Circus Show! Rohan / Mumaks

[Phallen Cassidy]

Here's a deck I've had for a while, one that walks the line between fun and competitive pretty well. There are some changes to make to both sides, particularly the Shadow, but I'm not sure what. Someone on Gemp - perhaps ket_the_jet? - thought up the theme for this deck after one of the first games, and it is so joyfully whimsical that I went all in.

Circus Show
Ring-bearer: Frodo, Courteous Halfling
Ring: The One Ring, Such a Weight to Carry

Adventure deck:
Edoras Hall
West Road
Hall of the Kings
Osgiliath Fallen
City Gates
Minas Tirith Fourth Circle
Pelennor Grassland
Cross Roads
Dagorlad

Free Peoples Draw Deck: (37 cards)
1x Éowyn, Restless Maiden (Starting)
1x Éomer, Skilled Tactician (Starting)
1x Elfhelm, Marshal of Rohan
1x Gamling, Warrior of Rohan
1x Grimbold, Marshal of Rohan
1x Théoden, Leader of Spears
2x Merry, Swordthain
1x Sam, Proper Poet
1x Deor
1x Ecglaf, Courageous Farmer
1x Guma, Plains Farmer
1x Leowyn
1x Bounder
1x Brego
1x Firefoot
1x Heavy Chain
1x Merry's Sword
1x Rohirrim Helm
1x Rohirrim Shield
4x Éowyn's Sword, Dernhelm's Blade
2x Brace of Coneys
1x Hobbit Sword
2x Let Us Be Swift
4x Simbelmyne
1x Armory
1x Arrow-slits
2x Well Stored

Shadow Draw Deck: (37 cards)
4x Army of Haradrim
2x Desert Legion
1x Desert Lord
4x Desert Stalker
3x Southron Captain
3x Southron Traveler
1x Southron Troop
4x Mumak
3x Raider Halberd
2x War Mumak
2x Discovered
1x On the March
1x Red Wrath
2x War Towers
3x Whirling Strike
1x Ithilien Wilderness

I bid 2 to go first. The first card to pull with Simbelmyne is Merry's Sword if you have Swordthain out already, Leowyn if you know you're against a wounding deck, or Deor otherwise. You need the cycling of Deor / Leowyn to get through the deck the way it's currently built. Lots of the FP stuff is situational to be pulled by Simbelmyne and the Shadow only needs / expects to play 2-3 cards per turn so tossing cards isn't too difficult, but I still might need to cut it down a bit.

Free Peoples Overview
The show's headlining act is sword-swallower Eowyn, Restless Maiden. Play Dernhelm's Blade to wound a minion, ditch it, play another one... Eomer returns them to hand, Armory is a Dernhelm's Blade on standby, Merry can play one mid-skirmish, and of course with 4 copies you draw them frequently as well. I'll be the first to admit that the focus is excessive, but while I'll consider going down to 3x it will always be the focus It's all worth it for those moments when Eowyn discards her initial Dernhelm's Blade and plays through 3 more to deal 3 wounds to WK and end with 15 strength for the final blow.

Eomer, Skilled Tactician is a minion-juggler on horseback. It's an improved version of Pacifist Eomer from my Pillage the Village deck in Towers, using Firefoot and Rohirrim Helm to cancel the skirmish of two troublesome minions. With Merry's Sword any minion can have its first skirmish canceled, and with Merry you can cancel two skirmishes per turn instead of just one. The rest of the companions are simply Valiant for Ecglaf and Let Us Be Swift and receive no investment whatever. I guess they're clowns? I suppose in this analogy Swordthain is a knife-thrower. The Rohan allies would be vendors. Frodo is the Ring-leader, for so many excellent reasons. And of course, Sam is a Proper Poet. First he was a conspirator, now he's a jester. He'll end up by becoming a Wizard -- or a warrior!

Deor makes anyone a skirmisher, at least enough to not be overwhelmed. It doesn't matter if companions die (you may even want them to be killed so that you can use Eomer's text again while staying below 6 companions until Merry's Sword is out), just remember that without enough Valiant companions you can't use Ecglaf or Let Us Be Swift. Ideally the two cards Merry pulls back are Dernhelm's Blade and Rohirrim Helm because those are the fun parts. Brego is there with Eowyn for a spot of healing and strength when it's needed, and Ecglaf can replay Rohirrim Shield against wounding decks to effectively stop two wounds per turn. Arrow-slits and Heavy Chain are primarily there for Easterling Captain + Easterling Polearm + Raider Bow. Discard the polearm for a kill, otherwise Heavy Chain and Deor make it easy to survive.

