The King Rides Forth! 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

I built this deck to be part of the COTR Elfhelm and the Mounts Fellowship.

The basic idea is to buff up your heroes to really high levels with King Theoden taking center stage. The deck provides the Fellowship with a solid 9 and a starting Gather Information to get key pieces in place.

Strategy

• Take Gather Information as Thurindir's opening sidequest.
• Look for Snowmane, and Master of the Forge in your opening hand. If Master of the Forge doesn't come up, fetch him with Gather Information. This deck is all about attachments and he'll let you set up quick.
• Try to get your mounts out fast. Snowmane brings Theoden to 4 and Windfola brings Eowyn to 6 with the potential for more if players discard cards.
• Try to complete either Rally the West or Double Back as your second sidequest while you start equipping Theoden with his shield, sword and an Unexpected Courage.
• The deck is light on cards so the Master Ironsmith is there to equip Theoden with Herugrim and the Hauberk of Mail. Since the Ironsmith can pull cards out of the discard pile, don't be shy about boosting Eowyn's willpower with every weapon that comes through your hand if you plan to play it this way.
• If you can complete Rally the West, earn The Arkenstone and the [Necklace of Girion] (/card/18011) (attach it to Theoden), you can get your heroes boosted to crazy high willpower and Herugrim and the Golden Shield give Theoden bonkers stats.
• With all the pieces in place, Theoden becomes a 8 , 12 , 11 5 monster that can quest, attack and defend.
• With Rally the West and The Arkenstone in play and multiple sidequests completed, your heroes can eventually quest for 8+ each (I had Thurindir up to 11 in the recorded game with TheChad and Mr Underhill) so you can quest for 24+ with just the three heros.
• With a high percentage of Spirit cards, I included a couple copies of Song of Travel which can go on Theoden and Thurindir and boost their willpower if mounted (Thurindir can beg a Steed of the North off the Eomer deck).
• The Legacy Blade were included for boosting the other deck's heroes, but they could be attached to Thurindir as well if he had an Unexpected Courage.
• The Events are basic safety events that should help keep you safe in most quests.

Sideboard

• I use Proud Hunters a lot but this deck is lean enough I ended up removing it but you could cut some copies of some uniques to make room for it and rely on the Master of the Forge to keep you consistent.
• Song of Kings is there only to give Theoden one more defense point from Herugrim, but it seemed silly and useless so I cut it.
• Deep Knowledge is super good for nearly any Fellowship but the other two decks were fairly high threat and there's a lot of threat increasing cards in Journey up the Anduin so I ended up cutting it as well.

Thanks for reading! You can watch the Fellowship Journey Up the Anduin on YouTube here (waiting for link ). All my combos came together, but the other decks were crushing the enemies so hard poor King Theoden didn't get to battle as much as he could have but he did get to one-shot a Hill Troll near the end of the game!

I used this deck against Journey Up the Anduin in a solo game as well and it functioned well as long as you can get Theoden's defense up fairly early.