DúneGlóin 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Of all my borderline broken decks out there, this is probably one of the most entertaining to play.

To get the combo up and running, all you really need is Warden of Healing and Song of Wisdom. You can even play them both turn 1 if they're in your opening hand. If not, there are lots of draw effects, and Master of the Forge to help you get these cards quickly. Narvi's Belt is a backup for the Song of Wisdom.

Once those 2 cards are in play, you are invincible to any number of undefended attacks of strength 3 or less (and 1 attack of 4 if you exhaust to defend with Glóin). Why? Well, every time Glóin takes two damage, he gains two resources and uses them to exhaust and ready Warden of Healing to fully heal himself, thanks to Elrond. So with just these two cards, you can already take 100 strength two attacks. For the last two damage you take each round, exhaust Warden of Healing a final time and do not spend Glóin's resources to ready him. You will end with a net gain of 2 resources on Glóin. Note that each time you are exhausting the Warden you can also be healing other characters on the table too. Thanks to PocketWraith for opening my eyes to this endless Glóin-Warden-Elrond loop.

Many enemies hit for 5+, so we need Citadel Plates. They can be played early as turn two thanks to Mablung, as long as you engaged an enemy in turn 1 and have played a Dúnedain Hunter. Otherwise, A Good Harvest can also help you play it. To help consistency, Galadhrim Minstrel can help you find A Good Harvest while Master of the Forge looks for your Citadel Plate.

So hopefully by turn 2 or 3 you now have a Citadel Plate on Glóin. He can now defend an unlimited number of attacks of strength 7 or less, which is basically everything. You should now be trying to engage as many enemies as possible.

Once you get out Self Preservation or a second Warden of Healing you will make solid net gains with Glóin each round. Just ready Warden as often as necessary, then heal off the rest. Glóin can then play Narvi's Belt and help pay for Warden of Annúminas and Fornost Bowman. At this point I'll usually have 6-10 enemies engaged with me so those Dúnedain can handle questing and attack all by themselves.

Song of Mocking makes this a multiplayer deck. You can let all the other players take undefended attacks and soak up all the damage for them with Glóin/Warden.

For solo play, swap out the 3 Song of Mocking for Boots from Erebor or We Are Not Idle.

This deck is very vulnerable to shadow effects because you are taking all the attacks undefended, so the Dúnedain Watchers are there for the cancel-or die shadows. You don't really care about shadows that give boosted strength or additional attacks. You mainly care about the game-ending shadow effects like the ones on Sleeping Sentry or Driven by Shadow. If the quest you're playing doesn't have shadow effects like that (reference guide here), then swap out the Watchers for the other Dúnedain in the sideboard. It also helps if you are playing with a Spirit player who is running Hasty Stroke.

The deck is really strong, solo or multiplayer, and pretty fun too. Glóin can show up for battle exhausted and still take a beating from 10 enemies, only to walk away without a scratch and with more money in his pockets.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes. It's pretty straightforward I think, but let me know if I should make a video of this one too.