I've added an updated comprehensive tutorial to post #1, that explains how to effectively play with this deck. For convenience, here it is again:
Bid 0. You're going to be adding a lot of burdens yourself, you're going to need all the resistance you can get. If given the option, choose to go second. If forced to go first, start
Dammed Gate-stream. If going second, you'll play
Dammed Gate-stream as Site 2. Basically you want
Dammed Gate-stream out ASAP so you can use it to pull
One Good Turn Deserves Another.
You'll start your companions in this order:
Frodo, Resolute Hobbit,
Faramir, Captain of Ithilien,
Ranger of the White Tree,
Madril, Defender of Osgiliath,
Smeagol, Always Helps,
Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver. Ideally you'll draw some means of protecting Madril from Ulaire Enquea at Site 2. There's 15 cards that can do this: 3x
Ithilien Blade, 2x
Ranger's Cloak, 1x
Saved From the Fire (if you get Gandalf out), 4x
Something Slimy (to pull
Stewards' Legacy), 2x
What Are They?, 1x
Soldier's Cache, 1x
Stewards' Legacy, 1x
Storied Homestead. If you don't draw any of those, you might want to mulligan. EXCEPTION:
Shadowfax, Greatest of the Mearas is pretty high priority, if you get him in your starting hand, you might choose to risk not mulliganing. But it's a gamble either way.
You are most vulnerable when your Fellowship moves to Site 2. That's the point in the game when you'll be least prepared, have the least knowledge of what strategy your opponent is using, and the greatest chance of potentially losing Madril to a
Shotgun Enquea that you're not ready for. Protecting Madril at Site 2 is your 2nd-highest priority. Worst-case scenario, if you don't draw anything to protect him, try to keep his Resistance at 5 or more when you move to Site 2, so that Faramir can protect him. That is the trickiest part of being forced to go first; You'll need to use
Dammed Gate-stream to pull
One Good Turn Deserves Another to play Site 2, and add a burden to keep it in your hand. Keeping that event is the HIGHEST priority, which means you'll potentially be moving to Site 2 with 2 burdens and Madril at Resistance 4, a prime target for
Shotgun Enquea if you don't have other cards to protect him.
If you ARE going first, Site 2 is almost always going to be
The Prancing Pony. You'll be using
The Prancing Pony to pull
Boromir, Defender of Minas Tirith.
Site 3 is often going to be
Steward's Tomb, unless your guys are really, really hurting. Assuming your deck is rolling properly, ideally you'll be playing
Steward's Tomb at both Site 3 and Site 6, preventing your opponent from healing at any sanctuaries. This is much easier if you're going second, and can be particularly effective if your opponent doubles from 1-3. Then you can stick him with the Tomb at 3 while you stop at Site 2 (
Dammed Gate-Stream), stop him healing, but then swap the Tomb out again for
The Prancing Pony with
One Good Turn Deserves Another before you move to the sanctuary yourself. Otherwise, in order to play the Tomb again at Site 6, you'll need a bit of luck, and have to draw a
Led Astray to swap it off Site 3. EXCEPTION: There may be games in which your opponent's fellowship is just not wounded very much at Site 3. In that case, don't waste the Tomb there, just hold it for Site 6! Common sense, really.
So, let's say you're sitting at Site 3, it's
Steward's Tomb, and it's time for you to move to Site 4. Most of the time, Site 4 is going to be
Mithlond. This is particularly effective (again) if you're going second and your opponent is in front, since you can play some other site for him, but then switch it to
Mithlond when it's your turn to move there. But even if you're in front, most of the time you'll still play
Mithlond at 4 to get some healing, and start "resetting" some of your allies (which you hopefully have out by now). EXCEPTION: If you are playing against Nazgul, your biggest threat is
Ulaire Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders. He'll want to switch sites all around to his advantage. IMO the most decisive actions of the game take place in Region 2, Sites 4-6. So if he's playing Nazgul with Nelya, you play
Mount Doom at Site 4, and make all his Nelyas useless until you move to Site 7, at which point (hopefully) you'll have countermeasures in place.
