"We live now upon an island amid many perils, and our hands are more often upon the bowstring than upon the harp." -Haldir, The Fellowship of the Ring
...with this deck though, Haldir also gets to play and listen to many songs!
The basic concept underlying this deck is derived from the observation that the best way to achieve strong attacking potential is powering up a single hero and give him much action advantage instead of, say, building up an army of allies.
This deck capitalizes on this and aims at gathering enough attacking power to kill enemies all around the board in 3/4-player games.
To do this, it needs to be a highly specialised deck so you'll have to rely upon other players to quest or do the defense that needed ( not much sincehopefully enemies are going to stay around for a short time).
Here is the Decklist:
Heroes:
Haldir / Bilbo / Pippin (Lore) [ 24 Starting Threat, +2 to Engagement Costs]
Allies (0):
-
Attachments (28):
3x Bow of the Galadhrim
2x Rivendell Blade
2x Rivendell Bow
1x Black Arrow
3x Unexpected Courage
3x Miruvor
3x Love of Tales
2x Scroll of Isildur
3x Song of Battle
3x Song of Travel
3x Good Meal
Events (22):
3x Daeron's Runes
3x Mithrandir's Advice
3x Peace, and Thought
3x Deep Knowledge
2x Advance Warning
2x Foe Hammer
3x Hands Upon the Bow
3x A Good Harvest
Sideboard:
Unseen Strike
Feint
The Will of the West
Strategy
This deck is not easy to play, becuase a single mistake could mean the whole engine stops working.
There is an insane amount of card draw in so that by round 3 you should have drawn half (or more) of your deck, and by 5 you probably have drawn it all: this allows you to quikcly have all the cards that you need in your hand (the Songs, two Weapons for Haldir and a couple Miruvor/Unexpected Courage).
You have lots of card draw, so how about actually playing those cards?
Well, what allows this deck to run is, surprisingly so, the much-maligned Love of Tales!
Once you have a couple of those attached on your heroes, each Song you play will also be *netting* you an additional resource which, considering the hilariously low cost of the cards in this deck (only a couple of 2s and a lot of 1s and 0s), goes a long way towards quickly playing all the cards you need.
A Good Harvest is there to speed everything up and provide a backup plan in case the Songs do not show up.
Once Haldir is fully equipped you'll have 5-6 actions capable of dealing 8+ (for example, two Bows of the Galadhrim and one Rivendell Bow) ranged damage, while also being able to attack enemies in the staging area thanks to Haldir's ability or the all-important Hands Upon the Bow.
You should be able to consistently reach this goal by round 4-5 unless you have very very bad luck. Keep in mind though that your start will be somewhat slower at times: in that cases prioritize card draw (Peace, and Thought is a saviour) in order to quickly draw the cards you need.
To be honest, most of the times you'll be able to attack 2-3 times for 7 damage in round 2; however when drawing cards is involved nothing can be taken for certain.
Be carfeful not to play Songs if you don't need them until you have at least a couple of Love of Tales in play. In addition to this, *never ever* keep drawing events in your hand if you don't need the resources to play other, more important, cards (weapons, mostly): you want to constantly draw cards, the more the better.
If you end up stuck with no way to play good cards and no draw, asking your teammates for a bit of drawing (Campfire Tales, Deep Knowledge, Gleowine etc.) goes a long way towards solving the issue: this deck is so packed with card draw (14 cards out of 50 + 2 Scrolls, so almost 1/3) that it's a very rare occurence you will not draw what you need.
In fact, this amount of card draw is there to power up a snowball mechanic: every time you draw, there is a high chance you'll draw another card-drawing event; Good Meal also helps you paying for all of those events, so do not be reluctant to spend it for a single resource discount, it's worth it every tiny bit.
Last piece of advice: you don't want Miruvor to go to your discard pile because as soon as it's there you'll have no way to retrieve it, so always use the "Ready+Back on Top" combination unless you *really* need something else.
