Con of the Rings is just around the corner, and will feature quests from the Heirs of Númenor and Against the Shadow cycle. Into Ithilien has long fascinated me as quest, in both its original and nightmare version. It’s been a while since I built a deck for this quest and the card pool has changed quite a bit in the ensuing years. As always, the full deck list can be found on RingsDB.
Heirs of Númenor was a pivotal moment in the life of the game. The Dwarrowdelf cycle brought a bevy of powerful (some might say too powerful) player cards to the table. In many ways Heirs was the designers’ reaction to the “One Deck” of the day which featured Spirit Glorfindel, Elrond and Vilya, and could easily crush every quest released. Quests like Into Ithilien and Siege of Cair Andros changed all that. Suddenly, a multi-sphere deck built around the incredible power of Vilya was not necessarily fast enough.
Battle and Siege quests forced players to reexamine their starting hero choices. Any deck which doesn’t include enough attack and defense from round one is in serious risk of being steamrolled by a horde of angry orcs or a stampeding Mûmak. Contracts were not even a shadow on the horizon when this quest was released, but it is an interesting exercise to take one of my favorite contracts and go back and design a different kind of solution.
It should be stated at the outset that this deck is designed for multiplayer. If you want to play it solo, you should replace Tireless Thoroughbred with some other, more useful, restricted attachment. The contract gives a discount on the treasure trove of weapons and armor at your disposal, which should help your heroes to be well-equipped in the early game. Beregond can easily be turned into a tank in this deck, which is critical in a quest so many powerful enemies.
Once it is flipped to the B side, the healing also mitigates some of the archery damage which makes this quest so deadly. Don’t forget Livery of the Tower as an alternative solution for rounds when direct damage is overwhelming. Most decks without Steward of Gondor will find Livery too expensive but Three Hunters decks are an exception to normal cost curves. The discount makes 1 cost attachments like Gondorian Shield free, and Raiment of War becomes a bargain at 1 cost.
Once each of your heroes has their full assortment of attachments all of your resources are reserved for events and many of those included here are free. This means that you can easily save up money on you heroes (especially Beregond) and use it with Livery to save them from the inevitable rain of arrows coming later. Mablung’s ability makes him an excellent choice for both Livery and Gondorian Fire. It is nice including that card in a deck as a thematic choice without guilt because it does not use the easy and obvious combo with Steward of Gondor.
The deck lacks willpower, by design, so unless you are pairing it with a questing powerhouse you will want to avoid stage 3 and instead let Celador leave before moving on to stage 2. For a Tactics deck, there is a plethora of action advantage available. In particular, the ALeP card Onward Into Battle is perfect for readying a hero with combat stats after they have committed to a Battle or Siege quest. Unexpected Courage is expensive, but there are not many Spirit cards included so it should be possible to save those resources. Without allies, we need to maximize the power of our heroes.
Tactics Boromir, in particular, shines in this deck. Load him up with Raiment of War, Gondorian Shield and even a Captain of Gondor. Then watch the favored son of Denethor become a one man wrecking crew. Beregond’s ability will help offset the threat raise incurred from readying Boromir. Secret Vigil is always an underrated card, but in a quest with so many high threat enemies and plenty of doomed effects it becomes even more useful.
A typical weakness of Tactics-heavy decks is their lack of healing. Into Ithilien especially highlights this gap in the Tactics arsenal, as it features perilous levels of direct damage effects. The healing provided by the B side of this contract is thus essential. The armor available here transformed already strong defenders into tanks, so they should not be taking too much damage in combat. However, multiplayer games are sure to feature an army of enemies with archery, so damage is going to be assigned despite your best efforts. Being able to receive and immediately heal 3 archery damage every round allows this deck to help other decks while they muster solutions for healing or damage prevention.
Avoiding hero conflict is an inherent challenge to ad hoc multiplayer, but this deck is powerful without the necessity of any unique player cards. Sure, Captain of Gondor is unique, but it is by no means essential for this deck to function. This genericity allows the deck to easily coordinate with many other kinds of decks in multiplayer games. Beregond has sentinel built-in, and a ranged Boromir riding a Thoroughbred will strike fear into every enemy. Secret Vigil is significantly more powerful in a three or four player game.
I wanted to keep this deck thematic, which does mean sacrificing the most powerful combinations. That said, it features powerful heroes with useful abilities who only becomes stronger as their don their battle gear. Still, players seeking power above all else are encouraged to either run the encounter deck or look for other, less thematically constrained decks. Better still, pair this with another deck which features cards like For Gondor! that boost your heroes, and see the true might of Gondor made manifest.
I look forward to seeing familiar faces and meeting new friends at this year’s Con of the Rings. With the evolution of the card pool and almost a full cycle’s worth of ALeP cards it will be interesting to see creative decks designed to tackle the quests from the Heirs of Númenor and Against the Shadow. These quests were challenging when the released, and I suspect many of them remains so. One of the real joys of this game is emphasizing strengths with new cards and discovering novel uses for existing cards and melding it all into a cohesive strategy.
Hall of Beorn 