Deck: Celebrían’s Pride

This week I’m taking a break from my Thematic Nightmare series to get some other work done, but in the meantime I thought I would show you the deck I built for the Middle-Earth Hero Auction, a forum game hosted by Seastan.

The first half of the game involved bidding on Heroes from a selection of them, where bids were placed in the form of starting threat. The bidding is mostly over now, and I won Arwen at 10, Elladan at 9, and Elrohir at 9, for a total sum of 28 starting threat, or -1 from their usual cost. I’m okay with not getting much of a discount, since this was really just an excuse for me to try building a solo deck out of the brothers. I use them all the time in multiplayer, but as a combat-focused deck. By combining them with their sister, the hope is that I can get something a little more well-rounded and capable of standing on its own.

The second half of the game involves building a deck without knowing what scenarios Seastan is going to pick for us to play it against. We’re allowed a sideboard of 6 cards total, but that’s it. Once we’ve all submitted our decks, he’ll reveal the quests and we’ll see how well our pre-built decks can hold up!

Here’s what I came up with:

Celebrían’s Pride

Hero (3)

Arwen Undómiel (The Dread Realm)
Elladan (Road to Rivendell)
Elrohir (The Redhorn Gate)
Ally (17)

3x Galadriel (The Road Darkens)
2x Gandalf (Core Set)
1x Glorfindel (Flight of the Stormcaller)
2x Lindir (The Battle of Carn Dûm)
3x Mithlond Sea-watcher (The Grey Havens)
3x Sailor of Lune (The Grey Havens)
3x Warden of the Havens (The Grey Havens)
Attachment (18)

2x Celebrían’s Stone (Core Set)
3x Dúnedain Mark (The Hunt for Gollum)
2x Dúnedain Remedy (The Drowned Ruins)
3x Dúnedain Warning (Conflict at the Carrock)
3x Elven Mail (The Three Trials)
2x Light of Valinor (Foundations of Stone)
3x Rivendell Blade (Road to Rivendell)
Event (13)

3x Elrond’s Counsel (The Watcher in the Water)
3x Elven-light (The Dread Realm)
3x Hasty Stroke (Core Set)
1x Lords of the Eldar (The Battle of Carn Dûm)
3x Revealed in Wrath (Temple of the Deceived)
Player Side Quest (2)

1x Gather Information (The Lost Realm)
1x Prepare for Battle (The Mûmakil)
3 Heroes, 50 Cards

Sideboard
Event (6)

3x A Test of Will (Core Set)
3x Feint (Core Set)

This deck on RingsDB

Strategy

The goal is to rely pretty heavily on Elladan and Elrohir for combat, with tons of Attachments around to boost their stats. I’ll use Arwen Undómiel’s discard ability to ensure I have the resources wherever I need them, whether that be to pay for cards faster or to fuel one of her brothers’ abilities.

I also decided to include the three “top of your discard pile” Allies from The Grey Havens—Mithlond Sea-watcher, Sailor of Lune, and Warden of the Havens—since I haven’t used all three of them together in a deck yet. I’m hoping that Arwen Undómiel’s discard ability can keep them operating at peak efficiency as often as possible. We shall see!

I suspect Elven-light is my mulligan card, but I’d probably keep any decent hand with Prepare for Battle in it too.

As far as my sideboard goes, I chose two staples: Feint and A Test of Will. I figure if I end up against bigger than usual Enemies or some nasty Treachery that I can’t counter it’s better to have them around than not.

I’m sensing a theme here…

I didn’t set out specifically to build a theme deck, but my decks have a tendency to come out feeling kind of thematic anyway—it’s just what I most enjoy building. In this case I built a Noldor deck, but with a little splash of some of the Dúnedain Signal Attachments. That kind of fits Elladan and Elrohir’s shtick anyway.

Will it work? I hope so! I haven’t had a chance to tune it like I do most of the decks I post on this blog, but I did play it against the first few rounds of Trouble in Tharbad just to get a feel for it. It seems promising, but I won’t know for sure until it gets a little more play time.

All that’s left to do now is wait for Seastan to reveal the quests. Wish me luck!

UPDATE: You can find my play report for this deck here!