Deck-Building 101: Core Set Construction

Continuing Tales from the Card’s deck-building series, this article will document the process of building a deck from start to finish. One of the obstacles to initially building decks is not having experience and also not being able to see models for how to do it. When I was first experimenting with mashing all these different cards together, looking at other people’s deck lists was marginally useful, but I benefitted far more from reading or hearing them talk about how they went about choosing cards. In order to start at a very basic level, I will build this sample deck using only cards from the Core Set, though I will cheat a bit by assuming ownership of two Core Sets worth of cards.  For those who are new to the game, I hope that using only this limited set of cards will successfully demonstrate how to go about constructing a deck. The main purpose of this article is to convey some of the key considerations that emerge during this process, and to outline what kinds of questions you should be asking of the cards in front of you (just don’t ask them out loud, or any people nearby might think you’re a bit odd). I will apply the concepts mentioned in my last article on Deck Abilities, so if you haven’t read that one yet, you may want to give it a quick read. In later articles, I will discuss dealing with deck building when you have the whole card pool at your disposal, which can prove a different kind of challenge. As I walk through this example, keep in mind that this is only one possible way to approach building a deck. Other players will have their own personal methods, all of which are valid. However, I hope that a concrete example like this can at least prove to be a useful starting place.

Before I begin, I want to explain a crucial idea when it comes to building your decks: proportionality. This refers to two things: the ratio between card types (allies/attachments/events), and the ratio between the different spheres included in your deck. Striking the right balance is a matter of experimentation and reflection, but there is no magic number or formula out there to guide you. You can build a successful deck with a ton of attachments and events and only a few allies. However, with that caveat out of the way, I think it does help when first starting out to have a general guideline in mind. With more experience, these guidelines become less important. One rule of thumb that I have seen suggested, and that makes as good a starting place as any, is to roughly adhere to a ratio of 1/2 allies, 1/4 attachments, and 1/4 events. The logic behind this is that allies are the lifeblood of most, though not all, decks by providing the raw bodies you need to quest, attack, and defend beyond what your limited amount of heroes can do. Although, you will see me doing a lot of number-crunching in this article, I don’t want you to think that building a deck is necessarily a math exercise (though it can be if you want). The numbers are there just to make sure that the deck is as consistent as possible, which is a product of proportionality.

Step One: Picking Deck Abilities

Often I begin conceiving of deck by coming up with a certain theme, like “I want to build an Eagles deck” or “What would a deck consisting only of Elves look like?”. In our case, the Core Set unfortunately limits the thematic options. Instead, in our first step I will hearken back to the Deck Abilities article, and choose 3-4 of them as my primary focus. I want my deck to be able to willpower boost, as making progress on quests is the fundamental key to victory. I also want to focus on card draw, because having more options throughout the game will make sure I have what I need when I need it. Finally, as I will not be including much combat ability, I’m going to be including some encounter deck manipulation with a touch of threat management to make sure that I can avoid the nastiest of the enemies for as long as possible. Hopefully, since I am focusing on quest progress, I can move through quest stages faster than enemies can build up. As a secondary focus, I will include some treachery cancellation just to make sure that treacheries don’t foil my plans. When thinking through your abilities, always keep in mind how you will deal with the three types of encounter deck cards: enemies, locations, and treacheries.

Step Two: Picking Spheres

With this abilities wish-list decided, it is time to select the sphere(s) that will be the foundation for my deck. In general, the sphere and ability breakdown goes like this:

– LORE: card draw, encounter deck manipulation, location management, threat management, healing, and player deck manipulation

– LEADERSHIP: resource generation, readying, player deck manipulation

– TACTICS: direct damage, defense/tanking, attack/hulking

– SPIRIT: treachery cancellation, player deck manipulation, location management, threat management, willpower boosting, readying, and healing (card resurrection)

It is fairly easy to see that I should base my deck on Lore and Spirit cards. How many spheres should you include in one deck? In general, dual sphere decks are the standard for this game, especially when first starting out. Tri-sphere decks are very possible and can be extremely effective, but take a bit more expertise. Mono-sphere decks are becoming more feasible as the card pool grows, but still need some progression to be able to function well (mostly because they can’t cover enough deck abilities on their own to be successful).

