Hi there

We play exclusively 2 players.

So with this in mind has anyone tried to use the tactics Theoden to have 2 straight tactics decks?

OR maybe have one splash one spirit hero to get Shadomane and other horses and horse searching cards + cancelers.

Perhaps each deck has 2 Tactics heros?

Thalin would be better to use for his ability with +! willpower

Obviously sword Thain would be cool.

Merry would quest for 3 for only 6 threat.

Thoughts? Ideas ? Experience ?

2 Mono-Tactics decks would fail pretty miserably, even with Tactics Theoden. It can start off with a decent amount of questing, but then you have to rely on your allies for combat and Tactics has sooo little willpower on their allies that you can't build up enough willpower for later on. The closest thing I've seen is using Hama to recycle Trained for War. With the right combinations, I could definitely see 2 Tactics heroes in each deck working, but I haven't tried it.

I think it would be viable, especially with TaEowyn. If tactics allies can't handle combat, who can, and with TaTheoden and TaEowyn your heroes can provide terrific initial questing without any card support.

With that said, there's some reasonable questers that mono-tactics have access to. For instance, an Eagles deck would have Gwaihir, Radagast, and 3x Eagles of the Misty Mountains. Tactics also has access to Bofur, Rumil, Beechbone, Treebeard, Gandalf (temporary), Saruman (temporary), and 3x Rangers of Cardolan (with ranger hero). How many questing allies do you need with strong questing heroes?

With that said, I didn't try to pair my Eagles deck with another mono-tactics deck. Instead I have a Sam/SpMerry/LoPippin secrecy deck dedicated to buffing the main deck, providing Snowmane/Herugrim to TaTheoden and Wingfoot/Sword That Was Broken for TaAragorn. With Sword in place even the cheap eagles can quest, while still providing monster buffs for Support of the Eagles.

Does the Oin hero's ability (While you control at least 5 Dwarf characters, Óin gets +1 and gains the tactics resource icon.) count as being printed tactics and hence get he +1 willpower from Theoden?

Does the Oin hero's ability (While you control at least 5 Dwarf characters, Óin gets +1 and gains the tactics resource icon.) count as being printed tactics and hence get he +1 willpower from Theoden?

No. Printed means "the card came out of the packaging with it".

I think focusing too much on tactics ruins it. Every time I look at deck building, tactics is the lowest of importance... Tactics advantage is eagles, which are expensive. You would need resource boosting and that means leadership for the most part.

Maybe player 1 can run a dwarf decik with Dain and Thalin while the other runs a Rohan deck with Theodin and Hama. Dain could include Dunedain Cache to give Hama ranged, and the tactics deck could include hands upon the bow and rohan war horses to multi-shot any enemies in the staging area while the rest of both decks is build around questing. The Rohan deck will need heavy card draw to get the combo going since you need 2x hands upon the bow but you also need low threat as Theodin and Hama already put you at 21 so maybe lore pippin with all the green draw you can muster. Dain would use king under the mountain to add draw power to reach dunedain cache, fortunately you only need 1 of these... The questing will be strong as Dain doubles up with Theodin giving Thalin a respectable 3 willpower, but also other dwarfs can handle combat well so even if it takes a bit to get the combo going Theodin and Hama can both focus on questing while the dwarf deck takes most of the combat heat.

shosuko those are some good ideas. Dain + theoden means gimli quests for 4 and thalin 3.

Eomer, hama and theoden would be the heros for the other deck. Play thicket of spears, for the no attacks lock-down.

We are currently playing through the heirs of numenor again, so with lots of battle and siege quests, these sort of decks might work nicely, Theodin giving you the boost you need for the odd actual normal old fashioned quest.

Of course not having spirit means no treachery cancellation, which is always a problem as the treachery cards kind of force you to have some spirit hero somewhere.