A Stereotypical Post-errata Hama deck

By dalestephenson, in Strategy and deck-building

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/16887/astereotypicalpost-erratahamadeck-1.0

I actually prepared this several months ago, but couldn't find my creation notes. After a recent desk-cleaning I became convinced they were lost for good, so I just worked from memory in preparing the commentary for the deck and went ahead and published it.

As I suspected would be the case, 3x Thicket was one of the most popular events for post-errata Hama decks. But Book of Eldacar barely missed the cut, and other powerful Tactics events like Wait no Longer and Oath of Eorl didn't make the cut either -- the other two most popular events were Feint and Foe-Hammer. Instead of decks designed to maximize specific powerful events, my source decks were almost entirely Heirs of Numenor progression decks or designed for specific combat-heavy quests.

With most stereotypical decks, the creators tend to run the gamut from 1-reputation creators to 1000+ creators, but the distribution for Hama was a little different. Of the ten pages of Hama decks at ringsdb, here's how they breakdown by reputation

1000+ reputation -- 16 creators pre-errata, 5 creators after.

Breaking down post-errata creators specifically, I see that one of the five creators didn't make a post-errata Hama deck at all -- it's a proxy for Thorin Stonehelm in an informational deck about the Collector's Edition. The author (stokesbrook) had a pre-errata Hama deck but not a real post-errata deck. Rouxxor posted a Shadow & Flame support deck post-errata, pre-errata were three general purpose Hama decks. Mr. Underhill posted one deck pre-errata and one post errata. Wandalf the Gizzard published two post-errata decks, both specifically for Long Dark (no pre-errata decks). And Authraw had two thematic decks (none pre-errata).

The ratio of 16-4 is only 4 to 1, but the creator ratio is lower than the deck ratio -- on the first page (30 decks) only Authraw's two decks are post-errata. Discounting the proxy deck, the 1000+ rep creators posted 60 decks -- 54 between March 2016 and Nov 2017, 5 within six months of the errata, and *one* after April 2018. It's been a year since a 1000+ rep poster created a Hama deck.

100-999 reputation -- 30 creators pre-errata, 16 creators after (excluding the Stereotypical deck I just posted)

25-99 reputation -- 22 creators pre-errata, 10 creators after

1-24 reputation -- 28 creators pre-errata, 40 creators after

The disdain for Hama hasn't filtered down to the bottom of the reputation list. Now, some of this is just a temporal effect -- all the high-reputation posters have been posting since 2016, while everyone who is just starting to post at ringsdb is down at the bottom of the reputation list. You could look at *any* old hero and find dramatically more high-reputation decks posted in 2016 than 2019-2020. But this is a very different pattern than I noticed with Caldara or Boromir. When I did the post-errata Caldara deck, I was surprised at how the post-errata Caldara (for her agressively discarding lineup) was dominated by higher reputation posters.

Of course, there's also no telling how many of the post-errata decks either are unaware of the errata or intentionally ignoring it. In constructing my deck I had to exclude one of my post-errata sample, because the deck comments said the creator was ignoring the errata.

Inspired by your deck I created a Post-Errata Hama deck. This one is based around the idea that if you have a strong and large toolbox of Tactics events you can use Hama's ability to get back those that are more useful each different game. It's of course not a solo deck, but meant to played in a Fellowship. I partnered Hama with MotK Legolas to compensate the much needed card draw for Hama

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/16890/hamapost-errata-1.0