The rest of effectively using this deck is highly situational, it depends on what strategy your opponent is using, what you have an opportunity to do, as well as effectively timing things to your advantage. I'll cover a number of strategies and address the usefulness of specific cards:
Madril, Defender of Osgiliath/
Ithilien Blade-Would you believe I almost forgot to mention this? I guess it's just so obvious. Yes, the most basic strategy of a Madril deck is to make minions roaming with Madril, and use
Ithilien Blade to discard them.
Stewards' Legacy-Stewards' Legacy may be the most important card in your FP side. Keeping it out greatly increases your effectiveness, in conjunction with Boromir, Faramir,
Ithilien Blade,
Ranger's Cloak,
Soldier's Cache, Pippin,
Don't Look at Them, etc. It transforms Boromir into a death machine, and Faramir into the ultimate strategy-denier. Most of the time,
Stewards' Legacy is the condition you want to get out first.
Something Slimy/
Long-stemmed Pipe/
Saved From the Fire/
Barliman Butterbur, Prancing Pony Proprietor-This combo pulls you a
Saved From the Fire extraordinarily quickly, for a deck this size. The first victim burned will probably be
Ranger of the White Tree, and the cards you get will probably be
Throne of Minas Tirith (the only way to pull it, otherwise you gotta draw it naturally),
Ithilien Blade, and one other high-priority thing, which depends on what strategy you're facing. Second target to burn (often later in the game) would be
Radagast, The Brown, and the cards you get will probably be
Pallando, Far-travelling One (only way to pull it),
Shadowfax, Greatest of the Mearas (if you don't already have it), and
Traveled Leader (if you don't already have it in discard). Again, what you pull with it may greatly depend on what strategy you are trying to counter. If you really need mass condition-discard,
Deep in Thought. If you really need burdens off,
Citadel to Gate. If you really need to get a key minion out of his hand,
A New Light. You get the idea.
Allies/
Mithlond/
Traveled Leader/
One Good Turn Deserves Another cycling
-A big part of this deck's effectiveness, is the ability to play
Mithlond over and over, and use it to heal your allies:
Albert Dreary, Entertainer From Bree,
Barliman Butterbur, Prancing Pony Proprietor,
Hugin, Emissary from Laketown. Of course, healing all of your companions is super-helpful too. If you have
Traveled Leader in your hand or discard pile, you can conceivably play
Mithlond every turn, retrieving
Traveled Leader with Barliman each time, or switch the site with
Led Astray or
Ulaire Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders. Because of that ability to cycle
Mithlond, when you draw
A Wizard is Never Late, generally you'll use it to get Barliman out, go ahead and exert Barliman to get
AWINL back, and use
AWINL again to grab Gandalf or another guy. Then you can just heal Barliman (and everyone else) with
Mithlond.
Albert Dreary is primarily there as a quick dependable counter to
Greed, which can otherwise completely decimate you. Of course he's also good versus Moria, but that's about it. If you're confident your opponent isn't using
Greed or Moria, you don't need
Albert Dreary.
Hugin is much like Barliman, except he has the ability to get back anything you want. That might be a high-priority possession like
Shadowfax, but often it's retrieving high-priority conditions like
Stewards' Legacy or
Storied Homestead, or just cycling
Something Slimy back into your deck. Note that, if you have a
Something Slimy in hand,
Hugin will enable you to get a discarded condition right back out on the table!
Gandalf, Wise Guide/
Shadowfax, Greatest of the Mearas-Gandalf's ability to cancel events is massive, in terms of denying your opponent's strategy. Particularly once he's riding
Shadowfax, Greatest of the Mearas. Among other things, Gandalf protects your conditions from
Saruman's Power, protects your guys from being killed by
Hate, as well as all manner of other extremely powerful event cards.
