Deck Challenges.

[menace64]

I want to get back into playing shape so I figure maybe we can put together a way of gaming the deck construction process.

This could be as simple as you telling me (or whomever) to use This culture, or That starting companion, or Here, Build a Bill Ferny Deck.

Or we could spice it up with additional rules for requesting/supplying a challenge.

Didn't we use to have something like this?

[Phallen Cassidy]

I'm in, whatever we're doing. I have a number of interesting restrictions/strategies in mind for this very thing, but I've built most of them to at least a prototype so I'd be more interested in other people's suggestions. I'd thought of making this a sort of unofficial tournament, but shortly after getting things together we started working on Draft and it became redundant. I figured a round-robin with 3 matches where everyone builds the same deck type, but that was then what do you want this to become?

[menace64]

I want to be less reliant on what I remember building 12 years ago and more aware of the potentials in front of me now. I'll nod my head and do my best with whatever materializes next.

I think a round robin tournament where everybody is assigned certain requirements (either shared as described or drawn-lot style) could be a lot of fun!

[Dictionary]

Didn't we use to have something like this?

I remember reading something like that. They'd say something like: "Build a deck around Hastiest of All" and see what people came up with. There was some pretty good stuff.

EDIT: One of these, right? http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,356.15.html

[Air Power]

Do you want to specify the format?  I'd love to see what people come up with for a Smeagol BoGS deck

[menace64]

EDIT: One of these, right? http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,356.15.html

Ten years ago...! And of course it's Dain running the thing.

I'd speculate that running a full-on old-school voting contest for deck construction is likely a bit too much for us to tackle right out of the gate - but that whole thread is gold and it'd be a goal perhaps to shoot for something similar to it down the road.

Do you want to specify the format?  I'd love to see what people come up with for a Smeagol BoGS deck

Do we have any takers? I had a BoGS deck back in the day I could try reassembling!

[Dictionary]

I'd speculate that running a full-on old-school voting contest for deck construction is likely a bit too much for us to tackle right out of the gate - but that whole thread is gold and it'd be a goal perhaps to shoot for something similar to it down the road.

Things are quieter now. We can probably be a bit more informal, unless this gets super popular.

Do you want to specify the format?  I'd love to see what people come up with for a Smeagol BoGS deck

I'd normally advocate doing any formats of player choice, but BoGS is much harder in Movie than Expanded. Since this is a deck challenge, I'm guessing it'll be just Movie. Some cards are only challenges in certain formats.

EDIT: That being said, Expanded probably allows for more creativity, which is also nice for this kind of challenge. What do you guys think?

[RJH777]

This sounds like a great idea - good for finding all those old cards you forgot existed too...

[Deckhunter]

Looks like fun! I'd say expanded, but that's just me since I've never really been able to get the hang of movie for some reason. I guess I just like going a little too mad with experimental decks to find a solid one in that format first.
That being said, in either format I think it'd be fun to pair Smeagol, BogS with rohan companions and allies. I know that in expanded you could use the old gamling + horn to grab rohan stable master and make smeagol mounted for certain allies to spot. But there are lots of other more unique combinations out there. Frenzied Fighter and Where Now the Horse anyone?

[Phallen Cassidy]

So that's what we're doing? Expanded BoGS? Any other requirements, e.g. unbound companions, no solo smeagol, certain shadow sides, etc.?

[menace64]

Well I hadn't really had a mind for all of us competing with the same deck restrictions/themes (although that does sound wicked fun and I absolutely want to do that). My primary motivation for starting this thread was to provide all of us a forum for when we want to build a new deck but feel uninspired. Like, I've got my Trollcker deck that I cherish from my physical-card-playing-days, but beyond that I'm sort of out of ideas.

