In our last installment, we took a look at the quest structure of the upcoming quest to add to our narrative cycle – The Hunt for Gollum. It’s not a quest that is remarkable for its difficulty, but it can have its moments, particularly when you have 3 Clues out and staging flips 2 Hunters from Mordor.
Still, such an easy quest means that I’m going to start out by looking at narrative possibilities for deckbuilding, and then try to work out functional decks that can handle the quest, rather than deckbuilding from the other direction.
The first narrative point to consider is this: canonically, hunting down Gollum was Aragorn’s quest. By the end of it, even Gandalf had given up. Aragorn alone went after the creature, finally capturing him in the Dead Marshes. Also, it happened only a few months before Frodo leaves the Shire for Rivendell. Something is obviously going to have to give here. While I want to do things as close to canon as possible, I am more than willing to bend a story here or there. I think that the timeline is easier to fix than the rest. If Gollum is held by the Wood-Elves for some time, I don’t think it breaks the Lord of the Rings story. The most it does is likely to alter where Gandalf’s suspicions about the Ring start from. His long search for information elsewhere in the world is still going to happen, and can easily be explained as taking the same amount of time. And Gollum might have to get released earlier in the timeline (about the time that he was captured by Sauron originally) to keep the Nazgul on the right timetable for finding the Shire. But that’s small potatoes, I think.
That is, in this canon, Gollum’s capture happens much closer to 3010 or so, and Gollum escapes/is captured by Mordor around 3017. This still has Aragorn in Rivendell to bid farewell to his mother on her deathbed, and we can say that the Orcs that captured Gollum from the Wood took him to Mordor where he was interrogated and released (just as it happened in the canon timeline), and then he found the Fellowship in Moria. Anybody else see any really problematic issues with this timeline?
The second point, on further examination, doesn’t need to be so tricky. I can still have Aragorn do it (mostly) on his own – the Dead Marshes is the “capture Gollum” quest. Before that can be the first set of the searchers Gandalf manages to rally, following the trail in the right direction.
That leaves Eleanor and her party cooperating with Aragorn to find signs of Gollum. Sounds like a good start. As I’ve mentioned before, this is one of the few quests for a good long while in which I can justify a Silvan deck (with the possible exception of the Redhorn Gate, if I really want to). So I really want to kind of go all-out on a Silvan deck for this one. A really interesting line-up would be Galadriel + Celeborn (of course) with the Leadership edition of Aragorn as a third hero. Aragorn’s attachments can be used to give him multi-sphere access, making it possible to include whatever Silvan allies I want, which is often the primary limitation of these decks – Silvan allies are spread liberally across the four spheres of influence, and it can be hard to make sure you have reliable access to all of the spheres. That means an Eleanor – Lanwyn – Thalin deck for our other one, which is a nice, comfortable companion at this point.
So, let’s take a look at deckbuilding.
A Hunter from the North
Let’s start by looking at our allies. Since Leadership is our primary sphere, we’ll want to fill out a fair amount of allies from that sphere. From the Silvan trait, our options are Silverlode Archer, Naith Guide, Greenwood Archer, and Orophin. The Silverlode Archer is overcosted, and probably not worth putting in the deck, even with our heavy emphasis on Leadership. That’s a shame, because I love the card, and at 2 cost it would be a good choice for a Silvan deck even without an enters-play ability. With one, it could well be a good card even at 3 cost (especially with Celeborn + Galadriel making it quest for 2 and attack for 3 on the round it enters play). As it is, though, it probably won’t make the cut. The others are worth 3x apiece, except for Orophin, who we’ll take 2x because he’s unique, and not essential for the deck to function.
Looking at the rest of the Silvan allies, the Galadrhim Minstrel is going to be important. Finding the Silvan events is going to be important towards getting this deck to run on all cylinders. Galadriel’s Handmaiden is an auto-include, for obvious reasons. Looking at the other Spirit allies with the Silvan trait, we have the Lorien Guide, Silvan Refugee, Woodland Courier, and Galadhrim Weaver to choose from. Lorien Guide is going to be overcosted and fail to make the cut for the same reason as the Silverlode Archer. The Silvan Refugee is just not going to mesh well with the concept of this deck – allies will be consistently leaving play, so she won’t provide enough long-term benefit to be worthwhile.