Shadowfax is the best way to add threats for this strategy, simultaneously taking burdens off. In an emergency, you can kill off a companion, spread the wounds out, take burdens off, move to
Mithlond, and heal everybody!
Faramir, Captain of Ithilien-Besides canceling special abilities with
Stewards' Legacy, Faramir is a force multiplier. His ability to heal other guys means you can use things like
Ithilien Blade more than once... or distribute wounds more evenly, then double to
Mithlond and completely heal.
Boromir, Defender of Minas Tirith/
Stewards' Legacy/
Ithilien Blade/
Ranger's Cloak/
Pippin Wearer of Black and Silver-As previously mentioned,
Stewards' Legacy turns Boromir into a death machine. With a
Ranger's Cloak, he and Pippin can kill almost any minion played, with or without Madril. With
Ithilien Blade he's handing out exertions left and right, again denying your opponent of various strategies, or just making minions easier to finish off... and then he just heals up again next turn! This combo is an effective counter to both
The Balrog, Demon of Might, and
Final Strike, which are popular Madril counters.
Storied Homestead-Storied Homestead is first and foremost there as a counter to
Ulaire Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders, though it has obvious applications against other strategies too. Ideally (of course) you don't want to play this condition until your resistance is high enough to get some tokens on it, which means you'll probably need
Shadowfax in play.
Ranger's Cloak can also help for getting your Rangers' resistance up a little higher. You also probably don't want to play it until Site 4 or later, since you're probably up against Nazgul, and you want to wait and play it at a time when you know you'll be safe from Nelya for a while (
Mount Doom in Region 2). Once you play it, you'll want to build tokens up on it with
Throne of Minas Tirith and/or
Soldier's Cache. In a perfect world you'd have 5 tokens on it by the time you get to Site 7 (so it's sustainable for the rest of the game), but realistically that probably won't happen often. At a minimum, hopefully it should at least protect you for a site or two, and/or force your Nazgul opponent to leave their favorite site behind. The Nazgul site in question is
Buckland Homestead, which Nelya will use repeatedly to wreck your conditions if you don't stop him.
Soldier's Cache/
Boromir, Defender of Minas Tirith/
Mithlond-This is a token-generating machine. At the end of each turn, if you've got some exerts left on Boromir, you may as well use
Soldier's Cache to add tokens to whatever conditions you need the most. If you're preparing to double to
Mithlond, then you can exert each one of your Gondor guys to add tokens with
Soldier's Cache, then move and completely heal everyone.
Throne of Minas Tirith-Throne was originally added as a counter to Corsairs and
Ships of Great Draught, the most effective counter to Madril. It's another great token generator, and offers a great advantage against any Shadow that relies on possessions (such as
Warg Riders). It's also vital against
Grond, Hammer of the Underworld.
Don't Look at Them-Don't Look at Them is useful against Nazgul, but here again was primarily added for countering Raider strategies, particularly Corsairs. Raiders will likely be running heavy
Ships of Great Draught, and you may simply not be able to get rid of them fast enough. Madril will be useless for most of the game.
Don't Look at Them enables you to kill his most powerful minion with Smeagol. That's particularly effective with Corsairs, who don't have very many powerful minions. Raiders also don't have very effective condition discard, they're better at discarding possessions than they are conditions, particularly if you have Gandalf in play to protect things. As such,
Don't Look at Them is a pretty dependable Raider counter that keeps your deck cycling.
Pallando, Far-travelling One-Besides being re-usable condition discard,
Pallando does a couple of other nice things: If you've got
Stewards' Legacy out, but don't yet have
Ithilien Blade, you can put
Pallando on Boromir to immediately exert two minions (or one minion twice), or you can put
Pallando on Faramir to cancel the special abilities of two minions at the same time. This can be particularly handy versus Nazgul, who often play two minions at once who both have extremely dangerous maneuver special abilities (e.g.
Shotgun Enquea and Úlaire
Cantea, Faster Than Winds).
