Question: how well does a tentacle bomb deck cycle? I'm in the process of making mine and I'm not sure which freep deck to put it with!
I think the Gil-galad engine would work best for this particular build.
Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor is the key card in a loop that, in its simplest form, can draw as many cards as needed in the regroup phase, at every site. Normally losing all those cards when reconciling your hand is a problem, but for tentacles it becomes an additional bonus. Suddenly The
Watcher in the Water, Many-tentacled Creature has a whole bunch of tentacles to play, limited by the twilight available.
Another thing the Gil-galad engine does is to customize your hand, since you can choose what eight cards to keep. This is where the twilight generation side comes in. One direct method is to use
Led Astray. Another method is to use
So Polite (multiple copies can be played because the Watcher discards Gollum), which adds
for each threat you spot. Obviously the more threats the better, and legolas3333 hit on the idea of using
Plotting (and
Dark as Darkness for extra juice!). In any case, you just want lots of twilight.
Twilight bomb + tentacle bomb = swarm!
A few caveats:
- The deck as it stands is like a what-if scenario--the fellowship side is completely geared into setting up the Gil-galad engine, which is to say it's rickety at best.
- The game doesn't have a player's committee at the moment, but I'd imagine the Gil-galad loop would be fixed once something official/semi-official gets done. The last few sets introduced some pretty crazy things.
- On the bright side, tentacles work just fine IMO without the Gil-galad engine (Gil-Estel's paired one with Smeagol choke), though for this build I think cycling into the "perfect" hand would be too slow without it. I think a fellowship should at least be able to discard cards at will, though (e.g.
Poor Creature,
Don't Look at Them).
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The loop itself goes like this:
Needed:
-
Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor- 2
conditions that can add at least 3
tokens when played (one can be in your discard pile)
-
Leaving Forever (can be in your discard pile)
Loop:
1. Remove the first token to play
Leaving Forever.
2. Discard
Leaving Forever to draw 2 cards.
3. Remove the second token to play
Leaving Forever.
4. Remove the third token to play the second token condition.
5. Discard
Leaving Forever to discard the first token condition.
6. Repeat.
(The first step can be modified into playing an
condition of your choice, skipping the second step in that case.)