9 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

1- The White council target The White council and galadhrim greetings

I don't understand. How do you target 2 cards with The White Council? Each player must choose a different option:

So when you play The White Council, only 1 player can pull a card back from the discard pile. Now since The White Council then goes to your discard after playing it, that's a net gain of 0 cards. So I don't see how this card can result in any positive gain of cards from your discard pile, which is necessary for a loop to be made.

Maybe this explains why I couldn't understand how your dwarf fellowship worked.

Oops. You are right. I talk to some people to review my combo but none of them saw this. So we will only use the attachment part and save slots ^^. Glad to post quite fast here and don't playtest too much with this version. This mean we need to be able even more regularly to stand more than one turn.

Also, you can still have player 1 play Justice Shall be Done on turn 1 to set up the combo. Then player two can beat the rest of the quest alone.

Yes it is usually possible. And objective ally/hero or saga hero usually usually move to the next player right before the player one die.

I may get one or two corner cases where I can't play any justice shall be done. But usually it is only player 2 justice shall be done who is unnecessary. Since it is not that useful anyway I'm even considering cutting it.

I still think that it make the whole thing more efficient by making the first deck a "draw decks" who is able to draw his entire deck on turn one each game and so can play all his dunedain, born aloft and a second breakfast. You don't say anything about that, and I think it is central in deck construction. If you are not convinced we can try to make so test and stats (not for showing this but because I really want to know).

I'm starting to taking this fellowship REALLY seriously, like determining all the concern in all the scenario available to have what is needed. Then play all them in a "Beat (almost) all quest" like you do for the One deck (and like I was doing on the past for others decks, like my old combo deck). Are you interest to discuss the decklist concern? I will have many optimization problem and you may find something I wasn't thinking about.

No news? So I assume you can't dedicate time to optimize the version? I will do it myself though but it may be longer, or less optimized.

I realize that 3 tome of athanator is absolutely useless in deck 2: second breakfast is the only target you like and second breakfast automatically put tome in hand. So when you play a tome you just put a second breakfast in the bottom of your deck for 1 resource.

The more I play Message from Elrond the most I like it. It could be useful to give the second "justice shall be done" to player 1 (he will die twice, so sad ^^) in game that last more than one turn. It also is great to give a born aloft to player 1 before he play a second breakfast (who will bring back one born aloft for each player).

And I keep putting card that stabilize the deck (drawing card essentially) because I find more slots. For example I now only play "solution cards" (the one I play after getting infinite resource) in lore and leadership, so I can't keep playing them after turn one (when I loose Dain and his song).

5 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

(he will die twice, so sad ^^)

Only mostly dead! #theprincessbride

9 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

No news? So I assume you can't dedicate time to optimize the version? I will do it myself though but it may be longer, or less optimized.

I realize that 3 tome of athanator is absolutely useless in deck 2: second breakfast is the only target you like and second breakfast automatically put tome in hand. So when you play a tome you just put a second breakfast in the bottom of your deck for 1 resource.

The more I play Message from Elrond the most I like it. It could be useful to give the second "justice shall be done" to player 1 (he will die twice, so sad ^^) in game that last more than one turn. It also is great to give a born aloft to player 1 before he play a second breakfast (who will bring back one born aloft for each player).

And I keep putting card that stabilize the deck (drawing card essentially) because I find more slots. For example I now only play "solution cards" (the one I play after getting infinite resource) in lore and leadership, so I can't keep playing them after turn one (when I loose Dain and his song).

Sure, I can discuss and help optimize the deck. There may be some scenarios that present a fun challenge to the Pathfinder loop.

Message from Elrond is good, this card was in my Black Gate fellowship for the reason of passing Justice Shall be Done.

The reason for the 3x Tome of Atanatar was for higher likelihood of finding multiple copies, since each copy allows you to get 2 more uses out of Second Breakfast to grab Born Aloft.

Like I said if you target second breakfast, second breakfast bring you Atanatar in hand (no choice, it is the top attachment of the discard) and after that get under the deck. Since Tome alway go back in hand having 1 or 3 don't make any differences. And it is not that useful to get back born aloft because you have to draw your entire deck before get the chance to redraw second breakfast. And you want to empty the deck of location SO you can draw your deck, not the opposite. Message from Elrond is way more powerful in order to do that. I still don't get how will of the west can help you to achieve your goal because at some point you will miss resources to pay your draw engine.

