Let's Build It: Three Hunters

Surprise! I am a mediocre deck builder.

On one hand, I hope that is an encouragement to others that you can get really far in this game without having amazing deck building chops. I could realistically finish up the remainder of my quest backlog without significantly changing the types of decks I bring to the table. But I want to see my skills improve and I want to take advantage of new cards in ways that will lead to new strategies in my play. This has led to my recent adoption of playing through top decks on RingsDB. I can see how those decks work and experience what exactly about them gives a greater advantage over a quest vs. the mid-range decks I gravitate towards.

But this time I would like your help.

Many of the deluxe boxes have been coming with a "Hey, you should build this deck" pool of player cards (The Black Riders, The Land of Shadow, The Flame of the West, The Lost Realm, The Sands of Harad).  I've taken a crack at a Three Hunters version of the player cards included with The Sands of Harad. It's a passable deck that I would be happy to give a spin. But could it be significantly better? That's where you come in.

Let me know (here or @RingsDB):

• What improvements you would suggest and what cards would you remove to make room?
• What quest in Angmar Awakened, Dream-chaser, or Haradrim you would like to see this ran agains?

 And now onto my first draft...

TEMBD Three Hunters v.1

Heroes
Aragorn (Core)
Gimli (Sands of Harad)
Legolas (Sands of Harad)

Allies
Faramir (Core) x1
Fili x1
Galadriel (The Road Darkens) x3
Arwen Undomiel (Watcher in the Water) x3
Dunedain Pathfinder x2
Kili x1
Gandalf (Core) x3


Attachments
Celebrian's Stone x2
Dunedain Mark x3
Dunedain Warning x3
Dwarven Shield x2
Roheryn x1
Steward of Gondor x3
Sword that was Broken x1
Mirkwood Long-knife x2
Unexpected Courage x3
Strider x2


Events
Sneak Attack x3
Unlikely Friendship x3
A Test of Will x3
Elven-light x3
Inspiring Presence x2

Sets Used
Core
The Hunt for Gollum
Conflict at the Carrock
The Watcher in the Water
Over Hill and Under Hill
The Road Darkens
The Dread Realm
The Drowned Ruins
The Flame of the West
The City of Corsairs
The Sands of Harad
Race Across Harad

RingsDB Link

I called this version 1, but there were a few adjustments made as I went along. Originally there were two copies each of Dwarven Sellsword and Weather Hills Watchman. I wanted a cheap ally and the ability to pull more signals in my deck. These went out in favor of Galadriel, who can give me a one-turn ally and get my attachments equipped faster. Her higher cost combines with the free attachment to be a net value in my mind, especially considering Voltron is a goal of this deck. The forth spot went to the one-off of Roheryn.

Before publishing both this post and deck, I decided to do a quick search on RingsDB to make sure there was no obvious archetype utilizing these three hunters that I was missing. Only a handful of decks came up and most of them had the same essential framework listed. A few notable additions among different versions would be King Under the Mountain and Envoy from Pelargir, both great ideas to consider (although it would be an interesting move for me to not include Envoy for once). A notable exclusion from the other decks was Inspiring Presence. Yes, it is pricey to get the full use out of it, but giving Gimli +2 defense and Legolas +2 attack in a crucial round is nothing to lightly pass up. But that's the trick for me in deckbuilding: It is not hard to find good cards for a deck, but hard to determine which good cards to leave out and which to keep. Captains Wisdom, Dunedain Remedy, and many other cards could have made the cut. I want to hear from you which ones actually should have.

Looking Back: The Lost Realm

Good hype about this box had made its way to my ears since its release and that was not proved unfounded. Intruders in Chetwood is a great entry-level quest for the current cardpool. The Weather Hills, while taking me quite a while to conquer as I tried to make a certain deck work,  presents a unique challenge that takes some thinking to work around (or it took me that at least). Deadmen's Dike is a solid, challenging quest. All-in-all, The Lost Realm is a fantastic box that I highly recommend. Unsure how just a Core + this one would fair beyond the initial quest, but there are some solid Core-only decks out there and this gives the pool you need for a decent Duendain archetype (although I have yet to really explore that path myself).

My biggest regret is spreading out this box over months and not really getting into the thematic mindset, which feels like it could be really rich with this one. Blame my Xbox and Arkham Horror for that. Also, looking over some of the quests while writing this, I'm realizing the encounter deck played it pretty easy with me on some of these. Most notably Deadmen's Dike, where I faced down zero side quests and any of the three would have posed serious problems to me in that final play through.

Let's go back to the player cards. Too often I open a new box, add the cards to my pile, and realize down the line that some of these have been fully untouched. That is exactly the case here. While I played with, and loved, Secret Vigil right of the box, most of the cards are semi-known and never seen in my decks. But there are some awesome contributions pulling you towards an interesting enemy engagement strategy. Now I want to dive into the Dunedain archetype and see if I can wreak some face in this cycle.

