Greetings all,

I work an overnight job with a fair amount of downtime. I was sitting at work during said downtime letting my mind wander as I often do, and that night I was thinking about our beloved LOTR LCG, especially how my collection grew in the last two weeks thanks to recent restocking. Then it it hit me. Inspiration. I had a buddy who wanted to try the game and he had asked me if it was possible to build a deck around Prince Imrahil, his favorite character in the book.

The deck was right there in front of me. It came together beautifully. Prince Imrahil, Leadership Aragorn and Tactics Boromir leading the way. Low cost allies fuel the Prince's machine while Aragorn walks his path and becomes who he was meant to be. Boromir helps the deck get setup and provides his strength as needed.

How do I complement this deck? I thought about that for a moment, then realized I could finally try something: Gondor's Rangers. I grabbed Lore Faramir and put him with Damrod, trap specialist. It was time to play with traps. Even though he's not a ranger, they enlisted the help of Spirit Beregond.

The decks worked great. This is the first time I've thought up some decks and they have worked exactly how I wanted them to, so I feel pretty good about them. I taught my friend the game and we breezed through Passage Through Mirkwood, as expected. We loaded up Journey Down the Anduin. It was a tough challenge but we endured and came out successful with many great plays. So I like the decks but at the same time I'd like to welcome suggestions for tweaking them. I don't know which cards to take down from 3x to 2x or what cards to put in with that space if it is even needed. So here are the decks, followed with a few notes.

Heroes :

(Leadership) Aragorn, Prince Imrahil, (Tactics) Boromir

Events :

Dawn Take You All x3 (Return to Mirkwood)

Gondorian Discipline x3 (Encounter at Amon Din)

Sneak Attack x2 (Core Set)

Valiant Sacrifice (Core Set)

Allies :

Defender of Rammas x3 (Heirs of Numenor)

Envoy of Pelargir x3 (Heirs of Numenor)

Errand-Rider x3 (Heirs of Numenor)

Gondorian Spearman x3 (Core Set)

Guard of the Citadel x3 (Core Set)

Squire of the Citadel x3 (Blood of Gondor)

Gandalf x3 (Core Set)

Attachments :

Celebrian's Stone (Core Set)

Captain of Gondor x2 (The Antlered Crown)

Dunedain Mark x3 (Hunt for Gollum)

Dunedain Quest x3 (Journey to Rhosgobel)

Horn of Gondor (Core Set)

Roheryn x3 (Flame of the West)

Steward of Gondor x2 (Core Set)

Tome of Atanatar x3 (Blood of Gondor)

Sword that was Broken x2 (Watcher in the Water)

Heroes :

(Lore) Faramir, Damrod, (Spirit) Beregond

Events :

A Test of Will x2 (Core)

Forest Patrol x3 (Assault on Osgiliath)

Secret Paths x2 (Core)

Stand and Fight x2 (Core)

Allies :
Anborn (Blood of Gondor) x3

Ithilien Archer x3 (Encounter at Amon Din)

Ithilien Lookout x3 (The Dunland Trap)

Ithilien Tracker x3 (Heirs of Numenor)

Mablung x3 (The Land of Shadow)

Minas Tirith Lampwright x3 (Encounter at Amon Din)

Northern Tracker x2 (Core)

Warden of Healing x2 (The Long Dark)

Gandalf x3 (Core)

Attachments :

Forest Snare x2 (Core)

Ithilien Pit x3 (Encounter at Amon Din)

Poisoned Stakes x3 (Blood of Gondor)

Ranger Spikes x3 (Heirs of Numenor)

Ambush x3 (The Land of Shadow)

Blood of Numenor x3 (Heirs of Numenor)

Wingfoot x3 (The Nin-in-Eilph)

Unexpected Courage (Core)

Notes:

- My collection is 2 cores, all saga sets and the first four cycles complete, plus The Dread Realm from Angmar cycle. While I am open to cards of other cycles it is going to be awhile before I go for another cycle. Cards from the sets I have will be the easiest to implement.

- While not 100% locked in, I am fairly set on the heroes as they are now. Even if Leadership Faramir or even Ally Faramir are better, I wanted to explore using Lore Faramir for exactly that reason. Same with spirit Beregond. If I played the quests where Faramir is an objective ally I'd swap in Beravor.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I was going to make a list of locked in cards but I figured that wouldn't help much, even if Northern Tracker was an absolute workhorse and cleared 7 threat from the staging area in one turn. I mean you can see the theme of each deck and what it wants to do.

I really like how friendly and welcoming the LOTR community is here on the website. Thank you very much for your time and feedback. I look forward to the discussion.

Edited August 30, 2019 by TheSpitfired
cleaned up a bit

Some observations from me:

For the first deck: Dawn Take You All has some severe restrictions as it only works on engaged enemies and you discard the cards facedown. You will be better off with Hasty Stroke in the other deck. Why do you include Sneak Attack only 2 times? It is one of the best Leadership events paired with Gandalf.
If you plan on many characters leaving play, you can just as well increase your copies of Valiant Sacrifice. But with Beregond and all the traps you probably will not often resort to chump blocking. Dúnedain Quest is rather expensive for willpower, better slot in Visionary Leadership and some Gondorian Shields. Do you plan to attach the Dúnedain Marks on Aragorn? If not Roheryn will not do much for you. And some copies of Feint can help you out in combat as well. Steward of Gondor is just so good, you can increase its copies to 3 and as you hardly have Leadership events and not even a mono sphere deck, I would cut Tome of Atanatar.