Step Three: Picking Heroes

It is possible that you could build your deck first and go back and choose your heroes last. However, I always begin by choosing my heroes before picking out allies, attachments, and events, and I imagine that most players do as well. The reason why is that some cards synergize directly or indirectly with certain heroes, and you want to be able to plan for their inclusion. For example, a card like Celebrian’s Stone, included with the Core Set, gives Aragorn a Spirit icon if it is attached to him. If I know that I am including Aragorn, then I will know in advance to probably include the Stone as well. 

Back to the deck at hand, knowing that I want to focus on willpower boosting and questing, I am going to choose Eowyn as my first hero, the quintessential choice for that deck ability. She allows me to discard a card to boost her willpower by one, and her 4 willpower is the highest out of the Core Set heroes (this is actually still the case even with the entire card pool).

My second deck ability focus is card draw, which leads me straight into the arms of Beravor as my second hero. She is Lore, so I now have 1 Spirit and 1 Lore hero, and her ability allows her to exhaust in order to grant me the power to draw 2 cards. This will be a consistent basis for card draw. When possible, it is always nice to have heroes that work well together and support each other’s abilities. In this case, the extra cards that I get from Beravor can possibly be discarded to feed Eowyn’s ability.

At this point, after selecting 2 heroes, I usually like to stop and take stock of the situation, meaning taking a moment to assess my starting threat level and possible roles before choosing my third hero. With Eowyn starting at 9 threat and Beravor at 10, I am already at a total of 19. I will want a third hero with a fairly low starting threat, since a main focus of my deck is threat management. Regarding roles, heroes generally should be specialized into either the role of quester, attacker, or defender. This helps to make sure all of the main bases of the game are covered, and that each is specialized enough to be effective. Eowyn is the obvious quester. Beravor, with her very balanced stats of 2 willpower, 2 attack, and 2 defense, can fulfill the role of either attacker or defender, depending on who I choose for my third hero. With that in mind, I look at the possible choices for the last hero:

* Denethor: He will give me encounter deck manipulation, as he can exhaust to look at the top card of the encounter deck, moving it to the bottom if he so chooses. He is the best natural defender in the Core Set (3 defense), so he fits the balance of roles i in my current scheme well. His starting threat of 8 gives me a bit of pause. Including him would put me at a starting threat of 27. Not terrible by any means, but not as low as it could be.

* Dunhere: This hero provides direct damage, being able to exhaust to attack an enemy in the staging area. This is not one of my current deck ability focuses, however. He will definitely fit into the attacker role though. His starting threat of of 8 is equal to Denethor’s, again giving me a starting threat of 27.

* Eleanor: She has the benefit of allowing consistent treachery cancellation, as she can exhaust to cancel a “when revealed” effect, replacing it with a new card afterwards. She has fairly low stats (1 willpower, 1 attack, 2 defense), but would probably fit into the defender role given my current balance of heroes. Her starting threat of 7 makes her very tempting, as I would begin with a threat of 26. One point of threat may not seem like a huge difference, but it can be the difference between having an enemy engage with you and being able to avoid it.

* Glorfindel: His power gives me some healing, as he can spend 1 resource to heal 1 damage on a character. This is not one of the abilities on my wish list, though. He has strong stats (3 willpower, 3 attack, 1 defense), meaning he could be my attacker, and if I can find a way to ready him consistently, he could help with questing as well. However, his starting threat of 12 is way too high. It would put me at a threat of 31 to start the game. With the deck abilities I have focused on, which do not include any from the Warrior category, I cannot afford to start with so high a threat as enemies will be engaging me too early. Therefore, I will immediately eliminate Glorfindel from consideration.

Denethor, Dunhere, and Eleanor would all be viable choices. At this point, three different people making this deck could easily diverge, as a case could be made for each hero. For this example, I am going to rule out Dunhere, because he does not give me one of the deck abilities that I want. I keep in mind that this means I will have to figure out some other way of getting rid of enemies when required. Denethor is a strong choice, but I don’t like the slightly higher starting threat he gives me, and I want more Spirit in my deck than Lore. The reasoning here is that Spirit will give me more willpower boosting and questing power, as well as threat management and treachery cancellation, while I only need Lore for card draw and encounter deck manipulation. With this in mind, I will choose Eleanor as my third hero. In addition to being of the sphere I want, I also like her very low threat cost, and her ability gives me some natural treachery cancellation. However, I will need to compensate and plan for her low stats, which could prove to be a liability.

