Last night I picked up my copy of Khazad-dûm, and I have to confess... when I sat down to build my first deck to tackle the mines, I could not help myself but try and make it as dwarfy as dwarvenly possible. richsabre, I don't think you had posted this thread yet, but I'll admit, I thought of you and your intense fondness for theme decks when I started building. So, I'm glad you began this thread so I can share my experience with you here. I tried the first two adventures, one game each, and after this very brief introduction, I can confidently say that I'm very excited to play these guys some more!

I decided to pick all cards that were either explicitly dwarven or at least "theme neutral."

For my heroes I went with Dáin Ironfoot, Bifur, and Gimli.

Allies by Sphere:

Leadership: Brok Ironfist (x1), Longbeard Orc Slayer (x2)

Lore: Erebor Record Keeper (x3), Miner of the Iron Hills (x3), Erebor Hammersmith (x3)

Tactics: Veteran Axehand (x3), Veteran of Nanduhirion (x3)

Support Cards by Sphere:

Leadership: Narvi's Belt (x3), Durin's Song (x3)

Lore: Ancestral Knowledge (x3)

Tactics: Citadel Plate (x3), Dwarven Axe (x3), Dwarrowdelf Axe (x3), Quick Strike (x3), Khazâd! Khazâd! (x3), Feint (x3)

Neutral: Boots from Erebor (x3), Song of Battle (x2)

I have to admit... i was skeptical. But I thought it would be fun to give things a go, armed to the teeth in dwarfs. It was!

The first adventure, Into the Pit, actually went quite well. I had the good fortune of being able to quest through East Gate fairly quickly, and I was off! It was a very fun match, with a lot of enjoyable decisions to make along the way. I drew and played a pretty steady stream of allies, and they all came in handy. Thanks to Dáin, even the 0 willpower folks would quest for 1 when he was left standing. This allowed me to move quickly and still have guys ready for battle. Veteran of Nanduhirion was a beast! To my shock and delight, I won the first game with a final score of 127! I was flying pretty high. And I moved on the adventure two...

Supposedly, the first adventure has a difficulty rating of 5 and the second has a difficulty rating of 3, but the second adventure crushed me and my deck in to little dwarven pieces. Granted, I was not drawing allies at the rate I needed to keep up with the constant stream of enemies coming my way, and I'm not sure I managed using the Book of Mazarbul as efficiently as possible. I still had fun though, and I'm going to take The Seventh Level for another spin... well, right now. I'll be using my all-dwarf deck again before I break down and start messing with the wonderful themeieness of it all. Good times in the deep!