85 replies to this topic

[Kennon2nd]

So I'm having quite a bit of fun discussing LotR in more depth here during the day, so I thought I'd see if people wanted to work together on a group deck build. Since secrecy turned into a hot topic for the day, I thought I would start there as the theme.

 

 

So, where do we go? 2 heroes to easily start below on threat, or 3 to start closer to that cap, but require more threat reduction to get the ball rolling early?

 

I feel like I would overall vote for 3 heroes, with one being Spirit. I'm a bit loathe to go with Glorfindel here, so what about trying to make Fatty Bolger work as our Spirit hero and abusing his ability with threat reduction? Possibly Loreagorn as well? I like the interaction with Fatty, but it does push starting threat fairly high.

[mnBroncos]

Sure this sounds like an interesting idea (: I'd vote for three heroes since two seems very hard to survive with. 

[OKTarg]

I think this will be fun!

 

Secrecy can go two ways, in my opinion. The first way (and the way that I've done it thus far) is to go for some secrecy effects that you're really looking for in your opening hand and not as much aiming to be underneath 20 threat for the whole game. For example, you could run Sam/Merry/PIppin and start at 20 and look for Timely Aid/Resourceful to start. This is a great way to go, but probably not tricky enough to necessitate a group thread. I could post up that deck if anyone is interested BTW.

 

The other way is to look for consistent secrecy. Obviously this is a bit trickier, and it can be helped if we "cheat" and have our partner deck run Galadriel. But--we're no cheaters here! I vote for Frodo (spirit) to get the Hobbit Pipe/Smoke Rings option since we lose Elrond's Council. Frodo also allows Good Meal to reduce the Greeting, since 3 cost is VERY steep in 2 hero builds. 

 

Frodo comes in at 7, and we could pair him with Fatty if we wanted and then a Lore hero for Noiseless Movement and some of the cool encounter scrying effects like Risk Some Light. Or, we could go Frodo/Merry/Pippin for a 19 start. Right now, though, I'd say Frodo/Fatty/Lore Pippin would work. (BTW, I tried Spirit Pippin in a deck like this and even my considerable tolerance and appetite for jank could not gag it down. Dear goodness.)

 

VOTE: Three heroes, all hobbits.

 

EDIT: If we do 2 heroes, I vote for Galadriel to give reduction/draw/Mirror/Nenya for Lore as well as the action advantage we'll need out of allies and Samwise Gamgee the Brave for his questing power at the start, action advantage, and access to Timely Aid.

[slothgodfather]

I like the 2 hero option, simply because it's not a concept I've ever really given much thought - considering it to be too big of a disadvantage for the - ultimately - limited pay out of the secrecy cards.   I like the Galadriel/Sam suggestion, giving you access to allies that don't exhaust when the first enter play, which can pair really well with A Very Good Tail and Timely Aid for getting out some of the more expensive allies.

 

It also means you get access, after Nenya is attached, to all 3 of the repeatable "less than 20" events: Courage Awakened, Noiseless Movement and Swift and Silent

[Asmoridin]

I think that this sounds like an awesome idea!

 

When I've run Secrecy, it's always been two heroes, and always been Glorfindel + someone else (for a while I did Lore Aragon, then switched it around from time to time).  It's worked out pretty well.  I think three heroes would be interesting, but hell, either way, I think a discussion on this is going to be good. 

 

Three hobbits would be interesting, the hobbit tech isn't particularly expensive, and secrecy would decrease the cost of the other stuff.  That's not a bad idea at all.

[Kennon2nd]

I realize that I perhaps jumped the gun a bit too quickly in my excitement over the idea and didn't establish any ground rules for making the final decisions on what goes into the deck. We could, perhaps set up an official voting system that would tally until a specific marker is reached and then move on from there, but I have a feeling that we would get caught up more in the minutia of the tallying minigame rather than just working on cool deck ideas, so I'm going to unilaterally declare that I'm running this thread much like the deckbuilding episodes of our podcast. We'll continue on essentially just like we have so far with open thoughts on what seems to be the most relevant topic at the moment until it seems that we've reached a general consensus or are just spinning our wheels, in which case, I'll note the decision or pick between competing choices so that we can keep things moving. Fingers will be crossed that this can work well here. It's been pretty smooth on the show, but if it works poorly here or rubs people the wrong way, we can certainly figure out a more impartial system for the next one.

