Deck Tech: Sam Gamgee, Elf-friend 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey, welcome to the first in (hopefully) a series of deck tech posts. I'm still figuring out exactly the format I'm going to shoot for (separate blog, ringsdb posts, etc.), but I do know that I want to highlight decks that are interesting, not necessarily hyper tuned.

This deck, which I've dubbed "Sam Gamgee, Elf-friend" is one of mine. It's a single-core secrecy deck that lives in the low threat space that Galadriel allows. And it uses the Mirror of Galadriel and Silver Harp combo to add draw and tutoring to help get the cards you want when you need them.

There are also nearly no unique allies in the deck, and none of the most common unique attachments, so if you need a deck to try out in a multiplayer setting, you shouldn't be stepping on anybody's toes. (Contrast this with the strongest secrecy deck I've ever made, http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/10/three-hero-secrecy-muster-draw-1.0, and you'll see just how multiplayer unfriendly you can get. At least it doesn't include the Horn of Gondor!)

Enough fluff! Let's talk about some results.

I played a handful of games tonight on OCTGN with this deck, all normal mode, just to put the deck through some paces.

Take 1, Journey Along the Anduin

This was an interesting quest, because I got the Mirror early, but couldn't find the Harp. Only two cards per round is clearly not enough! Once I got that, I used the combo to find one of my Sneak Attacks, dropped in a Gandalf during combat to soak up the troll attack, and swung for the fences with nearly all of the allies in the deck. After that, I played out Gandalf for full cost and quested through stage 2b over the next two rounds.

Final results? A win, in round 11. Final threat, 18. And only 9 cards left in the deck.

Take 2, Foundations of Stone

FoS is actually one of my old school favorite quests, and it's a decent test for the deck, since the final stages tend to be pretty combat heavy. The first few rounds are pretty much all locations, and the deck nearly gets locked out. But free allies (Bill the Pony and Rivendell Scout) and a bit of encounter deck scrying let us win through before getting completely stalled. Galadriel and Sam both got hit with Watchful Eyes before stage 3, but the penalty from the extra revealed cards was pretty low. And then when the flood happened, I had extra copies of the Mirror combo in hand to play down.

But I did get the Old One Lair that revealed two regular Nameless Things and one Elder Nameless Thing. Oops. The party engaged one Nameless Thing and flopped two Daeron's Runes, so that was easy! The other two were both engaged in subsequent rounds, and hit much more substantial allies.

Fortunately the second Elder Nameless Thing came down when my deck was entirely empty, and so couldn't get a boost. After that I just power quested out.

This one's end results are pretty similar to the first quest. Turn 11, threat 15. Nothing left in the deck.

Take 3 (4, and 5), Massing at Osgiliath

Emboldened by a couple of good successes, I wanted to try something harder but that I still thought the deck could handle. (I'll save the soul crushing defeats for later on in the series.) But I get demolished a couple of times early. Too many scouts and some of the painful locations coming out of the staging area before the draw engine came online.

On the third try, though, things went a lot better. The deck still stalled out for the first handful of rounds. The draw engine came online quick, but a Wainrider Captain pulled in a second copy of Wainriders and kept the threat in the staging area high. So progress was slow, but steady. Stage 2b also means no Sneak Attack or Timely Aid to help out.

I also had to soak up 12 extra threat from a round of chump-questing against the Witch King. But the threat gain was carefully calibrated to keep the deck well below the Wainriders engagement cost. One Sneak Attack Gandalf later and the Witch King was once again ended by a woman and a Hobbit. (Yeah, it's not the right ones. And yeah, Galadriel can't attack. But I'm okay with that.)

That victory took 14 rounds, and I ended up at 35 threat with no cards left in the deck again.

Play Tips

1. Daeron's Runes lets you discard the first copy of The Evening Star, if you want. That way the first one you have to pay for is more impactful.

2. Resourceful goes on Galadriel first, since she needs to pay for the spirit and lore cards, whereas most of the leadership cards are free!

3. If you're not used to a single-core deck, don't forget you only get two copies of Sneak Attack, A Test of Will, and Hasty Stroke.

4. And don't forget that Sneak Attack works incredibly well with Ithilien Lookout and Celduin Traveler.

5. Don't forget to have fun with it! You're drawing three cards a round, your threat doesn't have to go up if you don't want it to, and sometimes Bill the Pony will be the thin pony line between victory and defeat.