I'm pretty happy with the Free Peoples, even though there are some obvious gaps -- no Rohirrim Bow, too few copies of Merry, no innate skirmishing power. They've nevertheless held their ground against everything. I don't quite recall, an earlier version may have even had some of that and I scaled it back on purpose because they were cutting into the Eowyn fun One thing I see is a use for extra horses, so that Eowyn can more reliably get one early and take down minions on her own.


Shadow Overview
The Shadow side is a little less interesting. Trained Elephants, though! Getting Southron Captain out for a site 5 kill (or a little later, if my opponent plays Pelennor Flat*) is the main thing, other than that it's just put a mumak on a big Southron and let him rampage. It doesn't get many Shadow wins, but it gets plenty of stops which is as well as I can hope for a supporting act. People are very hesitant to move twice when there's an 18 strength fierce minion on the table (not to mention 4 twilight refunded by the mumak), so that's really all I try to do. Since that doesn't tend to take many cards, it complements the FP hunger for drawing.

It used to have more of a threat focus than it does now, which I think I'd like to drift back towards if anyone has any suggestions. I tried out Bold Men and Grim, but unlike all the other conditions in that cycle you have to add a threat as a cost -- and that means when threats are maxed out, it's a dead card! I got bit hoping to drop it at City Gates with Southron Captain Ambush is primarily so that if I'm able to play Army of Harad and another noteworthy minion I might be able to put mumaks on them both, but of course generating twilight helps further encourage stops. Southron Bandit never did what I wanted him to do in this deck, my conclusion is that he's only fit for a deck that's all-in on both threats and twilight.

I used to have Desert Nomad in there too since 6 twilight for a 12 strength, damage +1 fierce minion is how much that costs for anyone. It's just awfully manageable. Fair Elf Maiden gets to 13 against fierce minions too easily, I'd basically always rather have a fierce minion of 15+ strength without the damage bonus. For the same reason I'm down on Desert Fighter and Desert Villain, too many primary fighters have damage bonuses and can beat them at 11 or 12 strength with a Mumak and I'm not sure they bring value if they can't be used twice. Maybe playing them and a bigger Southron could be more threatening, though it would mean giving the weaker minion the elephant at times and shifting strategy a bit more. Though if it works, Southron Captain would be more than a one-site pony elephant rider. Hmm...

[Tunadan]

I don't care if any facet of this deck is bad, you made a circus deck that might work and that's enough for me.

In all seriousness, have you tried Howl of Harad and Southron Assassin? It requires a little setup, but is nasty most of the time. Deep in Thought is bad, but other than that stuff like Secret Sentinels is not hard to fight when you have multiple copies on the table. I played it in PC Movie and it worked really well, even was able to fight ents with decency (Southron Intruder 2x on the table is fun).

[Phallen Cassidy]

I have a dedicated RB hate deck with those cards, though it does look similar with mumaks and many of the same ambush minions (Mumak and Desert Stalker just go hand in hand). In fact it's my only deck with Arrow from the South, my hope being that if an opponent can only remove it or Howl of Harad, they won't be able to choose wisely. If it survives, I'll use it with 1 or 2 tokens on Desert Lord to exhaust two important companions and put them within Whirling Strike of dying. For the most part I keep the goals of different decks different even when there's a lot of overlap between them.

You're the second person to mention that Southron Assassin would be a reasonable pick for this deck though, and I agree fully. On his own he doesn't require any real investment and, if he's played alongside a towering minion, the FP might be forced to assign him and the big guy to winning skirmishes or else kill the Assassin and let a secondary companion die. The threats that pop when Southron Captain gets a kill all go on Frodo first, so if I can lightly pepper him with Assassin I'll either get burdens for Desert Legion or put wounds on the rest of the Fellowship to kill later. The idea of Howl of Harad similarly fits, I just don't know how to find room for it without a major shift. I'm already at less than 25% minions in the deck so I don't want to lose any of those, and I think giving up 2 slots of supporting cards would eat too much into the rest deck. I could maaaybe lose a War Mumak but I've liked having 6 mounts, and the extra strength is occasionally the difference between an overwhelm. Even if I did go down to 5 elephants I'd be more tempted to sub in Southron Assassin or another Whirling Strike / Red Wrath than anything else.