The more I play the more I'm convinced that all those drawing card make the deck more stable.

Yes, I see your point. 1x Tome of Atanatar should be enough.

Will of the West is to allow you to play more copies of Born Aloft. Drawing gets pretty cheap once the encounter deck gets low on locations.

Another card that might help is Erebor Hammersmith to recycle Born Aloft, although paying 2 for another Pathfinder might be too expensive.

I'm in agreement that you want a lot of draw cards.

@Seastan Very interesting discussion

I have made a test with Emyn Muil and his 20 locations. A clear win. It is a single test but here is how I got the 20:

First I get the deck 1 empty.
Then I play 3 dunedain pathfinder of deck 1 (3 locations out)
3 born aloft who bring back 3 pathfinder than I play gain (6 locations out)
Deck 2 give a born aloft to player 1 with message from Elrond. Player one bounce a pathfinder and play it back (7 locations out)
Deck 1 play a second breakfast, both player get a born aloft back in hand. Player 1 play another pathfinder (8 locations)
Deck 2 give the same born aloft to player 1 with another message from Elrond. Player one bounce a pathfinder and play it back (9 locations out)
Deck 1 play a second breakfast, both player get a born aloft back in hand. Player 1 play another pathfinder (10 locations)
Deck 1 play a Tome of Athanator and then give his Hero to player 2
Deck 2 play 2 pathfinder (12 locations)
Deck 2 play 2 born aloft, and use them for 2 more pathfinder (14 locations)
Deck 2 play 2 second breakfast, get 2 born aloft back and use them to another 2 pathfinder (16 locations)
Deck 2 use player 1 Tome to play his second breakfast who get a born aloft (because tome get to player 1 discard pile) and re-use a pathfinder (17 locations)
Then I have to do pay for some drawing card engine to finally draw the last pieces, get the deck empty and pay 2 using tome of Athanator/second breafast loop to get a pathfinder ready for the loop.

So I can get the 20 locations by using all the cards of my decks but I got trouble to actually reach the end of my deck. I don't see any use of will of the west outside of this case of 20 locations and it can only make use save few resources with that seem to me a moderate possibility to fail.

Erebor hammersmith was considered but I'm not even playing the 6 second breakfast anymore (only play 2 in deck 1, cut one for get a tome of athanator, very useful to reach valor turn one in shadow and flame or mount doom).

Here is my updated version: http://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/4727

2 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

Deck 2 play 2 born aloft, and use them for 2 more pathfinder (14 locations) 

In this step, player 1 gets back some Born Alofts as well, yes? So if deck 1 had Message from Elrond as well you could pass them to player 2.

Player 1 deck is really full. That is why I only play 2 second breakfast in it. But in my example below player 2 can use his last message from elrond to steal the born aloft of player one, so all the 20 location can (and will) already be put in staging area without any need to redraw the deck.

I'm listing every difficult scenario to see a correct path to win them and potentially adapt the deck to get what I need. So far I see that:

- Escape from Dol Guldur seem impossible, both in solo or multiplayer. So many pathfinder have to come into play, we can't hope to wait that long, and get some sneak attack may not be efficient enough, and will totally disrupt the deck in other scenario.

- Quest where a big part of the deck is put away (catch an orc with Mugmaz and espace from Mount Gram) let us really few chances to get enough part of the combo, can't see any correct solution

- Nin il-eiph have many awful quest that block us from doing anything (can't draw cards, can't play more than one card per turn), and I don't see anything we can do since there are quests. But we have one chance over 3 to get the quest that make ally come into play exhaust, who do few to none damage to the deck. So 1 chance over 3 to win it ^^.

- Shadow and flame need to get from 0 to 40 threat to get in vailor. I can achieve this only by putting a tome of athanator in deck 1, what I have done. I'm not sure if we must try to win turn one or not and if feint effect is usefull.

- On black gate opens and mount doom we need to go from 30 to 80 threat. It is 10 more than we need for shadow and flame but it seem manageable as well, alway with the tome of athanator operation in deck 1.

