Lets try this again: Pipeweed / Saruman deck help wanted

[neopium]

You really like this Pippin, Guard of Minas Tirith, don't you... But you don't have any fortification, what did I miss? Is it just to be able to discard cards from hand?

This is what I came up with (yet another variant):

Ring-bearer: Frodo, Old Bilbo's Heir
Ring: The One Ring, Answer To All Riddles

Adventure deck:
Steps of Edoras
Rohirrim Camp
Beacon of Minas Tirith
Osgiliath Fallen
City Gates
Minas Tirith Fifth Circle
Osgiliath Crossing
Morgul Vale
Dagorlad

Free Peoples Draw Deck:
1x Gimli, Skilled Defender
1x Legolas, Greenleaf
4x Gandalf, Mithrandir
1x Aragorn, Ranger of the North
1x Elrond, Herald to Gil-galad
1x Bilbo, Retired Adventurer
1x Gimli's Battle Axe, Trusted Weapon
2x Gimli's Pipe
2x Gandalf's Pipe
1x Glamdring
2x Aragorn's Bow
3x Aragorn's Pipe
2x Ranger's Sword
4x Longbottom Leaf
4x Old Toby
1x The Gaffer's Pipe
1x Grown Suddenly Tall
1x Sleep Caradhras
1x Sent Back

On a pre-shadow multipath, the idea is to have a different site path, with the site that allows you to play aragorn from your draw deck (this is why I only have one copy of him). Thus you can start with Legolas, Greenleaf and Gimli, Skilled Defender, retrieve Aragorn quickly and with 4 copies of Gandalf, Mithrandir, hope that he arrives sooner than later.

You don't have much backup companions though, which is why I chose 3x Aragorn's pipe, in order to heal my companions as early as possible.

The choice of frodo is to heal Bilbo, retired adventurer that I use to recycle the pipeweeds. Obviously, with only one copy of him, You have to be lucky... Maybe I should replace him with more weapon for Gimli... don't know.

IRL, I also have only one copy of sent back, which is why I didn't include more. Moreover, with all the healing power and multiple copies of Gandalf I have, I hope he can survive long enough...

I didn't play it much, so I don't know if it performs well, but I really wanted a pipeweed deck, and I found the Mithrandir idea very interesting.

[Zurcamos]

You really like this Pippin, Guard of Minas Tirith, don't you... But you don't have any fortification, what did I miss? Is it just to be able to discard cards from hand?

...

The choice of frodo is to heal Bilbo, retired adventurer that I use to recycle the pipeweeds. Obviously, with only one copy of him, You have to be lucky... Maybe I should replace him with more weapon for Gimli... don't know.

I didn't play it much, so I don't know if it performs well, but I really wanted a pipeweed deck, and I found the Mithrandir idea very interesting.

I focused on the archery idea, but I don't know if it'd work.  Guard of Minas Tirith is here because he's the only Frodo signet hobbit sturdy enough to stick around.  Friend to Sam is another option though, for boosting others instead.  Everyone has the Frodo signet in my latest build, except Faramir, for Frodo's Pipe.  I feel it's A LOT better for healing Legolas and Aragorn than Aragorn's Pipe, but obviously, both are here.  You'd end up with Greenleaf, an 11 strength archer Aragorn, a 9 strength archer Faramir who can carry Aragorn's Pipe, along with the hobbits [Hmm, maybe Friend to Sam WOULD be better actually; Aragorn and Faramir might win skirmishes, he requires no spotting, and is cheaper too (I'll edit the other post)].  No Grima can do a thing to it without having condition support, due to it only being three cultures, and only Faramir carries three items.  The Elrond/Bilbo combo isn't a bad idea by any means (I have it in one of my decks), but yeah, one copy of each seems too inconsistent and takes up card slots.  It's just so hard to fit everything you want into a Pipeweed deck, if you have lots of pipes and all 8 weed, which is why Tennet didn't do it.  I still like the Mithrandir idea too, but letting him die again and again requires about as many cards as just keeping him alive, huge and winning skirmishes; you just avoid threats, adding tons of twilight, and putting in more copies of his pipe.  Shrug, shrug.

[neopium]

If it's about archery, I already tried a Pipeweed deck like that. I explained here why it did not work:
http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,8109.0.html

The idea was to have 4 Gondor bowmen and to recycle them with Bilbo's pipe. It required too many cards to work and there was a focus on too many things: drawing plenty of cards, recycling Gondor bowmen and general pipeweed.

