The Greatest Dùnedain Deck
(In my foolhardy mind)
I have always loved the Dùnedain. They are mysterious foresters who protect Middle-Earth. Their ranks include Aragorn, one of the most heroic characters of the third age. They even have a fancy accent mark in their name, which makes it hard to type. (Alt+0249 allows you to type “ ù “ in case you were curious.) However, they never clicked for me in LOTR LCG. True Dùnedain decks are often slow and purely focused on combat. Even worse, they work best in multiplayer, while I primarily play alone. Despite the excellent theme of engaging enemies, only the Leadership sphere helps with this concept. While Tactics can get enemies engaged with you, it does not allow you to keep them engaged safely. In fact, allies like the Dùnedain Hunter, Fornost Bowman, and Northern Bowmaster focus on killing enemies rather than keeping them engaged. Lore Dùnedain cards are primarily focused on side quests. While I appreciate this theme, I always find it hard to leverage it. Dùnedain characters lack willpower, and even the best questers are slow to set up. For example, Thurindir and Warden of Annúminas take time to use properly. Side quests are also problematic as they don’t synergize with the central theme of engaging enemies. Instead, cards like Legacy Blade and Dour Handed seek to kill foes. Finally, Spirit Dùnedain focuses on locations. While some of the cards are great (I am looking at you, Northern Tracker), most of the Spirit cards are terrible. Greyflood Wanderer, Idraen, Spirit Aragorn, and Súlien are all outranked by other options. Overall, Dùnedain cards conflict with each other and lack synergies. The best Dùnedain card (Armored Destrier) was supposed to be a Rohan-focused card. Despite these many flaws, all the Dùnedain archetypes can fit together in a single solo with the addition of three cards:
Let me explain…
Dùnedain lacks three main things: chunky defense, board acceleration, and early-game presence. Rather obviously, Beregond is the defender that the Dùnedain always dreamed of. Combined with Gondorian Shield, he can defend a Hill Troll on turn one without getting scratched. In addition, the only Tactics Dùnedain hero is Aragorn, who has a high threat and an ability that is useless in solo. Thus, Beregond is a far better choice if we want to use Bond of Friendship, and we definitely want to use it. Because it allows us to start with four heroes, we have a stronger early-game presence and more resources. However, while the contract solves problems, it creates more. We now have a far higher starting threat, and ideally, we want card draw to leverage the extra resources. This is where the Galadriel comes into play. Triggering her ability each round allows us to stabilize our threat and draw an additional card. She even lets out allies pull double duty the turn they enter play. This lets us thrive in the early game. In a typical deck, you would effectively start with only two heroes because Galadriel’s ability requires her to exhaust. However, we will still have three ready heroes with Bond of Friendship. In addition, Galadriel can wield a Silver Lamp while still triggering her ability. This allows us to defend safely and properly use Armored Destrier. Overall, these three additions allow this Dùnedain deck to function in solo play:
https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/361778
While it’s not perfectly thematic, it’s not far off. I figured Arwen and Galadriel fit fine because of the Tale of Tinuviel. Beregond doesn’t fit at all, but he is just one card. Plus, he is rather necessary. Thankfully, I avoided cards like Steward of Gondor and Daeron’s Runes. The deck is relatively simple to play. Each game is a bit more varied than usual due to the contract’s restriction to only two copies of cards. However, it is certainly not a complex deck. I know it sounds like a YouTube outro, but I would genuinely appreciate it if you left a like or comment on RingsDB. I will happily take into consideration any feedback I get. I am by no means a perfect deck builder.
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