Witness to History engine - The White Council deck

[Shelobplayer]

This deck is my attempt to make elves work in a new unique way in expanded. No HKOTN, no Cirdan, no archery, no skirmish events no tokens. I aim to turn Elrond, Witness to History into a event recursion engine with Barliman Butterbur, PPP + Nenya + Master of Healing. Also the OG Gil-Galad really shines with this list (HKOTN takes up way too many deck slots). I love the asesthetics of this fellowship once the setup is done, I think Hugo Weaving's portraital of a high elven lord is the best in the fantasy business, and I always wanted to build a deck around Elrond (and Witness to History has my favorite art of them all, plus the foil version is relatively cheap, so it's all great).

If you are familiar with MTG, this is a very much "prison" like deck, trying to completely control the opposing shadow with A New Light, Traveled Leader, Speak Friend and Enter and all the usual meta sites.

I don't pretend it's power level is on par with top expanded decks, but I really enjoy playing it (I'm the sociopath, who was obsessed with prison decks in MTG too), and still it has game against most decks of the format.

The Shadow is one of my usual "placeholder" shadows, I might update it later, but since the free people side has no Deagol, and I don't want to attempt to play a 130 124 card deck's shadow without Sudden Strike, corsairs might be the way to go (thanks to the Plotting Deceiver + Corsair War Galley synergy)

Ring-bearer: Galadriel, Bearer of Wisdom
Ring: The One Ring, The Binding Ring

Adventure deck:
Buckland Homestead
Neekerbreekers' Bog
Cavern Entrance
Steward's Tomb
Mithlond
Caras Galadhon
Mount Doom
Old Forest Road
Heights of Isengard

Free Peoples Draw Deck:
4x Elrond, Witness to History
3x Gil-galad, Elven High King
1x Glorfindel, Revealed in Wrath
3x Gandalf, Returned
1x Gandalf, Wise Guide
1x Grimbeorn, Beorning Chieftain
1x Quickbeam, Bregalad
1x Merry, In the Bloom of Health
1x Pippin, In the Bloom of Health
4x Barliman Butterbur, Prancing Pony Proprietor
1x Asfaloth, Elven Steed
1x Elven Armaments
1x Hadafang
2x Beorning Axe
1x Shadowfax, Greatest of the Mearas
1x Aiglos
1x Galadriel's Silver Ewer
1x Narya, Ring of Fire
1x Nenya
1x Vilya
3x Master of Healing
3x A New Light
4x A Wizard is Never Late
4x Momentous Gathering
1x Roll of Thunder
4x Saved From the Fire
2x Servant of the Secret Fire
2x Speak \Friend\ and Enter
2x Traveled Leader
2x Long-stemmed Pipe
1x Celebring, Elven-smith
2x Woodhall Elf, Exile
1x Pallando, Far-travelling One

Shadow Draw Deck:
1x Gollum, Old Villain
1x Gollum, Plotting Deceiver
1x Shelob, Her Ladyship
1x Grima, Servant of Another Master
1x Grima, Wormtongue
1x The Balrog, Demon of Might
4x Castamir of Umbar
4x Corsair Boatswain
2x Corsair Freebooter
3x Corsair Lookout
4x Corsair Marauder
4x Corsair Plunderer
1x Southron Leader
1x Sauron, Dark Lord of Mordor
1x Úlairë Enquëa, Lieutenant of Morgul
3x Úlairë Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders
1x Úlairë Nertëa, Dark Horseman
1x Web
4x Black Sails of Umbar
3x Corsair War Galley
2x Ships of Great Draught
4x Captured by the Ring
2x Led Astray
3x Sudden Strike
3x Saruman's Power
3x Evil-smelling Fens
3x Under Foot
https://play.lotrtcgpc.net/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=B0r0m1r$1zoy865qvdgvru0a - this is how things go in a good scenario
https://play.lotrtcgpc.net/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=B0r0m1r$ae1xqtmfvutysrla - this is a usual shadow kill, when the opponent is forced to double

The starting fellowship is all sacrificial lamb, non of them are meant to stay alive. Glorfindel is usually the first burn, Quickbeam is the next. I like to fetch all the elven rings with The Binding Ring, and kill off hobbits with threat wounds generated by GOTM (or just soak up 3 on both, then kill them later). I play this starting freeps so I get access to Momentous Gatherings, which lets me get Long-Stemmed Pipe (as the only target) that gets me an SFTF into the discard to scavange with Barliman. I'm considering a 2nd copy of Long-Stemmed Pipe in case if I need access to Roll of Thunder or any of the 3 control events that I may be missing.

The first burn usually gets Elrond, Gil and Celebring (who gets Aiglos). Aiglos at this point usually nets 4 strength thanks to The Binding Ring grabbing all the rings, making Gil-Galad a very potent fighter, and his regroup ability is what enables double moves.

