Introduction

"Hello sir, and welcome to the Rangers Guild. The Guild that accepts only the most daring, the most dashing, the most charismatic of adventurers..."

"Well, that sounds a little bit like me, I would like to join the Rangers Guild"

Viva La Dirtleague

When crafting this deck, I was really looking for an Ithilien ranger deck with a heavy emphasis on traps. I wanted every hero to facilitate trap plays as much as possible. Celador and Damrod were the obvious choices. Their abilities are phenominal for trap based strategies and their stat line up is overall solid. The last hero slot was a difficult choice as there were many possible interesting candidates like Denethor who could act as defender or allow you to look at top card of the encounter deck to know in advance what traps to play. (MotK) Ioreth for a secrecy approach with immediate access to healing. In the end I decided (MotK) Haleth would make for the most interesting build.

Gameplan

The strategy with this deck is very straightforward; disable enemies with traps, quest, and support your friends with powerful utility cards. This deck is primarily meant for multiplayer as it sometimes struggles to handle both questing and combat effectively.

Card & Resource Economy

The card draw engine of this deck is excellent. Haleth searches you an attachment after she quests successfully and Damrod draws a card after you trap an enemy, possibly multiple times per round. To further boost card draw I also included Mithrandir's Advice to draw 3 cards and a single copy of Stone of Elostirion.

Resource economy on the other hand is where this deck can struggle a bit. Though many cards are only 1 or 2 cost to play, the deck has no way to gain more resources, other than during the resource phase. Instead of trying to force in cards like Steward of Gondor and Song of Kings, it was much simpler and on theme to play a three copies of Seasoned Forager. Combined with Damrod you can play most traps for 0 cost or allies at a nice discount.

Haleth as Hero.

For a mere 8 starting threat is Haleth's stat spread very solid. With 2 , 2 , 1 and 3 health he can contribute to questing and possibly assist with combat as well. It is, however, her response that makes her an excellent MotK hero. After questing successfully, she let's you search the top 5 cards of your deck for any attachment.

The deck plays a total of 21 attachments which ties in well with Haleth's response. She will let you search your traps or other valuable attachments every single round. With an opening hand+draw containing an average of ~3 attachments, Haleth's first search has a decent 95% success rate. These odds are bound to change as the game goes on and primarily depend on the ratio of the deck size v.s. the amount of attachments left in the deck. Overall, the odds of Haleth missing are slim.

Allies

Emyn Arnen Ranger, Mirkwood Explorer, Mablung, and Firyal and are there to assist with questing.

The Ithilien Archer, Anborn, and Faramir can help you kill enemies that dodged your traps or are engaged with other players. Put the guys into play with Spring the Trap.

Warden of Healing is your much needed healing support.

Each ally also has a valuable action/response. Henamarth Riversong is there to help you decide on what traps to play into the staging area. Similarly, Firyal's response lets you look at and optionally discard the top card of the encounter deck after she commits to the quest. Anborn can recur your traps in your discard pile back to your hand. When Faramir comes into play you can engage an enemy and damage it. Lastly, Mablung can allow you to engage and potentially Snare an enemy during the planning phase, before that enemy even had a change to attack you.

Attachments

Only 12 out of 21 attachments in the main deck are traps. The other 9 attachments all have their own specific purpose in the deck. Two Ranger Spears should go on Celador to push his base attack to 5, and up to 7 when attacking a trapped enemy. The third Spear can go on Anborn should you find it. Seasoned Forager helps the deck out with its otherwise difficult resource management. The Scroll of Isildur lets you reuse and recycle your events. Lastly, the Stone of Elostirion. This card has two purposes in this deck. The most obvious one is to boost Haleth's and card draw. Maybe less obvious is how you can pair it with Henamarth Riversong. It being a Guarded (location) Artifact means that you can use it proactively to get rid of possible nasty treacheries or enemies before they are revealed during staging.

Traps

The purpose of your traps is not defeat the trapped enemies right away but rather to keep them out of play. An average 2 enemy stuck in your Ranger Spikes is in most cases completely out of the game. There's no need to kill it, you can let it sit in the staging area indefinitely. Similarly, a weak 2 enemy with Entangling Nets is almost completely harmless and depending on the scenario you can even risk letting it attack undefended.

