Deck: Ride to Bruin

If you thought the hosts of Mordor were terrified to see the Rohirrim charging across the Pelennor Fields, just imagine if Rohan had been joined by giant bears. Without a doubt, this is one of the least thematic decks I’ve built in a while. On the other hand, it is more fun than a barrel of mead. Children of Eorl just released this week, and it provides this deck with a plethora of wonderful combinations.

The obvious use for Thengel is the fuel the Rohan Sacrifice archetype. Mustering Rohan allies after you sacrifice a Rohan ally allows a Rohan deck to avoid the tempo hit that these decks traditionally suffered. This remains the primary role that Thengel plays here, but the inclusion of The Last Alliance contract introduces an interesting, furry, wrinkle. After you discard a Beorning Skin-changer to bring big bears into play, you can use Thengel’s response to go fishing for a second bear. The ratio of allies in this deck means that it is safer to use this response for Rohan allies, so trying to muster a Beorning is the more high-risk decision. With a bit of luck, however, this deck can have some amazing starts.

What follows is an example first turn which is well within the real of possibility for this deck. Santa (Théoden) allows us to reduce the cost of Squire of the Mark to 0. Once we have a Rohan ally in play, our next Beorning ally costs 1 less (thanks to the contract). This allows us to play a Beorning Skin-changer for 1. During the combat phase, we first exhaust the contract to change the response on Squire of the Mark to read “Response: After a Rohan or Beorning ally you control is discarded from play,…”. Then we can discard the Skin-changer to put Papa-Bear (Beorn) into play from our hand. There are only 11 Beorning allies in the deck, so this next step is definitely a risk, but bears are nothing if not adventurous. We Trigger Thengel’s response for discarding the Skin-changer to search the top 5 cards of our deck for another Beorning and put it into play (exhausted). With any luck, we can find another Giant Bear or Beorning Bee-keeper. Next, we trigger the response of our (magically translated) Squire of the Mark to put the Beorning Skin-changer back into play (exhausted). Fortunately, the Skin-changer does not need to exhaust to shape-shift, So if we’re lucky enough to have another Beorning in hand, we can immediately discard the Beorning Skin-changer again, to put that Beorning into play.

Given the ratio of Beorning to Rohan allies in this deck, it is entirely possible that the Thengel response whiffs. Even so, this example setup would leave us with two large angry bears (11 resources or so) in play by the end of the first combat phase! If we got lucky enough for Thengel’s response to find a fuzzy friend, we could have as many as 16 resources worth of bears in play on the first round. The fact that we now have no Rohan allies in play simply means that we play the next one at a discount of 2 (1 for the contract, one from Théoden) on the subsequent turn.

If you’re worried about not having enough ursine targets for Skin-changer to choose from, you can use the contract to change his text to include Beorning or Rohan allies for mustering. One of my favorite uses for the contract is to change the wording on The Muster of Rohan to read:

While paying for The Muster of Rohan, each Rohan or Beorning hero you control is considered to have a Spirit icon.

Planning Action: Search the top 10 cards of your deck for up to 4 Rohan or Beorning allies and put them into play. Shuffle your deck. If any of those allies are still in play at the end of the round, discard them.

Note that both instances of the Rohan trait in the original text have been changed to Rohan or Beorning. This means that Grimbeorn the OId gains a Spirit resource icon to help pay for the event. Not only do we then get to summon an army of bears into play (along with any Rohan allies which may be helpful), but they then go to the discard pile where the Skin-changer can put them into play permanently. Don’t forget that you can respond to one of these four allies being discarded by triggering Thengel’s ability, brining yet another ally into play. The shenanigans in this deck are deeper than a winter cave.

There are many things to like about the work being done by ALeP. My personal favorite is how the new cards provide such a variety of interesting options. Without exaggeration, this article could have been twice as long and I still would not have scratched the surface of all of the different ways to play this deck. Rohan Sacrifice has intrigued me as an archetype since I opened my first Shadows of Mirkwood APs, but the resource and tempo hit always seemed to hold it back. Between Horn of the Mark, The Muster of Rohan, and all of the new toys we have in Children of Eorl, this archetype is truly ready for its day in the sun. That applies even if you make the (misguided) decision not to invite bears to your war party.

You can find the full deck list on RingsDB. Let me know in the comments what you think of this mash-up of a deck. I encourage everyone to check out Children of Eorl. I hope that my readers have as much fun building and playing decks with these new cards as I am having.