Quest 39: Deadmen's Dike

Victory on the Second Attempt!


The Deck


Anytime a strong, high-costed Spirit ally is released I automatically think about throwing that in a Caldara deck some day. Fortunately, Beorn has done that work for me and has been tweaking and adjusting his Agro Caldara deck throughout the years. A big ramp in the deck's performance came with the new Prince Imrahil ally, but even some of the most recent packs have had contributions to make.

Agro Caldara v3

Heroes
Arwen Undomiel (The Dread Realm)
Caldara
Cirdan the Shipwright

Allies
Elfhelm (The Dead Marshes) x1
Emery x3
Escort from Edoras x1
Gamling x1
Glorfindel (Foundations of Stone) x1
Hama (The Treason of Saruman) x1
Imladris Stargazer x3
Jubayr x1
Lindir x1
Northern Tracker x3
Pelargir Shipwright x3
Prince Imrahil (The Flame of the West) x3
Rhovanion Outrider x1
Sulien x1
Westfold Horse-Breaker x1
Zigil Miner x3


Attachments
Light of Valinor x2
Map of Earnil x2
Narya x2
Sword-thain x3


Events
A Test of Will x3
Dwarven Tomb x2
Elven-light x3
Fortune or Fate x3
Hidden Cache x2


RingsDB Link


I am definitely not a skilled pro at piloting this deck, but it only takes a cursory knowledge of the basic strategy to succeed: Get strong allies into your discard pile, retrieve them with Caldara, then find a way to get her back so you can repeat.


The Journey

Even a strong deck played poorly can loose spectacularly. I found that out during my first attempt when I advanced to stage 2 before properly establishing my board state. The result was a massacre.

Opening hand for attempt #2: Fortune or Fate, Prince Imrahil, Gamling, Hama, Elfhelm, Imladrist Stargazer. Definitely worth keeping! Fornost Square in the staging area, Baleful Shade engaged with me, and we are ready to rock and roll.

Round 1

A Map of Ernil is added to my hand, increasing my anticipation of future Caldara shenanigans. I add another location to the staging area (Haunted Keep) nick away at the Baleful Shade with Prince Imrahil (who found his way to the table).


Round 2

I'm intentionally conservative in my questing this round, hoping to build up a sizable army before making my way to stage 2. Caldara heads over to the discard pile and the Rohan trio of Gamling, Elfhelm, and Hama are now in play.

Round 3

Fortune, or possibly Fate, brings Caldara back to the team with the plan of having her help out with some light questing and then fetch more allies to join the crowd. The encounter deck had the same idea, revealing a Cursed Dead and fetching two more from the discard pile. At least I was able to get this out of the way early, instead of right at the end like my first attempt.

Round 4

Hey, it's Caldara again! And there she goes again, fetching more allies. The remaining members of the amy dispatch the Cursed Dead. 

Round 5

My board is pretty well established now and the staging area is in good enough shape to move onto stage 2. Flipping Cursed Dead at this point, with an inadequate ally pool, is what did me in during attempt 1. This time I get a Haunted Keep and sacrifice an Imladris Stargazer to Thaurdir. 

Round 6

 Thaurdir makes an attack on Hama after a Heavy Curse is revealed, but I still make progress on stage 2 and feel well prepared for a final push.

Round 7

Needed to do one round of power questing, then one round keeping everyone ready to dispatch Thaurdir.  The finish line is in sight! And the reveal during the quest phase is...Cursed Dead! Shoot. How many are in the discard pile already? Four. That gives me five of them + Thaurdir to take on this round. I end up making it through the combat phase only in better shape than I thought I would be. 

Round 8

Now came the time to 1) quest small and take a significant threat increase, 2) get decimated by Cursed Dead, 3) wreak Thaurdir's undead face. I am glad to say that everything went as planned (except for the threat increase, which ended up being minor). Nothing was guaranteed here and a bad reveal off the encounter deck or as a shadow would be the end of me. As it was, Arwen remained the only hero who lived to tale the tale of Deadman's Dike.

Final Scoring
7 Completed Rounds x10: 70
Ending Threat: 39
Total Damage on Heroes: 0
Threat of Defeated Heroes: -20 (Cirdan the Shipwright, Caldara)
Victory Display: 0
Total Score: 119



The Recap

Did I mention I only had a few cards in my deck by the end of the quest? Well, I did. The discard mechanic functions as a soft Time X mechanic. Soft in the sense that you can make the choice to add cards into your deck (Will of the West being the prime example) to mitigate this source of attack. Also worth pointing out here that when I came back to the game after a long break I was under the impression you would loose the game if your player deck was emptied. Found out quickly I was wrong, but now it turns out I was  narrowly right.

This was a challenging quest, as is to be expected from the final quest in a deluxe box. My second attempt felt a bit demoralizing, with the initial batch of Cursed Dead, and I was about to chalk this up as one of the ridiculously hard quests that are out there. It ended up being a fun play through. Although, to be fair, that could have been mainly due to the deck.