This deck is a departure from my standard approach to deckbuilding, but it's been a blast to play!
I've wanted to build a Denethor/Palantir deck for quite some time, but I've never been quite able to make it work out well. Either the deck was weak, or the deck was fine but the Palantir was completely irrelevant. The closest I got to success was a Ld/Tactics Gondor deck (LdDenethor, TaBeregond, LdBoromir) that focused heavily on attachments. The deck worked fine, and the ally swarm was great. But the Palantir never did anything useful in it.
So this time, I decided to start by asking how I could maximize the value of the Palantir. The Palantir's most important use is scrying (the card draw is inconsistent and comes at a very high cost in threat), so the real question is how to maximize the value of scrying. Scrying is valuable for several reasons - first, if you know what's coming off of the encounter deck, you know exactly how much willpower you need to send on the quest, and how many defenders you will need. That value can't be understated.
But if something awful is going to come off of the encounter deck, scrying just lets you know that you are going to get pounded in advance, and doesn't actually help you counter it. So my thoughts were to pair the Palantir with means of encounter deck control. This pushes us towards the Lore version of Denethor, rather than the Leadership one. With some readying, we are already looking at a powerful combination - Denethor uses the Palantir to scry the encounter deck, and then drops the top card to the bottom of the deck if he doesn't like what's coming.
Scrying is also a good fit for a Trap deck, to make sure that you don't waste your traps on small enemies. Damrod is looking like an excellent hero here - and thematically appropriate, too. This suggests a theme - Ithilien Rangers. For a 3rd hero, we want one with low threat, to help keep us scrying for as long as possible. Since most of the cards we're going to want will be from the Lore sphere, we are pretty much looking at either Mirlonde or Pippin. Mirlonde is lower threat (but the equivalent for engagement costs, thanks to Pippin's ability), but I like having Pippin's card draw. In addition, as a knight of Gondor, Pippin fits the theme a little better (even if he is a little bit anachronistic).
Before we finalize our selection, though, we ought to decide whether we want this to be a solo deck or a multiplayer one. While the challenge of building a solo scrying/trap deck seems interesting, the Palantir really isn't that useful in that setting. So this is clearly a multiplayer deck - that means that weakness in questing or combat can theoretically be covered by a partner. Still, I want the deck to be able to offer meaningful contributions to both questing and combat, and to be reasonably self sufficient for what it is trying to do.
So, we have 3 heroes, a starting threat of 23 with 4 starting willpower, and significant card draw already included in the deck. I'll start by slotting in my standard Trap bundle - 2x Anborn, 2x Forest Snare, 2x Ranger Spikes, 2x Entangling Nets, and 2x Ambush. An argument could be made for Poisoned stakes if we wanted to, and Ithilien Pit is a good choice as well, but this deck is focused around playing dirty tricks on the encounter deck, and the traps I included help mitigate the deck's weaknesses a little better.
As far as allies go, the most important ally for the deck is one that hasn't technically been released yet. Emyn Arnen Ranger - that can bring some serious willpower to bear on the quest. It pairs well with Ranger Spikes and Forest Snare, as well. For further questing assistance, the Ithilien Tracker makes a decent 2-of. And with the Palantir scrying for us, we will know whether or not it's worth using his ability. Mablung is an auto-include in the deck. Not only is he 2 cost for 2 willpower, but he lets us engage an enemy and immediately put a Forest Snare on it.
3x Guardians of Ithilien give us even more flexibility to control which enemy goes onto which trap, and provide chump blocking or some small attach boosts. 2xIthilien Archers give us some needed attack power (along with Anborn). 2x Warden of Healing are hard to pass up. We're at 16 allies and 10 attachments now (including 2 copies of the Palantir).
Taking stock of where we are at - the deck is going to struggle a little bit questing in the early game, and it's not ever going to top out at super-high levels of willpower. On the other hand, once it gets set up, it can make sure that the worst cards don't hit the staging area. To help boost our questing, I think we ought to insert 2 copies of Firyal. Her 3 willpower will be very welcome, and her discard ability takes some action pressure off of Denethor once she's out. In addition, we now have control over the top 2 cards of the encounter deck - which means that if either card that's going to come up in staging is objectionable, we can just say no.
Finally, 3xGandalf will be very welcome. Not only for the extra willpower or the attack, but for the threat reduction. That should round out our selection of allies, at 21 cards.
Now, let's look at combat. We need a good defender, and luckily, Denethor fits the bill! A natural target for Burning Brand, and in-sphere Defense boosts via Protector of Lorien. He'll need readying for that and his scrying duties , and the Lore sphere doesn't have much to offer there. That means splashing in another sphere, and since we're going to do that, let's just go for the gold standard - 2x Unexpected Courage should be nice. And 3x of A Good Harvest to pay for it. Since we've got A Good Harvest already, it might be worth slipping in 2xGondorian Shield, so that Denethor's defenses don't end up hemorrhaging cards from our hands.
Now we're at 18 attachments and 21 allies, with 3 events so far. 42 cards total. Let's drop in 3x Mithrandir's Advice, and 3x Deep Knowledge for the card draw - helping us get to the most important cards quickly (Daeron's Runes might be better, really, but Deep Knowledge helps out our partner decks in multiplayer, and hopefully they can reciprocate with threat reduction). For our last few cards, let's look at our deck and see where we might be lacking.
For questing, as long as we have a trapped enemy sitting useless somewhere, our Emyn Arnen Rangers can contribute significantly. A reasonable board state - 2 of them (assuming a 2-threat enemy trapped), Mablung, and Firyal gives us 13 willpower (including questing heroes). Not enough to carry the questing burden on its own, but enough that the partner deck isn't trapped into being a dedicated questing deck.
For combat, we have Denethor defending, and Anborn and a few Ithilien Archers attacking back. Denethor as a defender is fine, and if we need more defenses than he can provide (unlikely but possible) we have Guardians of Ithilien as chump blockers. But the return fire is just weak. So our last few cards ought to be focused around helping us get rid of enemies. Luckily, we have a few options in Lore. The two that stand out are the Ranger Spear and the Ranger Bow. The spear boosts the attack of the Ithilien Archer (the most likely recipient) to 3, and 4 against a trapped enemy. That's not bad, and puts us in a much better place attack wise. But the Ranger Bow is intriguing. Direct damage into the staging area not only helps with our attack problem, but also helps manage threat in the staging area as well - helping to compensate for lower willpower numbers. We also have the extra actions on our Guardians or Ithilien Trackers, which means that that's not a problem. So, the Bow will be our weapon of choice, although we probably ought to sideboard the Spear for use against quests where direct damage is blocked for some reason, or for use with partner decks that might need extra attack help.
That brings us to 50 cards, but with all of our card draw, we have room for a few more if we really want to. And since we chose to go the direct damage route, let's toss in 2x Forest Patrol, for those times when we really need to get rid of a big enemy fast.
And there we are. 52 cards, more card draw than we know what to do with, and so much deck control that the encounter deck will be sobbing for mercy by the time we're done.
Now, I've published this deck as part of a fellowship - the other deck is a side-quest focused Thurindir/Lanwyn/Beravor lineup. As a result, I tailored the deck I made right here slightly to fit the exact fellowship - added Gather Information to boost Thurindir, sideboarded Unexpected Courage because the other deck can play it natively without A Good Harvest, sideboarded Gandalf because the other deck has enough threat reduction to cover me, and added Steward of Gondor and Heir of Mardil so the deck can get its cards out faster.
Link: http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/7556/eyes-of-the-white-tower-1.0
As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated!