Hey all,

I was thinking today about how some contracts force some common cards to be seen across various decks. I wanted to compile a list of the most common cards ("locks") for a deck running a particular contract. Some are a little more difficult than others, so I wanted the community's input.

1. Fellowship

Lock: A Very Good Tale

Honorable Mention: Elrond

Right out the gate, I am struggling a bit on this one. A good chunk of Fellowship decks use A Very Good Tale as a way to accelerate the allies into play, and for good reason -- there are a good chunk of expensive unique allies, such that if you can get a couple in early, this singular card could shorten your time on side A by a full turn or two. However, this requires running a deck with at least one leadership hero, so it does limit the style (A Caldara deck probably wouldn't run this card). Due to the variety of strategies involved in getting allies into play, this one is somewhat difficult to figure out. However, Elrond does lend itself to paying for allies outside of sphere PLUS his ring can accelerate the process even further.

2. Burglar's Turn

Lock: Haldan

Honorable Mention: Citadel Plate

Alright, maybe some controversy with this one, but Haldan seems to be, at the very least, wasting space in your storage if you are running a Burglar's Turn deck without him. He sits for the entire game (minus the first turn) committed to the quest without exhausting, has in-sphere location control, and a built in card draw. Even if you are not running him in the deck that's running the contract, it seems silly to leave him out of any multiplayer fellowship. His stat line is excellent, and with the toys you get out of the loot deck, you can make him a very powerful force. Now, I struggled a bit with the Honorable mention. There are plenty of guarded cards that ought to be included, and perhaps I could have left it with "all guarded cards" as that will most likely be the case to get to 14 item/artifact attachments. However, the other benefit (besides ignoring guarded keyword, no small issue) of the loot deck is the fact that it doesn't have to be in-sphere nor do you have to pay the cost. Since the Citadel Plate is a great benefit offset by the cost of the card, I think this ought to be in any loot deck. In low combat scenarios, perhaps the guarded weapons are traded out for willpower items, and vice versa for high combat scenarios. Maybe I am wrong on this, but since Citadel Plate is not restricted to any trait specific hero, even someone like Galadriel can sit as a soaker with just this card.

3. Forth! The Three Hunters

Lock: The One Ring

Honorable Mention: Dagger of Westerneese

No question here. Unless you are running 3 extremely high threat heroes, most of us are willing to trade the elimination drop to gain the restricted attachment out the gate, with your choice of some excellent neutral events or some case-specific attachments in your starting hand. Since you need 6 restricted attachments to flip to the willpower/healing boost (unless you are, for some reason, running less than 3 heroes), getting 16% of your work done out the gate helps tremendously. As for the Dagger, so many restricted attachments require some trait or sphere. This card comes in free on side A and is marginally better than round shield. An argument could be made of a hunters deck that is not running tactics would not be running this card, in which case I request to see how a non-tactics deck runs enough restricted attachments and still stays combat viable. In a fellowship, sure, I've seen it (I myself have run a Glorfindel-Slegolas-Limli build) but boy it takes a while to get that engine up and running, doesn't it?

4. The Grey Wanderer

Lock: Strider

Honorable Mention: Timely Aid

The combo that started the thought process to begin with. This card becomes such a lock with this contract, I feel like ringsdb has become a mad dash to see who can build a viable deck that doesn't fetch this card in setup (to little avail, in my opinion -- we all have to quest). This contract could have opened up all kinds of neat combos if they allowed one sneak through of a guarded card, but alas, the powers that be force us into this option nearly every time. With that in mind, and such starved for characters to help balance the load, Timely Aid becomes the card you mulligan for to try and get in some powerful beasts while in secrecy. Need I say more?

5. Council of the Wise

Lock: Daeron's Runes

Honorable Mention: Heed the Dream

So this is a difficult one. You would like to have plenty of events to run in your deck, but a singular card may not show up the entire game. With that in mind, I think it's safe to say if you are running a lore hero (access to card draw will be key to any semblance of consistency) then Daeron's Runes is your go-to auto include. Coming up with 50 individual cards with a little synergy is difficult enough, so deck thinning is practically required. Daeron's Runes does more than thin your deck -- it gives you cards, choices, and a trigger for the contract. Best of all, it's free, so you don't even need to do the "burn a resource to gain a resource" trick with the contract. This is slightly different than Heed the Dream, another great card in it's own right. I give deference to DR because of it's auto-play, versus Heed the Dream might need to be held back until some person at the table has 3 leadership resources to trigger the second ability.

