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| valkir |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 10:32 am |
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Joined: 29 Jun 2006
Posts: 15
Location: Gdynia, Poland
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I am quite new to LotR TCG and the deck I’m going to post down here is almost constantly changing; in order to have this changes go right way, I decided to share it with you.
Fellowship: [35]
Starting with:
The One Ring, The Ruling Ring
Gimli, Bearer of Grudges
Uri, Dwarven Lord
Linnar, Dwarven Lord
Other companions:
Thrarin, Smith of Erebor
The rest:
2x Axe Strike
3x Dwarven Bracers
3x Lord of Moria
4x Flurry of Blows
2x Dwarven Axe
2x Proud and Able
4x Hand Axe
1x Dwarven Armor
1x Ring of Retribution
1x Ring of Accretion
1x Ring of Guile
3x Endurance of Dwarves
1x Gimli’s Battle Axe
1x Honed
2x Their Halls of Stone
2x Cleaving Blow
Shadow: [35]
1x We are Fighting Uruk-Hai
2x Uruk Slayer
1x Ferocity
2x Uruk-Hai Raiding Party
1x Relics of Moria
2x Bitter Hatred
4x Host of Thousands
2x Moria Axe
2x Goblin Scimitar
3x Goblin Bowman
1x Goblin Armory
2x Uruk Rager
1x Saruman’s Ambition
4x Goblin Marksman
1x Archer Commander
1x The Balrog, Flame of Udun
1x Uruk-hai Sword
2x Dark Places
2x Goblin Spear
Sites:
1. East Road
2. Trollshaw Forest
3. Council Courtyard
4. Great Chasm
5. The Bridge of Khazad-Dum
6. Dimrill Dale
7. Anduin Confluence
8. Brown Lands
9. Slopes of Amon Hen
Main aim of this deck was just moria archers. I had 4 Moria Archer Troop here, instead of Goblin Bowmans, but they just cost me too much twilight. Previously I tried Moria without Uruk-hai, but it didn’t have the proper power, which it appears it has now. Now I can play archers and Uruks in the same time, which I couldn’t do with Moria Archer Troop for example. However, this deck turns out to be most effective at sites 8 and 9. At Anduin Confluence I have enough opportunity to play really much archers with archery total bonuses, and - considering the low twilight of Bowman and Marksman - maybe even add some uruks. At site 9 fellowship is in bad condition, so simple swarming can do.
Problem is, that counting on these 2 last sites is a bit... uncomfortable. Last time my bro came with single Frodo onto the 9th site and I was sure I’ll win, but suddenly he played Elrond, Aragorn, Legolas and Hobbit Sword from his hand. Pure luck, but it certainly does happen.
Durin III and Cave Troll of Moria are on the way; I’ll make place for Durin without problems, but Cave Troll of Moria requires changing the deck...
Summing up, I’d like to read your suggestions. |
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| Pipeweed |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 10:41 am |
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Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 1010
Location: Earth (I think)
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| Merrick_Hale |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 11:43 am |
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Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 445
Location: Austin, Texas
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First off, you have 36 cards listed for the fellowship and you need to drop it down by one to have an equal number of cards per side.
Personally, I might cut the Endurance of Dwarves as there can be a fair amount of condition removal in expanded format (I’m assuming you are playing expanded due to Fellowship block, Reflections and King block cards being allowed). There is very little more annoying than having a companion die because they are exhausted and a +1 Vitality condition gets discarded. I would probably also switch out the Their Halls of Stone for two more honed. With all the damage bonuses you will have from Proud and Able, Thrarin smith of erebor and Lord of Moria, more Honed will give you a better and potentially more consistent pump. One dwarf companion you might want to use if you have him is Durin III Dwarven Lord. He is a beast when completely tanked out with armor, axe, hand axe, ring and bracers.
On the shadow side you will definitely want to focus a lot more on the archery side of things.