Mulligan conditions:
In your starting hand you want as much card draw as possible, also Song of Battle + Weapons is very good but do not keep a hand without a good amount of card draw (5+, so Peace, and Thought is usually a keeper by itself).
Do not keep a hand just because there's a couple of good pieces in it: you'll need to draw a lot for this deck to be effective.
Observations on Team Play:
1 - What you're giving to the Team
Besides its role as dedicated attacker, at which this deck excels, it also shines as team player for many reasons: Haldir can kill enemies that engage before they have a chance to damage your teammates, Bilbo provides card draw for the whole team and Pippin virtually reduces everyone's threat by 2.
In addition to this you can give Good Meals away if you don't need them and you can even give action advantage away if Haldir is already set up (just be warned that if you attach Miruvor to another player's character you will not be able to have it back on top of your deck).
Another important thing is that you'll have spare weapons in your hand by round 4-5. They can be played on a Silvan or Noldor character, bolstering the attacking power of the team even further. In fact, depending on other players' deck choices, Mirlonde might make a better Hero for this deck - more on this later.
Finally, you'll also have many spare Songs: as soon as you have 3-4 on you heroes the other ones are useful only for resource generation so they can be used to help other players; this could also lead to interesting choices, opening up for example to possibility of a combination of a Burning Brand + Song of Wisdom on a strong non-Lore defender (Beregond, Erkenbrand etc). This needs a bit of advance planning with your fellow players but it can easily be done and should be pretty fun.
2 - What you're asking for
This deck has absolutely no direct defenses, so if enemies engage you're toast unless someone can defend for you tih Sentinel or pull the enemy away, so you'll surely need at least another player in the team able to engage and defend enemies pretty well; the aforementioned Sentinel, in particular, is a saviour for this deck.
Furthermore, this deck completely lacks any questing power, so your teammates have to make up for this.
Finally, since you're giving so much it seems right to have to have a bit of drawing support: if someone can allow you to draw extra cards this deck is almost guaranteed to do very very well.
Overview
Strengths
- Awesome ranged attacking power (Haldir + Weapons).
- Staging area attack (Haldir's ability, Hands upon the Bow).
- Card draw and attachments support (Bilbo, Songs, Weapons).
- Hampering engagement checks (Pippin, Advance Warning).
Weaknesses:
- Non-existent defenses against engaged enemies.
- May suffer from a slow start.
Possible solutions:
- Adding Feint, Quick Strike; have your teammates help you with Sentinel.
- Have your teammates play cards like Deep Knowledge, Campfire Tales or target you with cards like Gleowine, Galadirel.
Possible Adjustments
The main one is the starting heroes: Haldir, is the absolute star of this deck (btw, kudos to Mr. S. Giacobino for such a wonderful piece of art, one of my favorites) but Mirlonde, Pippin, Bilbo, Bifur could all play a part.
If the players you're going to play with already have a lot of card draw in their decks Mirlonde + Pippin might serve you better than Bilbo + Pippin, since this combination will give you both a good recipient for your spare weapons allowing your attack to reach absurd levels (she can easily go up to 6 ranged attack) and a very low threat [20].
Bifur could help with resource generation if the other players are very wealthy but I would not prefer him over Mirlonde.
Cards that you might consider adding in are Feint (especially for those scenarios in which enemies engaged by forced effects) and Unseen Strike (if there are mostly enemies with high Engagement Costs and/or no threat raising effects). An extra copy of the Scroll of Isildur can also be added to play an extra Advance Warning or Mithrandir's Advice.
Be sure not to remove any of the card drawing effects, since otherwise the deck might collapse.
Number of players
This deck is best suited for play with 3-4 players, since otherwise its attacking potential will be mostly wasted while you'll have to struggle for questing and possibly defend. Nonetheless it works very well, so against scenarios full of enemies it surely is worth a try with 2 players. Avoid it if playing solo.
That's all, good luck and thanks for reading!
Edited by Eu8L1ch