So, along that line I'm thinking I'll give up Southron Troop and a Southron Traveler for 2x Southron Assassin. One of the Nomad slots went to Desert Legion but I wanna see if I can actually get the FP to soak threat / Assassin wounds as burdens. While the Troop has been a solid Mumak bearer (and of course I appreciate the naming pun for the deck), I don't think I've been able to use his ability yet. Often at 6+ companions the FP will throw their least important companion in front of a mumak to pop threat and get back down to 5 anyway.

[WilliamFox]

Disclaimer: I am an amateur player so please take my comments with a grain of salt.

Very interesting deck idea on the FP side ! Sword-swallowing Eowyn is one I had never seen. Nice to see Brace of Coneys, I've also been including them in my decks recently in my effort to cut Son of Hamfast (though I picked Sorry About Everything when there's enough healing, for the reduced twilight). (REMOVED : re-reading the thread I don't think it'd make sense to part from Guma and Ecglaf to save up the space from the 2x Well Stored). You have already mentioned it, but I would also have proposed a bit of archery with Rohirrim Bow, which would pair nicely with Dernhelm's Blade and can be recurred. On the other hand, I wouldn't know what to cut without harming your current synergies. Maybe Heavy Chain and Arrow-slits? It seems those are two of the most situational cards since you put them there for one specific encounter and you can't recur Arrow-slits. Else you could replace Proper Poet with Son of Hamfast and free up 2 slots by removing the 2x Brace of Coneys... That set aside, you might want to look at Windfola, since it would allow Eowyn to wound a fierce minion once more for an emergency kill (emergency, since it'd put you at risk during the next turn if not on a sanctuary for Hate, Whirling Strike or any other directed wounding).

For the shadow side, if you wanna go threats I'm at loss. The cards I would mention, you already tried (not a surprise coming from you though). I have always had the same unease for Bold Men and Grim (I understand that the effect is very strong but it already requires a very accurate timing to be used since it lasts only 1 turn, so the extra cost requirement of 1 threat seems overly strict). That being said, you do not have much threat generation in your current deck and quite a few big minions so I think it could be worth keeping 1 copy just in case. Has it failed you consistently? I'm interested in knowing.

Fair Elf Maiden is a pain for all fierce minions, certainly. With the amount of healing those decks usually have (Herald to Gil-Galad, Lady of the Golden Wood, Shadow Between), it might even be difficult to get her into Whirling Strike / Red Wrath zone. I might have suggested more directed archery but then your deck would look like mine haha (I find it quite nice to shape a bit the battlefield). Still, losing a few potential wounds from big minions (do you actually overwhelm often with those?) to simply add a few more threats with Desert Villain remains an option since eventually those should translate to wounds as well (either at companion kill or with damage bonuses) plus maybe some bonus skirmish wounds. It'd make your main killer Southron Captain more reliable and unlock Southron Marksmen which may be useful to hasten threat "cycling" as well as make companions more vulnerable to skirmish wounding / loss.

I would personally reduce a bit the big skirmishers and some of their support cards to make place for those, something like:

-1 Army of Haradrim
-1 Southron Troop
-2 Desert Legion (you do not play Pelennor Flat*, do you often see 4 burdens?)
-1 Southron Traveler
-1 Mumak
-1 Raider Halberd

+1 Desert Lord
+2 Southron Marksmen
+3 Desert Villain
+1 War Towers

That would make it 10 mumak bearers for 5 mumaks, +3 recursions with Army of Haradrim, and you'd be +1 minion overall. With this ratio, I believe you would still have some opportunities to put a Mumak on a Desert Villain for double threat generation when you do not draw your big guys. You might want to switch 1 Desert Stalker for 1 Southron Commander.

Otherwise, have you tried something with Trample and Fierce in Despair? Since you have plenty of Mumaks, and 2 surviving minions wouldn't be that rare of an occurrence (I suppose?), it could be an interesting combo. Southron Bandit could support you there too, I guess.

Sorry I can't help you as much as you helped me, but that's what I'd try for a first mumak / threat deck with my limited knowledge.

[Phallen Cassidy]

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.