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Shadows

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:54 pm

Joined: 21 Aug 2006 Posts: 136 Location: the underworld

--- description ---
How to make a deck based around Denethor, Last Ruling Steward.
--- end description ---

Hey there, thanks for reading this. The aim of this article is to give some insight into making a competitve deck around Denethor, Last Ruling Steward.

We’ll start by putting down some of the key cards to go into our deck, and why they’re in there.

Denethor, Last Ruling Steward - the deck’s namesake, and key companion his ability to remove possesions for exertions is your principle way of getting past minions

Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow - makes Aragorn an archer, and allows for easy extra wounds with it’s threat adding ability.

Faramir’s Bow - makes faramir an archer, and with ranger’s cloak, we might be able to use it’s second ability to finish minions off aswell.

Eowyn, Lady of Ithilien - with a horse is often defender+1 and can lay the finishing blow on sickening numbers of minions as a result.

Gondor Bowmen - +2 archery, and an extra exertion if used by boromir.

Now we have our key cards, let’s look at some of the other important cards for the deck:

Stewards Legacy - means that with gondor bowmen we can get extra exertions off boromir. also has rather useful abilites for faramir and denethor, so an all round good choice.

No Travellers in this Land - Extra wounding, and if used with Boromir and Stewards Legacy it can be used to exert an additional minion.

Kingsfoil - provides healing, and can be removed by denethor

Leowyn - heals eowyn and cycles cards, both of which are extremely important.

Ok, now we’ve got the core of our deck, let’s put together a decklist. in terms of shadow, it could be paired with a stopping shadow, in order to get the most from it’s double moving abilities, or it could equally be increased in size and paired with a swarm, as with leowyn, and the fact everything i the deck gets played straight out of hand, it cycles extremely well.

FP:34

Starting:
1x Boromir, Bearer of Council
1x The One Ring, Answer to All Riddles
1x Denethor, Last Ruling Steward
1x Aragorn, Strider
Companions/Allies:
2x Faramir, Son of Denethor
1x Eowyn, Lady of Ithilien
1x Leowyn
Possesions:
4x Ithilien Blade
4x Ranger’s Cloak
4x Kingsfoil
1x Ranger’s Sword
1x Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow
1x Faramir’s Bow
1x Eowyn’s Sword, Dernhelm’s Blade
1x Rohirrim Mount
Events:
4x No Travellers in this Land
Conditions:
4x Gondor Bowmen
1x Stewards Legacy
1x The Saga of Elendil
1x Boromir, My Brother

And now for the strategy behind the deck:

The basic premise of the deck is to use Denethor, Last Ruling Steward’s rather tasty text. With his ability you can exhaust any minion in the game, by simply removing 2 gondor possesions from the game. this is an ability asking to be abused so lets go ahead and do just that.

Now obviously the first issue here is that no matter how many exertions we do, we need some way to finish minions off, and to do that we need some wounding. so we’ll start by putting in a couple of bows, and eowyn, lady of ithilien.

The main idea with this deck is therefore to use Denethor and cards like Gondor Bowmen to bring minions down. As Denethor is the key to the deck we’ll put him in our starting fellowship. we’ll also start Aragorn, Strider as he is a nice strong gondor companion, and it means we can get aragorn’s bow out straight away, allowing for a quick source of wounding. we’ll also use boromir as our ring-bearer, because with a stewards’ legacy out, we can do even more exertions, and he is quite useful for discarding minions for the double-move with his skirmish text.

Faramir is a good companion to use, because he can be an archer with his bow, and if we use faramir, son of denethor then we can shut down nasty minions like easterling captain and ulaire enquea, thrall of the one.

you should usually bid one, and if you win the bid use the prancing pony to grab faramir, so that you have a good solid base of companions. you should never be afraid to play all the gondor possesions in your hand, because they are all cheap, and even if you don’t use them with denethor, they all have useful abilities anyway. once your stewards legacy is out, then boromir should generally be used for the cost of the gondor bowmen, as it nets you another exertion.

eowyn is invaluable in terms of wounding, and you should never be afraid of using a couple of the kingsfoil’s up to heal her, and get some more wounds out of her (after all you have plenty of possesions to spare.)

you should attempt to double-move as often as possible, generally speaking if you have aragorn’s bow and faramir’s bow out, and a couple of possesions other than those in play you should be able to pull off a double.

Possible match ups:

Beasterlings: Quite a nasty match -up with their wound preventing, but they only have 4 polearms, so if you use the kingsfoil’s for healing, and stack faramir with health boosters you should be able to deal with the captains, and your wounding should ensure you are only fighting a captain by himself.

