This Deck is Exhausting 1.0

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• 1.0

This Deck is Exhausting

Played through the campaign on Normal with this deck, managing at least a 250 score on each quest with a couple of 275's (against quests 3 and 5 I think)

We're mixing up Lore's board control with some of the more direct damage themed options from Tactics. The recent changes to Lore's level 2 cards, Sudden Riposte and Mablung, make them a decent choice for building a two sphere deck with the limited early card pool. Though this is primarily as I think Lore and Tactics are the two strongest spheres at the moment due to how combat focused the game is and by extension how helpful healing is.

Opening Hand:

You ideally want to mulligan pretty aggressively for a weapon. Warrior Sword is good, but for quests that start with more enemies in play the sooner you see a Ranger Spear the better just for the block.

Unless your only weapon in hand is a Ranger Spear you can probably discard any healing cards you get in your opening hand, you have more than enough card draw with Faramir that you should go most quests drawing through almost your entire deck.

Quests that start with a big boss enemy usually have a Fate event to help you deal with them, but mulligan for a Sudden Riposte can save you a lot of incoming damage while you get to that Fate event, or strengthen your board presence for a single resource.

The way the AI is with the game right now you probably also want at least 1 ally to get into play as your first or second action just to turn that 100% chance one of your heroes get hit down to 75%. Galadhon Archer isn't a bad choice for this as it's cheap and help you bank a resource for next turn if you need it.

In Play:

Faramir should probably get your first weapon so you can keep your card draw ticking over, though you'll get a pretty good idea early on which of your characters with Ranged Sauron will be focusing on (usually Legolas) so the Ranger Spear on that poor hero will mitigate some of the damage.

Lore has plenty of willpower to help with objectives, so you shouldn't really have any problems on that front. Erebor Record Keeper is included more for his willpower and his hitpoint pool than the card draw, which is a little overkill with Faramir in your starting lineup, you'll likely often end up at max hand size, unable to draw anything new (give us a discard and draw option FFI!)

Spike Trap isn't really a great card but I find it useful just as a 1x to get rid of any enemies lingering with 1-2 health left, especially enemies with Guard, as we're not bringing a great deal of Tactics so occasionally your attack can be a little lacking in the early game. But this early in the card pool it isn't a bad compliment to our other direct damage options, Westfold Outrider and Galadhon Archer and often lets you kill 2 enemies during Upkeep along with Legolas's ability

Arwen's healing is pretty sufficient for the most part so we're not packing the full suite of healing cards Lore has, sticking to only 1x for Self-Preservation and Lembas

The rest of the deck is filled out with Lore's board control options to exhaust enemies, to just give you a breather from enemies so you can Travel. Advance Warning is a bit of a win-more card, but playing it as soon as you have more bodies on the board than Sauron will save you from dealing with particularly nasty enemies, especially if you're about to travel.

Gandalf rounds out the deck and will 99% of the time be used for your threat reduction to avoid some of the more brutal threat events and keep your threat at 40 or less to help with your score. While we're not quite as combat focused as we can be, we still manage to progress, kill enemies and take objectives without turtling too much, thanks to our direct damage and Arwen and ally willpower.