I tried too things, first with Gandalf, then with only Gondor guys. None ever worked very well. I couldn't double move and relying on archery only was not enough to beat the minions before skirmish, were the fellowship was too weak... This is when I abandoned this deck and tried the one detailed above.

I tried it once on Gemp, but it is currently very hard to find opponents for multipath. I was defeated by a southron wounding deck that managed to exhaust all my companions before I could draw Frodo's pipe... Once Aragorn and Gandalf were killed, at the Steward's tomb, I finally drew Frodo's pipe... but couldn't use it because of the site... Not a very conclusive game, thus. But I have to try it again and again.

Instead of Faramir, Ithilien Ranger, you could also try with Faramir, Son of Denethor. You can't have him in the starting fellowship, but he can be very useful against annoying minions and he has the Frodo signet...

[Zurcamos]

If it's about archery, I already tried a Pipeweed deck like that. I explained here why it did not work:
http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,8109.0.html

...

I tried it once on Gemp, but it is currently very hard to find opponents for multipath.

...

Instead of Faramir, Ithilien Ranger, you could also try with Faramir, Son of Denethor. You can't have him in the starting fellowship, but he can be very useful against annoying minions and he has the Frodo signet...

Galdor told me to look at your deck, but I never did until now; sorry.  There are a lot of similarities.  I have less I'm trying to do in my build, but I am not saying it would necessarily work any better.  As for multipath, Galdor likes it.  Maybe you two can play/test your decks online together in the future...?  Though I like Faramir, Son of Denethor a lot too, you'd have to switch to a different Aragorn in order to have him replace the other two in the starting fellowship.  You'd lose cardslots, make it harder to double move early on, and give up Aragorn's Frodo signet (unless you, like Galdor, don't care about the X-list ... but then I'd start thinking you ARE Galdor with your shared love of Pipeweed and multipath and hatred of the X-list!!! ).

[neopium]

unless you, like Galdor, don't care about the X-list ... but then I'd start thinking you ARE Galdor with your shared love of Pipeweed and multipath and hatred of the X-list!!!

Nope, I'm not Galdor :-)

[Off-Topic]
IRL, I only have one opponent and we play for fun, so indeed we have our own X-List (which says "if it ain't fun, don't play the card"). Movie block X-List contains Bill the pony for instance and I don't see why it is a problem when Lady Redeemed is not X-Listed and is clearly NPE.
However, when I first create and test my decks, before buying tons of useless cards, I try to test them on Gemp, where I have no choice but to respect X-Lists and format limitations.
In the end, respecting the X-List remains the rule, even though there might be exceptions IRL.
[/Off-Topic]

Back to the pipeweed topic, the problem with my previous deck was that it was too much focused on playing with the pipes, drawing plenty of cards and recycling tales, while it should have focused on killing minions and surviving skirmishes...

Archery is strong, but it is not enough to win games. It works great against Moria or Dunland, but in front of Nazgüls (or worse, enduring Nazgüls), you have to exert Legolas and Aragorn so many times that it is not worth anymore... Don't forget either that healing with pipes only happens in Fellowship phase, so double moving is not necessarily easy when you exert your companions several times during the first skirmish...

Maybe Out of the High Airs could help, but then you have to include Gandalf... and exerting Mithrandir is dangerous (especially when double moving)...

That's a complex equation to solve :-)

[Zurcamos]

Archery is strong, but it is not enough to win games. It works great against Moria or Dunland, but in front of Nazgüls (or worse, enduring Nazgüls), you have to exert Legolas and Aragorn so many times that it is not worth anymore...

That's what I was afraid of.

Maybe Out of the High Airs could help, but then you have to include Gandalf... and exerting Mithrandir is dangerous (especially when double moving)...

That's a complex equation to solve :-)

I keep thinking the entire idea of Pipeweed in Movie Block is a complex equation with no real, working solution.  For me, personally, I'll keep playing my Fellowship Block Pipeweed deck, as it's very good there (though I wouldn't mind playtesting some of my Movie deck ideas, just to see how badly they go wrong).  I signed up for Gemp and put a deck together, but I watched some games, got stressed, and quit out without playing, haha.  Gotta get 1+ of my homies to sign up, so nobody has to deal with our cluelessness.

