LotR TCG Wiki → Card Sets:  All 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 → Forums:  TLHH CC

 
Cobra Cards Player Community Forum Index
 Forum index » Lord of the Rings TCG » LOTR TCG Deck Clinics » Standard
Author Message
fineltour
Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:00 pm
Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 3 Location:
--- description ---
This deck abuses Gothmog and the Saruman follower to kill Fellowships outside skirmishes.
--- end description ---


Saruman, Servant of Sauron x4
Mouth of Sauron x4
Whispers in the Dark x4
Pavise
Howdah x4
Gothmog, Morgul Leader x4
Frenzy of Arrows x4
Isengard Underling x4

(29 cards)

In the initial draw, you’re looking for two cards : Saruman and the Mouth of Sauron. With just 7 twillight at site 2, you can play both and then use the Mouth to draw Whispers to play upon Saruman from your draw pile. From then on, the Fellowship will be exerting at the beginning of each Maneauver phase. Once you find an Orc, Frenzy (4 arrows min) and Gothmog (3 arrows min) add minion archery. Your best bet for early sights are City Gates (add threats) or Dootway to Doom (wound 2 characters) at 2 and then Steward’s Tomb to prevent healing at 3. The Underling pulls Frenzy back out while Howdah adds to archery as well. It is possible to exhaust the Fellowship by 3 and prevent them from healing before they move forward.

There are multiple copies of Saruman, so if they discard one, you can start over if you haven’t played all your Whispers. For faster exerting, throw in a Rapid Reload for the Mouth to pull out and exert companions. If you’re worried about Elven Armaments, use Bold and Cunning to discard possessions during skirmishes. Otherwise, throw in more minions to make sure that there is always someone in play to trigger the Maneauver and archery phases. The Mouth, Sauruman and Gothmog are all unique, so try to keep pair this with a Fellowship that can cycle well.
lem0nhead
Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:59 am
Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 2981 Location: Blood Island
Sounds thoroughly horrible. Well explained and good tactic. You seem to have thought of everything. Dont think theres anything id add to it. Its beyind sickening and broken as the day is long but killer none the less. Doubt much would survive that. Having said that a fellowship that discards followers will upset it slightly though theres nout you can do about that. Might want to try controlling the site path a bit as when i face gothmog i cycle the sites using travelled leader or such to play the minion archery is -3 so all u get is a net 3 archery coming your way.
Ban shampoo, demand real poo.
Popcorn My Trade List and CC References
"Smart guy, especially considering his head is filled with lemon juice and seeds. That boy’s juicy brain is FULL of good stuff" ~ DainIronfoot
"No fair! And all I got was an oily unconscious steward!" ~ Pippin.
"Okay, stop me if you've heard this one. An elf, a man, and a dwarf walk into the Riddermark..." ~ Eomer
LeoKula
Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 6:26 am
Joined: 31 Oct 2005 Posts: 479 Location: SP, Brazil
Nothing like abusing and combining bad written card texts Very Happy

Not being too optimistic, saruman + 3 howdah + gothmog + 2 frenzy of arrows + isengard ruined = 14 archery total + 2 exertions. That’s a lot of arrows Applause

Awesome idea Thumbs Up
lem0nhead
Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 6:28 am
Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 2981 Location: Blood Island
You do know the minmum deck size is 30 dont you?
Ban shampoo, demand real poo.
Popcorn My Trade List and CC References
"Smart guy, especially considering his head is filled with lemon juice and seeds. That boy’s juicy brain is FULL of good stuff" ~ DainIronfoot
"No fair! And all I got was an oily unconscious steward!" ~ Pippin.
"Okay, stop me if you've heard this one. An elf, a man, and a dwarf walk into the Riddermark..." ~ Eomer
NBarden
Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 11:49 am
Joined: 28 Dec 2006 Posts: 5468 Location: I don't know...
I actually beat smallman yesterday with an Orc/Men deck. (I think he’s like the Australian Champion).

My deck was...


I paired it with Rohan horns. And I almost decked out.

1x Countless Companies(12U58)
2x Forced March(13R108)
4x Goblin Hordes(11R123)
3x Unforgiving Depths(13C120)
4x Whisper in the Dark(18C77)
4x Frenzy of Arrows(18U79)
4x *Saruman, Servant of Sauron(17R38)
2x *Black Gate Sentry(15U98)
3x *Gothmog, Morgul Leader(18R80)
4x *Mumak Commander, Giant Among the Swertings(15R86)
4x Isengard Underling(11C125)
4x Orkish Lackey(17C80)
3x Orkish Smith(11C132)
4x Pavise(11C94)

How many broken cards can you cram in a deck?

