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| CarpeGuitarrem |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 12:22 am |
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Joined: 07 Apr 2006
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Location: Franciscan University of Steubenville
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--- description ---
Here comes Aragorn and his Bow...and he’s mad. Enraged. Ready to kick some evil minions around, with the help of a few friends...
--- end description ---
The Hunters card Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow is one of my favorite cards, if only because of the massive damage it has the potential to cause. If you boil it down, it has the potential to cause enormous injury to any shadow during the Archery phase, with 4-5 wounds in a good "round" of shooting. After that, though, we run into a tiny little problem: Aragorn has just maxed out your threats, the resources that his Bow thrives off of. If it weren’t for this, he would become a veritable beast of the LOTR world. So much for that. There goes one more perfectly good idea.
Or does it? If we look back to Return of the King, we find a nice little card that goes a long way in helping Aragorn with these threats. Each turn, it purges those threats from your dead pile, effectively "reloading" Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow. It keeps him fresh and ready to fire away all over again. And the name of this card? A simple condition named Hearts Raised. Its uses: obvious. Remove those threats!
If we take a closer look at this card, we begin to truly see its potential. If we have 3x of this card out, we’re capable of almost totally refilling Aragorn’s quiver to the maximum, with a potential 4 wounds for the next archery phase! And if that’s not good enough for you (although it really should be good enough to convince just about anyone), here’s another little bit of food for thought. Hearts Raised requires you to discard cards from hand at the start of the regroup phase. And then what happens? You (presumably) reconcile your hand! This card, right here, has instantly become a cycling powerhouse, bringing huge amounts of cards into your hand!
The only little problem with relying on Hearts Raised? You won’t be able to depend on drawing it when you need it, let alone drawing enough copies to reload that bow completely. Enter another player for  : Denethor, Lord of Minas Tirith. His ability, when used at Site 3, will nab two copies of Hearts Raised for you. Heal him with Kingsfoil, and he can grab another copy. Now, you’re ready to begin tearing into the Site Path!
Before we take a look at the decklist, I’d like to examine a couple more potential modes of alternative threat removal. The first one is Into the West, a staple  condition. The only problem I have with it, however, is its heavy cultural reliance. Not only do you have to have an Elf in your fellowship, but you also have to have cards in your deck. And in this type of deck, we really can’t afford the space that all of that would take up.
Another excellent idea to remove threats, however, is to play Tom Bombadil, the Master. Play Bombadil and remove two threats. Use Well-Traveled to play Anduin Confluence, and discard the now-useless Bombadil. Draw Bombadil again, and play him! Now that seems like a worthwhile addition to our deck, doesn’t it? Let’s stick two copies of Bombadil in there, especially because we’re going to be cycling insanely.
The final, and almost automatic, method of threat removal is Frodo, Hope of Free Peoples. As much as I’d like to use a RB for this deck, Frodo is a nice backup to keep the threats down and Aragorn’s quiver filled up. In some metas, however, Faramir or Boromir will be a better Ring-bearer...but I handle that later on.
Free Peoples-37 Cards
Ring-Bearer and Ring
The One Ring, the Ring of Rings
Frodo, Hope of Free Peoples
Starting Fellowship (3)
Aragorn, Strider
Gondorian Prowler
Denethor, Lord of Minas Tirith
Allies (2)
Tom Bombadil, The Master 2x
Companions (6)
Denethor, Last Ruling Steward 3x
Mablung, Ranger of Ithilien 3x
Conditions (11)
Hearts Raised 4x
Man the Walls 4x
Portico 3x
Events (5)
Stand to Arms 2x
Well-Traveled 3x
Possessions (10)
Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow 3x
Kingsfoil 3x
Ithilien Blade 4x
As you look through this decklist, you might notice something very unusual: Denethor, Last Ruling Steward has been included among the companions! At first glance, this seems like a very unusual choice for a card. After all, if we want to heal Denethor, shouldn’t we just include more copies of Lord of Minas Tirith? The reason here: we don’t really care about healing Denethor. What we do care about is using Last Steward’s ability. But we also want to use Lord of Minas Tirith. What do we do?
This is where a nice new site from Rise of Saruman comes in: Falls of Rauros. What you need to do is a Site 4 sacrifice: send Denethor up against a minion he can’t beat, after he’s exhausted from grabbing your possessions, and send him to the dead pile! If you have a lot of threats from Aragorn’s Bow, put some of them onto Frodo as burdens with the Ring of Rings. He won’t mind a few extra burdens, since he starts at 12 Resistance. With Denethor dead, play Falls of Rauros as Site 5 (by using Well-Traveled), remove the dead Denethor from the game, and play a brand-spankin’ new Denethor!! If you want, play Imladris as Site 6 to remove a couple of the burdens that you added from threat wounds.
The deck is pretty simple to play. What it thrives around is the Archery phase. Here’s where ’Gorn goes to work. Add enough threats to down the dangerous minions, and you’re set. If you think you can spare the vitality, use Ithilien Blade to drop an early roaming minion. If you find that you’re suddenly out of threats to use, drop an exhausted minion on Mablung, and you’re good to go! Keep your companions healed with the Kingsfoil you’ve got there, and think about using one copy to heal Denethor for an extra Hearts Raised.
The minions should stay roaming fairly easily, since you have not only Man the Walls but also Portico, the cheapest fortification out there (as long as you’ve got enough rangers out). Since they’re roaming, they fall prey not only to Mablung, but also to Man the Walls and Ithilien Blade. There’s not a lot of minions that survive very long against this onslaught.
