So I'd like to see about making 3 viable 4 man teams to take on this encounter in Epic Mode, but to also restrict the hero lineup to not have duplicate unique characters across teams. I'm not attempting to do this with the rest of the player cards, so each team can still be their own Steward of Gondor, blow their own Horn of Gondor and have Gandalf running around.

First off, Gandalf Hero is likely off the team since he would only benefit one group and would restrict the other teams from running the ally version.

Second, in any 4 player game, I feel someone should be running the Victory manipulation tech to control certain terrible cards and to give every player access to Keen as Lances. With that in mind, each team will be running this, but that is more a deck building idea, and I'm not sure I want to get too far down that line of thinking. But that does mean Rossiel will be a good choice during our selection process.

As discussed in the main thread of the Gen Con/Fellowship event, it is likely best if each team focuses on a trait - or at least a few players in each team does - depending on the type of global buffs those traits get.

Here is currently where I'm at with the teams and their trait theme:

Team 1: Dwarves

- Player 1: Dain, Balin and Gloin - Questing, Resource sharing, Shadow cancel and Readying effects

- Player 2: Dori, Gimli and Thalin - Pure combat

- Player 3: Thorin, Bifur and Dwalin - Questing, Combat and heals

- Player 4: Nori, Oin and Ori - Questing, Cancels, Stargazer to stack deck for Well-Equipped to put Tactics weapons/armor across the board.

Team 2: Noldor

Team 3: Gondor (Mutual Accords where ever possible)

Player 1 - Boromir (L), Imrahil, Denethor (Le) - Ally swarm, global buffs

Player 2 - Theoden (S), Eomer, Elfhelm - Rohan ally swarm with mounts, mostly combat focused

Player 3 - Caldara, Eleanor, Eowyn (S) - Questing, cancellation

Player 4 - Beregond, Faramir (Lo), Damrod - Traps, healing, ranged/sentinel support

Some other traits that an individual player may explore is Dunedain, Hobbits, Ents, Rohan and Outlands. I don't think Scouts are there just yet as a complete them.

What are some thoughts for the other teams? Considering the power of Silvans tends to be short lived, I feel that team is the best candidate for the Aragorn/Dunedain deck since it takes a bit to set up and then can handle everything.

For the Gondor table, I would add Rohan and include as many Mutual Accords as possible

Player 1 - Boromir (L), Imrahil, Denethor (Le) - Ally swarm, global buffs

Player 2 - Theoden (S), Eomer, Elfhelm - Rohan ally swarm with mounts, mostly combat focused

Player 3 - Caldara, Eleanor, Eowyn (S) - Questing, cancellation

Player 4 - Beregond, Faramir (Lo), Damrod - Traps, healing, ranged/sentinel support

I'm begining to wonder if Silvans are even strong enough to warrant being a main trait? Especially with the change to Horn of Gondor. Sure they are the only other trait with a global buff, but it is generally short lived. Once you run out of the bounce events, they become a bit stagnant.

Maybe mix the Silvans and Noldor? Thematic, and when the Silvans die down the Noldor should be getting stronger.

I won't be there, but I agree that you will probably need to just make an elves table.

Are the general ideas to be able to make a set of 12 decks technically from one play set of cards? That would be excellent

My idea would be to break it down in the following way:

Stage A/B: 4 Player Dwarves with Dain. This allows you to start off with high willpower to boost up Annuminas' total health. Dain in 4-player dwarves is so insane that these decks can be sub-par and still perform well.

Stage E/F: A kill-em-all deck combo with Tactigorn, like this: http://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/1600/annuminas-stage-e-f

Stage C/D: Whatever remaining good decks you can still make, of which there are a few: Elrond/Vilya, Caldara deck, Boromir/eagles, Ents, Outlands, Silvan, Loragorn/doomed, etc.

On 3/18/2017 at 4:45 AM, alexbobspoons said:

Are the general ideas to be able to make a set of 12 decks technically from one play set of cards? That would be excellent

The original intent was just to make the 12 characters unique, but not constrain the deck building between groups. Though with enough trait focused decks, the only unique cards that really put the limit on things is Steward of Gondor and Horn of Gondor, so it should be pretty feasible with all the other resource acceleration available. The real trouble is simply having enough cards for things like Test of Will, Foe Hammer, Feint, etc., to go around.

Thanks, The idea of being able to make 12 decks from a single full playset (3 cores) boggles my mind!

Yea, it was challenging enough to figure 12 unique heroes across the board.

Trying to keep the decks balanced enough so that the first 6 you make are as strong as the last 6 would be a huge challenge, and maybe not even the best way to approach it. I think you'd have to really analyze the quest itself to determine which deck ideas would work best for each stage and then try to play to those strengths. Also, I'd consider making 3 powerful decks that get divided between the 3 groups, so you have 1 super strong deck per area, and if you can manage it, 2 per area. With the card pool being what it is for all the non-unique events, the last 6 decks will really suffer, but it may be possible. Also, since we are inflicting this unique across the board rule on ourselves, I'd say it is acceptable to either start with extra resources and/or cards in hand. or allow multiple mulligans or something.