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King Standard / Re: Circus Show! Rohan / Mumaks
« Last post by Phallen Cassidy on March 24, 2023, 10:11:51 AM »Even though Arrow-slits and Heavy Chain are in the deck for a fully armed Easterling Captain, I still use them against other decks. I've removed The Pale Blade or a copy of Hides at a crucial moment, for example, and Heavy Chain is good for the clowns to tank all sorts of hits. Of course, maybe with Rohirrim Bow I wouldn't need to tank hits. I do already have Eomer to juggle troublesome minions anyway, I can see how they wouldn't be necessary. When Eomer dies I can give any of the clowns Brego (or even Firefoot) and keep the trick going.
I did think about Windfola, there's enough healing to make it work. I could even exert Eowyn twice, ditch Windfola and the blade, then use Merry to replay the blade and Brego for a heal and then discard Brego (to replay Windfola next turn). Eowyn winds up at 15 strength having wounded a fierce minion three times (initial exert from the mount, then two wounds) and it wouldn't require any cards from hand. In my current setup that would be overkill since I can play Dernhelm's Blade 3 times without much trouble, though if someone wanted to build the deck without being a psychopath I think there's potential for that little loop. Now that you mention it, I don't have a deck with Windfola yet and I'm always looking for ways to exploit the unexploited
Hmm...
Bold and Grim hasn't let me down consistently, just when I've wanted it most. The trouble with Bold and Grim for this deck specifically is I'm pretty much banking on opponents using Hall of the Kings to get themselves up to 4 threats at City Gates*. Often, people will add 3 threats at site 3 so that site 5 ends up removing a threat, which means I can't play it at 5. I may not be able to play it at 4 or 6 since my minions are so expensive, and then I'm probably not going to be able to get a kill at 7 because of the sanctuary healing so it'd just be a threat and maybe force the FP to keep a splashed companion around for the next turn. Sites 8 and 9 could still be high impact though... Site 9 especially, with a baseline of 3 threats from Dagorlad, Southron Captain would almost assure a kill in the first skirmish and let me remove a troublesome companion for the fierce round. I think I've never kept it in hand that long, I should give it a shot.
I don't typically get overwhelms unless the FP sends an exceptionally weak character up to save their primary skirmishers. Southron Captain gets most of the overwhelms, humorously enough, since his damage bonus will kill anyway so he may as well kill a weakling. For most skirmishing companions 20 isn't enough and I'm not even hitting that very often. I could try to go in that direction by removing Whirling Strike and Red Wrath for 4 more pumps -- an unexpected +6 would probably do it, especially when people expect 5 twilight to mean Red Wrath and give me their full vitality Aragorn or Gandalf. I think to really try and make that happen would probably require a mumak / twilight build with everything else stripped out, though. The main thing this Shadow does so far is funnel wounds onto the FP's strongest companions and make it so the threat of having another big Southron (or two!) in play makes them stay put in the regroup phase.
Desert Legion isn't there for his text, he's a Southron Captain with ambush for when I have 3 or fewer threats. I will see burdens stack up sometimes since 4 is usually a safe number with no consequences and I am playing with threats, but never played him with more than 4 and he's not worth keeping just for those fringes. Him and Southron Troop are the highest strength ambush minions there are, is why I've kept them around. I don't know if the twilight they refund have ever mattered though.
As I think about it, the biggest problem for me is that I have so much fun wounding minions with Dernhelm's Blade that I forget about everything else
I've played probably 2 dozen matches and I have little recollection of their end results. But! I found some replays of one of the earliest versions that I had used in a competitive league on Gemp. It's got Desert Nomad and Desert Fighter on the Shadow side and Mustering for Battle on the FP side (as well as other, more perplexing choices ). The deck was 42/42 yet had enough cycling that it wasn't a huge downside... usually.
Surprisingly enough, here's one where a Desert Nomad kills Arwen, Fair Elf Maiden!
Another where everything worked on both sides, the clowns enabled some pretty bold doubles to 6 and 8. Against a Merry's Sword / Rohirrim Bow deck, of all things.
And one against one of those Easterling decks I mentioned.
A close loss against a large fellowship. I think this would have been avoidable with a slimmer deck, I got stopped at 2 and couldn't return the favor, then foolishly discarded my only minion when reconciling my Shadow hand at 5 and let them double unopposed to 7 next turn.
Unfortunately I didn't save the decklist... It definitely plays differently than it does now, in part because of the extra 10 cards. I've always been pretty unimpressed by minions in the 8-10 strength range, I'm not sure why. I've seen them used against me to great effect and clearly they did well in these replays too. I guess when it came time to trim the deck, I played favorites with the big guys
I'm a fan of the ideas above too, though. Southron Marksman in particular is interesting, I always discounted him since he's already fierce and that's what Mumaks provide. However, if I can play a big mumak plus Marksman, I get two fierce minions for only one mount. And if I up the threat adding, turning the extras into wounds early might mean more kills later since Frodo will have already taken some archery hits. And this might be an interesting deck for Arrow from the South, which would let Marksman turn 4 threats into wounds instead of just 2. It's not necessarily incompatible with Southron Assassin, either. Just means tearing out some beatdown minions as William suggests to make room -- something I didn't want to do because I thought it would lessen the effectiveness, but clearly not!
This would bring the deck back closer to where it started, which is a pretty big shift from where I've taken it... Now that it comes to it, I don't feel like parting with it. After all, Why Shouldn't I Keep It? It seems to me there's 2 or 3 decks to be explored here instead of just one.