Pallando and
Shadowfax also enable Gandalf or
Radagast to get up to 10 strength, enough to win against
Ulaire Nertea, Dark Horseman.
And now for the Shadow side! It's pretty routine for opponents to look at this Shadow and describe it as a "total mess," or to say things like, "I don't understand your Shadow," or "Your Shadow makes no sense." You have no idea how much this pleases me.
This Shadow incorporates every single Shadow culture in the game, and the strategy has been dubbed "
Sudden Strike," because it is focused on pulling whatever is needed from either the draw deck or the discard pile, in order to counter whatever Free People's strategy your opponent is using. The means of doing this is mostly based around Gollum, and to a lesser-degree cards like
Morgul Squealer. How you actually play this Shadow is completely dependent upon what strategy your opponent is using. Identify your opponent's strategy, identify the weakness in that strategy, and then exploit it using whatever cards you need. The
Sudden Strike Shadow is all about attacking your opponent's strategy at its key points, and then watch as the whole thing comes tumbling down. Here again, I'll address key strategy points and individual cards:
Sudden Strike-The card this Shadow takes its name from. It's easier to play minions from your discard pile than from your draw deck, so this card is key for both getting a vital minion into play, as well as getting that vital minion into your discard pile, to be re-used later. All you gotta do is spot Gollum or Smeagol, and if you're using
Sudden Strike to play Gollum or Shelob, you get to play a possession or condition as well! Most of the time that extra card is going to be
Web, so you can continue to play Gollum and Shelob over and over for the rest of the game. BUT if you are playing against another Madril deck, you may well choose to pull out
Ships of Great Draught instead, to counter Madril.
Evil-smelling Fens-The only Shadow condition in the whole deck. Pretty obvious application: Replay whatever awesome minion your opponent really doesn't want to see again.
Gollum, Her Sneak/
Deagol, Fateful Finder-This combo enables you to keep your hand cycling, but allow you to play Gollum from your discard pile pretty much whenever you need to.
Shelob, Her Ladyship/ Gollum (any)/
Web/
Gothmog, Morgul Leader-Shelob is of course great for eliminating a key companion from helping out for a turn. If you can get Gothmog out at the same time though, look out! Opponent takes 3 archery, and Shelob gets really strong. If you are going up against a major Free Peoples archery deck, you'll want to get Shelob and
Web out ASAP.
Gollum, Old Villain is mostly there to help declog your hand, and potentially beat up a ring-bound guy running a twilight denial strategy.
Saruman's Power/
Grima, Wormtongue/
Grima, Servant of Another Master-A lot of Free Peoples strategies rely on conditions, and
Saruman's Power is the most effective condition removal in the game. This deck packs four of 'em, because sometimes you really do need 4x of them in order to take out a pesky Hobbit Hospital with multiple
Scouring of the Shire in play. If conditions are the vital component of your opponent's strategy then this is how you attack it. As for Grimas,
Wormtongue is most often used against Dwarf strategies. They looooooove to pile up their cheap artifacts and possessions on their guys!
Grima, Servant of Another Master can be incredibly useful for disabling a key companion special ability. For example, we talked about how
Gandalf, Wise Guide can protect your conditions from
Saruman's Power. Well,
Grima, Servant of Another Master counters that counter! He can disable Gandalf, and then blast away with
Saruman's Power.
Southron Leader-This minion is the answer to multi-cultural decks. It is particularly handy against the much-hated Horn decks that play out all those Followers. With three of these guys, ways to add threats, and ways to recycle them, if your opponent is using 4 Free Peoples cultures, he's almost certain to lose.
Ulaire Nertea, Dark Horseman/
Bill Ferny, Swarthy Sneering Fellow-These are primarily the answer to mono-culture decks, especially Dwarfs. The weakest point of a mono-culture Dwarf deck, is to make Gimli fight over and over until he finally goes corrupt. Also useful against other alternate ring-bearers, and Nertea is particularly useful against any 2-culture deck that uses Frodo and
The One Ring, The Great Ring. Just throw down Nertea at
Cavern Entrance and he's probably done.