Given the feedback received thus far, I propose two different ways for us to interact in this thread:

Deck Requests
"I want to build a deck but I can't figure out what I want to build."
---
When you make a Deck Request, supply any up-front criteria you wish to abide by: block, format, cultures, etc. You can also make a Deck Request blindly, which may lead to more interesting results. Your post in this thread can be nothing more than "Deck Request: Anything, Any Format". I don't think you'd have to go with whatever is first-suggested, and maybe you'll want to discuss the suggestion with whomever is suggesting it - maybe they know something about this deck that you don't! (Or, in my case, loooooong forgotten.)
In either case, I think it should be mandatory that any Deck Request you make must be played at least ONE time and your deck list shared before you can put in for another Deck Request. This way, we all improve, and spammy posts will be kept to a minimum. (Unless we can get some old CC members in here.)

Deck Contests
"I want to follow a list of restrictions and play against others beholden to identical restrictions."
---
Might be easiest to just use the example we've already got going in this thread: Let's say that this week we have 4 players interested in participating in a Deck Contest, and through some agreed-upon means of negotiating we've determined to build BoGS decks in the Expanded format. And then we'd face-off with our Smeagol decks and have a romp of a slimy time.

---------

Does that sound like what's bouncing around in all your heads? It seems really easy, and the best part is that it isn't reliant on a specific person "running" the show for it to work.

[Dictionary]

Sounds good. We can always mix and match formats too if we want e.g. one person does Fellow, one does TS, one does Movie, one does Expanded etc. Might be a cool comparison for earlier cards.

Do we want to post replays here as well as decklists? Replays are nice for people to see these cards in action.

I'm rebuilding an old BoGS with companions deck I used to run a while ago.

[Shelobplayer]

This BOGS build did fairly well for me, and I enjoyed it a lot:
http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,9092.0.html

Although it uses New Chapter, so might not be for everyone's taste.

[Dictionary]

I don't know if this thread is still alive, but I'll go ahead and post my entry in hoping we can rekindle some interest. Shadow was a bit lacklustre, so I won't bother posting. Basically just News of Mordor shenanigans.

Decklist:
Ring-bearer: Smeagol, Bearer of Great Secrets
Ring: The One Ring, The Great Ring

Adventure deck:
Buckland Homestead
Streets of Bree
Cavern Entrance
Doorway to Doom
Mithlond
Caras Galadhon
Dammed Gate-stream
Pinnacle of Zirakzigil
Falls of Rauros

Free Peoples Draw Deck:
1x Farmer Maggot, Hobbit of the Marish (Starting)
1x Merry, In the Bloom of Health (Starting)
1x Pippin, In the Bloom of Health (Starting)
1x Quickbeam, Bregalad (Starting)
1x Skinbark, Fladrif (Starting)
1x Host of Fangorn (Starting)
1x Ent Horde (Starting)
1x Gandalf, Returned
1x Grimbeorn, Beorning Chieftain
1x Radagast, The Brown
1x Treebeard, Enraged Shepherd
4x Barliman Butterbur, Prancing Pony Proprietor
2x Beorning Axe
1x Shadowfax, Greatest of the Mearas
4x A Wizard Is Never Late
1x Grown Suddenly Tall
3x Look to My Coming
1x On Your Doorstep
4x Traveled Leader
1x One Good Turn Deserves Another
4x Release Them
1x Softly Up Behind
2x Long-stemmed Pipe
1x Perspective

Replays:
http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Dictionary$a76za705lt2olzvi
http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Dictionary$0cuq2fuea1mzs0lk
http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Dictionary$n4nu9fdy69w2kugc

Summary:
Start with the classic train of Bloom of Health Hobbits + Ents. Play some region 1 Dwellings for Maggot, then Falls of Rauros 3 times through One Good Turn Deserves Another and Traveled Leader in region 2. Bounce Mithlond in the final region. Try to sacrifice a Wizard to BoGS then revive at Pinnacle of Zirakzigil if possible. This means you can potentially finish a game with 5 companions still alive.

The main perks of this deck are infinite threat removal via BoGS killing people, which is great for GotM, and Smeagol's brutal Regroup ability. It is a very heavy site trickery deck, but it has to be to use Falls properly. I also considered Well Met Indeed (Sacrifice Gandalf every turn) and/or Greyhame (Discard many fodder companions then fetch them when needed), but it'd have to be a different deck for those.

Another possible build is Knocked on the Head + Unquenchable Hobbit -> Bounce and discard him in the same phase to trigger Home and Hearth.

