November is over, and with it went NaNoWriMo. This years experience was thoroughly disappointing, unfortunately. I learned that trying to carve out dedicated writing time with 2 small children at home is difficult, and that that schedule is compounded by 10 hour work days. I learned that the word vomit approach that typifies NaNoWriMo doesn’t work very well with my writing style, and that I am particularly susceptible to that form of despair that comes when you fall behind and just let yourself fall further behind because the task of catching up is just so daunting.
In short, I learned that maybe NaNoWriMo just isn’t my thing and that I should find ways to engage in writing that support the pathways that I have found to work for me instead of trying to force myself into a mold that doesn’t fit well.
Also, I miss night shifts. My woes could be much simpler than ‘NaNoWriMo isn’t working well for me’ and could possibly be all boiled down to ‘moving back to day shift was a bad move.’
Anyways, all of that is to say that I’ve been gone for a month and didn’t get anywhere near what I had hoped to finished during that month. But I did get a lot of character development work done for the main character of my original novel, and hammered out the plot into something that can facilitate a definite arc instead of a series of events. Maybe you’ll get future references to it in this space, or maybe I’ll create a separate space for it elsewhere. But the time wasn’t all ill-spent.
But now, it’s time to come back from hiatus and get back to work here. First order of business will be to finally clear out the backlog of quest writeups. Since the writeups are so far behind the video logs, it just makes sense to try and catch up before seriously moving the story forward.
But since I know that at least a few of you really enjoy the videos I put out, I want to have something on that front for your consumption. Towards that end, I’ll be going back to the Experimental Deckbuilding series and doing deck testing videos for the Scions of Arnor fellowship. We’ll start with an updated version of the deck – bgamerjoe did a spotlight on the fellowship early in October that put some initial stress tests on the decks and we are going to use that valuable feedback to get the decks into better condition before we start deck-testing. There are also a few valuable cards that have come out since then that could be really useful in these decks.
So, first we’ll incorporate the results of Joe’s testing as well as my further reflections on the decks. Both decks are fairly oversized, even after accounting for their card draw, so we’ll emphasize cutting cards when we can, especially cards that are only situational. We’ll start with the Spirit/Lore deck, Hunters of Eriador. The first thing that he notes – and it is a point well-taken – is that our Noldor subtheme isn’t giving us anything useful. Gildor is nice and beefy stat-wise, but his ability is less-than-useful for our purposes, and even with The Storm Comes and Elf-stone, he’ll be difficult to get into play. And the Imladris Caregivers are nice, but we don’t have enough card draw to make them really effective at what they do. His suggestion of Athelas as a replacement healing effect is well-taken (and it’s nice to have the condition removal built into the deck, instead of sideboarded). The idea of including Elladan and Elrohir in place of Gildor is a thematic home run, and it works out better for the deck as well, I think.
In addition, Self-Preservation just doesn’t fit very well here. As a 3-cost Lore attachment in a deck with only a single Lore hero and no resource acceleration, it’s really difficult to get out onto the table. Add to that that it’s a combo piece for Vigilant Dunadan, and I think that it’s worth cutting completely. Athelas can heal the Dunadan, if it comes to it.
I’m also going to move Distant Stars to the sideboard. As a card, it’s very useful in some quests and just not useful at all in others. To replace it, I’m adding 3 copies of Guarded Ceaselessly, which helps with questing and also gives Idraen something else to do with her extra actions.
As far as threat reduction goes, I feel a little over-protected in this deck, between Well-Warned and Elrond’s Counsel. To save space, I’m going to drop Well-Warned entirely, replacing it with a single copy of the side quest Double Back. With the sort of subtheme of location attachments that this fellowship is running – Ancient Mathom, Elf-stone, Ranger Provisions, and Guarded Ceaselessly – I’m also feeling comfortable replacing Elrond’s Counsel with a new card from the Roam Across Rhovanion pack – South Away. It reduces threat for both decks, and also helps manage travel costs. With this noted, Thror’s Map is going to move to the sideboard as well, to be pulled out against only quests with a lot of really serious travel costs.
With a few cards reduced to 2x, this gets us down to a workable deck size, without sacrificing any of the deck’s core functionality. The combat deck is a little easier. Dropping Forest Snare (for the same reasons as Self-Preservation) and the Dunedain Hunters (they can’t be played on the first round, which is when you really want to play them, in order to start powering up the abilities of the allies. And the deck really wants more defenders early on, not more attackers) brings us down to something much more reasonable as well.
With that done, let’s pick out the quests to test these decks against. Nightmare Journey Along the Anduin will be a decent start, I think. It’s got a lot of really nasty enemies, along with some treacheries and shadows that really punish you for keeping multiple enemies engaged with you. We’ll see if this deck is sufficient for the requirements.
Second, Escape from Umbar. With all of the archery this quest piles on, it can be difficult to keep enemies engaged. In addition, the direct damage will be a challenge to our limited healing. The frenetic pace of the quest might also cause some problems, testing our ability to gain control of a quest quickly.
For our third quest, I’ll pick one of my favorite ones – Intruders in Chetwood. It’s a good, well-rounded quest that offers challenges to both our ability to quest past enemies in the staging area and to our ability to keep enemies engaged with us.
The fourth and final quest will be Journey Up the Anduin, from the Wilds of Rhovanion. In part, it’s because I haven’t ever played it before (despite owning the box), and want to use this as an excuse, now that I’m starting to play more often. But also, from the commentary I’ve read on it, it’s a fairly challenging quest that has a lot to offer as a deck tester.
Well, that’s all for now. You can expect some new videos coming out soon, and the narrative writeups along with them. In addition, I’ve got some new and interesting deck ideas I’m working on, so there might be another Experimental Deckbuilding post out with ideas that I can’t keep stuck in my head.
But whatever the future has in store, I’m excited about it, and I hope you are too.
The White Tower 