With the starting trio of Eowyn, Eleanor, and Beravor, I am rocking an alliance of the Women Warriors of Middle-Earth. I like that this is turning out a bit thematic after all. Eowyn will be my quester, Eleanor will be my defender, and Beravor will be my attacker. Both Eleanor and Beravor have to exhaust to use their abilities, so I am either going to need some means to ready them, or I will need to include lots of cheap allies to take on defending and attacking and thus free them up for bigger and better things.

Step Four: Picking Allies

There are different ways to go about picking the cards in your deck from this point. You can look through the pool and pick out the strongest regardless of type, filling in the gaps afterwards. You can select the cards that fit your chosen deck abilities, again rounding out the deck once you are done with that initial process. You can also use my preferred method, which is to go through each category (allies, attachments, events) one by one, selecting the cards that best fit the deck abilities and theme that you have chosen. I tend to either look through the cards using the deckbuilder on cardgamedb or actually physically sort through piles of cards (the first option is much quicker).

When judging ally cards against each other, I take the following criteria into consideration:

* Card effects: Does the ally have a special ability? If so, does it match, either directly or indirectly, with one of the deck abilities I want to include? If not, does it somehow cover for a weakness of my deck or facilitate the work of other characters?

* Stats: What is the distribution of willpower, attack, defense, and hit points? How long will it survive? Can it be of help in any of the phases of play?

* Cost: Given the cost of this ally, how often will it actually come into play? Is the opportunity cost of this ally (yes, an economics term snuck into my deck building article) justified by the stats and card effects of this ally? In other words, are the resources spent on this ally better spent somewhere else more often than not?

* Utility: Will this ally primarily be in play as a body, taking part in questing/attacking/defending, or will it be exhausted most of the time to use its ability? Am I including too many of the latter, so that I will not have enough back-up for my heroes in the main phases of play? For those who are active participants in questing/attacking/defending, will their contribution be meaningful or will they mostly serve as a chump blocker?

Using these criteria, I review each possible card and say “yay” or “nay”, also making an initial judgement on how many copies to include. How do you decide the magic number? I personally come from the field of education, and we often have to figure out what information to leave out and what is absolutely necessary. One way to do this is dividing things up into the categories of “need to have”, “would like to have”, and “nice to have”. I take a similar approach to thinking about how many copies of each card to put in my deck:

One copy = “nice to have” (it will be a welcome sight)

Two copies = “would like to have” (I want this to show up fairly consistently)

Three copies = “need to have” (I need this to come into play every game)

Keep in mind that this is another place where different players will give you different advice. Some tend to use three copies of most cards, which means less variety, in order to improve consistency. Others tend to use two copies of most cards, which means a bit more variety, but at the cost of consistency. I tend to come from the latter school of thought, and my deck here would normally reflect that. However, since I am using only the Core Set, my selection is rather limited, which means I will be using 3 copies of cards when I usually would not do so. Keep in mind that at this point, the number of copies you decide upon is tentative. I almost always have to go back at the end to make adjustments

Diving right in, I am first going to run through the list of Lore and Spirit allies and pick the ones that directly give me one of my chosen deck abilities: willpower boosting, encounter deck manipulation, treachery cancellation, card draw, and threat management. This leads me to choose:

– Gleowine (card draw) – 3 copies: You can exhaust Gleowine to draw 1 card. This will supplement Beravor’s ability, or provide coverage when I can’t afford to exhaust her. I usually only include 2 copies of unique characters, as I don’t like to have wasted copies of a card in my hand (although with Eowyn, these can be fodder for her ability), and his actual stats (1 willpower, 0 attack, 0 defense, 2 hit points) are not that great, but he does give me one of the core abilities I am looking for.

– Henamarth Riversong (encounter deck manipulation) – 2 copies: You can exhaust this character to look at the top card of the encounter deck. While I can’t do anything with that card, like discard it or move it, at least it will let me know what is coming and to plan accordingly. This will be very helpful so that I can plan whether to have Eleanor ready so she can cancel an upcoming treachery or to keep some characters back to deal with an enemy that will be able to engage me this turn. Henamarth is easily killed, with only 1 hit point, so I would like to include 3 copies to make sure he can be replaced easily. Unfortunately, two Core Sets only allows me to include 2 copies.