- On Druadan Forest nightmare we have to get rid of an annoying location because he stop us from winning resource. That is why I have 1 Sarouman and 3 seeing-stone. But after some testing, since we start anyway with 5 resources in each hero we can go to the end of the deck before having to win any resource. After setting it aside we win all the resources we can (essentially justice shall be done, and another justice shall be done given by message from elrond). Then we have to attach a born aloft to sarouman and find the worst location (every card cost 1 resource more) and do another sarouman effect on him. This let still 2 location that we need to get rid of before being able to do the combo, I found more efficient to use another time sarouman (we are on 49 threat at this point usually ^^) and get the last one wiped by our event (star something). It is complicated but it work anyway. Having hunter instead of pathfinder will help a lot obivously.

- Druadan forest on normal mode is way more difficult. We have only one resource on the start, less location to find but the same 4 piece of **** stand in our way. So far I wasn't able to win it, because I get to the conclusion that, with the actual list (or a weaver list like I build) we need to win using only one deep knowledge, who is usually our best cards. And it haven't work on the few tests I made. A second the evening star will make things way more easy.

In another side I just realize that lore of Imladris is probably useless: the single scenario I remember that need us to heal is the rhosgobel one. And since we can rearrange the encounter deck the way we want we will found enough athelas every time :). Did I miss something?

I'm thinking about giving up seeing stone (and potentially concede the few time where an awful cards come up in the set up) to include elf friend and unlikely friendship (potentially in both decks).

22 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

- On Druadan Forest nightmare we have to get rid of an annoying location because he stop us from winning resource. That is why I have 1 Sarouman and 3 seeing-stone. But after some testing, since we start anyway with 5 resources in each hero we can go to the end of the deck before having to win any resource. After setting it aside we win all the resources we can (essentially justice shall be done, and another justice shall be done given by message from elrond). Then we have to attach a born aloft to sarouman and find the worst location (every card cost 1 reso  urce more) and do another sarouman effect on him. This let still 2 location that we need to get rid of before being able to do the combo, I found more efficient to use another time sarouman (we are on 49 threat at this point usually ^^) and get the last one wiped by our event (star something). It is complicated but it work anyway. Having hunter instead of pathfinder will help a lot obivously.

Saruman can only target one location at a time. If you play Born Aloft and play him again, the first location will no longer be affected by him. The Garden of Poisons and Ancestral Clearing make Druadan Forest a difficult quest for the Pathfinder strategy. Since they have 3 quest points they are rather expensive to get rid of. You will need several Evening Stars probably.

Evening Star #1 & #2 to clear Garden of Poisons #1

Evening Star #3 to clear Ancestral Clearing (which makes Evening Star cost 1 extra) once it shows up.

Evening Star #4 (passed via Message from Elrond) to clear Garden of Poisons #2 & #3.

That's 9 resources...

You are right about Saruman. Forget that "while Saruman is in play" line. Saruman will clean the first Garden of Poisons so we can gain resources. (total cost: 3 resources)

Having 4 evening star in the decks only for this scenario is not a viable option. We need to economize every slots we can. 2 evening star will be enough. We discard a first evening star on Daeron's rune, play the second on Ancestral Clearing when it show up (6 resources spend).

Then we can either play galadhrim weaver to put evening star on bottom of the deck, draw it and play it on garden of poisons (9 resources spend), attach a born aloft on galadhrim weaver and replay it for a last evening star (12 resources spend)

Or we can play a scroll of isildur (10 resources, could be 8 if helped by a message of Elrond) on evening star (12/10 resources), redraw evening star and play it (14/12 resources) if we don't play weaver.

So I'm thinking of the following change in the deck, for including a second evening star and for playtest unlikely friendship who help to draw and collect resources. I'm thinking about doing this:

Deck 1: +3 unlikely friendship + 2 elf friend -1 the seeing stone -1 legacy of numenor -1 heed the dream -1 campfire tales -1 gaining strenght

Deck 2: +3 unlikely friendship +1 the evening star +1 scroll of isildur -1 weaver -1 narvi's belt -1 shadow of the past -1 lore of imladris -1 noiseless movement

Any thought?

Looks good

I playtest it and I don't see any particular problem against druadan forest now. I now have to determine if I will have some trouble fro cutting lore of imladris (don't see any case where healing is relevant) and some legacy of numenor (will be harder to achieve the 80 threat treshold but I think it is still ok).