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Author Topic: My creation  (Read 2913 times)

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April 06, 2019, 02:14:19 PM
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mathes

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My creation
« on: April 06, 2019, 02:14:19 PM »
Soo as a long time lurker I would like to share my deck.

Although I have built the deck from the scratch myself it was based a lot on decks I have met in the lobby and I got inspired a lot.

As I am stuck in the office for another hour or so (and it's Saturday night so nobody is even sure why am I needed here) I will start with a "short" story of how the deck started.

1) The origin

I have played since Two Towers to Shadows, where I realized I really like neither the mapping nor the resistance stuff so I left. When I found GEMP I kicked off with movie block as that was the stuff I felt most confident in. Soon realized that movie block is a poop compilation with so much broken stuff going on and all the decks going from very weird and different angles and the infamous GLR to make things really stupid.

Soon I realized that it is not that fun. The expanded makes my head spin and makes my belly uncomfortable, so I moved to the pretty much the last format that is being played a lot. I quickly realized how fun the block still is and how appealingly simply the block is - every single thing is hate-able.

2) The first steps

As I moved to fotr I have seen a lot of games already played, so I build myself a first deck which was ElfGondor Archery + eye wound orcs (you know the usual hate, utwe, bowman). I realized neither half of the deck works and funnily enough both of them were very soft to condition removal. If an opponent played Saruman's power into Sleep Caradhas it was pretty much gg for both my FP and my shadow.

3) The fellowship development

So I started testing. I really liked Gandalf and Aragorn (due to Servant of the Secret Fire, Gandalf's staff and Aragorn's bow) but I wasn't sure who else should be there outside of Sam, Son of Hamfast (as the guy feels on the same power level as Aragorn, HTTWC). So I moved to rainbow fellowship based on Gandalf FOTS with Uruk as the shadow (as Saruman and Savagery are broken beyond imagination).

Here I was testing a lot of things. Starting fellowship was Greenleaf + Sam to be able to bid high and go first to be sure to pick up the one single Aragorn from the deck via Prancing Pony.

This turned out to be a very bad idea as the meta is - all people with Pony as site 1 bid 0-1 and the rest bids 2-3 to push their non-pony site and screw your deck. Somewhen during this time, I changed things up a bit. I cut the Greenleaf and Gandalf FOTS and instead went with Gandalf, The Grey Pilgrim as the starting character.

Then I saw someone playing pipes and I realized it is a very good healing engine (and burden removal if Sam gets sacked) so I added it there. It felt good, so I moved to shadow.

4) The Shadow development

I was feeling pretty good about the FP but the shadow felt kinda underwhelming so I start tweaking the Uruk. I went from "big bad ugly guys" version to "I will do nothing from site 5 to 8 to sculpt the perfect hand to kill you with on site 9. It worked pretty good but was very soft to hand disruption. So I was tweaking and tweaking and finally, I realized it just doesn't work the way I would like so I moved to my original shadow (the first one I build when playing the paper game more than 15 years ago). Nazguls.

I started with the twilight corruption but after couple weeks discarded the whole idea as it was very soft to burden removal (ehmehmSAMehmehm) and playing Helpless just to get it removed couple sites later and immediately remove 3 and pretty much ruin my mood.

So I moved to the true power - Force Nazguls. Those guys are just big. And fierce. And they will give you Black Breath and Blade Tip just like that. And you will be sad. I realized how powerful they are and also they do not need that much of the "critical threshold of minions in hand" the same way the swarm strategies work. You can play just one Attea with sword and steed and just watch him smash some heads.

5) Final tuning

As I was super happy with the basic structure of both fellowship and shadow I started with tweaks when I realized I play only a few conditions that are really good, but if you rely on them, they can explode to your face so I decided to cut all FP conditions and add Sleep Caradhas (if you don't care about conditions, the card is just so great in FOTR block).

Also since the Boromir horn deck is the deck to beat (IMO it is the strongest archetype there is in FOTR block) I have decided to cut allies to play Anduin Confluence. Later I realized how much I am telegraphing that site in advance by not playing any allies. So I added Elrond, Ottar and Barliman Butterbur as they are really good + they can convince my opponent to not expect the site.

For the past couple months, I was pretty much just polishing the deck and I have almost 100 games played with the iterations of the deck with approx 75% win rate.

So here it is:

Frodo, Son of Drogo
The One ring, Isildur's Bane

1x Gandalf, The Grey Pilgrim (starting)
3x Aragorn, Heir to the White City
2x Sam, Son of Hamfast
3x Elrond, Lord of Rivendell
1x Barliman Butterbur, Prancing Pony Proprietor
1x Ottar, Man of Laketown
1x Gandalf's Pipe
1x Glamdring
1x Aragorn's Bow
1x Aragorn's Pipe
1x Armor
3x Athelas
2x Flaming Brand
2x Rangers Sword
1x Frodo's Pipe
1x Longbottom Leaf
4x Old Toby
2x Sting
2x Gandalf's Staff
1x Narya
4x Servant of the Secret Fire
2x Sleep, Caradhras

1x Bill Ferny, Swarthy Sneering Fellow
3x The Witch King, Lord of Angmar
4x Attea, Keeper of Dol Guldur
4x Cantea, Lieutenant of Dol Guldur
2x Enquea, Lieutenant of Morgul
3x Toldea, Messenger of Morgul
1x Black Steed
4x Nazgul Sword
1x The Pale Blade
4x Morgul Gates
4x Relentless Charge
4x Black Breath
3x Blade Tip
2x Wreathed in Shadow


6) How to?

The FP deck is designed to go under the radar of most of the shadows going around - you are wrecking all condition based shadows, you go toe to toe with "big guys shadow". If you draw ok you shouldn't have any major problems going forward. Since you have max 4 companions in play (and you often don't need Sam at all) you are flying under both Nertea and Savagery. And being under Savagery limit is generally good idea in this format:)

You want to bid exactly 1 and if given the option, choose to go second (to get your sites 2,3,4 and 7). If an opponent does not have Prancing pony, you need to mulligan into Aragorn (or keep draw heavy hand). You can heal A LOT during the game.

If you wonder why is there the Frodo, Son of Drogo it is because of the ability. If you have just Frodo's pipe you can transfer the wounds from Frodo to Aragorn and heal up. Also, you can just exert Aragorn during fellowship to discard another copy of Aragorn to not clog your hand. The fact it wrecks the twilight Nazguls trying to stomp him down with wounds is just for bonus points.

That's all, it's a super long post I now - looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas:)