CotR Deck 1 - Gondor Vanilla - Needs Help

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CotR Deck 1 - Gondor Vanilla 0 0 0 2.0
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hawkeye007 28

hawkeye007 has a newer deck inspired by this one: CotR Deck 1 - Gondor Vanilla

I was playing Combat Commander against a fellow gamer and as we talked we discovered we both were fans of LotR LCG. After about 50 scenarios or so I had stopped playing a couple of years ago but my opponent was still active and he told me about CotR which really piqued my interest. Long story short I ended up signing up for the Con and will be attending for the first time this year. So I dusted off all of my LotR LCG stuff, hopped on RingsDB, and started making some decks that would quickly mop up the three scenarios in Heirs of Numenor which would be played at the convention (among others). I had always played progression style but I found out that at CotR using any cards in the game was fine so I figured I could come up with some decks that would breeze through HON scenarios. After all HON was a relatively early release in the game's development and some of these cards that I had never used before were just awesome. Easy peasy.

Wrong. After several attempts at beating Into Ithilien and Peril in Pelargir with my shiny new decks full of all sorts of new fangled cards I discovered a couple of things. First, I am probably not as good at building decks as I thought was and second, just throwing in a bunch of cool new cards without some sort of cohesion or purpose for the deck ain't gonna work and I don't care how old the scenario is.

So, I could use some help. I will say the deck, as it exists now, does work. When used with a couple of other of decks still in development I can consistently beat HON scenarios. But playing at CotR I may not know what the other players have for decks and I want to be sure that I have a deck flexible enough to adapt to what they might be trying to do.

The Deck. The scenarios in HON hit ya pretty fast. The first two use Battle Questing which seems tailored made for leadership Boromir. Erestor, Soldier of Gondor, Knight of Belfalas, Ancient Mahorn, and Valiant Sacrifce supply the card draw in this one. Obviously mulligan for Steward of Gondor. Lothiriel can provide additional help in getting down an extra questing ally which is of particular importance early since the starting active locations really need to be explored on turn 1 or a swarm of enemies may derail things in a hurry.

Questions: Am I trying for too much card draw? Can you have too much card draw? Do I need 4 weapons? I have zero threat reduction and Man the Walls is absent and there's no Visionary Leadership. Anyway, I would appreciate the help and thank you. This site is great and DragnCards is the greatest thing I've found since I don't know when.

2 comments

Aug 14, 2022 Flrbb 175

I'd say, with Lothíriel you cannot have enough card draw (although in my opinion Rod of the Steward is kind of too expensive). Also, your ally count (23) might be a bit low for a deck with her. The use of Sword of Gondor is kinda limited, I'd cut these, add a 3rd Knight of Belfalas and maybe add Visionary Leaderships - depending on the quest, of course.

Aug 14, 2022 hawkeye007 28

Thank you and I totally agree.

The more I've played this deck the more I've come to realize just powerful Lothriel is so I've adjusted things a great deal. I've replaced Aragorn with Imrahil for a couple of reasons. One, Aragorn and Boromir (leadership) both need a resource to take advantage of their abilities and I never had enough to keep em both happy. And second, Lothriel's ability will ready Imrahil.

I now have 27 allies and put in the third Knight of Belfalas. Because this deck heavily uses chump blockers Desperate Defense and Armored Destrier were pulled. I also took out sneak attack and Gandalf plus a couple of weapons. I added Visonary Leadership and Man the Walls plus allies. It's been fun to play.