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| Beyo |
![]() Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 8:13 pm |
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Joined: 22 Nov 2005
Posts: 60
Location: Poland
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--- description ---
Article focused on tribes of the East. Properly played they are still force to reckon with! So watch out..Easterlings are coming in!!!
Part 1 describes corruption strategies.
--- end description ---
Easterlings rarely seen in movie and seldom mentioned in book are very interesting shadow culture. Nothing certain is known about these conglomerate of ancient tribes of Rhun.
They’re second branch of human race created by Eru during First Age. They were brave warriors and played big role during Wars of Beleriand with House of Bor fighting on Maedhros side when House of Ulfang betrayed Free Peoples and stayed with the Morgoth.
And now..almost 5000 years leater Easterlings still make trouble to Free Peoples races. Allied with Sauron , they task is to attack Gondor and weak its forces to prepare ground for final strike of Mordor.
How these abilities are translated into LOTR TCG game? First, watch The Two Towers and look at scene when Frodo met Easterlings at Black Gate. Yes, their presence somehow affect The One Ring and you have the answer - Burdens, burdens, burdens 
So let’s look how to crush fellowship with TTT Easterlings based on burden manipulation.
Possessions
Easterling Polearm - best raider weapon ever made. With 2 burdens bearer is undestructible and only method of dealing with him is trying to discard it somehow.
Raider Halberd - Most universal weapon for Corsairs, Southrons and Easterlings but not effective in corruption strategy.
Raider Bow - to use it with easterlings is strange idea but...archer and ambush  definitely worth it cost of  .
Events and Conditions
This type of cards are designed to give benefit of burdens or to add them in some unusual ways.
Vision From Afar - cost but this is assignment action. Assign any minion to skirmish RB.FP player may add a burden to prevent.
Gathering to the summons - if FP won’t prevent ,add burden for cost  . Great card vs rangers.
Discovered - another strong card.Costs only  and when 3 burdens spotted it discards 2 FP conditions.
New Fear - high cost of  but if anyone wants to break the rule of 4 this card is an answer adding one burden for each companion over 4.
Men of Rhun - cost but +4 strength 
There are also some condition which are now defunct due to fact that ttt site path was rotated from Expanded and Standard formats but in block torunaments these cards are still great:
Eastern Emyn Muil - brilliant vs rangers and still valuable eg. for RB’s with ATAR.
Ithilien Wilderness - a musthave in tower block.It generates high twilight pool. A very good combo with site 9 Palantir Chamber.
Minions
Adding burdens for Easiss is not so difficult. Easterling Guard and Easterling Lieutanant do that where assigned to skirmish unbound companions. Rest of minions should benefit of these added burdens.
Easterling Army ,Easterling Skirmisher,and 4 copies of Easterling Captain are needed in deck. Captain is minion who can win a game for you. with 4 or 6 burdens spotted facing him is not risky but dangerous because he can pump up to unstoppable strength. Give him polearm and FP player has no possibility to kill him.
Example shadow side (33 cards)
Easterling Captain x 4 // main fighting minion
Vision From Afar x3// fight with Rb or have burden added
Gathering to the Summons x3 // if VFA prevented add burden
Ulaire Enquea (FOTR) // finish them!
Easterling Guard x4 //add burdens
Easterling Lieutenant x4 // add burdens
Men of Rhun x4 // pump-up
Easterling Skirmisher // add twilight
Easterling Infantry x3
Easterling Polearm x4
New fear
Discovered
Easterling Army
However that shadow looks like beatdown deck it is rather designed to corrupt ring-bearer or at least slow down fellowship.We still need to have opportunity to kill companions and that’s why Enquea here.
Possible match-ups
 Rangers - Most dangerous deck type are rangers with their guerilla tactics. They have ability to make minions roaming and their bows are designed to fight with Men especialy Faramir’s Bow. And remember that all second block rangers are Ring-Bound making Easterling Guard and Easterling Lieutenant useless.
