Hey guys, I thought I'd try my hand at creating a Dúnedian deck and I take back what I said in the dission about dúnedain decks: they ARE easy to build and this one surprised me in how powerful they can be. This deck is intended to be a Dúnedain trait deck, so I tried to keep it as 'clean' as possible. Steward of Gondor is more powerful than Heir of Valandil for example, but it's added benefit in this deck is so small, I chose Heir instead. Called Zoo-nedain because of the zoo of enemies you're trying to create with Forest Snares.

Stats:

Questing: 2/3

Combat: 2/3

Treachery and shadow control: 0/3

Luck-independant: 3/3

General strategy:

This deck uses several cards that are powered by the amount of enemies engaged with you. Therefore, the Forest Snare's power this deck like Matrix-people-pods. There are also many combos in this deck. In short: it's most powerful later on. Counter-intuitively it's also better at dealing with many enemies at the same time than it is at taking them on one-by-one. So you'll want to hold off fighting/killing the enemies for as long as possible, sticking with only defending against them if need be, until you're ready to make your massive move. This makes staying alive in the early game the biggest challenge.

Forest Snare - Descendants of Kings - Sarn Ford Sentry is boss!

Heroes:

Our leaderhip hero Halbarad is both our (permanent) quester and defender. The Dúnedain Warnings and Protector of Lorien go on him. He can't block your first enemy, but he'll block it the next few turns while still questing. With a Forest Snare enemies, he'll be ready for new enemies. His engagement trick is ocationally useful for setting up a winning turn and allround useful in the current cycle.

Our first lore hero Damrod is the star of the early game. His discount on traps is especially great for Forest Snare, which you can play without requiring to hold back a lore resource. Getting more cards after a trap lands is just icing on the cake. He'll be questing every turn.

Our final hero is Lore Aragorn . He's here mainly for his toys which help quest in addition to the nessecary resource smoothing. Celebrian Stone unlocks the Northern Tracker for emergency location control late game. His sack of HP also let's us take undefended attacks (first one when Halbarad is not auto-ready) and his threat-reset is very useful for such a high-threat deck.

Early Game:

We want to quest with the team every turn. The goal is to smash those locations before they start piling up. If all the locations are gone, we can keep some guys back to fight the enemy. To keep us alive while we foolishly exaust everybody, our best early game cards are the traps. Ranger Spikes makes questing with the team fairly safe. Forest Snare won't protect us from the first damage of an enemy, but after locking it down it'll activate Halbarad who'll become our saveguard. Without traps, we'll have to resort to plan B, C, and D.

Sneak Attack, Descendants of Kings and Ranger of Cardolan all provide an emergency defense for 1 resource. So if a location shows up, we'll have quested with everybody for an optimal turn, if an enemy shows up, we'll just use one of the many cards to block him. This deck is filled with emergency defense so it's unlikely you'll get surprised by the encounterdeck.

Warden of Healing helps Halbarad block 3+ attackers consistently and let's you use Aragorn for undefended attacks. Sword that was Broken helps you with questing (atleast 3 willpower since you're sending all your heroes every turn) and resource smoothing.

While we're doing this, we'll want to setup for our lategame. The longer we can quest hard and let the smaller fry attack us the better. If we get into a hopeless situation due to many enemies showing up, Peace and Thought can be used by holding our heroes back. With Aragorn we can always reset our threat if things get out of hand.

Starting Hand:

Try to mulligan for atleast one trap card. But if you have Sneak-Attack Gandalf in your opening hand, don't let me stop you.

Late Game:

We'll want to use all three Forest Snares if possible. Use Gather Information to fetch one if you can. Use other carddraw (like sneak attack Gandalf) to get as many combo pieces in your hand as possible. Once your situation calls for you to deal with the (powerful) enemies coming your way, try to take on as many at the same time as possible. Play Ranger of Cardolan for 1 resource, use Descendants of Kings halfway through your defense to use Halbarad twice and ready your questers, sneak attack Gandalf and use his damage to kill a weaker enemy etc. You may even decide to leave 1 or 2 attack enemies alive to power future cards.

