My first attempts at building with the new Leadership Denethor:

https://wardenofarnor.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/decks-the-house-of-stewards/ http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/1174/the-house-of-stewards-mono-leadership-1.0 http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/1175/the-house-of-stewards-tri-sphere-combat-1.0

Your mono-leadership deck looks quite similar to a mono-leadership deck I've been using for quite some time now and it uses Boromir, Balin, and Theodred (I know it's not thematic). I will likely be replacing Theodred with Denethor (Ld) to be more thematic and have a bit faster starts with A Very Good Tale, although I won't be able to keep the Denethor ally in my deck . Your deck seems like it would be better in solo than mine.

Since my deck has never been played solo, I opted to use Guard of the Citadel over Herald of Anorien as the doomed can be too punishing for my teammates sometimes. Do you think Guard of the Citadel makes a good substitute for Herald of Anorien in your deck or would it make it too slow since you aren't using A Very Good Tale like I do in my deck?

Also, do you find that you wish you could use the Faramir ally with your deck? I find the ally to be incredibly useful to muster more questing and provide another option to get questing rolling when you just can't seem to find your Visionary Leadership attachments. I figure you're probably trying to stay within theme which is why you opted to use 3 Gondor heroes. Maybe Imrahil could allow you to stay within theme, and still give you access to Faramir ally. Going outside of theme, Balin giving access to King Under the Mountain and immediate shadow mitigation seems fairly reasonable as far as consistency is concerned.

It's nice to see other player's perspectives on similar decks so I quite enjoyed reading about these decks you just posted.

Regarding your blog, I've come across it a few times here and there and always find it to be a good read and enjoy your content.

Since my deck has never been played solo, I opted to use Guard of the Citadel over Herald of Anorien as the doomed can be too punishing for my teammates sometimes. Do you think Guard of the Citadel makes a good substitute for Herald of Anorien in your deck or would it make it too slow since you aren't using A Very Good Tale like I do in my deck?

Also, do you find that you wish you could use the Faramir ally with your deck? I find the ally to be incredibly useful to muster more questing and provide another option to get questing rolling when you just can't seem to find your Visionary Leadership attachments. I figure you're probably trying to stay within theme which is why you opted to use 3 Gondor heroes. Maybe Imrahil could allow you to stay within theme, and still give you access to Faramir ally. Going outside of theme, Balin giving access to King Under the Mountain and immediate shadow mitigation seems fairly reasonable as far as consistency is concerned.

Well firstly, since Flight of the Stormcaller isn't on OCTGN yet I haven't actually played these deck yet, I just threw them together on RingsDB while FotS was still hot off the presses so I could jump on the hype train. To be honest, the Heralds Doomed effect may be unnecessary since I don't expect this deck to have a lot of resource issues (though in multiplayer you can let someone else bring in an ally), so yeah you could put in Guard of the Citadel as a possibility (and a third Pelargir Ship Captain). Or you could put in some of the stuff from the sideboard, e.g. A Very Good Tale.

Yeah, Faramir is a thematic choice, not just for all Gondor but also for all the family together. He does also pair well with Boromir/Visionary though since you end up with allies who are good in both questing and combat. Ally Faramir certainly would help if I don't draw Visionary early, which is a big concern for if I were to try this deck solo, but as I said, thematic choice. If I weren't going specifically for the full House of Stewards, then yes, Balin is always good (and a favourite hero of mine), or Imrahil would fit in nicely since he's Gondor and he'd ready often enough between some chumping and the number of Sneak Attacks I can get out with Tome of Atanatar. Either would be good substitutions from a purely mechanical perspective, though I do think that if this deck lasts long enough to get Visionary it'll also show pretty favourably.

Cool to see these decks starting to pop up! However, I assume this was not meant to play solo, right?

The mono-Leadership might work solo but it's probably only viable if you get Visionary Leadership early. The tri-sphere deck is purely combat-focused, absolutely not solo viable.