Knights - fortifications and Gondor Bowmen can finish Eassies off but Vision From Afair is nasty vs alternate RB like Boromir and Isildur.
 - Polearm is your only protection vs their arrows. With healing and burden-removal abilities of elves your victory won’t come easy. Try to finish as much elves as possible to lower resistance of Galadriel,Bearer Of Wisdom.
Hobbits - tough fighters because they are very resilent and can generate very low pool. They heal quickly and with Bilbo as ring-bearer bearing Consorting with Wizard it’s almost impossible to corrupt them...but still you have the Captain.
New  - very hard to beat. They are strong, pumped with strength and resistance..you may not be able to beat them or corrupt them.Probably the only way is to add so many burdens as possible before Durin and Co got theirs equipment to hand.
 - Gandalf can heal, remove burdens, discard conditions and so on. Properly set he is great danger to any Easterling deck and very difficult to kill. However Gandalf, Bearer of Obligation may give you burdens if you kill his companions.
Choke decks - since Easterlings as all Raiders benefits from high twilight pool Captain ability won’t work and you may not be able to play Vision From Afair or New Fear.
Big Fellowships - IMO easy to beat due to New fear and Vision. It’s not important how many big companions you have - the weakest link is ring-bearer (Vision +GttS)
Mono Smeagol - I hate playing vs that deck. Vision is useless in favour of gathering to the summons. Guard and Lieutanant is useless. Captain won’t fight too much. Your only hope is to make some swarm and overhelm Smeagol.
Possible Mix-ups
The idea of merging in one deck different cultures based on corruption was developed when  culture was introduced. Natural choice for mixing with Easterlings are perhaps Ringwraiths but tournament scene seen often something what you wouldn’t expected - mixed Easterlings with..Gollum! yes, that’s right.
Gollum corruption ability is well known and very annoyed for FP.
Ideal choice for that kind of deck is Gollum,Stinker and Evil-Smell Fens.
Example deck:
Gollum Stinker x3 / add burden
Evil Smell Fens x3 //brings minions from discard
Easterling Captain x4 /fights
Easterling Polearm x4 /protect
Vision from Afar x4 /add burden or fight with RB
Gathering to the summons x3 / add burden
Easterling Skirmisher x2 /add twilight for burdens
Easterling Guard x2 /add burden
Easterling Lieutenant x3 /add burden
Ulaire Enquea / use 5 burdens to kill companions (may be returned by gollum from discard)
Bill Ferny // vs alternate ring-bearers force them to use their game text.
Idea is to use gollum in the middle of the game..he is pumped up with number of burdens and if he wins a skirmish you add another burden.Then you can always use gollum with ESF to bring another minion from discard (eg skirmisher to add more twilight or enquea to finish companions)
Why Bill Ferny? With new alternate ring-bearers his ability is very deadly. You assign him to Boromir and 3 burdens on table, you assign him to Isildur..and 2 burdens or two exertions. 
This is part one of my articles about Easterlings. I know there are plenty combinations of mixing them with other cultures but probably Gollum will be the most effective.
I hope this article helps understand the power of east and bring back Easterling again for play. |
| Last edited by Beyo on Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:10 pm; edited 6 times in totalTime in the universe may be eternal..our patience is not |
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| TheShyzle |
![]() Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 6:49 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2006
Posts: 289
Location: Grand Blanc, MI
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| What there’s no Small Hope in this deck there’ no reason to live. Where’s my kuyack. I am guessing that English is not your first language otherwise you have some grammer issues. I don’t feel as though Easterling corruption has ever been a viable means of corruption. I will wait to vote until you have time to correct some of the grammer at least. Otherwise I would have to give a 3 right now. |
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| PorterTroll |
![]() Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 7:49 pm |
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Joined: 23 Jun 2006
Posts: 1193
Location: not sure yet
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| yes, you definitely need 3x or even 4x small hope |
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| sickofpalantirs |
![]() Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 7:58 pm |
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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.
