Bond of Kinship (A Dwarven Swan Song) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Dwarf decks have been good and pretty straight forward for a majority of the game's life at this point. Having just jumped back into the game recently after about 18 months without picking up the cards, I returned to find out that dwarf decks became even more powerful in the last two cycles of the game. Which is fun... and crazy. However, even though the Bond of Friendship contract can get the Dwarf engine going much faster, you are also playing against the clock now more than ever with a starting threat of 40.

First Turn and Early Game After testing the deck out many times, the most helpful card I have found to get out early is an Erebor Record Keeper because it accelerates the deck, and is a fraction of the cost of an Ered Luin Miner. So, on turn 1, getting that fifth dwarf is quite helpful, but not necessarily make or break. You will want to mulligan to at least assure that you will have your fifth Dwarf on the table by turn 2.

Quest with Thorin Oakenshield and Ori early and probably for the majority of the game. The early game may even require questing with Thorin Stonehelm just so you can assure the ability to quest successfully, but he is obviously a more ideal attacker. Cram is in the deck to supplement early game action advantage if you are not fortunate enough to start getting allies on the table.

Dáin Ironfoot is obviously going to sit back and wait to defend. He is one of the best tanks in the game (except for lacking the sentinel keyword) because you can trigger his ability in the action window after shadow cards are revealed.

This is the simple strategy to get started, quest with your higher willpower heroes as well as your allies until you can trigger the big boost...

The Thorongil Powerup I was messing around with this deck for awhile, trying to get it to work but it really wasn't as good as I was hoping for it to be. Then, paging through the binder, I found the missing piece: Thorongil. Unfortunately, to make a dwarf deck sing (for better or worse), you really want to include Dáin Ironfoot, but the deck restrictions of Bond of Friendship, make it so that you need to have 4 heroes of different spheres, but I didn't want to swap out Thorin. On the precipice of conceding such an act, I discovered a card that could fix my problem, an attachment that ironically came in the same pack as BoF, Thorongil.

Once you have it in hand, attach it to Dain and supply these Dwarves with the leadership that they so poorly crave. With that being said, I still do not mind using Dain as the primary defender, and do not stress out to much on whether or not I am getting the leadership heroes attack boost during the combat phase. While it is nice, most of the time it is not needed because Thorin Stonehelm is a rather proficient slayer of enemies, especially if you can get him a Valiant Sword.

Attachments

Dain: Shining Shield, Thorongil, Unexpected Couragex2, Gondorian Shield

Thorin Oakenshield: Narvi's Belt, Cram, Valiant Sword (Make sure Stonehelm gets his first)

Thorin Stonehelm: Valiant Sword, Shining Shield (emergency defense).

Ori: N/A

Tips

• Don't be afraid to discard cards with Dain and Thorin's ability. Beating the encounter deck is always number 1 priority. Defending and defeating an enemy is more important than a card in your hand. With that said Erebor Hammersmith and Reforged can both bring attachments back from the discard pile, and Will of the West is there in case you happened to discard one that you know there aren't any more copies of in the deck.

• Favor of the Valar, Woodmen's Clearing and Gandalf are all there to supply threat reduction. Just remember if you go below 40 threat, you will lose out on the benefits of Shining Shield and Valiant Sword. Personally, I like to push my luck and go no lower than 40, which is why I really like Favor of the Valar in this deck.

• I like to use Erebor Record Keeper for his ability rather than as a quester, so that I can ready Thorin Oakenshield to ready for attack. Between he and Stonehelm, there are very few enemies that will survive that attack.

The Swan Song of the Dwarves I used dwarves quite a bit before I got good at the game and like to revisit the archetype from time to time to see how it holds up in the current meta. With the game going on hiatus (probably the permanent kind) I thought it was neat to get a couple of pieces that added variety and fun to a deck type that hadn't changed too much for a while. While this deck feels very similar to the dwarf decks of old, it is nice to have a different approach in getting the 5+ benefits as well as the stat boosts from leadership Dain.