 

I like the thought of including the Hobbit Pipe/ Smoke Rings stuff since I've looked at that several times, but never quite felt like it was there. But then again, I haven't gone back to it snice having the Bilbo to search the pipes out. Even going that route, I'm a little wary of going with both Fatty and Frodo since they're both threat raising mechanics, but maybe we can cycle enough Galadhrim's Greetings to make that largely moot. I'd go ahead with a third hero and grab Pippin for Lore access and card draw. That would bring us to 20 starting threat, but we could potentially have two options to mulligan aggressively for- Resourceful for Galadhrim's Greeting to get the ball rolling on t1. If we can get GG, then we can drop well under 20 on turn two to get Secrecy going, or if we at least get Resourceful early, the additional resources hopefully make up for missing the Secrecy discounts for a few turns until we do hit a Greeting. And of course, some Lore draw should make this fairly easy.

[OKTarg]

I'm fine with Kennon "captaining" the thread. 

 

Is there anything that can grant Leadership icons other than Song of Kings and Sword that was Broken? I feel like our deck is really going to want some Timely Aid/Sneak Attack/Very Good Tale mustering tricks to get it up to speed. I also feel that Secrecy is a great area for Ents to roll--Treebeard helps with the resource acceleration and provides a lot of the punch that our deck will be missing in the Combat structure. 

 

Going Hobbits also means that we get the excellent Fast Hitch and the 2 cost "feint" type event whose name escapes me at the moment. (Edit: It's called Hobbit Sense) We're going to have to figure out combat, and I think we'll need that event that cancels attacks, the new Spirit Ride Them Down event, and something else. Have you guys ever tried Small Target?

[mnBroncos]

so assuming we are trying to build this from the prospect of a solo player deck? 

[Kennon2nd]

Also a valid question. I think solo is a pretty reasonable route for this deck. Maybe in a future thread we could be more ambitious and try to build some kind of tandem decks.

[slothgodfather]

Even with Bilbo, I don't think hobbit pipes are very good.   they are dead draw unless you draw your events that lower threat - and if we only have hobbit heroes that only leaves 2 events, Smoke rings and Greetings.  

 

The Silver Lamp and Small Target have really good synergy - though you'd have to be engaged by 2 enemies to make that happen.  If this is solo, hopefully that doesn't happen often enough to make their inclusion worth it.

 

 

Side note, if we went with Merry instead of one of the 2nd spirit guys, we'd gain an attacker and access to Dagger of Westernesse and Foe Hammer - which seems more reliable and useful than Smoke Rings and Pipes, and we start at 19 threat.

 

 

The real concern with this deck is the lack of Bill the Pony.   2 HP hobbits are rather squishy - even if Frodo has a once a turn save function.

[Kennon2nd]

Maybe we drop Fatty and look at Merry? Spreading into three spheres without one of them being Leadership always worries me a little, but we will have access to Resourceful to help offset things a bit. If we trade in Merry, we do gain access to that mail attachment that I'm forgetting the name of and of course, keeping Lore in still gives us Barliman Butterbur to soak up an undefended attack, if need be.

[Letux]

This is as close as I can recall to the last build I had. One of my friends was running Eowyn which let me pitch the big guys if I drew them enabling good Stand and Fight targets. In solo mode maybe I'd put Erestor in for a discard outlet.

Total Cards: (50)

Hero: (2)
1x Glorfindel (FoS)
1x Sam Gamgee (TBR)

Ally: (20)
2x Beorn (Core)
3x Bill the Pony (TBR)
3x Boromir (The Road Darkens)
3x Celduin Traveler (The Nin-in-Eilph)
3x Gandalf (Core)
2x Gildor Inglorion (THoEM)
1x Landroval (AJtR)
3x Dunedain Wanderer (RtR)

Attachment: (10)
1x Hobbit Cloak (TBR)
3x Leaf Brooch (The Three Trials)
3x Light of Valinor (FoS)
3x Resourceful (TWitW)

Event: (20)
3x A Test of Will (Core)
3x A Very Good Tale (OHaUH)
3x Elrond's Counsel (TWitW)
1x Hasty Stroke (Core)
1x Power of Orthanc (VOI)
3x Sneak Attack (Core)
3x Stand and Fight (Core)
3x Timely Aid (TRG)

[slothgodfather]

Yea, I agree with the concern from the split spheres, but Good Meals could also be included to further reduce expensive events - such as Greetings. Including Merry also opens the door for Treebeard and both the ents if we want to go that route.

