69 - The Siege of Gondor (Progression Series)

This is another fellowship continuing on in my goal to play through all of the quests in release order to learn how all (or most) of the cards interact with one another. The first fellowship for the quests in the core set can be found here, and it contains a slightly more detailed overview of what I'm going for with building these decks. As always, any feedback is appreciated so that I can continue to learn more!

I'm not a huge fan of this particular scenario, so I figured it was ok to break out some of the big guns from this time period of the game (even if Caldara functions a bit differently now than she did back then). I don't think I've actually used a Glóin deck yet in the Progression playthroughs, and only used Caldara back in the Dunland Trap, so I don't feel overly bad about taking power decks at a quest that doesn't really need them.

The Port of Pelargir locations actually shut down Gloin pretty well, so this particular strategy isn't the absolute best here, but having a nice soak for all of that damage and being able to avoid extra encounter cards is worth traveling there and delaying a round (or two if another comes out later) in my opinion. In my games I was pretty regularly sitting around 5 or 6 tokens on the Corsair Fleet at the end, which isn't amazing but is still survivable in Pelennor if this were in Campaign Mode.

The Caldara deck is fairly easy to pilot, with Zigil Miner and Imladris Stargazer being the classic combo to fill up the discard pile and get enough resources to play with the newly acquired Prince Imrahil ally that really makes this deck sing. Unfortunately all of the locations are immune to card effects, so no Northern Tracker or Rhovanion Outrider type shenanigans are available, but the pool of allies is large enough at this point that there is no lack of them available. Ring of Barahir can help Aragorn soak up a little more damage and pay for some of the more expensive cards and Warden of Healing readies if the game starts going on long enough that the decks start taking more damage than Gloin can handle.

On the other side of the table, Gloin pretty much just wants his Song of Battle so he can play some Citadel Plate and soak up the damage from the Fleet each round and spend it on some quality allies or Grim Resolve on the turn you need to travel to the Great Corsair Ship. I did pretty much adapt the deck straight from Sean's old Gloin decks, since I have really never bothered trying to build him (other than attempting some Well Preserved nonsense once just to say that I did it). It was fun getting to take him for a spin against a quest that really pushes out direct damage.