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Total Votes : 16 |
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| NBarden |
![]() Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 8:02 pm |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
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--- description ---
Welcome to Denethor’s Grill, may I take your order please?
--- end description ---
The Menu
Char-Broiled Smeagol -$216.40
Refried Gandalf -$143.70
Grilled Gondor -$154.60
Waterfall Special -$127.50
Strategy
Pairings
Matchups
Welcome to Denethor’s Grill! All our products are 100% Unnatural, prepared with Saved from the Fire.
Since the introduction of Saved from the fire in the Siege of Gondor set, Saved from the Fire has been the number one card used for grabbing the cards you need, when you need them. Used both for quick setups and great filters, its no wonder that Saved from the Fire is one of the most in-demand cards in the game, and fetches a $13 price on CobraCards.
So what makes this card so powerful?
 Saved from the Fire 
Event • Fellowship
Spot Gandalf and place a companion (except the ring-bearer) in the dead pile to take up to three cards from that companion’s culture into hand from your draw deck. Shuffle your draw deck.
“’…we will bear Faramir, Steward of Gondor, to a place where he can sleep in peace”
8R20
First of all, the spotting requirements. The ability to spot Gandalf is fairly easy, as many decks run Gandalf as a splash companion or a Gandalf package to deal with problems such as burden removal and token reinforcement. As such, spotting Gandalf is fairly simple.
Placing a companion in the dead pile can be a high cost, but the payoffs of grabbing a better companion, and with the new Falls of Rauros to free up space to play once-dead companions, break the rule of 9, or simply counter cards such as Houses of Lamentation, this cost is largely reduced. With a huge cache of startable  companions that can be roasted, such as Aldred, Eored Soldier, Gondorian Prowler, almost every version of Merry and Pippin, and, in correct decks, Dwarf Guard, and Ordulus, young warrior, not to mention many others, Saved From the Fire is a tantalizing card which can grab three cards and thus set up and filter a deck simultaneously.
But most copies of Gandalf cost  , right? How do you start Gandalf and a companion? The answer is Gandalf, Leader of Men. This version is twilight cost –2 when played in your starting fellowship, allowing you to start a potential of 2 companions. This can be helpful, as we see in our Grilled Gondor.
And then the payoff. Grab three cards, setting up your fellowship and filtering your draw deck simultaneously. What’s not to love about this card?
So let’s look at some of Denethor’s Grill’s recipes.
The Menu
Char-Broiled Smeagol ~Standard
First up on the menu, Char-Broiled Smeagol. Contrary to the rest of our recipes, this version is not designed for filtering and a fast free peoples setup, but a shadow setup. Why?  is the only culture to have both a free peoples and shadow side. Thus, Saved from the Fire can setup a shadow side by roasting Smeagol.
Ingredients: -68 $216.40 + T&D Cards
Free Peoples- 34 $120.05
Frodo, Protected by Many
The One Ring, The Ring of Doom
Eowyn, Lady of Ithilien
Gandalf, Leader of Men
Smeagol, Slippery Sneak
Aragorn, Thorongil x 2
Legolas, Fearless Marksman x 2
Theoden, King of Eorlingas
Tolman Cotton, Farmer of Bywater x 2
Woodland Onod x 2
Anduril, Sword That Was Broken
Gandalf’s Staff, Ash-staff
Shadowplay x 2
Borne Far Away x 2
Saved From the Fire x 4
For the Mark x 2
Seclusion x 2
Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom x 3
Pallando, Far-travelling One
Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow
Coif
Rohirrim Mount
Eowyn’s Sword, Dernhelm’s Blade
Shadow- 34 $96.35 + T&D Cards
Gollum, Dark as Darkness
Gollum, Hopeless
Gollum, Vile Creature
Shelob, Her Ladyship x 3
Captured By The Ring x 4
Little Snuffler x 4
A Dark Shape Sprang x 2
Web
Promise Keeping x 3
Not this Time x 3
Fat One Wants It x 2
Hidden Even From Her x 2
Unseen Foe x 4
Incited
Deceit x 3
This deck has two ways to set up for a shadow kill. A perfect draw would be Captured By the Ring, Fat One Wants it, and Saved from the Fire. Using this, you can grab three copies of Little Snuffler and kill a companion, with two threats to trigger, at site 2.