6. Messenger of the King

Lock: ???

Honorable Mention: ???

Okay, here, I have nothing. MotK has so many different permutations, and leads itself to so many different styles, I couldn't possibly pick a lock. That's why I have a feeling this will grow to become the community's favorite contract because even after years of exploration, it might still surprise you (if I may paraphrase the grey wizard). I ran Bofur, Ioreth, and Bilbo with this contract and let me say, those were radically different decks with radically different needs. If I am missing something here, let me know.

7. Bond of Friendship

Lock: A Good Harvest

Honorable Mention : Favor of the Valar

With a quad-sphere, perfectly balanced deck among the spheres, this is no contest. Every deck ought to run this sphere-balancing card. Plus, deck-builders are going to run into trouble finding the right neutral cards to fit the need of the deck, so that is why Favor of the Valar comes in so close. Threat will be high; that's a given. Between these two cards, you have 4 neutral cards cleaned up, and probably will be running at least one Gandalf as well. The tie-breaker between these cards comes from the fact that, perhaps, a deck is running with Hobbits, a couple copies of The Shirefolk will be more effective than FotV. But certainly not for AGH which will still be needed in that deck.

Tell me your thoughts! Did I miss any good cards for the contracts? Am I way off on others? What is the best card for the MotK!

I think the MotK target to dethrone is Firyal, especially in solo (but she ain't no slouch even in 4-player). Her ability is bonkers to have on the table from the get-go, and even if she were blank, 9 threat cost is the most efficient 3-willpower hero you can get in Lore.

Fellowship: Treebeard, runner up: Caldera/Tactics Boromir. I really think if you are only bringing unique allies then the best unique ally is pretty much a staple in all decks, plus he is neutral so anyone can pay for him. In my testing Caldera has consistently been the best at getting this contract flipped quickest, and old tactics Boromir has benefited the most from boosts across the board.

Burglar’s Turn: Stone of Elostirion, runner up: Strider’s Path. I think there are two ways to answer this question, cards that always end up in the burglar deck or ones that help you play this card. In the former all the guarded cards are in their element, with the Stone being easily the strongest card just edging out the Necklace. In the latter there are several good options, Haldan is a natural fit for sure, but he relies on locations being around in the first place so better in multiplayer. Eleanor actually increases your odds of drawing a location since she removes 1/3 of the encounter cards that you don’t want and if they have surge, also increases the odds of drawing extra locations. So she would be the better hero for me in solo or less players. But I think there are stronger cards to help this deck work and none to me are stronger than Strider’s Path, allowing you to potentially get a treasure on your first turn!

Three Hunters: Golden Belt, runner up Raiment of War. The One Ring is a great choice because of how it helps get you started but maybe I’m just biased against it because I just played through the LOTR campaign with a three hunters Gandalf/blue Legolas and Red Boromir where you can’t bring that due to uniqueness conflicts and rules. So I would say the best card for any deck where you only bring attachments is a card that lets you have one more, and for the low cost of 0 this card should literally be in all three hunters decks. Runner up is the 2 for 1 Raiment of War. Even if you only have one Warrior this card should always be in your three hunters deck and helps with all things.

Grey Wanderer: Strider, runner up: Resourceful. Strider is hands down the card you should star with unless you are playing Radagast in which case wizard pipe you can make a case for, and maybe an outside case for O’Lorien/To the Sea/Lord of Morthond on a matching hero. But it really is the card to beat, turning your single hero into one capable of doing all three actions (quest, defend, attack). Runner up for me is where I differ, I love timely aid but it can whiff, Resourceful is always good in the early game and I would trade three of those over three timely aids any day, plus again it’s neutral.