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why not try easterling shash you get a coupld fo burdens (minimum 2 maximum you will need 6) and smash the opponents felloship with heavy axeman easterling captain and army and such
oh adn one discuarging thing is all your match ups are bad essentially |
 Sop's haves/ top wants
(mm)"SoP: you will always be the Official CC Spammer in my heart"
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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.  |
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| bobtheorc |
![]() Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:21 pm |
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Joined: 19 Mar 2006
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Location: Wow, its hot in Iowa
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| Beyo |
![]() Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:25 pm |
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Joined: 22 Nov 2005
Posts: 60
Location: Poland
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I didn’t have much time to correct article so i’ll try to do that as soon as i can.I havent seen your replies either for many days (maybe something wrong with my proxy cache).
sickofpalantirs wrote:
oh adn one discuarging thing is all your match ups are bad essentially
I think I dont understand your point. I write them based on my experience in play with such decks.
Quote:
Also make sure to fix your no-links. And as SoP said it seems like this deck would get crushed by most other freeps sides.
May be...but may be not
Quote:
What there’s no Small Hope in this deck there’ no reason to live. Where’s my kuyack. I am guessing that English is not your first language otherwise you have some grammer issues. I don’t feel as though Easterling corruption has ever been a viable means of corruption.
You probably haven’t noticed that deck i provided comes from Two Towers era so I haven’t mentioned ROTK cards ( i wanted to do that in part 2 )
And I said the deck is designed to corrupt ring-bearer..but even if not you can always fight with captain and so one. Great thing in Eaasterlings is that you can use burdens in both ways: to corrupt or to gain advantage of them.
Deck what I provided has 15 cards adding burdens. |
| Time in the universe may be eternal..our patience is not |
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| CarpeGuitarrem |
![]() Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:00 pm |
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Joined: 07 Apr 2006
Posts: 3361
Location: Franciscan University of Steubenville
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| I would like to see some more matchups, though...like Ithilien Blade and Ents. In fact...Expanded rangers (and this deck would be expanded) are a lot more powerful than you mention, especially with What are they? and Citadel of Minas Tirith (great combo with Ithilien Blade). |
| "ok, change of plans. the Cobracards christmas party is coming to my house, and we’re gunna teach FM how to hunt." (mm) |
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| Beyo |
![]() Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:09 pm |
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Joined: 22 Nov 2005
Posts: 60
Location: Poland
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Hm.. I’ve never played vs the ents because ents are not often seen in my local meta.But AFAIK Ents are one of best fellows - resilent, powerfull,and in great number almost unstopabble.
According to rangers...I rather don’t use War Block and Hunter Block cards(keyword hunter should be banned in my opinion) and I am not familiar with new cards like Ithilien Blade.
But you’re right Citadel Of Minas Tirith roxx
Sorry if I dissapointed you but in my city LOTR is almost dead already and I do not have opportunity to test Easterlings vs new fellowships. |
| Time in the universe may be eternal..our patience is not |
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| Gate Troll |
![]() Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 5:02 pm |
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Joined: 15 Aug 2006
Posts: 384
Location: Udun Vale, Home of the one and only... Gate Troll!
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It was a well-written article though you did have trouble with
grammar. I also liked the way you showed what it matched up with.
You do need to fix links however. I am the middle of writing an article,
it is hard and takes a while so I give it a solid 4.  |
| "Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory."-George S. Patton. |
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| han_feizi |
![]() Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 3:49 pm |
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Joined: 29 Dec 2005
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The article shows some potential in Easterlings.
In expanded format there are, of course, deadly match-ups, but overall it seems to me that corrupting strategy is not a bad idea. And Captain is quite strong and can even win skirmishes.
Well, they’ll discard everything with Madril+swords (sarcasm  )
The contest winner for Sept. is already known, so I can give this article 5/5 |
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