The Galadhrim Weaver, on the other hand, is going to be an easy 3x include – both because of her cost and her ability. At 1 cost for 2 wp on the turn she enters play, she’s an excellent addition. The ability to help recur those important events is crucial. Woodland Courier is potentially useful, but there are other, more useful, Silvan allies. We’ll keep her in mind as we turn to look at the out-of-sphere allies.
The first to drop in will be the Galadhon Archer. A cheap ally with excellent attack and a useful enters-play ability will be important, and so a full playset of 3 will grace our deck. Between the Galadhon Archer and the Greenwood Archer, we’ll have a significant ranged attack corps, able to put down enemies anywhere on the table. The other Tactics options are all expensive, and since Aragorn is the only hero who will be gaining a Tactics icon, and we already have the attack power we need to supplement Lanwyn and Aragorn, we’ll leave them out today. This brings us to the Lore sphere. We already have 3 Galadhrim Minstrels, but there are a number of other good Silvan allies available. Immediately, Henamarth calls out as an important inclusion. At 1-cost, he’s easy fodder for the Silvan events, since we can return him to play quickly and not lose the benefit of his ability. In fact, we can even use him to scry the encounter deck, return him to hand with an event, and then play him again, letting him quest for 2 without exhausting and then attack for 2 as well. The Silvan tracker also looks intriguing, but we don’t have many Silvan heroes, and the Silvan allies we have aren’t robust enough to need healing. The final strike against the tracker is that there is very little direct damage in the upcoming quest, and our dedicated defenders are not going to be Silvan. We’ll add 2 copies of Haldir of Lorien, just because his stats are excellent, and with the action advantage we’ll gain from Galadriel and the boosts from Celeborn, he’ll be a stalwart addition to the board at any time. Of course, if we can cheat him into play with the Tree People, then things will be even better!
This leaves us with 24 allies – a reasonable number. As a last addition, we’ll slip Core Set Gandalf in there – he’s useful, and it would feel wrong to be aiding Gandalf in his search for Gollum without Gandalf making an appearance somewhere. With this many allies, we probably won’t include the Courier, trusting location control to the other deck.
With the allies provisionally taken care of, let’s turn to events. Quickly, we’ll include the 3 in-sphere Silvan events – The Tree People, Island Amid Perils, and Feigned Voices. Sneak Attack will be an auto-include, because we have Core Set Gandalf, and so many other useful enters-play effects. Since this deck is going to be cramped for space as it is, we won’t include any further events yet, while we turn to attachments.
Attachments is going to be where the deckbuilding constraints catch up to us. We want a lot of allies – most of them Silvan – so we can consistently benefit from Celeborn’s passive ability. We need at least the minimum Silvan events to be able to bring our allies in and out of play. But also, since we are playing Aragorn, we have a number of attachments suddenly available that compete for our limited remaining deck space.
First, let’s add 3x O Lorien, and 2x Nenya. These are core attachments for this deck – O Lorien for the cost reduction and Nenya for both the added questing power and the Lore resource icon on Galadriel. Since Nenya is not our only way to gain access to the Lore Sphere, I don’t think that 3 copies will be necessary. With our 27 allies and 12 events, we are up to 44 cards in the deck. Since resource smoothing will be important, we’ll turn to look at Aragorn’s attachments. Sword that Was Broken is quickly discarded, because we don’t need the Leadership icon. It’s an incredibly powerful effect, but it’s not necessary, and we don’t have the space. Celebrian’s Stone will give us more access to Spirit, which could be important if Galadriel is using her resources to pay for Lore cards. Ring of Barahir will give an alternate access to the Lore sphere, and Roheryn is our only way to get a Tactics resource icon. We’ll add 2x Roheryn and 2x Celebrian’s Stone. The Ring of Barahir is important, but – as it turns out – the other deck has plenty of Spirit resources to get it into play, and we need the deck space more urgently here.