4x Goblin Bowman
4x Goblin Marksman
4x Moria Archer Troop
3x Archer Commander
Is the bare minimum for a decent archery core.
You will likely want to add
4x Goblin Runner
4x Moria Scout
for the extra minion count and extra twilight.
From there you will likely want to add a couple of additional Goblin Armory, They are Coming and Host of Thousands and Goblin Scimitars so that you can get the added twilight to get out more archer minions.
In general, two different shadow cultures don’t work too well together as much fun as they can be to play.
So in keeping with the moria archery deck, a final shadow side decklist could look something like:
4x Goblin Bowman
4x Goblin Marksman
4x Moria Archer Troop
3x Archer Commander
4x Goblin Runner
2x Moria Scout
4x Goblin Armory
2x They are coming
1x Goblin Swarms
1x Relics of Moria
4x Goblin Scimitar
2x Host of Thousands
They don’t fight very well in general, but if you can get the armories out with relics, you should have enough twilight to get out a good number of archer minions each turn. Yes the Archer troops are expensive, but they cause two archery when you can spot another moria archer, are strength 8 and have decent vitality so it is likely they will stick around through to the regroup phase preventing your opponent from moving on for fear of more arrows headed their way. Let me know what you think! |
Aaron Rhinehart
Rider of Rohan (retired)
DAgent #417 (retired)
This Incognito is a smooth operator - Lem0nhead |
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| valkir |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 1:39 pm |
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Joined: 29 Jun 2006
Posts: 15
Location: Gdynia, Poland
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I am afraid that still they don’t have enough power to, for example, kill someone. Even when 2 minions will be assigned to a ring-bearer, they will be too weak to kill him. I thought about putting backstabbers in, but still it’s not enough to me.
There’s another thing to bear in mind - archers and legolas greenleaf. Most of moria orcs have low vitality, which makes them particularly vulnerable to arrows.
Anyway I’ll try to test that. But - what do you think of adding balrog and cave troll as an additional kick? Thanks for advice. |
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| PorterTroll |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 2:42 pm |
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Joined: 23 Jun 2006
Posts: 1193
Location: not sure yet
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ok, you need durin III for any dwarf deck, so before you make any more changes to your fellowship, put him in there. Also, in my Dwarf deck i run Durin and Gloin in my starting fellowship, but you should only use gloin if you plan on taking advantage of his token effect (remove a token to make him strength +2) otherwise, he siimply isn’t good enough. my main advice is definitely to get durin and put him in your starting fellowship instead of Uri. hope this helps  |
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| Merrick_Hale |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 2:45 pm |
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Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 445
Location: Austin, Texas
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That is why you play with the four Goblin Armory, the Goblin Scimitars and the Archer Commander. They increase the strength of your weakest minion to 8 if you can keep the archer commander around. If they are using an alternate ring bearer, it will be difficult for you to swarm them, but if you can keep putting out enough archery, you will either corrupt them or kill off enough companions that it will make a difference.
If they are playing with lots of companions consistently going to 6 or more, tweak the deck and put in a couple of Ulaire Enquea, lieutenant of morgul in to pick off a couple. Yes Moria’s low vitality means they are vulderable to arrows, but that is why you put in moria scout (free if legolas is on the table) and Moria Archer Troop (Three Vitality).
The Balrog in my opinion is a waste of space since it is so easy to just avoid him with Hobbit stealths or Boromir, Lord of Gondor with Armor. Cave trolls might be ok, but they are pretty expensive and not guaranteed to do more than one wound per skirmish if you run into someone playing with Armor or Mithril Coat. Aside from Mithril coat, you generally won’t run into anti-archery cards since archery wasn’t and that common of a deck when fellowship block was out.
