Children of Rohan 1.0

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• 1.0

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

Theme: The children of Théoden

Played Against: Nightmare The Fords of Isen

"Her children he took into his house, calling them son and daughter. He had only one child of his own, Théodred his son, then twenty-four years old; for the queen Elfhild had died in childbirth, and Théoden did not wed again. Éomer and Éowyn grew up at Edoras and saw the dark shadow fall on the halls of Théoden."

—Annals of the Kings and Rulers: The House of Eorl, Appendix A, The Return of the King

Strategy

This is a Voltron-Hero deck that gets good use out of some of the Rohan toys.

Questing

Both Éowyn and Théodred quest every round, giving the deck a base of at least 5—6 if I have a card to discard to Éowyn's ability (and with all of these Uniques, I usually do). Which of those two Heroes gets Théodred's extra resource depends on what I have in my hand, but in practice it usually goes to go to Éowyn since the deck runs a little blue. I'm usually looking to get a good questing Ally like West Road Traveller in my starting hand to ensure I'm off to a good start as far as goes, but I wouldn't mulligan away any decently diverse hand.

Combat

The deck has multiple ways of handling defense. The easiest is chump blocking with 1-cost Allies like Snowbourn Scout. I can even do it repeatedly once I get Gúthwinë into play. Ally Elfhelm can be used in a similar fashion, and he has the advantage of me not needing to spend the resource until I'm sure I actually need a defender.

My second option is to use Warden of Helm's Deep as a slightly sturdier defender. He's not going to survive any big attacks, but he's great for tanking some of the smaller Enemies, meaning he's pretty effective if I can get him down in the early game. Late game, when I'm engaging some of the bigger Enemies, I like to use the combo of Snowmane and Golden Shield on Éowyn as my repeatable defender with up to 6 (if I save her discard ability until the combat phase).

Most of the attack duties are handled by Éomer. Once equipped with his trusty steed Firefoot and his sword Gúthwinë he's truly a force to be reckoned with, sometimes able to take out two Enemies with a single blow and then return an Ally from my discard pile to my hand. And there are plenty of Allies in the deck with discard abilities that I can use to trigger his Response for the extra +2 when I need it.

Card Draw (or lack thereof)

The Ally selection is well-rounded, ensuring that I have whatever extra stats I need even without any additional card draw. Plus, between Westfold Horse-breeder, Mustering the Rohirrim, and Open the Armory I have plenty of ways to hunt through my deck and find whatever it is I'm looking for at any point in time. Even if these cards just thin my deck of extra Uniques for me to discard to Éowyn's ability, they rarely whiff.

The decision to use deck-searching abilities instead of regular old card draw was a deliberate one to help me with the particular challenges of The Fords of Isen. Against other quests, I'd probably substitute Valiant Sacrifice in for Mustering the Rohirrim.

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