Heir of Valandil is only here for the lategame. He'll help you pay for the Norther Trackers (in case of location lock) and Ranger of Cardolan (who should not be played the regular way until you have board control) and the others. Note that with three forest snares you'll often get a free Dúnedain every turn. At this point, you've got Aragorn's toys, a couple of powerful allies and you've had insane card draw so all that's left is to smash the encounter deck.

Play experience:

I've taken this deck a few times through all the quests of the current cycle and it's been doing extremely well. It is very consistent because many cards can be used instead of each other to get the same effect. Damrod and his traps are insanely powerful in the early game if you can draw them. Sarn Ford Sentry and Descendants of Kings are beasts in the late game. I've had situations where the encounterdeck attacked me with many enemies at the same time. Sneak Attack Sarn Ford Sentry in, draw 6 cards, draw Descendants of Kings and Sneak Attack Gandalf and wreak havoc on the enemy. It's great fun!

Strenghts:

Weaknesses:

Early (no attachment) boss enemies. Without Signals on Halbarad, we can't consistently deal with Hill trolls or similar threats. Here our high starting threat is the greatest enemy. In case of emergency you might even want to use Aragorn in turn 3 or something to avoid enemies for a few more turns.

Discard shananigans. We draw many cards and they are often expensive. So Nameless things or Undead are a threat. Still, this deck usually beats Deadman's dike just before decking out.

No shadow control. Especially multiple attacks on powerful enemies can become our death. When the Pack Leader from Wastes of Eriador attacked four times in a row and powered up in the last attack, I lost Amarthiúl. With Halbarad being our defender, Burning Brand is only ok-ish as a sideboard card. In that case you'll want to include Wingfoot as well to let Aragorn do more defending. But that runs against the flow of the deck so I cut it.

Hero: (3)

1x [The Lost Realm]Halbarad

1x [TWitW]Aragorn

1x [The Land of Shadow]Damrod

Ally: (14)

2x [TLD]Warden of Healing

2x [The Wastes of Eriador]East Road Ranger

3x [The Wastes of Eriador]Ranger of Cardolan

3x [The Lost Realm]Sarn Ford Sentry

2x [Core]Gandalf

2x [Core]Northern Tracker

Attachment: (19)

3x [Core]Forest Snare

3x [HON]Ranger Spikes

3x [CatC]Dunedain Warning

3x [Core]Celebrian's Stone

3x [TWitW]Sword that was Broken

2x [Core]Protector of Lorien

2x [The Lost Realm]Heir of Valandil

Event: (15)

3x [Escape from Mount Gram]Descendants of Kings

3x [Core]Sneak Attack

3x [TSF]Gaining Strength

2x [saF]Peace, and Thought

2x [TSF]Mithrandir's Advice

2x [Escape from Mount Gram]Distant Stars

Side Quest: (2)

1x [The Treachery of Rhudaur]Send for Aid

1x [The Lost Realm]Gather Information

East Road Ranger:

Very useful in the current cycle, and helps with our two sidequests. But her HP (for direct damage soak) and attack (after using Descendants of Kings) is actually pretty handy.

Ranger of Carlogan:

Awesome emergency card and easier to pay due to his neutral sphere. Our other emergency cards are leadership after all.

Sarn Ford Sentry

OMG, when playing your cards right, this gal just draws you your entire deck. Sneak Attacking her in and drawing 5 cards? Yes please!

Protector of Lorien:

Very useful on Halbarad who's doing both questing and defending. Discard your extra uniques.

Sneak Attack:

Yes it's always great on Gandalf, but in this deck Sarn Ford Sentry might draw you MORE cards than Gandalf if you time it right and the Norther Tracker can do emergency location control or blocking. So don't be affraid to use Sneak Attack without Gandalf!

Distant Stars:

Surprisingly useful in some quests. Many of the nastiest locations have limited quest points and getting them out of the encounterdeck and instead of a bigger location is great, as is the chance to remove locations with nasty effects for having it the active location. This card is mainly here to give Halbarad something to do if you've trapped an enemy but there aren't any new ones coming.

Gandalf:

With more alternatives to Sneak Attack and few resource generation, we'll only need two copies of him.

Not included:

Ranger Summons

Fun but with Forest Snares the chance of him being discarded as a shadow card is too high.