Ulaire Toldea, Black Shadow/
Too Great and Terrible-At least a couple of the top-tier Expanded decks are Gandalf decks, and a number of other strategies still rely on Gandalf playing a key role. These give you an excellent shot of taking Gandalf out, or at least forcing your opponent to discard cards that he needed.
Morgul Squealer/
The Witch-king, Morgul King-These are primarily there to pull important Nazgul (or Bill) out of your draw deck and/or replay important minions from your discard pile.
Ulaire Enquea, Sixth of the Nine Riders-This guy can be amazing against really large fellowships (Ent builds, for example), for dealing out a massive number of wounds at once, especially if used in conjunction with
Neekerbreekers' Bog. Time it right, and suddenly his entire fellowship is exhausted!
Other Nazgul
-I think the rest of the Nazgul are pretty self-explanatory.
Ulaire Cantea, Faster Than Winds adds threats, and can get rid of important possessions, such as
Beorning Axe on
Grimbeorn.
Ulaire Enquea, Lieutenant of Morgul is the classic for eliminating key companions.
Ulaire Lemenya, Eternally Threatening is another threat adder, a cheap fierce Nazgul, fuel for
Southron Leader.
Ulaire Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders can switch a site to either recycle something you wanted to reuse, stick the opponent with a deadly site, or give you a helpful site for your next Turn.
Site Manipulation
-Yep, it's annoying! But it's part of the meta, an integral part of Expanded strategy. You can't ignore it, and the only way to really counter opponent site manipulation, is with site manipulation of your own. Most of this deck manipulates on the Free Peoples side, using
One Good Turn Deserves Another and
Traveled Leader to switch sites around. There is a bit on the Shadow side though, with
Led Astray and
Ulaire Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders. The goal is pretty straightforward; play (and replay) sites that help you, but hurt your opponent. On the Shadow side of things, that might mean
Neekerbreekers' Bog to exert all his guys,
Steward's Tomb to stop him from healing or taking off burdens,
The Bridge of Khazad-dum to hit him with a cheap Balrog,
Cavern Entrance to cancel his skirmish special abilities, or
Sirannon Ruins to get enough twilight to do something effective against those twilight denial decks.
Other Minions/
Saruman, Servant of SauronRounding out the strategy are a smattering other other minions that help win the day, depending on what strategy your opponent is using.
Dunlending Ravager is great for taking out troublesome allies, like
Barliman Butterbur, Prancing Pony Proprietor, or popular Hobbit allies.
Mumak Commander, Giant Among the Swertings can knock a big companion down enough for
Shotgun Enquea to finish the job, or disable companions like
Legolas, Greenleaf or
Eowyn, Lady of Ithilien.
The Balrog, Demon of Might is a great Madril counter, and also great at taking out more powerful companions.
Sauron, The Lord of the Rings is also good for (probably) a couple of companion kills, if you have the twilight for him.
Mauhur, Relentless Hunter can be useful for eliminating key weaker companions that your opponent doesn't want skirmishing.
Saruman, Servant of Sauron is just more icing on the cake. Ah, it's a glorious day when you can get Saruman riding around on Sauron's back, like Master Blaster from Mad Max!
And I think that's about everything!
Thoughts? Questions? Additions?
ETA: Actually just made another minor modification to the deck; took out 1x
What Are They?, added 1x
Ithilien Blade. More copies of
What Are They? were originally in the deck because (at the time) it was the only guaranteed way to stop Ninja Gollum with
Final Strike out. But thanks to the one-man wrecking crew that is
Boromir, Defender of Minas Tirith/
Stewards' Legacy,
Final Strike is no longer as much of an issue. So now it makes more sense to swap a
What Are They? out for the more permanent and reusable
Ithilien Blade.