While your traps are powerful, it is important to consider the scenario you're up against. Know what enemies or shadow effects may appear and tailor your line up to the scenario. If you're going to be dealing with Goblin Snipers, the normally "bad" traps, like Ithilien Pit or Poisoned Stakes, can actually take care of them.

Events

The events are primarily there to support the whole trapper strategy. Starting with It Should Be Spared. You could use it to effectively play multiple traps at once in the staging area. When both traps attach to the first revealed enemy, detach one of them and play it again into the staging area to catch the next enemy. A second use case is to simply get multiple triggers from your heroes abilities. Drawing 2 cards withDamrod or readying and reducing your with Celador. Coney in a Trap acts as a better version of Feint. Consider an enemy that make an immediate attack when they engage you. While, both these cards are able to stop the immediate attack, Coney in a Trap also prevents the enemy from attacking you a second time during the combat phase. Spring the Trap allows you to get some of your high cost ranger allies into play at a discount. Your primary targets for this card should be Anborn, Faramir and possibly an Ithilien Archer.

Finally, The Great Hunt has to be one of my personal favorite mono events in the entire game, letting you discard any non-unique enemy in the staging area. Unfortunately, it is not possible to play The Great Hunt at a discount with Seasoned Forager as it requires you to use resources from three different heroes.

The Opening Hand

In your opening hand you're primarily looking for Seasoned Forager and a couple of your favourite traps. Seeing Mithrandir's Advice is awesome for additional card draw. You are also looking for allies to put into play like a Warden of Healing, *Henamarth Riversong or a Mirkwood Explorer. If you already have all the above, being able to pair these with It Should Be Spared or Spring the Trap can be extremely useful early on. Finally, the Stone of Elostirion** can be particularly useful if you know a bad treachery us coming up.

Sideboard

This deck is very flexible, and you should really adapt it to the type of scenario you're up against. The Main Deck runs a total of 12 traps. If, for some reason, you are venturing into the Hills of Emyn Muil, you may want to ditch some of your Ranger Spears and a couple excess traps or trap-centred events in exchange for cards like Strider's Path, or The Hidden Way and a few extra allies such as Ghân-buri-Ghân or the Forest Road Traveler. I would not cut down too much on attachments, having Haleth's ability miss is not something you want to happen. Instead, it is not a bad idea to include the Woodmen's Path and the Woodmen's Clearing.

Dragncard Replays

To view these replays you click the replay link, this will take you to a dragncards room with the final gamestate loaded. Rewind to the start of turn 1 and then let it play out, going forwards step by step.

• replay 1

  Full play through of Passage Through Mirkwood

• replay 2

  Full play through of Journey down the Anduin

• replay 3

  Full play through of The Hills of Emyn Muil

Strengths and Weaknesses

The deck is excellent for multiplayer scenarios where your primarily playing a support role. Aside from general support with questing and combat, it brings your group a form of control over the encounter deck. With Henamarth Riversong and Firyal you will know to some extent what the encounter deck is going to throw your way. If you feel like you need even more control, Interrogation is an excellent choice. #trap a high enemy in a snare and interrogate it as often as you can.

The main weakness of this deck is defending. All heroes have only 1 which isn't any good. You need to rely on your bulkier allies such as Faramir and Firyal to defend against attacks. Because of this, the deck is also rather difficult to manage in solo play. Additionally, this deck does not have any means to deal with treacheries aside from discarding them with Firyal.

Lore

While wandering the woods Far Anorien, Dinkledo- , I mean Haleth happened upon Celador and Damrod, two esteemed members of the Ithilien Rangers Guild. She declared she intends to join the Guild, put on her Ring of Charisma and was promptly accepted.

The Rangers of Ithilien keep watch over the lands of Gondor. Whether this requires distracting foes or exploring safe paths through treacherous terrain. Ever since Haleth joined the Rangers she has been a valuable scout, providing them with valuable information about the enemies movements through her vast network of spies.