Next, I will look back through the rest of the allies and include those who may indirectly give me the abilities I want or support them in some way.

– Northern Tracker (location management) – 3 copies: While location management was not a focus of mine, it will prove helpful in clearing out locations and thus making maximum progress on quest stages (which does happen to be a main focus). He also has strong stats (1 willpower, 2 attack, 2 defense, 3 hit points), which gives me some much-needed attack and defense strength when enemies come sniffing around. Because of this all-around utility, I will include 3 copies.

– Miner of the Iron Hills (treachery cancellation) – 3 copies: His ability allows me to discard a condition attachment when he comes into play. This is a form of treachery cancellation, though of an indirect nature. His stats (0 willpower, 1 attack, 1 defense, 2 hit points) are not superb, but not the worst around either. He can pitch in when it comes to combat, and survive at least one damage-dealing treachery. With a low cost of 2, I am fine with throwing 3 copies in to my deck.

– Lorien Guide (location management) – 3 copies: The ability to put 1 progress on an active location does help to make progress on a quest, similar to Northern Tracker. However, it is a bit more limited in scope than its location managing cousin. Lorien Guide’s stats are just ok (1 willpower, 1 attack, 0 defense, 2 hit points) for the relatively high cost (3 resources). For those reasons, I would usually include just 2 copies, but with the limited card pool and only a few Spirit allies to choose from, I will include 3.

Here, I stop and assess. I’ve included 14 ally cards. If I’m aiming for approximately 1/2 the deck (25 cards), I have some work to do. I also want to make sure about 2/3 of the allies are from the Spirit sphere, since 2/3 of my resources will be of that sphere as well. This is not a hard and fast rule, as you can include songs and other means of adding resource icons once you expand your card pool, but it is helpful to keep that ratio in mind, so that you don’t end up with a bunch of allies that you don’t have enough resources to pay for. At this point, 6/14 of my allies are Spirit, with 8/14 being Lore. The remaining allies really need to come from the Spirit sphere in order to achieve the proper balance, so that will be an ongoing consideration. If you already have a pretty solid ratio, this is the point where you really start including allies based on what stats they can give you, as well as if they can cover some of the weaknesses of your deck.

– Wandering Took – 3 copies: Unfortunately, this card’s ability is not useful in pure solo play. However, I do need another Spirit ally, and its stats are not bad (1 willpower, 1 attack, 1 defense, 2 hit points) for a relatively low cost (2 resources). They can make good chump blockers or contribute to questing, attacking, or defending. I will not hesitate to include 3 copies.

– Gandalf – 3 copies: The big G is pretty much a must-include for any deck, but he is especially useful with such a limited card pool (with all the cards available to you, it is possible to build decks without Gandalf). Gandalf is especially valuable in that his ability can provide threat management, card draw, or direct damage. His stats (4 willpower, 4 attack, 4 defense) can also help this deck deal with enemies, both through inflicting damage directly, and by participation in traditional combat. In fact, with a healthy amount of threat management and card draw to be included in this deck, I imagine that Gandalf’s main role will be as a damage-dealer.

At this point, we now have a total of 20 allies, with a ratio of 9/20 being Spirit, 8/20 being Lore, and 3/20 being Neutral. While not an ideal ratio, this is the best we can do with the card pool, and should suffice for our purposes. We will have to ensure that the attachments and events are heavily from the Spirit sphere to make up for not achieving our ideal ally ratio.

So far our deck list looks like this:

HEROES

Beravor

Eowyn

Eleanor

ALLIES

Gleowine 3x

Henamarth Riversong 2x

Miner of the Iron Hills 3x

Northern Tracker 3x

Lorien Guide 3x

Wandering Took 3x

Gandalf 3x

————————————

20 cards total

Step Five: Picking Attachments

Now we will move on to selecting attachments. Similar to how I began picking allies, I am going to first examine the list of Spirit and Lore attachments to find those that directly give me the deck abilities I want.