Council of the Wise: Rumour from the Earth, runner up: Swift and Silent. How does one keep playing events? How about playing ones that recur? With Rumour you can literally turn that one lore resource into any of the contracts three effects every round (and get some scrying in too!). There are three great secrecy-style cards that also come back into your hand the first time you play them each round if your threat is below 20 and Swift and Silent is the best and most useful of the bunch. Also pair with leaf brooch for maximum sneakiness.

Messenger of the King: Firyal/Legolas runner up Bilbo/Ioreth. Agreed that this one is harder to pick because it depends what you are going for, is it simple cheap cost heroes because Ioreth will let even Beorn into secrecy, and spirit Bilbo has become the new best Bilbo for simply questing at 2, costing a mere 4 and always bringing his dear friend Gandalf a pipe. The other end of the spectrum is making allies into starting heroes and so many different combos here. I’m a bit biased but I think Legolas has a super useful ability that tactics direly needs and getting it from the start is awesome. Similarly Firyal is the strongest hero in the game hands down if you are playing true solo. But there is pretty much no wrong answer here.

Bond of Friendship, Thurindir, runner up: The Storm Comes/Gather Information. Different ways to go with this awesome contract as well but to me the neutral side quests are the most helpful cards to get what you need from your deck using Gather Information (maybe that cost reducing attachment To the Sea or O’Lorien to help with paying for allies), and The Storm Comes is the ultimate in resource smoothing as you can play whatever you want each round. I think this card specifically is necessary in this contract. But what better way to fetch either of these cards if you bring Thurindir who can slip in as a solid quester and get you smoothing resources or that one key card for the rest game especially when your deck spheres are so mixed up.

@player3351457 @General_Grievous

I may be the odd duck out, but I do not run either Strider or Resourceful with my Gray Wanderer decks, as they just don't seem useful enough. I would say that Timely Aid is certainly the lock, as with only one body the whole gimmick of Gray Wanderer seems to be about exploiting Timely Aid and using an army of allies to solve all of the quest's challenges (which means Gray Wanderers really struggle in quests that prohibit allies from doing stuff, though Swordthain can give a little breathing room here).


I've found that the most reliable way to Gray Wanderer is to start with access to Lore + Leadership. Lore for the card draw (e.g. Daerun's Runes, Deep Knowledge, Drinking Song) and Leadership for the ally acceleration (e.g. Timely Aid, A Very Good Tale, Steward of Gondor). It also gives you access to some of the best Secrecy Allies, as an added perk. So, if I'm gray-wanderin' with a Lore Character I start with Song of Kings as my free attachment (and vice versa if you start with a Leadership Gray Wanderer, so they can start with Lore from Song of (Lore)). Couple this with the deck-thinning of starting with the One Ring + Master card, and you can build a very, very reliable deck.

For instance, my go-to Gray Wanderer is Galdor + Song of Kings, as he has a very good chance of playing Steward + 2-3 Timely Aids and 2-3 A Very Good Tales in the first round. On average, the deck tends to start with 25-35 resources worth of allies in play during the first round, but I've started with over 50 resources worth of allies/attachments on the best of starts. Then, with Steward + Contract you can easily play a new 4-5 Cost ally every single round, and with recursion from the discard (e.g. Will of the West) you can retrieve cards played or lost to the A Very Good Tale, and at that point paying 4 to play Timely Aid even if you're out of secrecy is still a great deal when you're grabbing a 4-5 cost ally most of the time. You can do a very similar thing with Elrond + Song of Kings, as he has better stats than Galdor and access to Vilya, but I've actually found Galdor to be a bit more reliable (since the whole point is to Timley Aid as much as possible, and no one thins and draws a deck like Galdor).

41 minutes ago, EBerling said:

@player3351457 @General_Grievous

I may be the odd duck out, but I do not run either Strider or Resourceful with my Gray Wanderer decks, as they just don't seem useful enough. I would say that Timely Aid is certainly the lock, as with only one body the whole gimmick of Gray Wanderer seems to be about exploiting Timely Aid and using an army of allies to solve all of the quest's challenges (which means Gray Wanderers really struggle in quests that prohibit allies from doing stuff, though Swordthain can give a little breathing room here).