Wingfoot

Just didn't do enough in this deck. Halbarad is often ready for enemies and often i'll rather play a healer and take undefended damage.

Steward of Gondor, Quickbeam, Riversong etc.

Many unique powercards could be included here, but I opted not to. In many cases they are only marginally better than the alternatives in this deck, so just let other players use them. And unfortunately the designers have had the tendency lately to hard-code trait synergy to the point where you'll have to use all or nothing. This deck is heavily reliant on Descendants of Kings, so we'll need all the Dúnedain allies we can get.

I've looked at other Dúnedain decks online and it's fun to see how many different approaches there are to this deck. This is the readying / pop-in allies variant. I think it can compete with the other powerful trait decks mostly because it's much faster than getting your dwarf swarm or gondor or outlands hordes going. It's not top tier but close enough.

Nice deck and write-up! I had previously tried to make a similar-but-totally different zoo deck that had mixed results. It took about 3 turns to get rolling, and that was usually too slow (at least for multiplayer). Also there were so many nasty engagement effects that made my strategy backfire a few times. I ended up getting away from Forest Snares in that deck because they were too expensive, but that was before we had Damrod. He might be the glue to hold it all together.

Some other cards your might consider are:

- Son of Arnor or Mablung to engage an enemy during planning and put them in a Forest Snare.

- Daeron's Runes to ditch the extra copies of Celebrian's Stone and STWB

- Master of the Forge to fetch traps and other key attachments

To make room I would probably take out Peace and Thought (there is no readying to offset the exhaustion) and maybe Northern Tracker unless you are playing 3+ players.

Very nice and very fun deck. I tested yesterday three games against the 7th level from Khazad Dûm with very mixed results...

First game, I draw a lot of traps and it wars really impressive. Three enemies staked in the staging area, and three engaged and trapped into forest snares... Halbarad with a Dunedain Warning and a Protector of Lorien was a beast defending everything and I won the game with an amazing ease.

Next game... first revealed card was a troll, I thought... well. no problem, its engagement cost is 33, I can handle that. I sent 6 WP to Quest, and reveal... a dommed 2 location. My threat goes to 33 and the troll engages. Well, I still can handle that with a ranger of cardolan, and a forest snare in hand... I defend the troll attack with ranger and the marvelous shadow effect discards the defender if it is an ally... ok, GG, and go for third attempt.

Third was a strange game... I just draw useless cards (sneak attacks without allies in hand, descendants of kings when I had no enemies engaged...) Peace and Thought when I need my heroes to quest... and I didn't draw a single trap in all the game. I ended loosing overwhelmed by enemies in second stage.

I really like the idea and the deck, but sometimes I felt that some leadership cards were a little expensive and crucial for it. I also think that the new trap (ambush, from the land of shadow) might be very useful to ensure you can manage the crucial first rounds.

Great job with this deck and thanks for sharing!

You are using some signals, so have you tried Weather Hills Watchman?

He is both theamatic, have a useful ability, more than one hit point (like the most dunedain) and not so expensive.

I don,t have Land of Shadow, so I think I would replace Damrod by Grima, and maybe replace 2 attachments with Power of Orthanc on Grima.

I just love traps... and LoS will give us the tools to build awesome trap deck!!!

@ Teamjimy: Damrod is indeed the glue for this deck. He makes Forest Snare playable with only 2 Lore heroes and the spikes are just insane with him. Son of Arnor is too expensive for what I want to do with this deck unfortunately, as he would thematically fit. But this deck works in a slightly different way than normal decks: it's suppose to either ready a hero or have an ally jump in for emergency defense. Celebrian Stone + Northern Tracker are here to break location lock (and help me win Weathered Hills as I'm mostly playing this deck against the latests quests) but they could be replaced with sideboard cards. Master of the Forge 'could' replace Peace and Thought, I'll try that! There is some reason for P&T though, as I only use it in emergencies against enemies in which case I want Traps + Sneak Attack Gandalfs + Descendants of Kings. And if there are a lot of enemies, I've probably already control over the locations so two less questing heroes isn't that big a deal. Also Descendants of Kings is a (super) ready effect.

