Theo.

Commit Theo + Boro.

Reveal DG Orcs. 2 dmg Theo. 3 Progr.

Boro defends Orcs and Troll, taking 1 dmg, then counterattacks killing Orcs and Troll (with help from Ara and Ent).

Refresh: 49, then reset to 31.

T3

Draw TSS (again! the deck was shuffled of course and Stones were not next to each one even before shuffling)

2x TSS + DK. 37 Thr, draw 2 Steward, Shield, Captain.

Play Steward on Boro.

Commit everyone. Reveal Goblin Sniper, 9 progr, 3 on Bight exploring it, 6 on quest

Defend and kill Sniper with Boro.

Refresh Phase: 40 Thr.

End of round 3: Boro 1 dmg 5 res ; Theo 2 dmg 0 res; Ara 0 dmg 2 res.

Second and last part coming soon. :-)

So basically looking for a feint and a shield of gondor to survive. Though it is a very risky play I must say, if you drew a card that increased your threat on second turn could have easily spelled doom for you. Nice run through thus far, fast play too. I can see if this deck needs to draw things out in solo it would probably spell out a loss. High threat in the staging area on first turn would likely be an issue too, though once it gets rolling with the Cel.stone and Sword it becomes no issue by the looks of things.

T4

Draw Gandalf.

Commit Theo, Ent, Ara for a total of 10.

Reveal Evil Storm, 1 dmg on every character (Theo has a single hp left).

Advance to Stage 2, Banks on top.

Ref 41 th.

T5

Draw Gandalf.

Play Gandalf (8, 0, 5 res), draw 3 cards: Shield, SAtt, P&T.

Commit everyone for 17.

Reveal Banks, Wargs. 14 progr.

Ref 42. Play P&T, exhaust Ara, Boro and ready him; 43 thr. Draw GFire, LoN, P&T, StwB, Envoy.

T6

Draw SAtt.

Play GF on Boro.

Play SAtt + Gandalf, -5 thr (38).

Note: since at this point the game was won, this move was dictated by the goal of saving Theodred from Evil Storm to have a better score.

Play Envoy.

Quest: SAtt + Gandalf again, 33 thr.

Commit Gandalf, Envoy, Boro, Ent for 12.

Reveal Wargs, Sniper. Place 5 prog, adv to Stage 3.

Reveal Beastmaster, Chieft Ufthak.

Travel to Banks.

Engage both Wargs.

Def both with Boro... and then it happens. One of them has Despair shadow, so Boromir would have been killed. Game was won amyway since with Gandalf in hand I had enough muscle to kill all the remaining enemies.

However I decided to change shadow to see what would have happened. Pursued by shadow is revealed, other shadow is Driven by Shadow (discard steward). Kill both Wargs with Boro.

Ref 39.

T7 draw Envoy.

Play both Envoys and Gandalf kills Sniper.

Commit, defend with envoys, kill both enemies and it's game.

‘’What if’ score: 6 rounds 6 dmg 39 threat 8 VP = 97.

Sorry for double posting but i'm on mobile so managing big posts is a bit hard..

I played another 4 games after that, winning 3 times out of 4, making it 4/5 (80%) win rate. Not bad for a quest that does not play to the strengths of this deck. Nightmare JatA is actually not much of a problem for this deck due to the fact it kills things quickly and Boromir doesn't have to worry because Despair. I was able to comfortably win after being engaged by two spawns inbround 3 and 4. 10 Threat locations is a problem of course but which deck doesn't find it troublesome?

Also, this deck doesn't have to worry of being engaged too early nor suffers because of the 'no attacchments on trolls' clause.

@Dava

The decklist that I consider to work best right now includes 2x Captain of Gondor + another Sword instead of Cram, so Captain also boost Boromir's defense; Envoy might be sacrificed in a pinch as well.

The risk for T2 was calculated, as the only card that could cause my threat to raise by more than 1 was Pursued by shadow, all other cases being non issues.

This deck does rely on drawing at least 3-4 cards out of a pool of more or less 20. I think people in general tend to underestimate the power of card draw: I do need to draw a few cards but this deck features impressive card drawing effects (3 copies each of P&T, Runes, DK and TSS)meaning it's actually more reliable than decks that do not live or die by drawing some cards but do not have much card draw. The same concept is put to work in my Haldir plays the Harp deck (which probably is the most powerful deck I've built so far) that is exceptionally reliable since by round 3 I've already drawn around 35 cards: hard to miss something at that point.

Doomed Numenoreans has proven its mettle for me over and over again; not having access to treachery cancellation is a big liability so by no means I consider it The One to Rule them All, even assuming such a deck exists.

By including Sneak Attack + Gandalf, a combo I initially left out since I usually play that Gandalf's response is cannot be played if you did not play him from your hand, this deck got really powered up and devoured most quests (in fact, everyone I've attempted -no Escape from DG nor Rhosgobel nor Battle of Lake-Town- except Morgul Vale while others required just a few adjustments). Last two games I won against JatA I scored 60 and 54 mostly due to having SA + Gandalf in starting hand. Threat reduction in particular is vital for this deck: the only game I lost I threated out in round 6 due to all 3 copies of the Wizard being in the last 20 cards.