Finally, don’t forget that you’re going to be recycling like crazy with Hearts Raised, so if you have a Shadow that needs cycling, this could fit the bill quite nicely. With this deck, you have the potential to rid your hand of every single Free Peoples card, as well as a Shadow card that’s clogging your hand, quite easily. Hand clog is not an issue for this deck.
If you decide to take this deck into Expanded, Into the West might prove to be a more useful card. Add Legolas, Greenleaf and a couple copies of Still Needed in there, and you’ve got wounding and threat removal. Pathfinder should also replace Well-Traveled, since it’s a much cheaper event, and you rarely need to play Site 2 and Site 3 at the same time. Also consider adding in copies of Ranger’s Bow, to put on Boromir, for some extra protection. With these cards, you’ll be ready to rip into Expanded!
Now, let’s step back and look at the matchups for the Standard-Format deck...
Bill Ferny: Wow. Major hurt here. With protection from your archery, Bill’s pretty much immune to everything you can throw at him. The only recourse here is to switch to Boromir, Bearer of Council or Faramir, Bearer of Quality, and then use Nimble Attack from Rise of Saruman to discard Pavise. With that gone, Stand to Arms will work quite handily, especially with Faramir’s ability.
Corsairs: Possession discarding will be your greatest problem here, and Corsairs will strike down Aragorn’s Bow multiple times. Consider Throne of Minas Tirith to sink those ships, and you’re well on your way to stopping Ol’ Tubby and his cronies.
Forestguls: Not too bad of a matchup. You might run into some problems with Site Path manipulation, but then again your sites only have effects that take place "when you move to this site". Buckland Homestead is the real threat, since you’ll be seeing your Hearts Raised going goodbye pretty fast. This means that you’ll be needing to use Frodo’s ability to refuel for your Longshanked Ranger. Conserve Aragorn’s arrows, and ramp up your skirmish wounding. Hopefully. with Frodo’s threat removal, it can pull you through.
Men Archery: Hmm...not really too much of a problem here, unless they pull Pavise on you. Most  archers aren’t known for high vitality, so striking them down in the Archery phase isn’t too hard. What your real problem is would be dealing with them after they’re gone, in the form of Howdah and the archery bonuses they already racked up before you killed them. In this case, give Frodo a lot of wounds, assign some as burdens with the Ring of Rings, and you should be fine.
Men Possessions: The massive strength boosts that these guys get won’t help them in the long run, facing your wounding. Again, Pavise is a problem, but it can be handled. Beast of War could prove nasty against your threat-adding, but that can’t be helped. Wound wisely, and you’ll win this matchup.
Ninja Gollum: Eesh. Probably the hardest matchup to win, because Gollum thrives off of threats. You won’t be able to get off a lot of wound here, although the one consolation is that you might be able to kill off the little stinker. Although Shelob is still a bit of a problem...but she can be handled.
Orc Corruption: Not a big problem at all. With the orcs finished off before the skirmish phase, and a 14 Resistance Ring-Bearer, the orcs won’t get a lot of opportunities to use their burden-adding capabilities, except for Bound To Its Fate, which should be counterable, since you’ve got events in your hand.
Uruk-Hai: Easy matchup. 4-5 archery wounds (combined with Denethor exertions) means that those Uruks won’t be hanging around for long. In addition, Sword of Gondor should boost Aragorn by enough to smash down any lagging Uruks that didn’t get the message.
Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow, is one of the most powerful cards that came out of the Hunters. By using it to its fullest, you can ensure great pain for your opponent’s minions, and a smile of victory on your own face. So...if you can manage to get your hands on three copies of Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow...you might want to give this one a try. And if not-ask Denethor about nabbing a copy of that awesome bow. |
| Last edited by CarpeGuitarrem on Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:55 pm; edited 6 times in total"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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| NBarden |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 4:43 am |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 5468
Location: I don't know...
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| Pipeweed |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 10:19 am |
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Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 1010
Location: Earth (I think)
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| sickofpalantirs |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:32 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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| Great article, the decklist wasn’t glorified, but certainly seemed strong. A 5 unless someone brings something up I missed. |
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| macheteman |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:39 pm |
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Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 1200
Location: The Jungle
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i agree with NB that you should use the threat removing Frodo, because increasingly popular condition hate will jam up Aragorns bow. otherwise, looks good. any deck that maxes-out threats all the time will have trouble with threat shadows, so that can’t be helped.
-macheteman |
Check out my best article The Utterly Corrupt Corruption,
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| Anonymous Prodigy |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:46 pm |
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Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 4197
Location: United States
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A well-written and creative article. I give it a 5!  |
| I had to put something here. |
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| legoles3333 |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 10:24 pm |
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Joined: 28 Nov 2006
Posts: 861
Location: In a place that is beyond your imagination
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| Very very noce article I would like to see more ways of threat removing... maybe events (not that I know how its possible) but probably a 5 |
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| Pywils |
![]() Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 12:19 am |
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Joined: 14 Jan 2007
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| good article on one of the most used cards in LOTR TCG |
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| CarpeGuitarrem |
![]() Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 12:45 am |
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Joined: 07 Apr 2006
Posts: 3361
Location: Franciscan University of Steubenville
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| Great point about Frodo...I completely forgot about that guy! He’s going right in there ASAP! I’ll also expand some of the strategy. |
| "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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| corvus |
![]() Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:32 pm |
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Joined: 13 Oct 2006
Posts: 1696
Location: Roaming, but dangerous!!!
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| It was a good article, but just a decklist. You could expand a little further with other decks as well. Will wait to vote. |
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