Breath of Arda [Suicide Deck] 1.0

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• 1.0

I had the honor of contributing to the community-made ALEP in a small way; namely, in the creation of the card Breath of Arda. I wanted to create a deck around this card, and realized it would make a great last play in a suicide deck.

The premise of this deck is to get as many eagles into play as possible, bank as much cash as you can, and then move all of the cards over to another player.

I first started building this as a Boromir Grey Wanderer deck. When I did, I realized the deck was good enough as a stand alone without the suicide component. I’ll be tweaking it and publishing it later. I did notice that I’d love to generate more resources, and that’s where Alagos comes into play.

Starting the Game You can make a decision based on the scenario -- You can choose either Stone of Elostirion or Elendilmir, the latter if you need more combat early on (put on Boromir), if you think you will need more of an early boost in allies (put on Alagos), or the former if you sense the resource cards are coming (can only go on Boromir). The setup timing is also interesting, depending on what version you play by. If you draw your opening hand first, you can make a decision based on this as well.

Opening Hand You’ll want Strider for early questing. Otherwise, you’ll want a good mix of resource generation and allies. A couple of Captain's Wisdom would be a huge play, as those act as free resources with no down side (since Boromir has many opportunities to ready)

First Three Rounds Get allies into play. Fill your hand and board with Eagles. Use the At the End of All Things side A pretty liberally; in the end, you won’t care about damage on the heroes. Note that if you chose Boromir as your Thief, you cannot trigger his second ability until the Hungry Creature is removed. Speaking of the Hungry Creature -- your deck has a good variety of cards to put progress down, but ultimately, you really only need to put one progress down to stave off discarding your hero too early (there are a LOT of zero cost cards in this deck... hopefully a treachery shadow comes up for you!). As for anything else… You have two monstrous stat heroes, so should be able to handle anything that comes your way.

Round Four Here it comes -- flip the End of All Things contract. Go and fetch one copy of Breath of Arda and Justice Shall Be Done. Besides what you have saved up, once you play Justice Shall Be Done, you will have 12 resources and 3 extra cards. Save exactly enough cash to return all the eagles to your hand momentarily and then put them back into play. After questing, push your threat up with Boromir, and toss him to give one last blast. Can you imagine running this deck across from a three hunters deck? Suddenly those lonely heroes have an army of eagles at their disposal.

There is one other quirk I had with this deck. Since you are running with 2 heroes, you can run a combo play of Vanish from Sight followed by Timely Aid. I assumed you can also play Pillars of the Kings in that same window, but maybe not. Regardless, the combo of these three cards should get some eagles in and get your hand full, toying around with threat that is, ultimately, inconsequential. This also could be a cool play if you happen to draw Breath and Justice early.

I am not so sure about Hidden Roosts and Man the Walls. The former is an eagle card, and feels like it should be an auto-include, just to thin the deck when you play The Eagles Are Coming!. On the other hand, threat is pretty inconsequential. It does provide card draw for the lesser allies. As for Man the Walls, if you are playing with a large group, this becomes better than Wealth of Gondor, and you can swap those out; granted, it doesn't actually provide resources that are needed for Breath of Arda, but it does help get the last few allies needed into play. Finally, Breath of Arda is a good enough card to include multiple copies of it, but it only becomes a necessary piece once the contract flips -- thus, I only included one (but you can include more, just take out Vanish and Pillars)