Corsairs: Ugh. could be almost certain death to you, with all their possesion discarding. hopefully your other wounding cards will be able to see you through, but it will be tough. if you see alot of them, consider putting in a couple for the mark in order to sink their ships.

Ninja Gollum: An easy match-up. Shelob and gollum can be easily exhausted and shot down, and faramir can deal with gollum if shelob doesn’t stop him skirmishing, and if she does case you can just stick heavily wounded shelob against eowyn. you can imagine the results.

Nazgul Corruption: Can be quite difficult, but faramir can shut down enquea. apart from that it’s just a case of playing your game well, and hoping they don’t get too many between nazgul and prey and go overwhelming your denethor. other than it should be close, but come down in your favour. consider putting in a scroll of isildur and a couple sapling of the white tree if you play alot of corruption.

Forestguls - an easy match, as they only play a few big minions, which means it shouldn’t be too hard to bring them down with denethor and an archery wound or two.

Swarm of any kind - could be quite nasty, as they tend to only have one health, so you can’t use denethor, and if they pull off a couple of big ones your aragorn’s bow capabilities will be used up, as will your gondor bowmen. eowyn isn’t much use as they will probably won’t have any wounds either.
Double as much as possible, so they have as little time as possible to set up, because you will need next to nothing equipment to run against an un-set up swarm. boromir, my brother can be a live saver here, as you can keep some possesions in hand and then burn them to stop boromir being overwhelmed.

Dunland - toughest match-up by far. you can’t exert them, so eowyn and denethor are useless. they can probably assign where they like, and will kill your possesions when they do. also hides will absorb your archery wounding. seriously consider adding a couple fell deeds awake and then using boromir, my brother to burn your (useless) possesions to keep those sites liberated.

Overall this deck is strong in the fact that so long as the core of the deck (Denethor,between 10-15 gondor possesions, and a couple of wounding abilities) is there, the rest of it can be customised to adapt to whatever shadow your opponent is playing be it:

- adding scroll of isildur and artifacts against corruption

- fell deeds awake to fight dunland and beseigers

- blade of gondor to help against swarm

- for the mark or hope renewed to help against corsairs.

Now obviously this deck is for expanded format. however with a few changes it can be just as viable for standard.

standard format decklist:

Total:32

Starting:
1x Boromir, Bearer of Council
1x The One Ring, The Ring of Doom
1x Denethor, Last Ruling Steward
1x Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver
Companions/Allies
2x Eowyn, Lady of Ithilien
2x Aragorn, Thorongil
1x Leowyn
Possesions:
4x Ithilien Blade
4x Ranger’s Cloak
4x Kingsfoil
2x Sapling of the White Tree
1x Scroll of Isildur
1x Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow
1x Eowyn’s Sword, Dernhelm’s Blade
1x Rohirrim Mount
1x Coif
Events:
4x No Travellers in this Land
Conditions:
2x Stewards Legacy

For the standard deck, the same strategies as the expanded one should be appiled, but this time the wounding is slightly more focused on Eowyn, and hence an extra copy has been included. As a further addition, due to the increased amount of corruption seen in standard, i’ve added 2 saplings and a scroll of isildur to help boromir’s resistance. Also the prancing pony should be used to grab aragorn instead. Finally we use four copies of no travellers in this land instead of gondor bowmen.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this has provided a good starting place (or actual deck) for using the awesome Denethor, Last Ruling Steward, in either expanded or standard.

Last edited by Shadows on Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:29 am; edited 6 times in total

elf lvr

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 3:44 pm

Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 3065 Location: Rivendell

Wow, looks really good! A nice looking deck, and a good article. Besides a few grammar errors, I see no major problems, so it looks like a 4, maybe 5 from me.

Might you consider using Boromir, Doomed Heir? With all your possessions (even with some being discarded) he can be a good fighting force, and he can exert with his own game text to power stewards legacy, even though skirmish exertions can only be used by Eowyn... just a thought, you could still use a Gondor

r-b, Isildur, so... or you could use frodo and shadowplay... but im just throwing out ideas.

Like I said before, nice strategy and good article!

Happy Hunting! Elf Lvr
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Shadows

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 3:51 pm

Joined: 21 Aug 2006 Posts: 136 Location: the underworld

Thanks.

I thought about Isildur, but after testing Boromir is the most reliable fo the ring-bearers. There isn’t enough space to reliably protect frodo, and if Isildur’s the ring-bearer there isn’t really enough space to add in Boromir, Doomed Heir into the deck.