– Favor of the Lady – 3 copies: This attachment falls under the willpower boosting ability. It will give any hero it is attached to an additional 1 willpower for the rest of the game. Even better, it is not unique, so you can stack as many as you want on one hero (or spread them out, if you so choose). My strategy will be to pile these on Eowyn, so that she can be even more of a one-woman quester. Being not unique and a central part of this deck’s approach, 3 copies is a no-brainer.

– Protector of Lorien – 3 copies: Protector of Lorien allows a hero to discard up to 3 cards a turn to boost either willpower or defense. This attachment also matches with willpower boosting (as well as defense/tanking). I can throw this on my defender, Eleanor, and use the cards I am generating through Beravor and/or Gleowine to boost her mediocre defense into something more respectable. If I have a way to ready her, I can also use Protector to help Eleanor become a strong quester as well. Versatility of heroes and effects is always a good thing. I will definitely need the extra defense, so for that reason 3 copies is a must to ensure a consistent source.

I now have 6 cards worth of attachments, 3 from each sphere. If I keep the goal of attachments being 1/4 of my deck, I should end up with about 12-13 attachment cards. So that leaves me with 6-7 more attachment cards to include, and they should be from the Spirit sphere to reach the ratio I want. At this point, I am looking for attachments that will either cover for any weaknesses or support the existing deck abilities.

Such a staple of decks, it should be renamed Expected Courage

– Unexpected Courage – 2 copies: I have mentioned in a few places already that I might need a way to ready my heroes. Unexpected Courage, which allows me to ready a hero once per turn, is just what I need (Note: I would love to have 3 copies of this actually, but I am building with the assumption of 2 Core Sets only.) While readying was not one of the focuses of my deck, it will allow me to get the most out of Beravor and Eleanor, both of whom need to exhaust in order to use their powers. It thus covers for a major weakness: the fact that my heroes’ abilities take away from their questing and combat capabilities. By doing this, it also enhances the card draw capabilities of the deck. By placing the first Unexpected Courage that comes up on Beravor, I will allow her to use her card draw power and still contribute to attack (or defense/questing if needed). Note that originally Beravor could use her ability as many times as she could be readied, but this was modified through errata, and now she is limited to once per round. Still, Unexpected Courage will mean that I will reliably be able to draw those extra 2 cards every round, whereas without it, I might not be able to use her card draw because she would be needed for combat or questing. The second copy will go on Eleanor, who hopefully has a Protector of Lorien attached by that point as well. She can then both quest and defend at potentially strong levels or she can use her ability to cancel a treachery and still be available for something else.

– Forest Snare – 3 copies: This is a form of encounter deck manipulation by allowing me to permanently neutralize an enemy. This is perfect for those quests that have a nasty enemy that will pose a hefty challenge for a deck so light on combat abilities (Hill Troll, I’m looking at you). While this messes with my sphere ratio once again, it is too essential to ignore, and fulfills one of my deck ability needs.

I now have 11 attachments, with a roughly equal amount from each sphere. I could include a couple more, but I’m not in love with any of the other options, and I will wait to see if I have any space at the end. My sphere ratio is still off, with it being approximately a 50/50 split between Lore and Spirit, so I will try to tip the balance with mostly Spirit cards when I choose my events.

Here is the updated deck list:

HEROES

Beravor

Eowyn

Eleanor

ALLIES

Gleowine 3x

Henamarth Riversong 2x

Miner of the Iron Hills 3x

Northern Tracker 3x

Lorien Guide 3x

Wandering Took 3x

Gandalf 3x

ATTACHMENTS

Protector of Lorien 3x

Forest Snare 3x

Favor of the Lady 3x

Unexpected Courage 2x

————————————

31 cards total

Step Six: Picking Events

Again, as with attachments and allies, I will first pick out the cards that give me the deck abilities I want.

– A Test of Will – 3 copies: This card provides treachery cancellation, supplementing Eleanor’s ability and keeping her available for questing or combat (particularly important if she doesn’t have an Unexpected Courage attached yet). Also note that Eleanor can only apply her ability to treachery cards, whereas A Test of Will can cancel any “when revealed” effect, including those that are included on enemy and location cards.

– The Galadhrim’s Greeting – 3 copies: One of the best threat management cards in the game, I can use this to lower my threat by 6. This will help keep those pesky enemies away and allow me to selectively pick them off one by one.

