Leaf and Land 1.0

• Versions
• 3.0
• 2.0
• 1.0

This is a thematic deck built for an ongoing series on my blog, Darkling Door.

Theme: Silvan

Played Against: Nightmare The Redhorn Gate

"In Dwimordene, in Lórien

Seldom have walked the feet of Men,

Few mortal eyes have seen the light

That lies there ever, long and bright."

—Gandalf, The King of the Golden Hall, The Two Towers

Strategy

This has quickly become my favorite Silvan deck yet!

At its core, it works just like any other Silvan deck: I play Silvan Allies down to get Celeborn's bonus. Galadriel lets them get double use out of those extra stats, allowing them to contribute to both the quest phase and the combat phase. The next round, once they are no longer benefiting from Celeborn's boost, I use an Event like Island Amid Perils, The Tree People, or Feigned Voices to pull them back into my hand so I can trigger their Enters Play ability a second time. That's all stock-in-trade for your standard Silvan deck.

The addition of Hero Gandalf adds an extra layer on top of the already-interesting Silvan fare. He allows me to include Silvan Allies from all four spheres, rather than having to pick between and . But he can also play the 0-cost Silvan-bouncing Events from the top of my deck, effectively resulting in free card draw. Combined with Galadriel's ability to exhaust in exchange for drawing 1 card and -1 threat, this deck draws cards surprisingly quickly.

The trick to playing this deck is in the timing: It's usually better for me to play whatever 0-cost Event happens to be on top of the deck than one from my hand (because it equates to free card draw). When Gandalf can't play the card on top of the deck, I usually trigger Galadriel's ability in the hopes of getting something better on top.

Attachments

My Heroes don't have any natural or icons, but as long as they're the top card of my deck, Gandalf can play cards from those spheres. There are only 2 copies of Wizard Pipe in the deck, so I need to be careful about drawing or cards into my hand if I haven't found one yet. Nenya gives Galadriel the resource icon, though, so the cards are slightly less risky than the few cards. In practice, this deck has so much card draw that a few dead cards don't hurt it too badly, and it shouldn't be too long before the Pipe decides to turn up.

The real star of the show here is Narya. Once Gandalf has found his ring, he can exhaust to ready two Allies and give them +1 to and . The best part is that this stacks with Celeborn's boost, turning wimpy Allies into stalwart heroes during the combat phase. In the late game, I frequently use Galadriel's Handmaiden as my main defender!

Threat

Even though it starts at 34, threat isn't a problem for this deck. Between triggering Galadriel's ability every round, Island Amid Perils, and Galadriel's Handmaiden, there's plenty of threat reduction to go around. So far all of my games have finished with my threat somewhere in the mid-twenties.

Mulligan

Unlike most decks I play, I haven't found any single card worth mulliganing for over the others. No one card is required for the smooth functioning of this deck. Instead, I usually mulligan away any hand that has too many or cards if it doesn't also contain a way to play them.

Sideboard

This is the deck as I tuned it against The Redhorn Gate, which has the Arwen Objective Ally who grants an extra resource per turn. I suspect this affected my resource balance somewhat, so when I take this deck against other quests I'll probably make room for at least 2x Gandalf's Staff.

Furthermore, depending on the needs of the quest, I could see Galadhon Archer being useful for a little extra ranged , an extra Galadhrim Healer for a little more healing, or an extra copy of Nenya if early game is at a premium.

Cards that could be removed to make room:

• Hithlain
• A Test of Will
• Flame of Anor
• The Wizards's Voice

► For more analysis, check out my blog post on this deck.