Felipe Musco

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 3:53 pm

Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

I didn’t like it very much. Denethor is not largely used because it provides HUGE card disadvantage, for very little gain, not to mention that, to get a cool effect out of his ability, you have to have OTHER cards in play along with it...
The deck’s IDEA I like, I’ve always liked to build decks around less-than-average cards (ok, Denethor is not exactly one of those, but still doesn’t see a lot of play), although I think this was not the best choice, since a deck revolving around card disadvantage may be bound for crumbling after site 6-7...
On the other hand, the article was well written, although I missed having "more" to read, and I think that, before explaining HOW the deck PLAYS, you should have posted the deck itself, it’s pretty messy to read about a deck you haven’t seen yet.
Points for writing style, though!

I don't like YOU.

corvus

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 4:15 pm

Joined: 13 Oct 2006 Posts: 1696 Location: Roaming, but dangerous!!!

Hey there, interesting article, nice decks. a 4 from me.
Let me point sth out: You cannot use Brego’s ability if you can’t remove 2 tokens, so replace him with sth else.

Click here if you want to trade some foils away Wink

Far, Far beyond the island we dwelt in shapes of twilight
Through draught and weary days
Through grief and endless pain

Shadows

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 6:55 am

Joined: 21 Aug 2006 Posts: 136 Location: the underworld

Thanks Guys.

Corvus - I didn’t think about that with Brego, but now that you mention, you’re right. Decklist updated to function better (hopefully) without Brego.

Felipe - I don’t see how Denethor provides card disadvantage for very little gain, exerting a minion twice for the loss of effectively one card is surely quite good.

I don’t see how removing one kingsfoil from the game to get 2 exertions is any worse than using one elven marksmanship to get 2 extra wounds in an elven archery deck, either way its one card.

Also of course Denethor needs other cards to back his ability up, but can you name me one card or strategy that doesn’t need any other cards to make it successful?

Whilst it is bad for card disadvantage, you are setting your shadow up nicely with all this playing out of hand, so as well as setting up for a shadow kill, you also have a free peoples that can run easily.

Finally you say it could be in trouble by site 6 or 7, but it’s not like you have to remove that many possesions combined with the wounding to bring minions down, and if elven events can survive when they pack a similar number of events to the number of possesions i’m using, and they do fine why shouldn’t this. In playtesting i’ve never run out of wounding capabilities, so please test-play the deck and see if you do.

Also you say you’d like more to read, so please could I have some suggestions on what else I could put in to fill it out?

Thank you for the formatting advice though, the decklist is now before the strategy.

Thanks all.

sperzdechly

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:46 am

Joined: 05 May 2006 Posts: 131 Location: Warsaw (Poland)

Good idea, good article. My remarks concerning expanded deck:
1. Instead of Kingsfoil put Athelas
2. Instead Dernhelm’s Blade put Spear of the Mark
3. I would strongly suggest including 2 Ranger’s Longbows
4. 3 Eowyns is a must have IMO
5. Maybe Ring of Doom instead of AtAR?
6. Last Throw could be useful

What is nice in this deck, that it uses several strategies during one game. In 1st region 1 you set up possesions and use Ithilien Blades to get rid of minions. In 2nd region you use Denethor+archery. In 3rd region you can use Denethor+archery and/or Denethor+Eowyn. I would suggest using 3 Eowyns and Spear, because of swarms, which can be very dangerous for this deck.

Article is properly done, but nowdays you have to do something more to get the prize, because there is a lot of very good articles on this forum. 4 from me. Good luck!

Felipe Musco

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:21 pm

Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

I’m currently playtesting, to see if my first impressions check. So far, I have had to discard some important possessions on a more-than-wanted amount of games... Yep, 3 Eowyns are a must, or at least 2. The suggestions above are quite good.

I don't like YOU.

sickofpalantirs

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 1:44 pm

Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 7750 Location: somwhere, over the rainbow way up high. There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.

i very interesting articles I really don’t have any complaints(or mine have been asked)

you get a 5.

Sop's haves/ top wants Exclamation

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Spammers really are amazing creatures. You can learn all there is to know about their ways in a month. And yet, after a hundred years, they can still surprise you. Razz

LunaticFringe

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 7:39 pm

Joined: 03 Sep 2005 Posts: 60 Location:

Brego would be justified with the inclusion of Noble Leaders; that, and a Guarded City or two. The problem is finding space for them. Considering how many wounds you could conceivably dish without using Eowyn, you could remove her package and go with two NL and two GC. Leaders would be a good last ditch workaround for large, healthy minions that you couldn’t yet get a couple wounds in on.

In respect to the expanded comment concerning the use of the Spear in the place of Dernhelm’s Blade is faulty. The idea is to kill off minions; Eowyn kills off minions prior to the skirmish. She kills the minion she’s dealing with in the skirmish. The deck is not going to see many swarms that it can’t work through, so the utility of the swap is wasted.

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