Deck Tech: Beorn SMASH! 2.0

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• 2.0
• 1.0

Hey, welcome back for week three of Deck Tech. Last week I posted an Elven-light spam deck that turns Éowyn into a master quester and very competent combatant.

This week's deck is different. Back in the core set days, every deck had to have a plan for how to deal with the Hill Troll when it got to 30 threat. And if you started at 30 (or more!) threat, that plan had to come to fruition very fast. Lots of Feint, lots of Forest Snare, back in the early days.

This deck just says to hell with all of that nonsense. Beorn can defend the troll without taking too much damage. And then you just need a little bit of a boost from an ally to kill it outright. (I know, if you bring in Aragorn instead of Mablung, you don't even need an ally. But the resource acceleration is important to get out the expensive eagles.)

Before we get too much further, though, I have to warn you. This deck is not an amazing deck. You won't crush difficult scenarios without breaking a sweat. Your threat will rise at an astronomical rate, sometimes.

And all of that is not going to matter. You get to bring out the big bear and smack down all of your foes in the blink of an eye.

Quest 1: Journey Along the Anduin

I already talked about Hill Troll murder, so this is where I put my money where my mouth is.

Setup just draws me the Hill Troll on side 1A, so the staging area starts off looking good. Any enemies would be no problem, but locations could mean a lot of threat in the first turn. I play a Vassal of the Windlord and quest with none of my characters. Staging reveals The Necromancer's Reach for a whopping zero damage. The Hill Troll is engaged, Beorn takes 6 damage, and the Hill Troll is soundly smashed.

From there, with a totally clear staging area, the deck makes slow and steady progress via questing. The encounter deck also served up the second Hill Troll, Chieftain Ufthak, and a Marsh Adder for a tidy sum of victory points before I found the first Trained for War.

Battle questing made short work of stage 2 after that, and the mop up of enemies at the end was nice and quick.

Final score: 138. 10 full rounds, 42 threat, 11 damage on heroes, 15 vp.

Quest 2: Into Ithilien

And for extra challenge, I'm trying to keep Celador alive.

Good news is, I start the game with Feint in hand and two 5 or 6 attack enemies in the staging area. For the first few rounds, the deck feels like a dunedain deck, as the enemies keep coming as fast as I can clear them out. But only two characters have left play when we progress out of stage one, so Celador is alive and we move to questing.

Fortunately, I've saved Trained for War for this, so we make progress over a few rounds. I don't want to quest too aggressively, though, just in case any of the really annoying enemies come out. But then I forgot about Blocking Wargs, and Celador dies a valiant death. (I could reset here, but we're so close to the end!)

Stage 3 forces me to siege quest thanks to a very high threat level, but Winged Guardian and Gondorian Shield on Mablung see us through in one round before I threat out.

Final score: 147. 9 full rounds, 48 threat, 9 damage on heroes, and 0 vp.

Quest 3: Shadow and Flame

I restarted this quest 3 times because I didn't have a Feint ready to go for the first balrog attack. Which is a classic way of shutting down his shenanigans. But Durin's Bane still chewed me up and spit me out.

Depending on the cards you get from the encounter deck, this should be doable. But the mechanics of Durin's Bane work against this deck. Counterspell stops the Feint or Trained for War. The balrog not leaving the staging area means you get fewer resources than you would against a traditional enemy heavy quest, and the willpower burden for non-battle questing is higher.

I did make it past stage 1 twice, but my threat was too high to quest through stage 2 as well, though the deck could easily put enough damage on the balrog.

If you feel like trying it, let me know how it goes! I think the deck can definitely win, but everything is going to get messy.

Play Tips

1. Book of Eldacar is for recurring Trained for War. Hama recurs Feint. You should only need to battle quest a few times in most quests, so putting it back into your deck isn't a huge problem. Feint is pretty key to keeping your attackers alive often, though, so you want it available every round.

2. Spend all your resources if you want. Mablung will give you the extra resource you need for Feint.

3. Beorn is brave. Beorn with Landroval on the table is fearless. You want him to be destroyed, and you can afford to play Landroval again.

4. Dúnedain Hunter with Mablung gives you an extra resource in the planning phase , so you can play more cards than you think.

5. Spend Beorn's resource every round. You don't want him to be destroyed with any resources on him.

Next week I can't promise I'll stay away from or again, but we'll see what the week brings. And if you have a deck you want written up, let me know!