Children of the Havens (an overexplained Revised Noldor Deck 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

"In that time the last of the Noldor set sail from the Havens and left Middle-earth for ever. [...] In the twilight of autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the seas of the Bent World fell away beneath it."

— By J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

An overexplained Revised Noldor Deck

This deck is built around the theme of the Grey Havens.

It's not gimmicky or broken, and should keep the emotional tension throughout a normal campaign. It relies on a few tricks I overexplain for beginners: how to mulligan, tempo, card value, chump blocking, discard manipulation and sphere splashing.

This deck is fun as you can quest and fight: you will contribute 15 within the first 5 turns. or fight for 15 when a boss shows up.

This deck won all scenarios of the Dream Chaser and the Angmar Awakened cycles, as well and Hunt of the Dreadnaught in normal mode.

Complete collection version: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/38518/childrenofthehavenscompletecollection-1.0

Some point of interests for long time players

• a sphere splash of and possible with Wandering Spirit and the Stand and Fight.
• no Elven-light
• Ranger Spikes for enemy control early on

Overexplaining the tricks

Mulligan

Mulligan with Galdor of the Havens for some of your attachements: Light of Valinor, Unexpected Courage, To the Sea, to the Sea! as those are the cards that give you tempo. More generally, attachements are desired in starting hands. An exception here is Narya, which really shines only when you can ready Cirdan and have a bit of allies in play.

1 card = 1 resource

With this deck, cards can be converted to resources, with the help of Arwen Undómiel and To the Sea, to the Sea!. For instance, Lindir can be free if you play it with an empty hand,as it gives you 3 cards, and thefore is pretty awesome.

Gain a resource every turn with Arwen Undómiel by discarding a card. Lords of the Eldar, Mithlond Sea-watcher next to a Wandering Spirit, duplicate Narya or To the Sea, to the Sea! are perfect candidates.

So now that I convinced you that 1 card = 1 resource, you understand that Silver Harp is 2 resources to save 1 resource a turn. Not bad!

The Tempo of the Encounter

Sleezy mode is when you add 1 resource to each of your starting heroes - and that makes the game more accessible to beginners, or simply allow you to play thematically. The encounter deck tosses at you a flow of , between 2 and 3 per player per turn.Have more than ? You will explore locations, diminishing the threat while you continue deploying more . Sink beneath the curve and you slowly crawl your way to loosing the game. We call this tempo: the pace at which you progress and scale in regards to the staging area and your engagement zone. Exploring a location, playing an ally, ready a character or killing an enemy are examples of a gain of tempo. Loosing an ally, failing to explore, playing an attachment that provides no value yet or having to exhaust a hero is a loss of tempo.

Resources have more value early on

When you understand tempo, you conclude that resources are worth more early on. Because it allows to stay ahead the encounter deck, which allows to explore location, not fail at questing and so on. Try to spend all your cards in your hand within the second or third turn, to trigger the very potent power of Galdor of the Havens. As cards are resources for you, you "earn" 6 resources with Galdor on turn 2 or 3, which has a tremendous impact in the whole game. You may have to play suboptimally, like discarding cards that could have value in 1 to 2 turns to To the Sea, to the Sea!, but the gain in tempo is really worth it.

LOTR is a tale of allies

A large part of our favourite game is a tale centered around heroes and allies. Allies have incredible powers:

• they can be as many as necessary
• they attack and quest as one, naturally scaling
• small allies can sacrifice themselves to soak larger attacks, wasting the attack of the enemy

This deck is full of 2 cost allies, which means you can finance 2 allies a turn with Arwen. That means every turn you gain somewhere around 4 or 4 . That's incredibly potent, as the encounter does not scale that fast. So the goal is for you to to get ahead of the the encounter with Galdor and stay that way by making good investments in allies.

The tale

A Very Good Tale is an excellent investment. You hope to replace 4 or 5 resources worth of stats by 4 or 5, not loosing tempo. But the next turn, you end up with an extra 4 to 5 resources worth of stats for free. As cards equal resources for you, this card nets you 4 resources + 2 cards = 6 resources. Worth noting getting a Guardian of Rivendell by playing a A Very Good Tale saves you 2 resources, as you don't have to discard the 2 extra cards anymore. It's Christmas when it hits.

Sphere splash for combat

You have the 4 spheres in this deck. How do you make it work? Well, first, you can bring back Mithlond Sea-watcher and Warden of the Havens with Wandering Spirit. Second, you can use A Very Good Tale to bring them in, as soon as Narya is in play. Then Stand and Fight is available for all the rest. So those 5 units have 8 ways to come in play. That's plenty enough, and allow to boost your defense and attack significantly. Choosing between a perfect block with a Warden or killing an enemy with the Sea Watcher, I choose killing, because it earns you tempo.

Chump Blocking

Try blocking a large attack with a Elven Jeweler or a Galadriel's Handmaiden. Loosing allies feel terrible, but you can imagine your ally just took a hit and is wounded until the next scenario. So you basically cancelled an attack for 2 resources (cost the ally), so a bit more than a Feint ? Thats not bad anymore, because your ally may have done other things before. Blocking with your chump will boost your Mithlond Sea-watcher by +2 too, as the chump will be on the top of your discard pile. Overall, with this deck, it's better to loose an ally and be able to kill an enemy - as you can deploy 2 allies a turn and the encounter deck deplys about 1/3rd of an enemy per turn per player.

Narya

Then you have Narya. This is incredibly fun and powerful. Probably the most difficult card to play correctly in this deck. You won't usually play Narya turn 1, because you need allies in play to get value out of it. Also, passing on the 4 from Cirdan is hard. So we tend to prefer waiting for turn 4 to 5 before playing it. hence, don't mulligan for it.

First, with it, you can play A Very Good Tale and the Warden of the Havens. And as we saw, it's cool, gives tremendous tempo mid game. Second and most important is its power. One use I suggest trying is to play after having committed a defender. You will ready them, but also give them +1 and +1 for the defense they are intercepting. Then they can block a second attack with they just earned, using the +1 twice. You can also apply the same trick on an attacker: attack an enemy, ready and benefit of the +1 for the current attack, then attack a second enemy, still with +0 .

Well timed, Narya gives you about +8 or +8 , For 2 resources, it's incredible.

To play in Complete Edition, add:

• Light of Valinor instead of Unexpected Courage
• Quickbeam instead of Guardian of Rivendellx1
• Deep Knowledge instead of A Very Good Tale
• Eregion Survivor instead of Bilbo Bagginsx2 and Warden of the Havens
• Warden of Healing instead of Daughter of the Nimrodel