However, this rarely happens. Still, using saved from the fire, you can usually grab 3x Little Snuffler to drop a companion quick, and Gollum, Dark as Darkness helps for a great RB kill early against some decks.
If your opponent doesn’t run easy-to-drop companions, grab Not This Time, Promise Keeping, and Fat One Wants It. Or you can grab 2x Deceit and another condition if you know your opponent packs condition removal, and grab the necessary stuff later on.
With the Free Peoples, it’s a wounding deck. Wound like crazy, abuse Eowyn, and then use any extra companions to beef up Woodland Onod is necessary. Borne Far Away is there to refry Smeagol and further set-up your Ninja Gollum side.
Refried Gandalf ~Treachery and Deceit Standard
Next on the menu, Refried Gandalf! First, use Saved from the Fire to burn Gandalf, then use it to burn him again. Repeat. This deck relies on Sent Back to play him repeatedly. And with Travelled Leader, you can set up your deck to pull the falls of Rauros several times, freeing up companion space.
Ingredients- 32 $143.70 + T&D Cards
Frodo, Weary from the Journey
The One Ring, The Ring of Doom
Brand, King of Dale
Gandalf, Leader of Men
Erland, Dale Counselor
Ghan-Buri-Ghan, Chieftain of the Woses
Librarian, Keeper of Ancient Texts
Gandalf, Returned x 4
Guidance of the Istari x 4
Saved From the fire x 4
Shadowfax, Roaring Wind x 3
Glamdring, Foe-Hammer
Sent Back
Last Stand x 4
Beorning Axe x 4
Alatar, Final Envoy
Pallando, Far-Travelling One
First time, grab Sent Back, Last Stand and Gandalf, Returned. Get tokens on Last Stand, play Gandalf, Returned and pull out a Shadowfax.
Next site, kill Gandalf, pull a Librarian, a Gandalf, and another card. Use Gandalf to grab Shadowfax for token reinforcing. Repeat each site until you run out of Saved From the Fire. Beat everything up.
Condition discarding isn’t a problem with Pallando, Far-Travelling One.
Thanks to AgentDrake for the token idea[/I]
Grilled Gondor ~Expanded
The Grilled Gondor is an atypical Noble Leaders deck that filters like crazy, sets up like crazy, and slaughters everything.
Ingredients: -33 $154.60
Boromir, Bearer of Council
The One Ring, The Ring of Rings
Gondorian Prowler
Aragorn, Strider
Gandalf, Leader of Men
Denethor, Lord of Minas Tirith
Faramir, Son of Denethor
Tradesman From Lebennin x 2
Gandalf, Returned
Pallando, Far-travelling One
Alatar, Final Envoy
Glamdring, Foe-hammer
Faramir’s Sword
Anduril, Sword That Was Broken
Blade of Gondor
Gondorian Blade
Brego, Loyal Steed
Shadowfax, Roaring Wind
Throne of Minas Tirith
Noble Leaders x 3
Heirs of Gondor x 2
Traveler’s Homestead x 2
Watch and Wait x 2
Sent Back
Saved From the Fire x 4
Pathfinder
Grab Faramir and Denethor as soon as possible. Slay a Tradesman from lebennin. Use Saved From the Fire on Gandalf when you can spare to pull Sent Back, Gandalf, Returned, and another card. Once you get to site 3, pull out Pathfinder with Denethor, play Falls of Rauros and lose a companion. Then get rid of the final Tradesman and begin slaying.
A good pairing for this deck would be a swarm. Pair it with any decent swarm deck, filter like crazy, and by site 4 or 5, your opponent should be dead.
Waterfall Special ~Standard
Since the release of Falls of Rauros in Rise of Saruman, there have been plenty of ways to break the rule of 9. In such, Ents, an unlikely Saved from the Fire candidate, due to their demand for huge numbers of companions out at a time, comes forward as a perfect deck for Saved from the Fire. With a hefty deck, this deck can be paired with any oversized swarm deck, or any oversized deck, for MASSIVE filtering capabilities. And a little site manipulation with Falls of Rauros means that you can recycle those trees and get the vast number of companions out for Ents to work.
