Into the West + Every Other Contract

Part 3

With the release of Beyond the Original Bargain, I am now working on a follow up to my original article on Into the West from over two and a half years ago. For that original article I built a bunch of Into the West decks--this time I'm building a bunch of decks that combine Into the West with every other contract. When I've published that article I will update this deck description with a link to it, and that article will have all my thoughts on this particular contract combination.

Playing this Deck

Do you like starting with 5 dwarves in play? Do you hate having to use Bombur to make that happen? Well with Into the West you start with a free ally, and now that you can combine it with Bond of Friendship, that gives you 5 dwarves during setup.

This deck was a huge challenge to create. Combining the deckbuilding restrictions of both contracts means that you are basically doing a puzzle, trying to fill the 50 cards with exactly the right combination of spheres and card-costs. But I'm fairly happy with the result.

This deck's biggest challenge is defense. In my testing of this deck I tended to load up defensive attachments on Nori since he is the only hero with more than one defense. Speaking of Nori, his Response is going to be very important since this deck starts at a whopping 42 threat. But don't let that scare you! Into the West will keep your dwarves cycling fast enough that your threat will be dropping quick. The first time I tested this deck I ended the game in the mid-twenties for threat.

Final thing, I know some of the card choices are weird. Lay of the Nauglamír in a deck where most of the allies are too expensive to come into play from it? Listen, I needed more 5-cost cards. At least it's Devoted. And it can hit your Ered Luin Miner and Hidden Cache!