For the second deck: Test of Will is such a powerful card, you should include it 3 times into your deck, just to be save. With Sword that was broken and potentially Visionary Leadership, you will probably not need Secret Path, as it is only a temporary solution. As already noted above, the second deck should take three copies of Hasty Stroke.
I would rather use Stand and Fight to get allies into play without a sphere match, I do not think it is needed in your deck, as you habe plenty of allies to play, without fetching them from the discard pile. The Ithilien Lookouts should be played in a Secrecy deck, but as your threat is way above it without means of reducing it besides Gandalf, I would cut them. Beregond can at best keep you at your starting level. The Lampwright is a terrible ally, as you will hardly get use out of it without deeper scrying into the encounter deck.
Depending on whether you need more healing, increase the number of Wardens of Healing to 3. Ithilien Pits will probably not help you much because of your high Threat, as enemies are going to engage you anyway.
I am surprised you have included Blood of Númenor but not Gondorian Fire. Wingfoot will only give you 2 willpower out of Damrod or Faramir, or maybe Aragorn but he has his own readying ability. And without scrying this effect is rather unreliable. Better put in a second copy of Unexpected Courage. And when you trim your deck size down to 50 cards, it will perform more efficient.

Both decks can profit from extra card draw (Campfire Tales and Daeron's Runes) and threat reduction (The Galadhrim's Greeting and Secret Vigil), even though you can offset the threat increase at the end of the round with Beregond. And the faster you draw into those cards you need, the better your decks will perform.

Thanks! I like quite a few of those suggestions and will be looking into them, I am very thankful for some of the suggested cuts in particular.

I only recently got a second core so in a lot of my mindset I have used the cards from each core to help make more decks - I have four that I could feasibly run at the moment. For example my other copy of Unexpected Courage is in my Elven deck. Now thinking that deck in particular would benefit more from two copies of it, it’s not really needed here.

Thanks again, will post an update on the Gondor revision (when I find time to get to it)

First revisions are in!

I created a profile on cardgamedb.com and after reviewing what you suggested and my own preferences I made some changes on paper. I'm in the middle of my work week so unable to physically make the changes until Thursday or Friday. Sorry I'm still learning the website and am uncertain on how to share direct links to the decks at this time. Hopefully this "change log" will suffice.

Gondor Leadership/Tactic deck:

Really not a lot of changes here. I removed one copy of Dunedain Quest for one copy of Visionary Leadership. I also took out two copies of Tome of Atanatar and added two copies of Feint. Again essentially keeping it to use of one core set there wasn't too much I wanted to do with this deck. Watching it action it was a beast. The chump blocking works to keep Imrahil ready for combat, and Beregond's sentinel blocking is to help make sure we don't get swarmed. I like the additions a lot although we didn't quite get the card draw in, so after a play with this I might find a way to sneak it in. Tome of Atanatar was very useful in both games that we played so that's why I didn't completely get rid of it. Maybe down the road I would scrap the last copy for another Valiant Sacrifice. We will see.

Gondor Rangers (And Beregond):

This deck saw many more changes. Both copies of Stand and Fight are removed (not needed), as were the secrecy Ithilien Lookouts. Unexpected Courage is going out to go in my Elf deck and I removed all three copies of Blood of Numenor.

What went in? A third copy of Warden of Healing, two copies of Hasty Stroke and three copies of Daeron's Runes. The numbers might sound off but believe it or not both decks are now at 50 cards each.

Warden of Healing was (unthematically) in my Elf deck so I'll have to fix that for the Elves but I'm not too worried about that. Hasty Stroke should have gone in sooner and that has been rectified. Even if a cheeky part of me wants to complain that it's a dwarven themed card, Daeron's Runes gives us some card draw which will help. I understand what you are saying about Minas Tirith Lampwright and Wingfoot, but the former was a huge help in preventing a terrible surged treachery in Journey Down the Anduin. I think by looking at the board state you can reasonably guess what would hurt you the most and if it pops up you've done a free cancellation. Same base concept with Wingfoot. Commit Faramir to the quest, trigger Wingfoot's response and call enemy. If one does reveal, now Faramir is un-exhausted and able to participate in combat. There aren't too many other situations where he needs to be ready so I think that is ok to stay. It actually has yet to get drawn and I'm bummed that I haven't gotten to use it yet.

With Prince Imrahil's chump blockers keeping him utilized it is possible that Beregond isn't needed and works as a counter-synergy to the decks and their theme. At the same time during Journey Down the Anduin Beregond bravely tanked attacks from two different Hill Trolls while buying time for Forest Snares. I suppose he could be swapped out for Idraen but I would be extremely reluctant to do that; Once you get used to having a 4-defense sentinel blocker that can keep threat from increasing it's hard to swap him out so I think he stays. Thematically part of the reason Ithilien Rangers (like Faramir and Damrod) can be so bold is because they know there is staunch defense at home. So it all ties in together, right?

Thanks again for the suggestions. I'm excited to see how this revision plays out.

Edited September 3, 2019 by TheSpitfired