I've found that the most reliable way to Gray Wanderer is to start with access to Lore + Leadership. Lore for the card draw (e.g. Daerun's Runes, Deep Knowledge, Drinking Song) and Leadership for the ally acceleration (e.g. Timely Aid, A Very Good Tale, Steward of Gondor). It also gives you access to some of the best Secrecy Allies, as an added perk. So, if I'm gray-wanderin' with a Lore Character I start with Song of Kings as my free attachment (and vice versa if you start with a Leadership Gray Wanderer, so they can start with Lore from Song of (Lore)). Couple this with the deck-thinning of starting with the One Ring + Master card, and you can build a very, very reliable deck.

For instance, my go-to Gray Wanderer is Galdor + Song of Kings, as he has a very good chance of playing Steward + 2-3 Timely Aids and 2-3 A Very Good Tales in the first round. On average, the deck tends to start with 25-35 resources worth of allies in play during the first round, but I've started with over 50 resources worth of allies/attachments on the best of starts. Then, with Steward + Contract you can easily play a new 4-5 Cost ally every single round, and with recursion from the discard (e.g. Will of the West) you can retrieve cards played or lost to the A Very Good Tale, and at that point paying 4 to play Timely Aid even if you're out of secrecy is still a great deal when you're grabbing a 4-5 cost ally most of the time. You can do a very similar thing with Elrond + Song of Kings, as he has better stats than Galdor and access to Vilya, but I've actually found Galdor to be a bit more reliable (since the whole point is to Timley Aid as much as possible, and no one thins and draws a deck like Galdor).

Interesting thoughts on grey wanderer. Have to admit surprise thought. Strider is just too necessary in the deck to not include. Your threat starts low but without early willpower boosts your threat is gonna rocket up too fast. Strider is the perfect fit and just out performs any other starting attachment.

Also I would much rather include Resourceful over Steward. Its a great fit in a secrecy deck and Steward is so overplayed I tend to want to not include it wherever possible. Thats just my playstyle though. Steward in every deck just bores me.

Definitely agree with Timely aid. Thats a staple in every Wanderer deck.

2 hours ago, MikeGracey said:

Have to admit surprise thought. Strider is just too necessary in the deck to not include. Your threat starts low but without early willpower boosts your threat is gonna rocket up too fast. Strider is the perfect fit and just out performs any other starting attachment.

Well, I don't think the +2 Willpower (or lack of exhausting) from Strider is all that valuable to a Gray Wanderer that is focused on Ally-Spam. You don't really need +2 early WP when you can spam allies into play on Turn 1 to quest for 10+ willpower on the first round. On Round 2 and after you don't even need to worry as much about exhausting allies for A Very Good Tale (which you are managing during Round 1), you're looking at having 15 or more Willpower in play just from allies, with +2-3 WP of additional allies hitting the board every round from then onward.

I have taken my Galdor Gray Wanderer (starts with Song of Battle) deck solo (1-Handed) through the Core Set (sans Escape), Mirkwood, Khazad-Dum, Dwarrowdelf, and Heirs of Numenor and I've yet to have an issue with insufficient Willpower to manage staged threat. The quests that I did lose once or more before finally beating them were generally quests where having only a single hero resulted in an auto-loss type of situation (e.g. stacking Bitter Colds where you only have one Hero in play to take them or Lost in the Dark which is just a cancel-or-lose card for a single hero deck). I don't think there was ever a situation where Staged Threat was met was insufficient Willpower and resulted in Threat-Outs, except for an uncannily bad start here or there, but even Strider will still have those.

Maybe modern quests will pose more of a challenge?

6 hours ago, EBerling said:

...no one thins and draws a deck like Galdor.

This is confusing to me. Do you mean Erestor?

1 hour ago, Kjeld said:

This is confusing to me. Do you mean Erestor?

Galdor of the Havens:

With him, for instance I pitch every single card in my starting hand that isn't Timely Aid or some form of card draw. This means Galdor potentially discards 6 Cards and takes 6 new ones, meaning your starting deck is really only 44 cards. Then, factor in that you pull out The One Ring, a Master card, and an attachment via Gray Wanderer during Set-Up and really you're looking at potentially running a deck that is only effectively 4`1 Cards, making it very reliable and consistent. Then, as soon as Galdor can, he empties his hand (things like Glorfindel ally and Protector of Lorien help greatly here) to use his Action ability and draws 6 more cards (after he's done that, he's a great contender for Helm of Secrecy ).

