First, Ecthelion and I have successfully completed our Saga Campaign – Lorefindel Walks to Mordor. With great aplomb, Lorefindel threw the ring into the fire from whence it came, and all is well in Middle-Earth again. It was a great and fun experience, and I hope it is at least half as enjoyable to watch.

Second, after this post, the Experimental Deckbuilding series will go on a little bit of a hiatus after this post. I still have plenty of deck ideas to choose from, but I’m beginning to feel my enthusiasm wane, and I would rather not let this become a chore. I always envisioned Experimental Deckbuilding as a sporadic series, although the ideas did come faster in the beginning than I could write up posts about them and do videos for them, so it felt like a more constant presence.

Third, I am getting back to the Eleanor saga. I keep saying that, and it keeps not happening. But this time, I think it’s for real. I am beginning to feel the itch to record Khazad-dum quests with new decks, and I have told myself that I can’t do that until the narrative has caught up.

Fourth and finally, in partnership with the Card Talk podcast, the White Tower blog is starting a new series! (Yes, I know, right as we’re putting ED on ice. *handwaves furiously) This new series will be called Ancient Mathoms, and will be described in detail in a future post.

Now, let’s get deckbuilding.

Vision of the Golden Wood

The final deck in our Wilderland-themed fellowship is a traditional Silvan deck, built around Celeborn and Galadriel, the Lord and Lady of Lorien. This is a well-worn and well-traveled path as far as deckbuilding goes. Celeborn’s boosts apply to all 3 stats of each Silvan ally as it comes into play. Galadriel’s action advantage allows you to make use of multiple boosts in the same phase.

The biggest weakness of Silvan deckbuilding is that their allies come from all 4 spheres of influence, and each of them offers something useful and important to the deck. The Lore sphere is widely regarded to be the most useful sphere to a Silvan deck, and so the most common choice for a third hero is a Lore hero, even though Galadriel can get access to the Lore sphere through her ring, Nenya. For those trying to stay roughly on-theme, Haldir is a favorite choice. The Dwarf hero Bifur is another popular option, offering low threat, resource smoothing, and access to the powerful cantrip card Unlikely Friendship.

For us, however, we went a little bit off of the beaten path. While Haldir of Lorien is an excellent hero, his ally card is so excellent in a Silvan deck that we found it too hard to pass up. And a Dwarf – while an interesting idea – isn’t hugely thematic for this particular deck. And so we came to the only other Lore Silvan hero who has a useful ability: Argalad.

Argalad’s ability to reduce threat in the staging area is particularly powerful when combined with Galadriel’s ring, Nenya. Between the two of them, they can adjust questing by up to 6 after staging has occured! That’s a huge swing, and it only gets better if Argalad is boosted by a Weapon attachment.

The core of a good Silvan deck lies in its allies, and so that’s where we started. 3 copies of the Naith Guide, 3 copies of the Galadhrim Minstrel, 3 copies of Galadriel’s Handmaiden, and 3 copies of the Galadhrim Weaver formed the core of our build. They each give useful enters-play benefits, and kind of form the backbone of the playstyle. To these, we added 2 copies of Haldir of Lorien, and 2 copies of the ally version of Legolas, who can be brought in with The Tree People or played using the resource smoothing from The Storm Comes.

2 copies of the Greenwood Archer offer additional attack power, and 2 copies of Galion offer a cheap ally to be brought back to hand with the Silvan events. The last 2 allies are a little less intuitive. The Woodland Courier is not normally seen as a great ally, but in a Silvan deck, she’s perfectly functional. She suffers in comparison to Galadriel’s Handmaiden, but almost every Spirit ally does. And 1 point of location control is useful, especially if you recur her. The Defender of the Naith, on the other hand, is just generally a poor card. Its ability offers action advantage, but its stats make it a less-than-useful option for that advantage. With only 2 defense and 2 hit points, defending more than a single enemy is difficult. Of course, on the turn he enters play, he has 3 defense, which isn’t useless, and the Warrior trait opens up some useful options with more recent cards. So we ended up with 2 copies in our deck, because while we do have Grimbeorn and Thranduil as powerful hero defenders, that’s not always enough to cover all the enemies we face.

Events were easy to pick out. 3 copies of both Feigned Voices and Elf Guide, 3 copies of The Tree People – easily the most important of the Silvan events – and 3 copies of Quicker than Sight. Normally, I like to run Island Amid Perils, but in a 3 player game, shadow cancellation can sometimes be at a premium. The extra enemies make it much more likely that we will see game-ending shadow effects at some point. 3 copies of A Test of Will turned out to be vital in larger player counts, and 3 copies of South Away helped support Haldan’s focus on Location attachments. It isn’tdifficult to reduce each player’s threat by 2 with that card, which is likely the best we could reasonably achieve with Island Amid Perils anyways.

Like most Silvan decks, we ended up rather sparse on the attachments. 2 copies of Unexpected Courage, and a single speculative copy of Light of Valinor (for Argalad, ideally) offered action advantage. A single copy of O Lorien! was the target for Gather Information. Then, we added 3 Ancient Mathoms and 2 Woodmen’s Clearings, to further support the fellowship’s Location attachment theme.

While most Silvan decks build a lot of themselves almost without thinking, filling out the remaining spots and shading the deck in certain ways is still a fascinating process. Most importantly, though, this deck is a blast to play. Allies bouncing in and out of play, Argalad damaging enemies in the staging area, and Galadriel’s ability to support whichever deck needs to dig for their cards most all offer important decision points, and there’s never a dull moment.

The last 2 test runs of the fellowship are now online. Watch Grant, Katie and I take on the Treachery of Rhudaur and Thing in the Depths! The decks are also now posted on RingsDB here. That’s a wrap for the Wilderland United fellowship! It’ll be a little bit before Experimental Deckbuilding returns, but I don’t plan for it to be gone forever. Until next time, happy questing!