Bartering with Birna's Sword

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NERD 808

This is a stupid deck based on a stupid concept: Using Sword-thain to make temporary allies permanent. Sneak Attack or To me! O my kinsfolk! work, but they are not repeatable. Lothíriel and Prince Imrahil work, but they need Reforged so you can buy Sword-thain in the required phase. I thought there was no good option until I saw Birna, an ally that solves the problem in a delightfully impractical way. She can repeatedly Sneak Attack a Beorning ally every planning phase. Buying Sword-thain on that ally will make it permanent. However, Beorn is the only unique target for Birna. A repeatable trick is not much when you can only do it once. That's where the Noldor come into play.

In addition to discarding the bears, the Noldor can be summoned by Birna using The Last Alliance. This allows Sword-thain to save huge allies like Galdor of the Havens and Glorfindel from being discarded at the end of the phase.

The final piece of this ludicrous puzzle is Bartering, which lets you play Sword-thain repeatedly. Beorn's Welcome lets you afford Birna each round, while also helping Grimbeorn the Old. Erestor provides plenty of card draw, and Silver Harp lets you save cards. Narya is great here to ready the big allies. Threat reduction is provided by Elrond's Counsel. If you want to make the deck playable, remove some of the combo stuff (The White Council) and add good stuff (Daeron's Runes/Beorning Skin-changer).

Have fun,

NERD

P.S. I now realized that Reforged can't buy Sword-thain cause it's neutral. That's such a stupid rule. Maybe even more dumb than this deck.

8 comments

Nov 27, 2022 Mythik 202

Maybe this is just my misunderstanding of what the deck is trying to do, but any of the Sword-thain tricks only ever need to happen once because it's unique so you can only have a single copy of it in play at a time?

Or are there some shenanigans I've missed?

Nov 27, 2022 Beorn 13362

It’s ridiculous, and I love it. Two paws, way up.

Nov 27, 2022 doomguard 1963

its a good piece of tinkering, but i doubt its efficiency.

you need big setup (birna in play, 3 tactic-res only 1 tactichero, swordthain in hand, 1 tacticres, an unique ally in the discard, no bartering in the discard, 4 res to play swordthain) not so easy and, you have to spare res until then.

until this time you have not so much benefit. it could be done easier with a sneak+swordthain.

then next round (i you do it the same round, the ally still have to go end of the phase nevertheless he was a hero for a fraction of a phase) you need to draw a bartering, even with erestor not soo common. then you spare up to 5 res to keep an 1-phase-ally forever.

then you can do it a maximum of 3 times (only 3 bartering) and it do really shine on 4-6 cost allies. specially with noldor-erestor i prefer the good old To the Sea, to the Sea! with a few Elven-light that works on all allies (with the contract)

its still a nice combo but i would not play it because lack of efficiency.

Nov 27, 2022 NERD 808

@Mythik I did not make the description very clear. Bartering lets you return Sword-thain to your hand so you can buy it again.

@Beorn Thank you!

@doomguard I know it's not efficient at all. As you say, To the Sea, to the Sea! is more consistent and similarly effective. Even just a Beorning Skin-changer does the same thing.

Nov 27, 2022 Mythik 202

Aaaah right, thank you. I missed that they stayed in play after removing sword thain.

Cool idea! But yeah, not the most efficient haha. Is it as fun as you'd hope it would be tho?

Nov 27, 2022 NERD 808

Not really, it needs more high-cost unique allies to even be remotely playable. I am going to try a Sneak Attack/Open the Gates version soon with some more recurring (Galadhrim Weaver). That will probably be a bit better.

Nov 27, 2022 kjeld 614

Fun deck! Also, I'm not sure that Reforged doesn't work on Sword-thain -- where is the ruling for this? Reforged simply states, in parentheses, that "The chosen attachment can belong to any sphere of influence". The "can" seems critical here.

Nov 27, 2022 doomguard 1963

Stand and Fight has the same "can" and you are not allowed to use it on Gandalf because gandalf has no sphere.

it is bad wording and bad reason, they should have been honest and say: "its op with gandal, thats the reason." then many neutral thins can go that are not op.