We’re at 48 cards now, and our deck looks intriguing. However, the problem is that we are relying on some key cards that aren’t guaranteed to come up. Luckily, we have a thematic and mechanical win in the Mirror of Galadriel. Searching the top 10 cards of the deck for what we want will get us our key attachments or allies quickly, and can be used to pull up events to play to keep the Silvan engine running once we’re set up. 3 copies will go in, because this card is important enough that I want it quickly. That’s 51 cards, and adding Gather Information just as a useful means of fishing out key setup elements seems a decent choice, especially since we don’t want to advance too quickly through the quest stages until we’ve found some clues. Although this will dilute the deck slightly, I’m also going to add 2 copies of Protector of Lorien. Thematic choice, of course, but it lets us discard all of the extra copies of these unique attachments for a decent effect. With 54 cards, few that look worth cutting, and enough draw between Galadriel and her Mirror to pull them, we might just have an early version of this deck ready to go.
The Hand of Mithrandir
This deck is going to be another variation on the comfortable, Eleanor – Lanwyn – Thalin lineup that we’ve been playing so far. There are going to be few adjustments for this specific quest, but by and large it will look remarkably similar to earlier versions. First, the allies. Honour Guard and Defender of Rammas will almost completely cover our defensive needs here. They won’t be sufficient against Hunters from Mordor boosted by several Clues on the table, but for anything but that, they will do well enough.
With several powerful Ranged attackers on the other side of the board, we can safely focus on more questing allies. The Ethir Swordsmen have been a part of Eleanor’s retinue since the beginning, and we aren’t going to leave them behind now. 2 copies of Bofur will also continue on with us from earlier quests, along with Lanwyn’s brothers – the Rhovanion Outriders – who will give us a little bit of attack power in an emergency, but will also start controlling the locations that will likely start clogging the staging area.
One of the themes which I wanted to start exploring during this cycle was the Dunedain – Aragorn’s brethren coming across the mountains with him to search for Gollum at Mithrandir’s behest. With 16 locations in the encounter deck, we should have a pretty good chance at getting the Dunedain Pathfinder into play. Add a pair of Northern Trackers to help us clear out the locations brought in by the Pathfinders, and we’re up to 18 allies. For our last 2 allies, we’ll bring Arwen Undomiel back. After all, she just helped us rescue Lanwyn from Dol Guldur, and – jumping a little bit into the future – I know that I’ll want her available when we get to the Dead Marshes, so she just makes sense.
For events, having 3 copies of Feint will be good – we’ll generally save them for Hunters from Mordor boosted by multiple Clue objectives. In addition, the shadow effects are mostly harmless in this quest; however, The Old Ford’s effect – discard all allies in play with a printed cost less than the number of Riverland locations in play – is sufficiently nasty to warrant including 3 copies of Hasty Stroke. Finally, we’ll include 3 copies of Foe-Hammer. We’ll need the card draw, and the other deck won’t likely be able to spare uses of Galadriel’s ability.
That brings us to the attachments. We already know that we’ll want 2 copies of the Ring of Barahir for the other deck. In addition, 3x Silver Harps will defray the cost on using the Mirror of Galadriel. 3 copies of the Dagger of Westernesse will let us actually trigger Foe-Hammer. 2x Unexpected Courage and Eleanor’s Magic Ring will cover any readying we need. 3 Gondorian Shields for Eleanor are par for the course, and 3x Ancient Mathoms. Black Arrow will give Lanwyn a single-use attack that can take down a Hunter from Mordor with no additional help. That brings us up to 47 cards. I can’t think of anything else I actually want in the deck, so we can toss in a few speculative one-ofs just for fun. As speculative 1x cards go, side quests are a useful addition. Double Back helps keep us under the magic 35 threat number, while Gather Information will help the Silvan deck pull out its key cards. Finally, we’ll drop a single copy of Rivendell bow in for Aragorn, letting us apply his attack wherever it is needed.
I’m satisfied with these decks, both theme-wise and mechanically. And Hunt for Gollum isn’t an especially difficult quest, so I don’t anticipate many problems with it. Come back next time as we put these decks through their paces!
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