This BOGS build did fairly well for me, and I enjoyed it a lot:
http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,9092.0.html

Although it uses New Chapter, so might not be for everyone's taste.

I think I played vs someone using this deck once. It's a pretty tough one.

[menace64]

(I'm sorry in advance if what follows comes off as overly-complainy. Honestly while there might be some venting here, for the most part I just prefer throwing my thoughts out without feeling tied to them on an emotional level - I'm also confident that with a few more rotations in this style a lot of my hangups will start to dissipate.)

This deck was my first return to the Expanded format and I'd say I did universally poor. Not beyond my own expectations.  

I got a few games in over the last week or so, my interest in sticking with the deck likely tempered by both the roughness of my build and my non-applicable playing experience. I feel incredibly rusty, but retrospectively I've always preferred design over competition, which is perhaps reflected in how "basic" my decks tend to be.

And this one is no different. It's too big and non-optimal, so any words of wisdom dealing with those hangups might give me a second shot with this deck.

Smeallum
Ring-bearer: Smeagol, Bearer of Great Secrets
Ring: The One Ring, Answer To All Riddles

Adventure deck:
Doors of Durin
Emyn Muil
Doorway to Doom
Slopes of Orodruin
Caras Galadhon
West Gate of Moria
Caves of Aglarond
Dammed Gate-stream
Imladris

Free Peoples Draw Deck:
2x Fishing Boat
2x Clever Hobbits
4x Naked Waste
4x Nasty
2x Release Them
2x Time for Food
3x Where Shall We Go
4x Follow Smeagol
3x Gladden Homestead
4x Never
4x Nice Fish
4x Poor Wretch
4x There's Another Way

Shadow Draw Deck:
4x Gollum, Mad Thing
4x Shelob, Her Ladyship
4x Spider Poison
3x Web
3x Captured by the Ring
2x Cunningly Hidden
3x Horribly Strong
2x Nasty, Foul Hobbitses
3x Sudden Strike
3x We Must Have It
2x Not Easily Avoided
2x Promise Keeping
3x They Stole It
4x Treacherous Little Toad

This is as bare-bones as gets, and I wanted the whole deck to be nothing-but. All Smeagol cares about is spotting a bunch of his own cards for deep effects like Never and Clever Hobbits. But it's quagmiresomely slow and besides choking-out the Shadow players to death I never accomplished much, even if Smeagol himself walked untroubled along the site path with some crazy base stats.

I wanted Shelob to work but she's a hard strat to perfect and I'm 10 years behind the times. I'll admit that I don't "get" her anymore. I know what Shelob / Promise Keeping used to look like; but Expanded is different than last I played within it and the meta is either tailored against such shenanigans or I might just need to find a more "me" strategy to use to pile on the wins. In either case, Shelob was a consistent misfire.

What, in your opinion, is the best way to optimize for Shelob in an Expanded environment?

---------

By removing a couple cards I could've shifted this into Move block - a much more comfortable format even if I still feel lost the majority of the time - but Horribly Strong Sudden Strike was the linchpin of the deck and without it I saw little sense in the attempt. (I still want to see a Limited-Expanded format, incorporating the X- and R- list and excluding all set 15, 17, and 18 cards. That's probably excessive and extremely self-absorbed but, hey, that's where mah brain is sittin' this morning.)

Replays:
http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Dictionary$a76za705lt2olzvi
http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Dictionary$0cuq2fuea1mzs0lk
http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Dictionary$n4nu9fdy69w2kugc

I'm assuming these replays are achieved with FRAPS or some equivalent software? Or have I missed some kickass gemp-based feature?

[Phallen Cassidy]

The third tab from the top left is Game History. Maybe give it a look

Perhaps a replay would be good for us (well, Dictionary) to see what you were up against and trying to do with your Shadow side. I do not play Expanded, but it looks like there's a lack of focus. What does Horribly Strong accomplish, exactly?