– Radagast’s Cunning/Secret Paths – 2 copies each: Very effective threat management of the indirect kind (by canceling encounter deck threat). Radagast’s Cunning cancels the threat of an enemy in the staging area, while Secret Paths does the same for a location. Removing threat from the staging area during the quest phase is also a form of willpower boosting, therefore these cards fit very nicely into my deck.

Stopping to look at what I have, as you always should do periodically, I see that I have 10 event cards total. Another 2-3 events (keeping to the 1/4 ratio for events) should be sufficient. Since I did not quite hit my goal for allies and attachments, I have room to include even more events than the 1/4 guideline if I so choose. As I did with attachments, I will now look for events that cover weaknesses of the deck or support/synergize with my chosen deck abilities.

– Dwarven Tomb – 2 copies: This is a super-valuable and versatile card that will allow me to bring any Spirit card back from the discard pile. I can use this to bring back a Spirit ally if desperate or to recycle A Test of Will or Galadhrim’s Greeting for maximum threat management and treachery cancellation. This is therefore a card that supports various abilities.

– Hasty Stroke – 3 copies: A card that provides tanking/defense through cancelling shadow effects. I am including this card because one of the weaknesses of my deck is combat. In particular, I have a defending hero, Eleanor, with a fairly low defense (2) and amount of hit points (3). Hasty Stroke ensures that I can defend with a bit more peace of mind. Paired with Protector of Lorien, Eleanor can be fairly serviceable in this role.

Note that I would like to include Lorien’s Wealth, which provides some extra card draw (3 resources to draw 3 cards). However, remember that I am trying to achieve the proper sphere ratio of 2/3 Spirit overall, 1/3 Lore. So, here I will stop and summarize where my deck stands:

HEROES

Beravor

Eowyn

Eleanor

ALLIES

Gleowine 3x

Henamarth Riversong 2x

Miner of the Iron Hills 3x

Northern Tracker 3x

Lorien Guide 3x

Wandering Took 3x

Gandalf 3x

ATTACHMENTS

Protector of Lorien 3x

Forest Snare 3x

Favor of the Lady 3x

Unexpected Courage 2x

EVENTS

Radagast’s Cunning 2x

Secret Paths 2x

A Test of Will 3x

The Galadhrim’s Greeting 3x

Dwarven Tomb 2x

Hasty Stroke 3x

————————————

46 cards total

Step Seven: Round Out Deck

With 46 cards, I only need 4 more to reach the 50 card minimum limit. As much as possible, you should try to hit 50 cards exactly. The fewer cards in your deck, the more consistent it will be. During this stage of deck building, you will either have to add a few cards to reach the minimum or take out some to get your number closer to 50. With a bigger card pool, you will more likely have the latter problem, and will have to make some hard choices about what to leave out. In general, I find a 50-52 card deck to be acceptable while still maintaining consistency. I see that my overall sphere balance is 25/46 Spirit (54%), 18/46 Lore (39%), and 3/46 (7%) neutral, which is pretty decent. The card type balance is 20/46 allies (43%), 11/46 attachments (24%), 15/46 (33%) events.

Taking into account those ratios and my deck abilities, I see a few options for rounding out my deck:

1) Add allies: This will bring the percentage of allies included closer to 50%, which will mean that I will have a greater likelihood of getting allies into my hand throughout the game. Unfortunately, the only allies left available are from the Lore sphere, which would mess with the sphere distribution. My choice would be between Erebor Hammersmith, whose power to bring back attachments from the discard pile is of limited utility, as only Forest Snare is disposable, and there probably won’t be too many occasions where it is used multiple times. Daughter of the Nimrodel has a better ability, giving my deck some healing (she can exhaust to heal 2 damage on a hero). However, this is an example of where cost can really influence card choice. I would rather include the Hammersmith, as it costs only 2 resources compared to 3 for the Daughter, and I like its stats (1 willpower, 1 attack, 1 defense, 3 hit points) better as well. I’m also taking into consideration the fact that I already have a couple of allies that will be exhausting to use their abilities (Henamarth Riversong and Gleowine), so I need another ally that will be an active participant in questing, attacking, and defending. I could add 2 copies of each, but that would decrease the consistency of my deck, and possibly add too much Lore.