Ingredients:- 38 $127.50
Frodo, Weary from the Journey
The One Ring, The Ring of Doom
Huorn
Gandalf, Leader of Men
Gandalf, Returned
Huorn x 3
Leaflock, Finglas
Shepherd of the Trees x 4
Skinbark, Elder Ent
Treebeard, Enraged Shepherd
Brooding on Tomorrow
G for Grand x 4
Measure of Comfort x 2
Not the First Halfling x 2
Sent Back
Momentous Gathering x 4
Saved From the Fire x 4
Traveled Leader x 4
Alatar, Final Envoy
Pallando, Far-Travelling One
Glamdring, Foe-Hammer
Typical Saved from the Fire. Fry a Huorn, fry Gandalf to pull Sent Back and Gandalf, Returned, continue frying, using Momentous Gathering to grab tons of companions. Approaching region 2, begin using Traveled Leader to make sure that falls of Rauros is ALWAYS the next site.
This recipe uses an interesting technique with Not the First Halfling to pump your trees up. Using Frodo and Gandalf to get the first token on, Gandalf and Alatar reinforce like crazy.
Then beat everything up. A strength 16 Treebeard with a huge capability of lowering strength, not to mention a same strength Leaflock, 4 strength 15 Shepherd of the Trees, and a strength 14 Gandalf, each with strength lowering for your opponents minions, is pretty nasty. Oh, did I forget the Huorn?
So, have fun! Slaughter conditions with Brooding on Tomorrow and Pallando, stomp everything easy with your Ents, and set up a perfect shadow hand all at the same time.
Strategy
Pairings
Well...with a deck like saved from the fire, the questions comes up, what do you pair it with?
Swarm:First of all, there’s the ever so typical pairing, swarm. Swarm is an obvious choice for a Saved From the Fire deck, because it gives you the density of Shadow cards necessary for a swarm deck to work properly.
Out of swarm, one particular deck comes to mind. Forestguls. Forestguls use Ulaire Nelya, third of the Nine riders to fill the sitepath with forests, and then use Dark Approach at the Angle with Moving this Way to throw out tons of Nazgul dirt cheap. This is probably the best deck for saved from the fire, because it enables you to set up a quick Free Peoples cycle with Moving this Way, allowing you to set up your Free Peoples side extremely quickly as well as all your conditions such as Moving this Way and Lost in the woods, while getting a dense concentration of Nazgul at the bottom of your deck. In fact, it is not unusual to play every single Free Peoples card in your deck and  condition, allowing for a completely uninhibited Moving This Way swarm to grab EXACTLY the Nazgul you need, when you need them.
Another swarm strategy is the troll swarm, which relies on using a quick filtering deck to leave a high concentration of Trolls in the deck, allowing you to play Troll’s Keyward, Keeper of the beast on a warg with a fistful of trolls. With Goblin Hordes working at its peak, you can easily add up to  twilight for a massive troll swarm. Watch your opponent’s mouth drop as he has to face up to 10 trolls in one site. And if he survives, Forced March is there to make him move again.
But swarm isn’t the only strategy that benefits from a perfect setup. Other decks can benefit just as easily.
Beatdown: Everyone loves beatown, right? Just drop a guy on the Free Peoples and watch him explode! Although this deck-type doesn’t capitalize as fully on the Saved from the Fire setup, it can be very useful, for example, using Riders in Black to pump Nazgul huge, or setting up an intricate combo to make a guy explode.
One strategy that comes to mind is a besieger deck. A deck revolving around stacking and replaying Sauron for cheap with their Marching Companies and taking control of sites with  engines, getting rid of everything with Grond, and playing huge minions to slaughter your opponent.
The problem? A vast number of conditions to work. With saved from the fire cycling for you, you can easily get out your Troop Tower, Tower Walkway, Encirclement, Their Marching Companies, etc., allowing for a perfect execution in region two. The Gothmog Bomb, which is a hybrid wounding/beatdown deck, can set up easily with all its conditions for an execution of the loop earlier in the game.
Corruption: Corruption can also benefit from this pairing. In expanded, Nazgul Auto-Corruption revolves around getting the Gates of the Dead City and the Lingering Shadow setup quickly to pull the Dark Fell About Him auto-loop. Other corruption builds, such as discarding corruption, also revolves on getting key conditions out fast.
Ninja Gollum: Everyone’s favorite little ninja sets up extremely fast with a massive cycling deck, but Ninja Gollum has one advantage over other condition decks. Smeagol. The ability to burn Smeagol with saved from the fire to set up a Ninja Gollum shadow is very useful, and can be used to kill the ring-bearer with a Little snuffler / Gollum, Dark as Darkness combo. However, this deck is best paired with a Smeagol burn Free Peoples.