The goal of effective Promise Keeping decks is to max out on threats and then kill a companion in a skirmish, causing each threat wound to essentially place two tokens (because threat wounds are placed whenever a companion dies, making them skirmish wounds). They Stole It can be used with Promise Keeping to kill many companions outright if they have no wound protection, but everyone's aware of Ninja Gollum and has to have ways of dealing with it. The point of Her Ladyship is to try and neutralize whatever companion is most able to deal with wounding shenanigans. This may not always be the most capable fighter, in my opinion: winning a skirmish is only one way to create a wound. I think a lot of your buffs could be swapped for utility. Where's Deceit, for example? Fat One Wants It, if you'll be replaying Gollum? Incited + You're a Liar and a Thief (allows you to play a single copy of YaLaaT twice) can kill someone off without any notice (wound, exert, wound again) if you've got Gollum winning skirmishes.

From Deep in Shadow appears to be a card worth substituting some of your other minion-pullers for. If you're not going for burdens, Mad Thing might be weaker than Threatening Guide.

Other people will be far more helpful about this than I am, anything I know about Expanded meta (heck, Movie meta) is theoretical knowledge at best. Solo Smeagol + Ninja Gollum should be a solid deck, but a lot of Expanded seems to be rock-paper-scissors. Your Free Peoples could probably be better optimized, too. Where Shall We Go is usually worse than Don't Look at Them, for example.

[menace64]

The third tab from the top left is Game History. Maybe give it a look

F'n'a Gemp has everything!!

Perhaps a replay would be good for us (well, Dictionary) to see what you were up against and trying to do with your Shadow side. I do not play Expanded, but it looks like there's a lack of focus. What does Horribly Strong accomplish, exactly?

Ahh sorry I mean Sudden Strike, not Horribly Strong. If replays are automatically generated I'll fetch one when I'm able!

The goal of effective Promise Keeping decks is to max out on threats and then kill a companion in a skirmish, causing each threat wound to essentially place two tokens (because threat wounds are placed whenever a companion dies, making them skirmish wounds). They Stole It can be used with Promise Keeping to kill many companions outright if they have no wound protection, but everyone's aware of Ninja Gollum and has to have ways of dealing with it. The point of Her Ladyship is to try and neutralize whatever companion is most able to deal with wounding shenanigans. This may not always be the most capable fighter, in my opinion: winning a skirmish is only one way to create a wound. I think a lot of your buffs could be swapped for utility.

That's mostly what I remember. My impression now, though, is 1-Part "The meta is extremely unforgiving against condition-heavy decks" and 1-Part "menace64 has lost his edge."

Where's Deceit, for example? Fat One Wants It, if you'll be replaying Gollum? Incited + You're a Liar and a Thief (allows you to play a single copy of YaLaaT twice) can kill someone off without any notice (wound, exert, wound again) if you've got Gollum winning skirmishes.

I think the lack of all of those cards in my build is indicitive of my problem: I'm not as fluent in card-knowledge as I would've been back in the day. Deceit outright solves my problem of getting gutted but I forgot it even existed - along with basically every other card in that sad, unjoyful set. (I still have nightmares about #18...)

From Deep in Shadow appears to be a card worth substituting some of your other minion-pullers for. If you're not going for burdens, Mad Thing might be weaker than Threatening Guide.

A solid focus on threats would make Threatening Guide a much better fit; I only went with Mad Thing because I remember he was the Gollum most likely to kill me when last I played.

Other people will be far more helpful about this than I am, anything I know about Expanded meta (heck, Movie meta) is theoretical knowledge at best. Solo Smeagol + Ninja Gollum should be a solid deck, but a lot of Expanded seems to be rock-paper-scissors. Your Free Peoples could probably be better optimized, too. Where Shall We Go is usually worse than Don't Look at Them, for example.

You've already been helpful! Just as simple a critique as "lacks focus: go for threats" gives me something to aim for! What do you think is the upper size limit on a deck like this?

[Dictionary]

a lot of Expanded seems to be rock-paper-scissors.

I've seen this description levelled at pretty much every format I've played, and many more besides. I've never seen things that way myself though.

