Deck Tech: Just One Core 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey everyone,

Chris here with a single core set deck and video, which will hopefully be helpful for new players and deckbuilders.

The core idea of the deck is pretty simple: Play good heroes, and fill the rest of the deck with the best 50 cards we can. And overall, we try to keep things on the cheaper side, because each sphere builds up allies more slowly than in a deck with only one sphere.

Card Choices: Heroes

Éowyn is an incredibly strong quester for a low threat cost. And questing is a huge part of winning or losing the game, so she's in.

Denethor gives us access to Lore, for healing and card draw, and he's a very solid defender for the core set quests. And even if you don't draw an enemy, or you just don't want to engage them, he still has a useful ability you can trigger during the combat phase. Just remember what card is on top of the deck, if you leave it there.

And lastly, Théodred. Extra resources are incredibly strong, and Sneak Attack with Gandalf will save games. Theodred's resources are also easier to get and more forgiving than Glóin.

Card Choices: Allies

I knew going in that the bulk of this deck would have to be allies. They take hits to prevent heroes from dying, and if their stats are split they can be very flexible. So the bulk of my ally choices fit a simple pattern: they have multiple useful stats and at least 2 hit points.

Erebor Hammersmith is probably the best of these. He's got one point in each of the "offense" stats, willpower and attack. And he's got one defense and three hit points, so he can defend a couple of small attacks and still stick around. And most of the rest of the allies I picked are similar. Wandering Took has almost the same stats, though the loss of health makes him more suited for offense.

And the allies that don't fit the mold have a really useful ability. Gléowine is great repeatable card draw, and with two of them in the core set, he'll show up reasonably often. Daughter of the Nimrodel can be huge, in the core set, because there's a lot of direct damage in those encounter decks. One activation heals Eowyn or Denethor to full.

Card Choices: The rest

After allies, card choices get a little bit murky.

I included all the card draw I could, Lórien's Wealth and Valiant Sacrifice. Choosing Denethor over Beravor means this deck needs to include more draw, but we start off a little better on defense.

I also included a lot of cards that smooth out questing a little bit. Radagast's Cunning, Secret Paths, The Favor of the Lady and Celebrían's Stone all help us get more mileage out of sending only a few characters to the quest. Which is important, because it lets us hold back allies for attacks.

The Galadhrim's Greeting is included just to protect from boss enemies. Being able to drop your threat by 6 to avoid something big until you've had a few more turns is potentially very strong in this limited pool.

But I left out shadow canceling (Hasty Stroke), some interesting readying effects, different sources of healing. There are a lot more options to try here than with the allies.

Final Thoughts:

The core only environment is rough! Especially with only one or two copies of some cards you'd really like to see more of.

Building this deck, though, I would say there's very little reason to buy more than two copies of the core set now. You get two copies of a lot of the best stuff in just one core.

If you've read all this, and you want to watch me squish some spiders, head on over to youtube to see the deck in action: Just One Core vs Too Many Spiders

Or you can stay here on ringsdb and check out my other decks. I've got a small series of decks built from one core set and a few extra expansions that would be a great follow up to this: Starter Decks