@ wehehe: cool that you tried the deck out for a few games! Your second game shows both it's strenght and weakness: being able to deal with unexpected enemies and being unable to defend against deadly shadowcards! Your third game makes me wonder, as Peace and Thought is suppose to be the emergency card in case you didn't get the cards you need. Taking an threat hit shouldn't be too much trouble, but if you where already getting swarmed with those enemies that increase their attack if undefended you probably didn't get time to make up for your bad opening hand. I'll go play a few games against 7th level and see what my experiences are!

Which leadership cards did you feel where crucial but too expensive to play? My experience has been that I use leadership resources for Warning, DoK and Sneak Attack if I get enemies or Sword that was Broken if mostly locations. I rarely needed both. I'm also curious how you'd use Ambush? My playstyle involves only defense unless absolutly nessecary. It does make sense against 7th level though, as Aragorn could stay back to kill those swordman. In general though, I prefer to have everybody questing and keep some cards in my hand for defense.

@DurinVoronwe: Unfortunately with only 1 leadership hero, those leadership resources are hard to come by. You could try an alternate version of this deck with Steward of Gondor instead of Heir of Valandil, but I was trying to stay away from the staple uniques and see if Dúnedain alone could keep up with the other traits as was implied in the 'Dúnedain Suck' topic.

Further testing has convinced me that Henemarth Riversong needs to be included. The lack of any 1 cost chump blocker / quester that can ALSO be sacrificed for ally sacrifices (darn Angmar Orcs!!!) has been hurting me. I'm also more in favor of using Scout Ahead over Send for Aid, as I didn't have leadership resources to spare for this card and having better knowledge is a great help for any trap deck.

Thanks for the feedback everybody! I feel like I can squeeze a little more out of the deck with your help. I shared this deck because I love how different it plays. It's much more reliant on events and temporary allies than the usual deck which makes you think differently. I also like how fast it plays. And unlike the Palantir deck I've been working on, this one actually works well against many difficult quests.

My experiences with quests:

Intruders in Chetwood:

Challenge: very hard

This quest unfortunately does everything possible to make this deck fail. Enemies immune to attachments, returning to the staging area away from Forest Snare, still being a nuisance if spiked and nasty threat increase! Without some side-board action only the grey wizard can even the odds.

Weathered Hills:

Challenge: hard

The 'trick' of the quest is to NOT travel exept to get rid of weathered hills. So explore the Ridge, trap the enemy and then build up your willpower to match the staging area. Eventually you'll get your Norther Tracker in play and can nuke the staging area and then you'll be fully equiped for the last part. Use Distant Stars to fish the other copy of weathered hills out of the deck to prevent it from becoming too nasty in the staging area if you can. Bad opening can instantly kill you in this super-surge quest. Most cards from the Orc deck can ruin your day in turn 1. If you survive turn 1 and 2 without losing a hero, you'll probably win.

Deadmans Dike:

Challenge: small

We should win most games against this quest. Locking the dead prevents them from returning from the discard pile. Distant Stars let's you switch the location to the one that puts cards back into your deck which buys you the time you need to face Thaurdir more prepared.

Wastes of Eriador:

Challenge: small

Wars returning to the staging area during the day can mess up your track groove a bit, but at the same time, having many enemies engage you simultaniously during the night is our strenght. I've had some insane DoK actions here. Also a high HP lore deck is naturally good against weather cards.

Escape from Mount Gram:

Challenge: very hard

Yes yes, the 'easiest' quest in the cycle and this deck sucks against it.

Across the Ettenmoors:

Challenge: small

More weather that doesn't scare us. Enemies that can be trapped easily and enough questing power to keep the location open for a save location if needed. Side quests stacking up can kill you easily though.

Well... I consider sword that was broken almost a vital part of this deck, because without it, my Willpower was always too tight. Also it helps playing other leadership cards. Of course gaining strength is great to help play it but... you can't rely on a card with only 3 copies !

I also played The watcher in the water, in a 2 player game this Saturday, and I discovered it is another annoying quest to play with it, because once the watcher hits the table, you must kill all tentacles in play in order to engage the watcher.

Anyway, the deck is very fun to play, once I played many games strictly with your list, I'll do some tweaks to adapt it to my preferences. As teamjimby says, I think sons of arnor (even with his high cost) will be a great addition.