The second burn sets up Grimbeorn and gets whichever lock piece I'm missing, and the party is set.

The 3-1 Gandalf split is if I think my opponent is playing Sudden Strike, basically, if I see a deck that's more than 120 cards, I'll just go for Wise Guide.

Cards I consider experimenting with:
On Your Doorstep - with Woodhall elf, this one could get back any maneuver (or later phase event for immediate use)
That is no Orc Horn - single copy to fetch with SFTF if I see any sign of a site control strategy
Careful Study - super iffy, but single copy could help my shadow setup for the late game immensly
Gandalf's Staff - now this is a tough choice, would make Wormtongue exceedingly dangerous, but on the other hand it would solve a lot of problem minions, will have to think about it
Notably I don't want to play any condition besides the Long-Stemmed Pipes, I want the opponent's condition discard to be dead draws, hence no inculsion of stuff like Shadow Between, Into the West, Perspective and whatnot.

Comments, criticism and bad mannered trolling are all welcome as always

[Shelobplayer]

Actively experimenting with the Master of Healing setup. Not gonna lie, lost more games with various build iterations than I usually do in months, but I really love this concept, and when it actually works o boy it wrecks. Not pretending it's a top tier build or whatever, just something new, and intriguing to me.

Here is how it looks when the stars align: (and you can imagine how it looks when they don't...)

https://play.lotrtcgpc.net/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=B0r0m1r$nfh1sx9gnc1dy74e

Made a couple of variants, with different starting setups:
Leader of Men + burn victim(S)
Witness to History + Poor Creature
the abomination in the replay link (Ordulus + Merry + Pippin + Quickbeam) may change to Pippin, Itboh and Ordulus to Glorfindel. I'm okay burning Glorfindel.

Not sure which will work best in the end, but will definitely keep going with it for a while.

Here is the list from the replay link:

Ring-bearer: Galadriel, Bearer of Wisdom
Ring: The One Ring, The Binding Ring

Adventure deck:
Buckland Homestead
Neekerbreekers' Bog
Cavern Entrance
Steward's Tomb
Mithlond
Caras Galadhon
Mount Doom
Old Forest Road
The Prancing Pony

Free Peoples Draw Deck:
4x Elrond, Witness to History
4x Gil-galad, Elven High King
1x Glorfindel, Eldarin Lord
1x Ordulus, Young Warrior
1x Gandalf, Returned
3x Gandalf, Wise Guide
1x Grimbeorn, Beorning Chieftain
1x Quickbeam, Bregalad
1x Merry, In the Bloom of Health
1x Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver
4x Barliman Butterbur, Prancing Pony Proprietor
1x Ottar, Man of Laketown
1x Asfaloth, Elven Steed
1x Elven Armaments
1x Hadafang
3x Beorning Axe
1x Shadowfax, Greatest of the Mearas
1x Aiglos
1x Galadriel's Silver Ewer
1x Narya, Ring of Fire
1x Nenya
1x Vilya
3x Master of Healing
2x A New Light
4x A Wizard is Never Late
4x Momentous Gathering
1x Roll of Thunder
4x Saved From the Fire
3x Servant of the Secret Fire
2x Speak \Friend\ and Enter
2x Traveled Leader
1x Into the West
1x Shadow Between
1x Long-stemmed Pipe
1x Perspective
1x Celebring, Elven-smith
2x Woodhall Elf, Exile
1x Pallando, Far-travelling One

Shadow Draw Deck:
1x Gollum, Old Villain
1x Gollum, Plotting Deceiver
1x Shelob, Her Ladyship
1x Grima, Wormtongue
2x The Balrog, Demon of Might
4x Castamir of Umbar
4x Corsair Boatswain
2x Corsair Freebooter
4x Corsair Lookout
4x Corsair Marauder
4x Corsair Plunderer
1x Southron Leader
1x Sauron, Dark Lord of Mordor
1x Úlairë Enquëa, Lieutenant of Morgul
2x Úlairë Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders
1x Úlairë Nertëa, Dark Horseman
1x Web
4x Black Sails of Umbar
4x Corsair War Galley
2x Ships of Great Draught
4x Captured by the Ring
3x Led Astray
4x Sudden Strike
3x Discovered
4x Evil-smelling Fens
4x Under Foot
1x Saruman, Servant of Sauron

Shadow for this version most deffinitely needs a change to a version that has space for 4x Led Astray, not quite happy with the corsairs here.

[Tunadan]

Looks neat! Would probably be stronger with HKOTN for regroup draws, but he's not much fun. Really love the abuse of the Binding Ring.