A couple of other things about the deck. Technically, if you are using fellowship of the Ring sites, you should only be using cards from sets 1-3. Thus your dwarven fellowship doesn’t work. If you use cards outside of one block, you should use only sites from Shadows on. You will find that Fellowship of the Ring was pretty well balanced but if you add cards from reflections or other sets, you will experience some unbalancing issues which may be why you think that moria is not that powerful of a shadow. |
Aaron Rhinehart
Rider of Rohan (retired)
DAgent #417 (retired)
This Incognito is a smooth operator - Lem0nhead |
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| valkir |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 3:03 pm |
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Joined: 29 Jun 2006
Posts: 15
Location: Gdynia, Poland
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Thanks again.
PorterTroll: Dwarves I have atm are quite effective and I will never replace durin with uri in my starting fellowship, but I’ll just throw out linnar to have Durin inside. Uri’s special ability, connected with Lord of Moria and Proud and Able and rings is powerful. Balrog, Sauron and other high-strenght cards become easy to defeat with one slash.
Merrick_Hale: Ok, I’ll try this way, but pplease explain what did you mean with the last part. |
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| Merrick_Hale |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 3:51 pm |
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Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 445
Location: Austin, Texas
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Certainly! In fellowship of the ring block the only ring bearer that was available was Frodo and if he died you could have Sam as a backup. As these characters only had three strength naturally (four with the ring in fellowship block which became a potential 5 strength with The one Ring answer to all riddles and The one ring Such a weight to carry) they usually didn’t get much above a 6 or 7 strength on their own without certain pumps from Boromir, son of denethor or from events in hand. Thus three 6-strength minions assigned to the ringbearer became a very simple overwhelm method and thus way to win the game. If your opponent had out 5 companions with none of them being defender +1 (and no backup sam), 7 minions on the table was often enough to overwhelm the ring-bearer.
Enter Reflections where we were introduced to alternate ring-bearers. These ring bearers made it possible for the first time to have your entire deck focus on one free people’s culture and have the cards that supported the rest of your deck help out your ring-bearer. These new ring-bearers had a much higher strength than their hobbit counterparts for the most part. With this greater base strength, they were much harder to overwhelm in a skrimish. With this higher strength came a down side to skirmishing (usually adding threats or burdens, wounding the ring bearer or exerting companions). So instead of needing three 6-strength minions to handily overwhelm a ring bearer, you needed a lot more.
Take Gimli, bearer of grudges for example. His base strength is 6 (compared to a hobbit’s strength of 3). Put Gimli’s Battle axe, Dwarven Bracers, a hand axe, an artifact ring of on him along with the One Ring and he becomes a 12 or 13 strength companion. A lot harder to overwhelm than the average strength 6 ring bearer as originally designed. Or look at Isildur, Bearer of heirlooms with Narsil Blade of the Faithful and the maximum number of artifacts on the table at a strength of 13 plus the strength from the ring.
So in this deck, if you catch your opponent early before he has drawn any frodo protection (assuming he is playing frodo) two of your weakest minion, the Goblin Bowman can overwhelm him. With Gimli, two of your weakest minion will only barely win the skirmish.
Simply stated, in fellowship block it took a lot more of your deck dedicated specifically to your ring bearer to adequately protect him from overwhelm since all ring bearers were hobbits. After reflections released, your deck could focus on your other companions, but most of the resources could be used on your ring bearer as well thus making the ring-bearer a much better protected companion than he was previously. |
Aaron Rhinehart
Rider of Rohan (retired)
DAgent #417 (retired)
This Incognito is a smooth operator - Lem0nhead |
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| valkir |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 4:01 pm |
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Joined: 29 Jun 2006
Posts: 15
Location: Gdynia, Poland
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Okay, now I understand =]
Gimli’s disadvantage is that he takes 2 threats/burdens to start the skirmish. |
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| Anonymous Prodigy |
![]() Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 4:06 pm |
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Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 4197
Location: United States
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Pipeweed wrote: I’d stick with a straight moria archery, rather than mixing uruks in with it. It should be much more efficient.
I agree with Pipeweed. |
| I had to put something here. |
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