Finders of Hidden Paths 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Thorongil and Haldan, masters of woodcraft, escort the Steward of Gondor through the woods, avoiding the watchful eyes of the enemy by traveling through hill and dale. The craft Steward, however, seems to himself possess surprising knowledge about what lies ahead...

This deck is intended as a broadly thematic deck that works as best as a support deck. It struggles with unavoidable enemies and bosses in particular, but is able to find paths through the wild, avoiding enemies as best as possible.

The basic strategy is to combine three tactics:

• Get readying effects on Denethor to mill through the encounter deck looking for locations.
• Load Aragorn up with willpower boosts and readying, so that he can use his ability to double-quest, clear locations, and hopefully defend an attack.
• Use location attachments to benefit from all that location clearing power using Haldan's card draw and built-in action advantage.

Some notes on particular cards...

Readying Effects

• Unexpected Courage goes without saying. Ideally I get one each on Aragorn and Denethor.
• Leather Boots is particularly effective when you are trying to mill the deck for locations.
• Wingfoot is pretty reliable in this deck thanks once again to the deck milling effects.
• Magic Ring is pretty flexible. Early game it goes well on Aragorn, since that extra spirit resource can be vital. Later in the game, I might be more interested in extra scrying on Denethor.

Location Attachments

• Elf-stone: an essential piece of resource acceleration. Most of the cards are fairly cheap, but the big allies are too expensive to pay for normally.
• Woodmen's Clearing and Woodmen's Path are standard location attachments to control threat and make it easier to get through those 'X' quest point locations.
• Explorer's Almanac is particularly useful when dealing with quests where you need to control your progress on the quest stage, giving you some room to over-quest and spill the extra progress on to a location.
• Ancient Mathom is a massive 4 cards when coupled with Haldan.

Other Attachments

• Ring of Barahir gives Aragorn a bit of extra survival power, and adds the lore resource icon for a bit of smoothing (though to be honest, I often need him paying for spirit cards allg ame).
• Stone of Elostirion and Silver Circlet are here to boost Aragorn's willpower, letting him use his ability and double-questing power more effectively. The Stone is particularly potent since it is only ever guarded by locations, which this deck can handle pretty easily.
• Thorongil is here almost exclusively to bring in Aragorn for the threat reduction, but Aragorn can be useful in the right situation for the readying.

Allies

• Most of the allies are the ones you'd expect. Arwen Undómiel is great in any deck with spirit access, but fits thematically here because of Aragorn's presence. Her defense boost can be key when an enemy sneaks through. Firyal adds more scrying, and Haleth finds you the attachments.
• Treebeard is your emergency defender and generally all around great ally. His resources are used for self-readying.

Events

• South Away! is handy for swapping in an active location. It's useful both for handling troublesome locations, and for clearing the location guarding the Stone of Elostirion on the turn you put it into play.
• The Hidden Way is more scrying power.