Encounter Confounder 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

My first deck published here. It's a multiplayer deck built for encounter control.

"Hey, can I play LOTR LCG with your group? "

"Sure, what does your deck do?"

"Well..."

• most rounds, it reduces the encounter deck reveals by 1 (Gildor's Counsel)
• it gives the first player an extra card each round (Bilbo Baggins)
• it frequently lets us see the top 3 cards of the deck (Risk Some Light), and sometimes more later in the round (Scout Ahead, Henamarth Riversong)
• it lets other players draw cards (Deep Knowledge, Gléowine)
• it gives all enemies +3 engagement cost (Pippin); sometimes +8 (adding Take No Notice)
• it hands out a few resources every once in a while (Keen as Lances) and gifts 1 or 2 repeatable resources to other players (Resourceful)
• it heals a bit (Ioreth)
• it removes some the worst cards in the encounter deck (Out of the Wild)
• it can cancel the other copies of those terrible cards (The Door is Closed!)
• mid- to late-game, it can hold on to one big enemy and prevent that enemy's attacks for the rest of the game ((MotK) Gaffer Gamgee).

Based on The Mormegil's excellent “Sneaking around the Lure of Middle-earth” deck.

Like The Mormegil's deck, the focus of this deck is attempting to play Gildor's Counsel most rounds. You won’t provide much in terms of or combat help, but if you play Gildor's Counsel or Risk Some Light almost every turn, you are already pulling your weight. As you can see above, this deck can do that and more.

The other powerhouse card in the deck is Risk Some Light, which is always helpful, and almost always free.

The deck works best in a fellowship of 2 or 3 players. It’s a little more potent in 2-player, but a little riskier. In 3-player, its effectiveness is still impressive, and it’s more consistent. It does work in 4-player -- Risk Some Light is a little less useful, but still can be great, and The Door is Closed! becomes more potent.

The beauty of the deck is this: In a 3-player game, you handle encounter control, and the other 2 players need to be able to handle only 2 players’ worth of questing and combat. Who wouldn’t want a friend to play this deck with their fellowship? It’s always useful!

Mulligan for Gildor's Counsel or The Shirefolk or card draw. An opening hand with Leaf Brooch or Risk Some Light is also great. In fact, you can hardly go wrong. Drinking Song can act as a second mulligan, if desired.

It’s pretty easy to draw through the entire deck in about 4 rounds, and usually all your cards are used up by round 5 or so. When starting a quest you think will take longer than that, use the sideboard cards A Good Harvest and Will of the West to do it all over again. Or, better yet, just make sure one of your friends with access to has a Will of the West for you.

If you draw into Peace, and Thought, it's usually worth saving a resource and two hero actions to play it in the refresh phase. Your next round will be amazing.

(MotK) Gaffer Gamgee’s action is a safety valve. If you must engage an enemy, you can hold that enemy off for a while. It will cost you 2 resources per round and you’ll lose a hero, but by mid-game, when Leaf Brooch is set up and you have at least 1 Resourceful in play, it’s not a problem. The third Resourceful is hardly ever needed, actually. I just included it because it’s a nice perk to gift to another player.

If playing by the current ruling Messenger of the King which says that you draw your opening hand BEFORE choosing a MOTK hero from your deck, if you draw Gaffer in your opening hand, this is bad, because he cannot become a hero. And you need 3 Hobbit heroes for The Shirefolk. So, if you play that way, you may want to include 2x Gaffer, or possibly add Robin Smallburrow, who can become a second-choice MOTK hero.

A typical early-game round involves paying only 1 resource for Gildor's Counsel thanks to a Good Meal, and Risking Some Light for free, while using Daeron's Runes or Mithrandir's Advice to set up a bigger combo next round.

A typical late-game round: being rich with cards due to having just played Peace, and Thought in the last refresh phase, you play a Mithrandir's Advice for no resource cost due to Leaf Brooch, then use Drinking Song to shuffle your 10 or so cards into your deck for a different 10 or so cards, so you can find those 2 remaining Keen as Lances cards, which you’ll play for free, gifting another player 2 resources and drawing 3 more cards — you just drew Good Meal, which you will attach this planning phase, and trigger in the quest phase to pay for 2 copies of Gildor's Counsel for 4 resources total, one of which you will pull from your discards via Scroll of Isildur, and still be able to trigger Gléowine on another player... etc etc.; during the quest phase, you cancel a nasty treachery with The Door is Closed!; later, you trigger Henamarth Riversong to see the first shadow card... All this while you’re sitting at around 12 threat.

Sideboard:

• Folco Boffin: The abilities of the other hobbits are too great. Yes, even Bilbo Baggins with his 9 threat. That extra card for the first player is so nice, you'll wonder how you ever played without it. Swapping Bilbo with Folco Boffin only needs to be done in scenarios where fast threat increases are an issue. For this reason, he is in the sideboard.
• Barliman: a safety valve, but I found that (MotK) Gaffer Gamgee was usually all the safety I needed.
• Erebor Hammersmith: Could get Scroll of Isildur back in hand, but surprisingly, I hardly found it necessary. The deck can already play Gildor's Counsel about 6 times per game; with Will of the West it becomes 12 times. Actually, I often find myself using Scroll of Isildur to recur a card draw event instead of Gildor's Counsel, just to plow through the deck faster, and that decision usually pays off. So, the real value in this guy is that, besides his ability, he is also a decent defender and HP pool for archery.
• Will of the West and A Good Harvest: for longer quests (see above).

Cards I didn't include:

• Bartering/Sword-thain combo: it would make Scroll of Isildur free, but resources aren't enough of a problem to warrant finding this 2-card combo.
• The Hidden Way: I originally had this in the deck, but it whiffed too often.
• Fast Hitch: Your heroes don't need the readying. Peace, and Thought once in a round is plenty!
• Firyal: Not worth 5 resources when you have much cheaper ways of scrying; other players handle .

Final note: I do have a faster version of this deck, but I've only tested it twice. It removes all the victory display stuff, and focuses on even quicker drawing and recycling Gildor's Counsel and Risk Some Light. It also puts Will of the West into the main deck and assumes you will use it at least twice. It pretty consistently plays the key event cards every round for at least 20 rounds in a row, staying around 0 threat for most of the game. After some more testing I'll probably share that deck!