So, by deck-thinning, he effectively runs a deck that is 6 cards leaner. His action to replace a spent hand with 6 cards is some of the best card-draw in the game.

This is what lets a Gray Wanderer --> Song of Kings Galdor so reliably play 2-3 Timely Aids and 2-3 A Very Good Tales on his very first turn, though I've done the same thing with other Gray Wanderers like Elrond and Leadership-Denethor, though they aren't quite as reliable in the early explosiveness as Galdor. In all of the above cases, it was Song of Lore/Leadership as the Contract attachment that enables the most mileage out of Timely Aid / A Very Good Tale shennanigans, which seem to be the real power of Gray Wanderer builds (not Resourceful or Strider, which I initially tried but dropped from all of my Gray Wanderer builds). At least in my own experiences.

Dude that is awesome that you made Galdor work! I have been meaning to give him an honest try. Do you have the decklist for inspiration? I have mostly been playing grey wanderer with Haldir in which case the starting questing willpower of 4 plus being ready to snipe and kill enemies in the staging area means you don’t really need to worry about combat at all. So allies just help with questing.

17 minutes ago, General_Grievous said:

Dude that is awesome that you made Galdor work! I have been meaning to give him an honest try. Do you have the decklist for inspiration? I have mostly been playing grey wanderer with Haldir in which case the starting questing willpower of 4 plus being ready to snipe and kill enemies in the staging area means you don’t really need to worry about combat at all. So allies just help with questing.

Galdor of the Havens
Contract: Gray Wanderer (Song of Kings)

Super cool thanks for sharing! I’ll have to give it a go sometime!

6 minutes ago, General_Grievous said:

Super cool thanks for sharing! I’ll have to give it a go sometime!

It's best in 1-Handed Solo. Only because it sort of breaks the game AND because it's zero fun for other players to have to endure. Like, it's first Planning Phase usually takes like 10-15 minutes and may involve taking 15-20 actions and can involve shuffling your deck upwards of 8 times (shuffles required for every Seeing-Stone, Timely Aid, A Very Good Tale, Drinking Song, etc.). It's sort of a thing of a beauty, but it's a repetitive 1-Trick pony that has a lot of mechanical busyness, which is part of the reason why I set the deck down after Heirs of Numenor back in Feb. But I do think it may have the chops to approximate a "ONE DECK' sort of approach to Gray Wandering, so at some point I may tweak it a little bit in light of some of the newer APs and lessons learned and try to take it solo through the whole game.

Great idea and let us know how it goes. The only thing unfortunate about Grey Wanderer is the auto-loss against Dol Goldor and some of the really heavy on hero hate quests. But aside from those it looks like it would rock most of the game

Truly excellent deck, @EBerling . Your Galdor deck and Some Sort's Galadriel decks are two of the finest Grey Wanderer decks I've seen, and neither fetches Strider as your attachment.

I have to say, though, you will find less creative individuals than you or some sort running perfectly viable grey wanderer decks choosing Strider.

1 hour ago, player3351457 said:

Truly excellent deck, @EBerling . Your Galdor deck and Some Sort's Galadriel decks are two of the finest Grey Wanderer decks I've seen, and neither fetches Strider as your attachment.

I have to say, though, you will find less creative individuals than you or some sort running perfectly viable grey wanderer decks choosing Strider.

Thats because its just the best attachment for Grey Wanderer.

EBerlings deck makes good use of Galdor and is creative, but also corner case. He mentioned questing for 10+ on round one, which is highly unlikely, even with a consistent deck.

Strider I mean, of course.

Seeing all this talk about the starting attachment for The Grey Wanderer I tried to think up a deck where you can have multiple possible choices depending on your starting hand (if going for the Setup of player card at Step 7 of course). Here it is.

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/17122/whatshouldiweartoday-1.0

3 hours ago, Alonewolf87 said:

Seeing all this talk about the starting attachment for The Grey Wanderer I tried to think up a deck where you can have multiple possible choices depending on your starting hand (if going for the Setup of player card at Step 7 of course).

I have a similar, but untested, idea for Messenger of the King.