I pulled it off even with the stupid mistake of not running any underground sites Rolling Eyes. Killed at 8 with 4 Frenzy, 3 Whisper, Gothmog and Saruman, Servant of Sauron.
Exclamation-Trade With MeExclamation
Popcorn Add the popcorn smiley to your sig, help it achieve world domination.
What if the hokey pokey really IS what its all about? Shocked
As I lay in bed staring at the stars last night, I thought to myself, "where the heck is the ceiling?"
Arrow Spotlight on....Sense of Obligation.
fineltour
Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:55 am
Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 3 Location:
my biggest problem is that i just don’t have much of a play group anymore (there’s basically just the two of us), so i don’t get as much feedback as i’d like. so, the question is "what do people consider broken?" i know i put the deck away because we both found the deck a bit boring after a couple plays, but what makes it "broken"?

whispers? without saruman it’s worthless and several factions have the ability to discard him and ringbound decks ignore the ability.

gothmog? he’s got a built in drawback that is pretty big.

frenzy? ok, i will certainly acknowledge that its a very strong card and my leading candidate for broken in this deck. but i don’t know that this is the card that puts it over the top. take out the orc cards and put in evil men archery and you’re still going to be crushing people.

i don’t really advocate decks that i think are unfair, but i came up with this when we were first trying out t&d strategies. (actually, i think i came up with this before t&d actually released, but it took a while to get around to building it). so, what is it that people think is "broken"? if you’re talking those 3 cards, then you’ve eliminated the entire deck. but if it is just gothmog and frenzy, then the saruman/whispers would still be a strong combo.

-really curious
-d
lem0nhead
Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:01 am
Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 2981 Location: Blood Island
Well saruman and whispers is only like under the watching eye so with condition removal its fine, but the fact theres no freeps cards to discard saruman except the horns is annoying. Gothmog is stupid but not broken. Without a doubt frenzy of arrows should never have been made, i can think of several erratas that would make it balanced but as it is its just sick. I wont play decks that use frenzy of arrows cos everyone on the online game does and its just dull facing deck after deck with this and isengard underlings playing it over and over again. And the orkish smith is extremely broken. Theres no point erratering goblin hordes or making it unique its the smith that abuses it once its discarded. So wrong.
Ban shampoo, demand real poo.
Popcorn My Trade List and CC References
"Smart guy, especially considering his head is filled with lemon juice and seeds. That boy’s juicy brain is FULL of good stuff" ~ DainIronfoot
"No fair! And all I got was an oily unconscious steward!" ~ Pippin.
"Okay, stop me if you've heard this one. An elf, a man, and a dwarf walk into the Riddermark..." ~ Eomer
fineltour
Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:05 am
Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 3 Location:
actually the gandolf librarian companion can also discard followers during the regroup. so with gondor, rohan and gandolf capable of getting rid of saruman, i don’t think it’s that out there.

personally, for frenzy, i think the best errata would be to half the arrows (1 arrow + 1/follower). i don’t really object to the card since it does hurt follower decks the way that few other things do, but i think the magnitude of the hurt is excessive.
LeoKula
Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:07 am
Joined: 31 Oct 2005 Posts: 479 Location: SP, Brazil
I think the big issue with this deck is that it’s not a strategy like elven telepathy or noble leaders... I mean it’s not something Decipher meant to do, this is more like a lot of cards with bad card texts combined so you have something to abuse...

In my opinion the combo with Saruman follower and Isengard Ruined should never happen in the first place, and whisper should say free peoples follower since it’s clearly a card that punishes followers, just like other cards meant to punish allies back in FOTR... but it seems to me that they just forgot to add this tiny detail. Frenzy of arrows is another clear anti-follower card that is bad written...

After all it seems like Decipher didn’t know what they were doing when they created this Saruman follower and by the way they haven’t even explained how it works. We all assume he goes back to the support area, but D never mentioned anything. They even said that followers couldn’t bear any cards, which leaves us wondering how they just printed a condition for followers with no further explanations.

This just raises the question on RoS and T&D brokenness that’s been fairly discussed over and over and will continue to be until they release a CRD that will look more like a book because I think it will have more erratas and clarifications in these two sets than all the erratas in all other sets together. Not to mention the X and R-lists that should be reviewed to leave us at least with some official formats to play this game after D drops it.
NBarden
Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 12:10 pm
Joined: 28 Dec 2006 Posts: 5468 Location: I don't know...
As a person who has played with this deck AND against this deck, I say that it is most definitely broken. Frenzy of Arrows + Isengard Underling means you can throw out an easy 16 archery, with +8 for each FP follower you spot. If you add in Mumak Commander and Orkish Lackey, it gets even worse.

Whisper in the Dark is not that overpowered, Gothmog is not that overpowered. But mix them all together with Frenzy of Arrows and that’s a total of 23 wounds per site! Add in 4x Howdah, and now you have 27 archery. ENTS can only take around 25-35 archery before everyone dies, and that’s a deck that runs 9 high vitality companions! Assuming a fellowship that runs 5 companions, that’s about 15-20 archery they can take before dying right off the bat!

Its broken!

But...its standard legal. So...back to the deck. I would run Goblin Hordes with the Smith and Unforgiving Depths. Cut 2x Gothmog, a Saruman, and a Mouth. Add 4x Goblin Hordes, 3 Smith, and 3 Unforgiving depths. That’s 35 cards, and even more broken fun.
Exclamation-Trade With MeExclamation
Popcorn Add the popcorn smiley to your sig, help it achieve world domination.
What if the hokey pokey really IS what its all about? Shocked
As I lay in bed staring at the stars last night, I thought to myself, "where the heck is the ceiling?"
Arrow Spotlight on....Sense of Obligation.

Display posts from previous:  

 Forum index » Lord of the Rings TCG » LOTR TCG Deck Clinics » Standard
All times are UTC - 4
Page 1 of 2 [11 Posts]   Goto page: 1, 2 Next
View previous topic   View next topic