I did think about Windfola, there's enough healing to make it work. I could even exert Eowyn twice, ditch Windfola and the blade, then use Merry to replay the blade and Brego for a heal and then discard Brego (to replay Windfola next turn). Eowyn winds up at 15 strength having wounded a fierce minion three times (initial exert from the mount, then two wounds) and it wouldn't require any cards from hand. In my current setup that would be overkill since I can play Dernhelm's Blade 3 times without much trouble, though if someone wanted to build the deck without being a psychopath I think there's potential for that little loop. Now that you mention it, I don't have a deck with Windfola yet and I'm always looking for ways to exploit the unexploited
Hmm...Bold and Grim hasn't let me down consistently, just when I've wanted it most. The trouble with Bold and Grim for this deck specifically is I'm pretty much banking on opponents using Hall of the Kings to get themselves up to 4 threats at City Gates*. Often, people will add 3 threats at site 3 so that site 5 ends up removing a threat, which means I can't play it at 5. I may not be able to play it at 4 or 6 since my minions are so expensive, and then I'm probably not going to be able to get a kill at 7 because of the sanctuary healing so it'd just be a threat and maybe force the FP to keep a splashed companion around for the next turn. Sites 8 and 9 could still be high impact though... Site 9 especially, with a baseline of 3 threats from Dagorlad, Southron Captain would almost assure a kill in the first skirmish and let me remove a troublesome companion for the fierce round. I think I've never kept it in hand that long, I should give it a shot.
I don't typically get overwhelms unless the FP sends an exceptionally weak character up to save their primary skirmishers. Southron Captain gets most of the overwhelms, humorously enough, since his damage bonus will kill anyway so he may as well kill a weakling. For most skirmishing companions 20 isn't enough and I'm not even hitting that very often. I could try to go in that direction by removing Whirling Strike and Red Wrath for 4 more pumps -- an unexpected +6 would probably do it, especially when people expect 5 twilight to mean Red Wrath and give me their full vitality Aragorn or Gandalf. I think to really try and make that happen would probably require a mumak / twilight build with everything else stripped out, though. The main thing this Shadow does so far is funnel wounds onto the FP's strongest companions and make it so the threat of having another big Southron (or two!) in play makes them stay put in the regroup phase.
Desert Legion isn't there for his text, he's a Southron Captain with ambush for when I have 3 or fewer threats. I will see burdens stack up sometimes since 4 is usually a safe number with no consequences and I am playing with threats, but never played him with more than 4 and he's not worth keeping just for those fringes. Him and Southron Troop are the highest strength ambush minions there are, is why I've kept them around. I don't know if the twilight they refund have ever mattered though.
As I think about it, the biggest problem for me is that I have so much fun wounding minions with Dernhelm's Blade that I forget about everything else
I've played probably 2 dozen matches and I have little recollection of their end results. But! I found some replays of one of the earliest versions that I had used in a competitive league on Gemp. It's got Desert Nomad and Desert Fighter on the Shadow side and Mustering for Battle on the FP side (as well as other, more perplexing choices ). The deck was 42/42 yet had enough cycling that it wasn't a huge downside... usually.Surprisingly enough, here's one where a Desert Nomad kills Arwen, Fair Elf Maiden!
Another where everything worked on both sides, the clowns enabled some pretty bold doubles to 6 and 8. Against a Merry's Sword / Rohirrim Bow deck, of all things.
And one against one of those Easterling decks I mentioned.
A close loss against a large fellowship. I think this would have been avoidable with a slimmer deck, I got stopped at 2 and couldn't return the favor, then foolishly discarded my only minion when reconciling my Shadow hand at 5 and let them double unopposed to 7 next turn.
Unfortunately I didn't save the decklist... It definitely plays differently than it does now, in part because of the extra 10 cards. I've always been pretty unimpressed by minions in the 8-10 strength range, I'm not sure why. I've seen them used against me to great effect and clearly they did well in these replays too. I guess when it came time to trim the deck, I played favorites with the big guys
I'm a fan of the ideas above too, though. Southron Marksman in particular is interesting, I always discounted him since he's already fierce and that's what Mumaks provide. However, if I can play a big mumak plus Marksman, I get two fierce minions for only one mount. And if I up the threat adding, turning the extras into wounds early might mean more kills later since Frodo will have already taken some archery hits. And this might be an interesting deck for Arrow from the South, which would let Marksman turn 4 threats into wounds instead of just 2. It's not necessarily incompatible with Southron Assassin, either. Just means tearing out some beatdown minions as William suggests to make room -- something I didn't want to do because I thought it would lessen the effectiveness, but clearly not!
This would bring the deck back closer to where it started, which is a pretty big shift from where I've taken it... Now that it comes to it, I don't feel like parting with it. After all, Why Shouldn't I Keep It? It seems to me there's 2 or 3 decks to be explored here instead of just one.
![[Gandalf]](https://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/Smileys/classic/gandalf.png "Gandalf")
but maybe has a stronger ![[Rohan]](https://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/Smileys/classic/rohan.png "Rohan")
splash.
but it requires initiative and can only be used once. Pippin, on the other hand, is a tremendous help every turn, just by himself, for only ![[1]](https://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/Smileys/classic/1.png "1")
. The cost benefit ratio seems definitely a bit off, compared to former sets, though Pippin is definitely more niche. Indirect wounds absorption set aside, even.
Based on all the answers to this post, I'll discuss some more with my friends and see if we decide to add them to our private X-list. Thanks a lot!