The Counsel of Gildor 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Designed exclusively for 3-4 players, this is one of the most powerful multiplayer decks I've ever played. I have never lost a game with it, even against insane multiplayer quests like Blood of Gondor.

The deck typically plays at least 2 copies of Gildor's Counsel every round at minimum (including the first). If the draw is favorable, I've been able to play 2 copies on the first turn, and 3 copies every turn thereafter.

Unsurprisingly, it's easy to win a 4-player game when you are only revealing 1 or 2 encounter cards a round.

Strategy

• Mulligan for Love of Tales
• Use Beravor to draw
• Play Mithrandir's Advice and Deep Knowledge to draw more.
• Play 1 copy of Song of Kings
• Legacy of Númenor to get more resources if you need them (otherwise hold off until you get a 4th hero)
• Don't worry about skyrocketing threat from all the doomed cards, you will deal with that later
• Play Ioreth
• Play Scroll of Isildur for 1, then use Bartering to get a free Sword-thain onto Ioreth.

With 4 heroes, you now have a number of factors that help you draw tons of cards:

• The Scroll of Isildur is free
• Mithrandir's Advice's now draws 4
• Legacy of Númenor gets you 4 resources
• You can play 2 copies of Peace, and Thought during refresh

Next steps:

• Use Scroll of Isildur to replay Mithrandir's Advice if needed, otherwise save them for Gildor's Counsel
• Play any Good Meals you find
• Use Good Meals to make Gildor's Counsel cost 1
• Use Scroll of Isildur to recycle Gildor's Counsel and put it back into your deck.
• Your hand should be massive, so use Drinking Song to shuffle your hand back in your deck and mix up the Gildor's Counsels that were placed on the bottom (and trigger Love of Tales).
• Play Gildor's Counsel for full cost if needed

With all the doomed cards, players might be getting close to threating out by the end of turn 1 or 2. This is how you handle that:

• Play Song of Travel (you can use Bartering+Scroll of Isildur if you want to save a resource here)
• In the refresh phase, reset your own threat with Aragorn if needed
• In the same refresh phase, pass Aragorn with Desperate Alliance to the player using that is closest to threating out. That player resets their own threat.
• Next round, do it again for third player using your second Desperate Alliance.
• To reset the 4th player's threat, you will need to wait until you play Will of the West to get the Desperate Alliances back into your deck. This normally isn't a problem, because there's often one player that had a lower starting threat and can afford to wait.

When you are fully exhausted of Gildor's Counsel and Scroll of Isildur, use Will of the West to shuffle everything back in and start again. You should be able to play Gildor's Counsel 9 more times after the reshuffle, which is 3 more rounds of a 4-player game only revealing 1 card a round, which in my experience has always been enough to seal the game. Don't forget that the other players have received a ton of cards and resources from all your doomed cards as well.

Since you'll only be revealing a handful of cards all game, Scout Ahead can be used to plan out almost all your reveals for the entire game.

Fatty Bolger was chosen here for his low starting threat, his Hobbit trait (for Drinking Song and Good Meal), and for his ability to shut down an enemy on one of the turns for a pseudo-Gildor's Counsel, which can help on the first round when you only managed to play 2 copies. But if you don't have ALeP content, the deck still works just as well with (MotK) Robin Smallburrow or (MotK) Gaffer Gamgee.