It looks like A New Light is the strongest play, especially with the sitepath control. I would focus on that more. Also, have you considered Have Patience? It'd keep Elrond healed, and could be nice with the insane Barliman recursion. Momentous Gathering doesn't seem to be doing much, so dropping that could free up slots. I'm a little confused with the choice of Narya, wouldn't the 3R version work better?

Have you considered running Gamling + Horn? That could get Aiglos/Nenya out faster.

[Shelobplayer]

I use reflections Narya to synergize with Aiglos.

I considered a Gamling start, but no artifacts are crucial for this to work, so shelved it, but it can be okay (especially if you want to make Galadriel skirmish, which is not a bad idea).

I like Momentous Gathering. Sure it's not OP here, but it gives more copies of Gandalf, and Long-Stemmed Pipe, that makes SFTF easier to get.

To make HKOTN work, you need to allocate a lot of deck slots. And this deck is already giant. Not only that, but this deck is good at winning skirmishes, but bad at finishing minions. Elven High King solves the later problem.

I should play Recovered Seeing Stone I think.

[Shelobplayer]

Posted my updated list in the opening post with a little writeup, and renamed the thread. Now this is a build thread

Having a lot of fun playing this build, I feel it is finally comming to its own.

[Ringbearer]

Ever considered slimming the deck down by a lot to improve consistency?

[Shelobplayer]

Ever considered slimming the deck down by a lot to improve consistency?

What would you suggest cutting? I would not go below somehting like 60/60 or 58/58 with a deck that draws so many cards. Losing a game to not having a draw deck when the game goes to full length is the most emberassing thing imo, and I consider it bad design.

Yes, it would be cool to cut down a few, but I feel it is really bare bones as it is now.

Edit: did cut down to 63/63 with -1 Shadow Between and -1 Beorning Axe // -1 Corsair Lookout -1 Balrog

[Ringbearer]

I don't have much experience in Expanded so it could be a good size, but with needing a specific card to make it work within a huge deck can lead to fizzling.

[Shelobplayer]

I don't have much experience in Expanded so it could be a good size, but with needing a specific card to make it work within a huge deck can lead to fizzling.

I don't think there is an optimal deck size for expanded, the format has so many search cards available, it completely changes the deckbuilding dynamic compared to other formats.

I don't enjoy 35/35 decks that always do exactly the same, although, I can't argue against their viability.

Generally if I'm left with roughly 10-20 cards in my deck when the game ends at site 9, then I'm perfectly satisfied with the size. The remaining cards are probably heavily filtered, and less than that might pose problems against discard decks (which you get an autowin against with a big deck).

[Tunadan]

Played against this a few times, it's very nasty

The Barliman combo is very strong, you are basically controlling their hand whilst controlling the sitepath as well. I would add at least a copy of Recovered Seeing Stone.

Have you considered a variant using  allies? Healing Aldor and Ecglaf in a wounding deck could work very well. Healing Leod and Hlafwine could also be useful.

Also a tanked up Thrarin fighting every turn could be cool.

[Shelobplayer]

Played against this a few times, it's very nasty

The Barliman combo is very strong, you are basically controlling their hand whilst controlling the sitepath as well. I would add at least a copy of Recovered Seeing Stone.

Have you considered a variant using  allies? Healing Aldor and Ecglaf in a wounding deck could work very well. Healing Leod and Hlafwine could also be useful.

Also a tanked up Thrarin fighting every turn could be cool.

I think further building on this combo would just result in a less consistent deck, that potentially has more explosive plays, and as probably you have seen it too, the events paired with the OG Gil-Galad are usually enough to get the job done. I actually even consider cutting it even further down to 60/60 from the current 62/62. I'm 2 cards short of completing this deck with physical cards and we are back to playing a lot with friends lately, so I will tune it as close to its perfect form as I can

The build is also possible, with the Dispatched With Haste // Brego looping I posted a few weeks back, but I feel that by relying on a condition that would be clunky. That combo I think is best suited for my BOO/Northman build.

On that note I have SEVERLY underestimated the OG Gil for years. This list is a result of me wanting to build elves without HKOTN, and boy am I happy with the result. Elven High King is outrageously underplayed and underestimated in expanded I feel. HKOTN just takes too many deck slots for my taste (I don't deny its raw power, just don't like playing it).

A Recovered Seeing Stone should indeed probably be on the list for trial. Just seeing the opponent's hand is valuable information, that you can take great advantage of.

I have another completely new concept brewing, that will have similar mechanics, just with an absolutely different setup, can't wait to play that one as well, I just don't have the spare time to do hardcore testing as I did for this one when I started working on it. A 1-2 game a day is the best I can manage for a week or two now, and I don't like testing like that. Lets just say I think I recreated the OG Horn of Boromir for expanded