 

Leaf Broach, Resourceful and Fast Hitch are already fairly mandatory includes - regardless of including merry or not.   I'd almost say we don't decide on a 3rd hero yet and just discuss what we're absolutely going to utilize from the spirit/lore spheres.  If we have space or find things lacking - then we decide if boosting our spirit resources is a better choice than adding Merry and the various tactics things - weapons, foe hammer, halfling determination and Ring Mail, to name a few.

 

Here are some cards I feel definitely need to be considered, regardless of the 3rd hobbit:

Allies:

Gandalf

Barliman Butterbur

Celduin Traveler

Ithilien Lookout

 

Events:

Take No Notice

Risk Some Light

Needful to Know

Out of the Wild

Courage Awakened

Noiseless Movement

Galadhrim's Greeting

 

Attachments:

Leaf Brooch

Resourceful

Fast Hitch

Boots from Erebor

Good Meal (depending on event costs)

 

 

Side note, I forgot about Needful to Know event.  That gives 3 events that reduce threat - so hobbit pipes may be more viable than I thought.

[OKTarg]

Isn't there also free to choose as a threat reduction event?

[slothgodfather]

That's counting on your threat being raised by an encounter card effect (doom) and you having that in hand.   yes.  It is there.  But not very reliable unless we are specifically building for a specific encounter that has doomed.

[Kennon2nd]

Yeah, I'd rather not build too hard for a specific encounter.

 

Hmmm... ok, I think those seem like reasonable starting points. Using Sloth's suggestions for this deck plus some sample numbers from Letux, maybe we can iron out how many of some of these things we need in order to nail down those ratios.

 

 

Allies:

Gandalf x3

Barliman Butterbur x2

Celduin Traveler x3

Ithilien Lookout x3

 

Events:

Take No Notice ?

Risk Some Light ?

Needful to Know ?

Out of the Wild ?

Courage Awakened x2

Noiseless Movement x2

Galadhrim's Greeting x3

 

Attachments:

Leaf Brooch x2

Resourceful x3

Fast Hitch x3

Boots from Erebor ?

Good Meal (depending on event costs) ?

 

 

I think I would like to see Galadhrim Minstrel in to give us some event searching capability. And, as an aside, if we look at that and maybe another Silvan (Galadriel's Handmaiden?), I could see including Island Amid Perils for more threat reduction. A little Silvan sub theme might work out pretty well.

[mnBroncos]

im making decks tonight because plan on playing some lotr tomorrow (guess later today Idk why I am still up) but was thinking what if we use a secrecy deck that starts low obviously and tries to get a few key cards early but then uses the fact that start at such low threat to capitalize on more powerful doom cards? 

[Kennon2nd]

I think there's something to be said for trying that sometime, but part of me feels that you'd really want to look at that as a two hero deck with Loreagorn to use the Doomed stuff, then in the mid to late game as you draw more secrecy drop back down to starting threat. I'd say probably Aragorn and Glorfindel. Seems pretty interesting to me, but counter to the general hobbit push that we seem to have going on for this deck at the moment.

[mnBroncos]

Okay (: can stick with the hobbit plan lol 

[Kennon2nd]

For the hobbit direction, what do people feel in general about some of those question mark card counts?

 

Any of the ones I did fill in that look wrong at the moment?

 

Any cards in that list that we should look at dropping for now?

I do have to admit that I'm not totally sold on Leaf Broach. Probably depends on how many copies of the low cost, return to hand events that we end up with in the end. If we have a bunch of those, probably. On the other hand, if the main events lean more toward GG and such, maybe Good Meal is more practical.