noldors and haradrim 1.0

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• 1.0

Men? Men are weak

Well, Kahliel as decided to prove Elrond wrong. Him and the haradrim whom have proven themself couragous enough to refuse Sauron's dominion, have formed an alliance with the elves, who have been Sauron's greatest enemies through the ages. Together as one, they stand against Evil.

those last four days i've maintained a steady stream of publishing one deck or fellowship per day. Since i am currently on vacation, i thought i might as well challenge myself to keep the streak going.

motivation

The noldors and harad archetype have much in common: excedingly expensive yet powerful allies, discard based abilities, and the ability to shuffle back cards from the discard pile into the deck.

However, both sides have some weaknesses: the noldors have excellent resource acceleration in To the Sea, to the Sea! and card draw from Erestor, but even their mightiest allies lack the punch expected for their costs, especially when it comes to combat.

On the other hand, the haradrim have the 3 strongest allies in the game among their ranks, and with Kahliel's ability and Kahliel’s Tribesman back up they can handle a lot.

So they form the perfect candidates for The Last Alliance, letting us access the best of both worlds: we can play both noldors and haradrim at almost no cost thanks To the Sea, to the Sea!, and we can access the powerful harad arsenal.

As an added bonus, by combining both ally traits we suddenly have access to a pool of 4+ cost allies so large the deck reaches a critical mass, where we can play a 4+ cost unit or two every round without running into uniqueness issues. Because of the sheer number of those allies, Send for Aid and A Very Good Tale will also guarantee at least one large unit.

Gameplan

Mulligan for To the Sea, to the Sea!. Start using it immediatly to play as many harad and noldors as possible. Kahliel's ability can be used to compensate Captain's Wisdom and A Very Good Tale. Play Steward of Gondor on Círdan the Shipwright so that he can play Lords of the Eldar every round once you have milled yourself. Try to prioritise Galdor of the Havens to have bigger hands to work with.

Don't forget to leverage The Last Alliance's cost reduction; on the first round you have 2 noldors so your first harad is at a discount. Bear in mind that unlike To the Sea, to the Sea!, The Last Alliance doesn't specifiy a minimum of 1 on the cost, so you can choose to first reduce the cost to 1 with To the Sea, to the Sea! then to 0 with The Last Alliance.

Jubayr with Narya, Kahliel, Arwen Undómiel and Kahliel’s Tribesman back up is the primary defender. Yazan, Elladan and Glorfindel are primary attackers.

don't play Daeron's Runes unless you have a bad hand. when you draw your 5 cards and runes is among them, decide if the 4 other cards can be fully used. If yes, discard runes, if no discard one and then play runes for a mini-mulligan.

Kahliel's Headdress, Light of Valinor and Narya take a bit of time to take full value, it's ok to pass on the first copies if you can do something good by discarding them.

Once you are out of deck, use Kahliel's Headdress and Lords of the Eldar every round to immediatly draw those 2 cards, the harad ally serves as a trigger for Kahliel's ability. I intentionnally ignored Will of the West because we have so many uniques and no real discard payoff once all of them have been played, so just chaining Lords of the Eldar is better value.

List of uses for The Last Alliance:

• Use To the Sea, to the Sea! to play harads

• Use Kahliel's resource to play noldors

• Use Kahliel's ability to discard a harad/noldor to ready a harad/noldor

• Trigger Kahliel’s Tribesman on a noldor in need

• Use Kahliel's Headdress to give everyone +1 , and eventually shuffle a noldor back into your deck

This is a serious power deck. We will play one or two (sometimes three) large units every round and quickly assemble an insane army. It is still unrefined and yet it is already steamrolling every scenario i throw at it. If there was not so many scenarios punishing erestor decks, this would be an excellent candidate for the One Deck challenge.