2) Add 2-3 copies of Stand and Fight: This Spirit event allows me to bring any ally back from my discard pile (other than Gandalf), paying the cost using Spirit resources. In effect, this is an event that acts as an ally, and also has the benefit of adding more Spirit to my deck.

3) Add 2-3 copies of Lorien’s Wealth: I previously mentioned wanting to include this event to add even more card draw. However, it still has the problem of adding more Lore to my deck, and upsets the balance of card types a bit as well (by giving me too many event cards).

Looking at those three choices, I feel that the best overall pick will be to add the 3 copies of Stand and Fight, a choice that puts more allies in play and provides more Spirit. I will throw in 1 copy of Erebor Hammersmith to round out the deck as a potentially useful card that I will not miss if it doesn’t emerge. Here is the final deck:

HEROES

Beravor

Eowyn

Eleanor

ALLIES

Gleowine 3x

Henamarth Riversong 3x

Miner of the Iron Hills 3x

Erebor Hammersmith 1x

Northern Tracker 3x

Lorien Guide 3x

Wandering Took 3x

Gandalf 3x

ATTACHMENTS

Protector of Lorien 3x

Forest Snare 3x

Favor of the Lady 3x

Unexpected Courage 2x

EVENTS

Radagast’s Cunning 2x

Secret Paths 2x

A Test of Will 3x

The Galadhrim’s Greeting 3x

Dwarven Tomb 2x

Hasty Stroke 3x

Stand and Fight 3x

————————————

50 cards total

Step Eight: Plan for the Mulligan

Now that the deck is built, you need to ask yourself: What cards do I want in my opening hand? When will I use the one mulligan to reshuffle my deck and draw again? You will often find that attachments end up on your list of must-have cards to start the game with, as their abilities are permanent and often powerful. This deck is no exception. I will want Unexpected Courage in my opening hand to facilitate the Beravor card draw engine from the start. If I can get Protector of Lorien as well, then I would be very happy to begin with a more solid defense.

Step Nine: Play and Revise

A deck is never really finished. It must be tested against a variety of scenarios to see how well it works and what tweaks need to made. After playing each game you should ask the following questions:

How well did my deck abilities work? For this deck, I would ask questions like: Did I end up drawing many cards? How often was my threat reduced? Was I able to cancel the nastiest treacheries? If not, what happened? How much quest progress did I make each turn?

Were there any obvious weaknesses to the deck? How could those be addressed? For this deck, I would ask questions like: Did my defense hold up? Was I able to deal with and clear out enemies consistently? Did enemies pile up at any point?

Were there any cards that stayed in my hand for a long time without ever being used? If so, was it because I didn’t have the resources to play them, because there wasn’t a good reason to use them, or because other cards were more suitable?

Did allies end up playing the role I thought they would? Did they actually get to use their abilities?

By taking a moment to really analyze what happened in each game, you can make small changes to your deck to make it more effective. In some cases, you might need to make larger modifications, but it all depends on what you notice. Maybe Protector of Lorien is not working well because there aren’t enough cards to feed it. In that case, there might be something wrong with my card draw. Is the problem that Beravor is too occupied to use her power consistently? Does Gleowine get killed too quickly? Perhaps I need to add in the Lorien’s Wealth after all to make sure that I get the card draw I need. Looking at another situation, what if I find that Eleanor is getting killed too often as a defender or not really making use of her ability? In that case, it might make sense to go back to the drawing board and pick Denethor as the third hero after all. This would require shifting the whole deck to account for a new 2/3 Lore, 1/3 Spirit ratio, but that wouldn’t be too difficult to manage if it was deemed essential to make the deck function better. The point is that deck-building is an ongoing process that hinges on asking the right questions at all steps of the process, especially when the deck actually sees play.

Step Ten: Have Fun!

I hope that all this talk of ratios and abilities and mechanics has not made the deck-building process seem dry and dull. It actually can be a quite creative and rewarding endeavor. Once you start to internalize the key concepts and considerations, you become more free to experiment and push the boundaries with your deck designs. I mentioned previously that I play guitar. I’ll tell you one thing, learning to play scales and notes is a methodical and plodding activity that is extremely boring. But once those movements become automatic, musicians become liberated to improvise, create, and express themselves. The same is true of building decks for this game. Have fun, enjoy the journey, and don’t forget that a defeat is just preparation for victory.

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