So, when you think of pairing a Saved from the Fire deck, remember, swarm is not your only option. Experiment with how certain decks work with saved from the fire, a fix all to any deck.
Matchups
Instead of providing a match-up section for each of my decks, I decided to include a Saved from the Fire general match-up section. I decided here to focus on decks that can hurt your saved from the Fire deck.
Threats: This deck can hurt. According to the rules, placing a companion in the dead pile means that companion is killed, thus Saved from the Fire will constantly be triggering threats, meaning that you will be taking a lot of wounds. This is even worse when combined with Archery or Grind, such as Southrons.
Ninja Gollum: Ouch. This deck hurts. Since Saved from the Fire reduces the number of companions in play, Gollum will be able to kill the few companions you have easily. And those threats that he adds will kick in because of Saved From the fire.
Dead Pile Hate: This can be just a negative effect such as houses of Lamentation, Orc Butchery, and Field of the Fallen, to a huge stopping power such as sauron’s Defenses, or an auto-win such as Put forth his Strength and Despair, you will have a number of companions in the dead pile, meaning that cards that take advantage of this will have an easy time beating you up.
On all other strategies, the match up is determined by the variation of Saved from the fire you play.
Thanks for visiting Denethor’s Grill. Try to get a hold of four copies of this awesome filter card and try out one of our recipes!
Would you like fries with that?
Thanks for reading! Thanks to AC for the Ninja Gollum side of the Char-Broiled Smeagol decklist, elf lvr, sickofpalantirs, TheJord, Celembrimbor, legoles3333, and Anonymous Prodigy for help on the Free Peoples side, and AgentDrake for the men token idea in Refried Gandalf! |
Last edited by NBarden on Sat May 26, 2007 9:57 am; edited 5 times in total -Trade With Me
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| Anonymous Prodigy |
![]() Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 8:34 pm |
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Joined: 10 Jan 2006
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Location: United States
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Good article, NB. A creative style, such as "Ingredients", and the "menu items" were pretty cool. A matchups section would be good for each deck, and maybe prices of each deck too. 
I will wait to vote, but right now I would give it a 4.  |
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| yerkamig |
![]() Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 2:09 am |
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Joined: 25 Jan 2007
Posts: 240
Location: Corvallis, OR
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| That was fun. Nice and tight and well written. Do you think it’s a good idea to use T&D cards? Some of them might be faux. A strong 4, but I’ll wait to vote. |
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| lem0nhead |
![]() Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 3:49 am |
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Joined: 02 Apr 2007
Posts: 2981
Location: Blood Island
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As always NB you provide me with much needed humour, can always rely on you to put an amusing twist on things. Article looks good mate, nice formatting and good stategy. I’d add unheeded to the first deck as youre using an unbound hobbit and shadowplay. Kill stuff even more!
This will get a good 4 at the moment, because its not that long. But cant find fault with what you have dude.
Wd.  |
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| NBarden |
![]() Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 9:43 am |
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| sickofpalantirs |
![]() Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 12:31 pm |
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Location: somwhere, over the rainbow way up high. There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.
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| a nice article...but never really caught my interest. still a 4 and a GP. |
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| legoles3333 |
![]() Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 2:17 pm |
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i dont know, i found it kinda long and dragging, but i’ll still give it a 4
EDIT: I’ll give you a  when i vote cause i got mentioned |
Last edited by legoles3333 on Tue May 08, 2007 2:44 pm; edited 1 time in totalHere's My Trade List
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| NBarden |
![]() Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 2:32 pm |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
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lem0nhead wrote: its not that long.
legolas3333 wrote: i dont know, i found it kinda long and dragging, but i’ll still give it a 4
To long or to short?
I added a general match-up section, AP, not one for each of the decks, because that might be kind of overkill. Instead, I put a few decks every Saved from the Fire deck has to look out for.
I also added a section about pairing your Saved from the Fire deck.
Okay, voting is open now. I increased the size of the article by a lot, added a lot more strategy, and hopefully it merits a 5 from some of you. If not, please tell me how I can make it better before you vote! |
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Add the popcorn smiley to your sig, help it achieve world domination.
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| mm doughnuts |
![]() Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 2:50 pm |
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| If you add prices, it’ll merit a 5 from me |
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| NBarden |
![]() Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 2:55 pm |
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