I tried the 7th level myself to see if any sideboard action could help.

First game: lost

I put the book on Aragorn which will come back to haunt me later. The starting setup had a friendly 7 attack orc, luckily sneaky Gandalf was there to help me. I traveled a bit and Scout Ahead (I already replaced the leadership sidequest with this). I removed a Goblin Swordsman and put a Troll at the back, this should buy me some turns. Unfortunately the other cards where also goblins of the not-engaging variety. This was my second mistake, I should have kept the Swordsman and use his shadowcard to discard the Troll. Oh well. Troll arrives and I use Ranger of Carlogan to block, in case he get's an attack bonus. Yet another mistake, as there are almost no attack bonus shadow cards in this deck.

Here's where I started to fall apart. I didn't draw any allies and every bloody Goblin kept drawing another for a shadowcard. And without Aragorns attack, I couldn't kill them fast enough. I had copies Descentants of Kings but not enough Dúnedain.

I feel like I could have won if I played better. My next few games where rather uneventful and I won them all. These times I did use Scout Ahead to setup shadowcards smartly. And used Distant Stars to remove the one location with a attack-buff-shadow-effect asap. And I used Gandalf to draw cards and block instead of damage enemies. And I killed the weak goblins because the benefits of a weaker engaged enemy don't measure up to the shadow effect enemies.

@Wehehe: I think we are playing the deck differently. My strategy has been to quest with everyone from turn 1. If an enemy engages me (and I'll optionally engage any 3 or less attack enemies if I have to), I'll use whatever 1 resource emergency-block option I have available or just take it undefended on Aragorn. Then Halbarad will be available to block next turn. This strategy means 6 willpower right from turn 1 so it 'should' smash through early locations. I focus only on cleaning up the locations and once I've done that, I keep more guys back to attack back. Preferably I just snare them and move on. Another excelent way to stay alive is to Sneak-Attack Gandalf, use his ability to draw cards and just block. This seems wasteful as you're not doing anything longterm to the enemy, but in those extra 3 cards there's often another Sneak Attack or Forest Snare or whatnot.

If I'm getting overwhelmed I often prefer Peace and Thought over blocking with those heroes, as new traps and leadership events like Descendants of Kings bring way more to the table in terms of defense. Also use it if you have a breather moment.

Another important bit about playing this deck is not to play allies if you don't have to. Mostly the Ranger of Cardolan and Sarn Ford Sentry should stay in your hand unless you're swiming with resources or you need a permanent body on the table. Keep resources ready for your event cards. As I mentioned, this deck plays very differently from most other decks (closest to Silvan I suppose) in that you don't want to through your cards on the table asap, but rather try to always be in a situation where you can deal with emergencies and playing less is often more.

Deck Changes:

Teamjimby suggested Master of the Forge and these guys work out great! They hit almost every time and can be used for chump blocking in emergencies. They also make it easier to rely purely on traps for the first few rounds. I had completely forgotten about them! And because they are a thematic fit (where do the Dúnedain buy their traps if not Rivendel?) I'll allow them. Thanks for the tip!

+ 3 Master of the Forge

- 1 Celebrian's Stone

- 1 Sword that was Broken

- 1 Dúnedain warning

A switchup in side-quests. Scout Ahead is much more valuable to this deck, with it's ability to manipulate shadow effects and balancing who to quest with.

+ Scout Ahead

- Send for Aid

I mused about Hennemarth Riversong and added him anyway. He's always a good card in solo and a cheap body on the table. He can be our Silvan scout.

+ 2 Hennemarth Riversong

Finally I added Daeron's runes. Yes, I'm aware that every lore deck should include 3 copies. But my friend was using them and I figured I could do without.

+ 3 Daeron's runes

This put's the deck 5 cards over 50. So I suggest removing one copy of East Road Ranger and consider the Celebrian's Stones and Norther Tracker (4 cards total) an add-on package for location heavy quests that can be removed. Similarly I suggest 2 copies of Wingfoot and 2 copies of Burning Brand as a combat add-on. Remove 4 less needed cards if you want to include an add-on. I'll keep them in, because I'm trying to build a deck that can take on the current cycle in it's entirety and because of the mad carddraw, I often end up with the entire deck.