[Zurcamos]

Galdor, I can see you came back to the site and gave me a bunch of negative gold for old posts that I thought we had moved past.  I've tried very hard to play nice lately.  Just for you, I created a Gemp account and playtested the archery and Gimli ringbearer decks multiple times.  Archery won 50% of the time, but Gimli never won, no matter what changes I made to it (they were paired with the exact same shadow).  Hope you enjoyed the cruise, and thanks for the gold.  See you later.

[Pepi]

Doesn't exactly fit all the requirements, but still, here's a fun pipeweed movie deck, I've been running lately, and I gotta say it's doing surprisingly well.

Ring-bearer: Frodo, Resolute Hobbit
Ring: The One Ring, Answer To All Riddles

Free Peoples Draw Deck:
4x Gandalf, Friend of the Shirefolk
1x Smeagol, Slinker (Starting)
1x Boromir, Son of Denethor (Starting)
1x Merry, Friend to Sam (Starting)
2x Gandalf's Pipe
2x Aragorn's Pipe
2x Frodo's Pipe
1x Hobbit Sword
3x Longbottom Leaf
4x Old Toby
1x Sting, Baggins Heirloom
1x The Gaffer's Pipe
2x Roll of Thunder
2x Sleep Caradhras
4x Don't Follow the Lights
2x There and Back Again

So basically; Smeagol is there, to get rid of the big minions. Gandalf's job is burden/condition/posession removal. Merry's and Boromir's job is to strengthen Smeagol/Gandalf/each other, and Frodo's job is to heal everyone and possibly ... survive.

[Galdor420]

@neopium: I can see how the deck might run low on companions, but adding legolas doesn't seem the best choice if you want more. Sure he has the frodo signant but theres no frodo's pipe and you can't start with him so you'd need multiple copies for 1 companion and the archery even with aragorn's bow would only be so-so. Maybe adding a couple copies of radagast instead of 2 copies of gandalf's pipe would work since you don't need the burden removal every site and Radagast can work off sent back as well as gandalf for extra disposable wizards. I don't think having a hobbit removes the need for gimli since you can start frodo for 0 even if hes not your ringbearer

your 2nd deck relies too much on getting arragorn out to start. What if your oponant bids more than you? You will only have 1 arragorn in the deck and 7 other cards that depend on him... Overall I think that deck just requires too much luck to work.

@Zurcamos  : "I keep thinking the entire idea of Pipeweed in Movie Block is a complex equation with no real, working solution" <-- I think that is the general community consensus, and I hope with all our collective brainstorming we can prove that piece of conventional wisdom wrong lol. I appreciate your playing nice lately. I honestly just figured out how gold worked on this site and figured you were the source of all my minus gold in that other thread so I figured I'd return the favor lol. I have no hard feelings so don't take it personal. Who cares about the site gold anyway, really? That fake gold isn't useful for anything but e-penius comparisons anyway. I did enjoy the cruise thanks, it was perfect. I still haven't had time to play test though which is why I refrained from posting here since I got back.

It's interesting to note the Gimli / Gandalf / Aragorn variant didn't work, yet archery had some success. I'm guessing it's because of the lack of ways the Mitherandir pipesmoker deck has in dealing with minions directly but it's impossible to tell without knowing what you died from (assuming they were fellowship deaths) during those games. My brother is running a Southron Wounding / 3 hunters choke deck at the moment so I'll see how it fairs against that.

@Pepi: Thats interesting. It looks super similar to a shire countryside deck I used to run but it gets away with sleeps by not having the countrysides. I'll try that if Mithrandir falls flat of his face. Still, you could probably get away with Deep in Thought and keep the countrysides for the best of both worlds especially if you are already using Roll of Thunder.

[hsiale]

In Movie block you cannot start Frodo uless he's the ring-bearer. Only Frodo FF can be a non ring-bearer companion.

The problem of Movie block pipeweed is that it needs possession and this format has great shadow possession removal (Corsair Marauder, Cantea FTW and a few others). In FotR block only thing you really had to worry about was Isengard Smith and if you prepared, you usually could have him exhausted till regroup phase. All top end Movie decks (except Dvarves) run no or close to no possessions (and Dwarves manage to survive by being choking powerhouseaiming mostly to survive and setup their shadow, with no running intended).