New Stereotypical Decks -- Hobbit Ally, Thranduil, Caldara

By dalestephenson, in Strategy and deck-building

Just posted four decks that I had ready. There's a Silvan deck featuring Thranduil:

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/15623/astereotypicalthranduildeck-1.0

There's a Tom Cotton deck, for the Hobbit ally archtype:

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/15624/astereotypicalhobbitallydeck-1.0

And there's two versions of the Stereotypical Caldara deck

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/15625/astereotypicalpre-erratacaldaradeck-1.0

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/15626/astereotypicalpost-erratacaldaradeck-1.0

Caldara was interesting -- with most stereotypical decks, there's a thematic hook that tends to drive the most popular hero selection. With no thematic hook at all for Caldara, the most popular lineup involved the two spirit heroes who can get allies in the discard for the very first planning phase. But there was an interesting split in reputation of the creators -- I'm used to a wide spread using the same heroes, from the 1-reputation folks posting decks with no commentary to the meticulously explained and optimized decks by the highest-rep ringsdb posters. But in this case the post-errata decks skewed to high rep -- of the ten decks created by 300+ reputation creators, 8 were post-errata, while below that count just 5 of 28 were post-errata (technically six were post-errata, but one of them said in notes that errata was ignored). Of the thirteen decks I used for the post-errata analysis, just one creator had used this lineup prior to the errata.

I think the stark reputation divide in composition reflects the change in Caldara's role post-errata. Cirdan/Arwen is the most aggressive combination, it will give you two allies in the discard on the very first turn without any other effects and should set up the earliest possible Caldara use. Aggro Caldara was not the most popular approach for optimized Caldara decks pre-errata, but now it seems to be.

Some interesting comparisons in the number of decks using particular cards.

Emery: 25/25 with pre-errata, 5/13 post-errata -- it still made the post-errata stereotypical deck since the allies were so scattered, but it wasn't remotely the staple it was in pre-errata.

Glorfindel: popular in both (11/13 post-errata, one omission accidental per comments; 23/24 pre-errata [one Grey Havens deck]), but it's typically 3x post-errata and 1x pre-errata

Neutral allies: In pre-errata decks, just 2/25 decks had Gandalf and 2/25 had Treebeard. Post errata 9/13 decks used one of the Gandalf allies, and 7/13 used Treebeard.

Derufin: this one's a little quirky, 2 of the post-errata decks used the Fellowship contract, and both of those decided to add Derufin to the roster of unique spirit heroes.

Light of Valinor: 16/25 pre-errata, but 13/13 post-errata

Map of Earnil: 18/25 pre-errata, but just 6/13 post-errata

Narya: 14/25 pre-errata, but 11/13 post-errata -- also it was typically 3x instead of 2x

Sword-Thain: 23/25 pre-errata, but just 1/13 post-errata. The errata killed Sword-Thain dead, at least for this hero lineup.

Fortune and Fate: 25/25 pre-errata, just 1/13 post-errata (and a single copy at that).

A Very Good Tale: 0/25 pre-errata, 6/13 post-errata

One card I liked a lot in my own (pre-errata) Caldara deck was Silver Harp, but that only made the cut in 4/25 pre-errata decks and 0/13 post-errata.

Paging through the Caldara decks, the one I liked the most was actually a LeGimli/SpLegolas/Caldara lineup:

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/3904/hero-shuffle-1.0

The flexibility of burning Caldara for a single ally with an early Strider intrigues me.