Ever since I saw The Hammer-stroke spoiled in a preview article, I have been wanting to make a deck to exploit Boromir's self-discard action and this card. The essentials in such a deck, as I see it, are Fortune and Fate to fish Boromir out of the discard pile, and some event recurrence in the form of Map of Earnil and Dwarven Tomb, and possibly Book of Eldacar to repeat the combo. The resource cost here is enormous though, so probably the Book of Eldacar won't make it in. Since Fortune or Fate is so expensive, I have been trying to design this with Frodo and Good Meal to bring down the cost -- Tactics and Spirit as a sphere combination is typically strapped for cash, and options are limited for resource generation.

I imagine this making an excellent combo with Rain of Arrows as well, a card that I also like but never seem to use in my decks. That means adding some Ranged characters. I think this deck needs a Spirit hero since blue resources are going to be in demand, so that means Ranged allies or attachments that provide the Ranged keyword.

I've tried a couple of different things but can't make it perform as well as I'd like. I will avoid going into detail so I can leave it open to others' deckbuilding creativity... would love to see if someone could come up with a workable deck around this combo!

Oh, and this would definitely be for a 2-player game with another as-yet-undefined deck.

Thanks for any input.

it could also combo well with farmer maggot being sneak attacked...obviously that would mean having leadership in there. but if the enemies were higher threat then thats an extra 2 damage per enemy.

rich

I tried as well and failed. The cost is too high.

It's better to go for hama perma thicket of spear and rain of arrows. Still not cheap, but more effective and easier to setup.

Don't let your dream die however, here's some basic tip :

- Use rain of arrow with vassal of the winlord. Trollshaw scout is fine too. You can go further by playing eagles of the misty mountain.

- Thalin allow you to deal 1 more damage if 2 isn't sufficient (for most of the ennemies). You can go further by playing gondorian spearmen with spear of the citadel.

- Horn of gondor. Not on Boromir obsiously

- Out of sight / Thicket of spear can allow you to gather more enemies before suicide.

To play thicket of spear, I had Oin, no song, so I added a lot of dwarves. That was my deck. Only the name was cool : Bozombir.

Did not work, but did not play frodo and good meal (or the books).

For a 2-player game, limiting one of the decks to Boromir's second action is a little difficult.

I remember that had a 4-player decks built we called the Borocop decks, that used the first ability as long as we wanted, and the Hammer-stroke could fit well in there, but can't seem to find where is the list.

I remember we beat TMaO with that combo...

you can see the heroes in http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?showtopic=60865

Thanks for the ideas and support! I'll let you know if and when I come up with something of my own.

Time for a status update....

This will have spoilers for Blood of Gondor.

After some experimentation, I decided the best thing to do might be divide the burden of this idea, and put Fortune or Fate in the companion deck instead of in the one with Boromir. So we had two decks: a mono-spirit with Frodo, Dunhere, and Eowyn (24 threat), and a tactics/leadership with Boromir, Hirluin, and Sam (threat 27). Dunhere made it into the mono-spirit as it had some choice Rohan cards, and if the other deck can get a Dagger of Westernesse on him in the early game, he can do some sniping.

We took these decks into a blind play of Blood of Gondor and, well... got slaughtered. If you have played the scenario that should come as no surprise. Mono-spirit has nothing to offer here On our best attempt, we got to quest card 2 after a big push with Light the Beacons. Boromir then drew about 8 enemies over to his side of the table, defended 4 attacks then prevented 4 more by destroying enemies who had 2 or fewer HP remaining. Rain of Arrows wasn't in my hand at that point so it didn't reach full potential. It was an emergency move and we couldn't bring him back -- no Fortune or Fate at this point. Then we had a major stall on card 2 thanks to the Battle keyword and no attack power in the mono-spirit deck. Lesson learned. Still, I think the combination has potential in scenarios with no Siege or Battle keywords.

Afterward I made a mono-tactics with Boromir, Beregond, and Thalin and left the Hammer-stroke combo cards in. To go along with it, we made a simple dwarf deck with Dain, Thorin, and Ori. King Under the Mountain went on Thalin to speed up card draw. Those decks slaughtered the scenario in 3 turns. Incidentally, Faramir + Alcaron make Hail of Stones a very powerful card to have in your opening draw. Just before the final push, I had the whole thing set up: Boromir with four 3-HP enemies engaged (hidden cards coming out on stage 2), Rain of Arrows and a Vassal of the Windlord ready to go. But decided just to win the thing, and had a massive Battle quest for 26 and won by a landslide.

I also made a version of the Hammer-stroke deck to go along with a modified version of my old Shire Mischief deck, a Hobbit deck that I made before Black Riders came out. I updated it with some BR cards as well. But haven't tried those decks out yet. Someday soon...

The work continues!