The meta is extremely unforgiving against condition-heavy decks

This is definitely true. I think some the culture's popularity has receded a bit over the years (Just parts of it, it's still a strong culture) because of rampant condition discard. Playing on Gemp made me give up on many conditions a long time ago. Gollum does have Deceit though (As Phallen mentioned) and while it does not make you invulnerable (Despite what many will tell you) it is a big help for Gollum.

Possessions are a bit safer. Larder is good for Shelob buffs if you want them, and if you stick with Enduring Shelobs you can use Gothmog, Morgul Leader and then Larder him if they don't make twilight.

Just speaking for myself, I like building 80 card decks and then working my way down, as I find losing due to lack of minions extremely painful. Bigger decks are, of course, doable, but they require a lot of work to get right.

[menace64]

This is definitely true. I think some the culture's popularity has receded a bit over the years (Just parts of it, it's still a strong culture) because of rampant condition discard.

I'll accept any meta-level setbacks if doing so keeps dead forever.

Possessions are a bit safer.

Why do you think I still like Troll of Cirith Gorgor so much? 

[Phallen Cassidy]

This is one of the more gimmicky decks I've built, but I didn't know what else to do.

The Secret Smeagol Slide

Ring-bearer: Smeagol, Bearer of Great Secrets
Ring: The One Ring, Such a Weight to Carry

Adventure deck:
Ettenmoors
Morannon Plains
Neekerbreekers' Bog
Fords of Isen
Mere of Dead Faces
Window on the West
Dammed Gate-stream
Green Dragon Inn
The Prancing Pony

Free Peoples Draw Deck (36 cards):
1x Frodo, Frenzied Fighter (Starting)
1x Sam, Resolute Halfling (Starting)
1x Anborn, Skilled Huntsman
1x Boromir, Steward's Heir
1x Faramir, Son of Denethor
4x Ranger of Ithilien
1x Bilbo, Aged Ring-bearer
4x Release Them
4x Something Slimy
1x Follow Smeagol
1x Gladden Homestead
4x Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
4x Poor Wretch
4x Secret Paths
4x There's Another Way

Shadow Draw Deck (36 cards):
3x Gollum, Old Villain
2x Shelob, Eater of Light
1x Shelob, Her Ladyship
3x Web
4x Captured by the Ring
4x Horribly Strong
4x Led Astray
3x So Polite
3x Deceit
2x Evil-smelling Fens
1x Fat One Wants It
1x Final Strike
1x Incited
4x It's Mine

You'd probably do well to cut the deck down to 30/30: I'd recommend -4x Release Them, -1x Gladden Homestead, and -1x Poor Wretch for the Free Peoples and -2x Evil-smelling Fens, -1x Fat One Wants It, and -3x Led Astray for the Shadow. There's probably a lot of missed opportunity for site optimization and manipulation here, and some tweaking could be done to the quantities. I made a few edits after the maiden voyage, but nothing major.

With 4x Secret Paths, you can probably guess the goal: use Smeagol's regroup ability to coast to site 9. Ring-bound Rangers are there to up the threat limit and provide cushion for the first few moves; with 8 companions (and no threats) you can play all of your Secret Paths and move from 3 to 9, though in the handful of games I played I could only move from 3 to 8. If your opponent's shadow side has cycling you're pretty much screwed.

I've bid 0 and started Green Dragon Inn when able, otherwise hopefully as the 2nd site with Prancing Pony or Dammed Gate-stream (depending on which I need) for site 3. The sites are basically all situational, I'd try to reserve Smeagol's vitality for using Follow Smeagol if you pulled/drew it early or Mere of Dead Faces with There's Another Way to ensure a crucial favorable site. Still, I haven't needed to depend on them one way or another. Neekerbreeker's Bog and Morannon Plains are theoretically cool, but there's probably something better that could go here. I didn't have a chance to try Window on the West or Fords of Isen but I have high hopes for them.

Having a Ranger in your opening hand is crucial (maybe I should start Prancing Pony instead?) because of how low the strength of the starting fellowship. Between Herbs and Stewed Rabbit, Poor Wretch, and There's Another Way Smeagol is usually plenty stacked by site 3 (Strength ranging from 11-15). Sam should be used to discard any Shadow cards you've got because there's a lot of digging you need to do. I use Something Slimy as a placeholder for Secret Paths and only use it to pull something else if I can get my max copies out (hopefully 4, but at least 3). Gladden Homestead is a fine way to clog the opponent's hand, but I'd spread the uses out rather than push all the conditions back at once.

The Shadow side is only here to help your Free Peoples, but so far it looks scary enough to keep your opponent from moving too fast (Ninja Gollum and what all). Play Gollum and exert him three times with It's Mine to get what you need. Horribly Strong is a great bonus because it lets you do this again. There are 11 distinct companions total in the deck, so don't worry if you discard Rangers. Incited only has one copy, but should probably move up to 3. Gollum will only be skirmishing for the first 3-4 sites if all goes well, which means he'll be much stronger than companions and can win skirmishes just by discarding your extra Shadow cards. If you can use Incited, I wouldn't use it to grab anything but a lost Free Peoples condition or a used Something Slimy. Playing Shelob at all is a secondary goal. Eater of Light pulls Web and thus bumps your shot at drawing your Free Peoples cards, but Her Ladyship stops moves better and if your opponent figures out that your Shadow side is toothless soon enough, there's a chance you could be out-raced by an opponent with an increased move limit (Radagast, mostly). I'm not sold on either one. Just remember that the focus here is to help your Free Peoples get set up.

[menace64]

The challenge has been issued to build a deck incorporating Uruk Spy. It hasn't been stipulated to what format this deck should reside, so I say Towers Standard until otherwise corrected.

[Pepi]

Really glad you brought Uruk Spy up! I've been thinking about an Uruk archery deck that utilizes these guys and Saruman's Reach to either add burdens (which can be at the very least -- traded off for extra minions at Palantir Chamber), or some extra exerts. I think Evil Afoot would help in a deck like this aswell. Not sure about fellowship, though. Some filtering would be great, so I'd likely go for Rohan, because Symbelmyne.

So that's my five cents.

[menace64]

1x Boromir, Steward's Heir

I want to see this deck in action, and until three seconds ago I had NO idea there was a Ring-bound Boromir. Holy crap! Are there other juicy-keyword online-only companions out there?!

---------

Uruk Spy isn't working [yet]. It feels like I'm missing some crucial component. The Nazgul side of the deck is working well enough - I think swapping out my generic Uruk cheapies with archers might be what I need here.

Not sure about fellowship, though. Some filtering would be great, so I'd likely go for Rohan, because Symbelmyne.

So far I'm using Ring-bound rangers with Shards of Narsil for cycling. I did learn this morning that stacking a Shard on a Shard and then shift+clicking a card stacked on Shards crashes gemp produces a slightly scary red error message prompting me to refresh. Or something else wonky is going on. (http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=menace64$ind1lh36vodks9b0 for the replay although the scary-red-text doesn't show up here.)

[Shelobplayer]

I want to see this deck in action, and until three seconds ago I had NO idea there was a Ring-bound Boromir. Holy crap! Are there other juicy-keyword online-only companions out there?!

It's not online-only, just a very rare promo.

[menace64]

I want to see this deck in action, and until three seconds ago I had NO idea there was a Ring-bound Boromir. Holy crap! Are there other juicy-keyword online-only companions out there?!

It's not online-only, just a very rare promo.

 

[menace64]

I am issuing a DECK CHALLENGE to all of you.

I want you to build a custom Starter Deck, with the intent of it being simultaneously Approachable, and Enjoyable, something you could sit down and teach with.

Each side of your Starter Deck must revolve around a simple focus, whether that be a specific character, or mechanic.

The format can be whatever makes you happiest, even Open! (I plan on trying Open first.)

I won't disallow Rares or Rare+s but these should be included at the barest of minimums.

Alternate Ring-bearers are fine - even encouraged - just be careful to keep things simple if you choose to go this route.

Feel free to use pre-existing Starter Decks as templates in your construction, but no copy and pasting! Try to innovate within these constraints.

[Wyrden333]

I guess the challange is for a 60-Card deck (or more).

Just asking sice the Decipher Decks always had like 50 cards or so...