I took this idea one step further and built a full 50 card deck. It's a lot tricker as it's harder to see your key cards, but it's actually a very solid deck. Like all things in this game (for now at least) it is dependant on luck to an extent: a horrible draw from the shadow deck or your own deck will undo you, but I think it is fairly consistant.

The basic premise of the deck is simple: utilize spirits amazing threat reduction to keep yourself under the radar while questing with their powerful questers (Eowyn, Northern Tracker and Lorien Guide.) Discard all of your 'out of sphere' guys to fuel Eowyn's ability, then bring them into play with Stand and Fight. Use Dwarven Tombs and Will of the West to get your Stand and Fight's back. Dwarven Tomb can also be used to re-use Galadhrim's Greeting. The most powerful part of this deck is that you have more control over the game than with any other deck I've played. You keep your threat low, snipe bad guys with Dunhere, avoid nasty cards with Eleanor, Test of Will and Hasty Stroke. I beat the second scenario fairly easily the first time I played this, though it (barely) beat me the second time, mostly due to the second Hill Troll cropping up right at the beginning of quest 2 right around the time I ran completely out of cards due to not seeing my Gleowine.

The most obvious shocker is how many out of sphere guys are here. Honestly there isn't much else to fill the deck up with and it works pretty well. Even if you only see 2x Stands and 2x Tombs, that's 4 very powerful guys you can put out. Gandalf is also essential for his threat reduction and utility. All these guys are getting discarded to Eowyn anyway, so they are serving another purpose as well.

Heroes (not the greatest combo, but damn it's nice to start with such low threat)

Eowyn

Eleanor

Dunhere

Allies

Lorien Guide x3

Northern Tracker x3

Wandering Took x3

Out of Sphere Allies

Gandalf x3

Gleowine x3 (Yes he's unique, but it's worth it to find him.)

Faramir x3 (See above)

Beorn x2

Daughter of Nimrodel x3

Attachments

The Favor of the Lady x3 (All goes on Eowyn)

Unexpected Courage x3 (All goes on Dunhere)

Events

Stand and Fight x3 (Key)

Dwarven Tomb x3 (Key)

The Gladhrim's Greeting (Key)

Will of the West x3 (Allows the deck to theoretically work infinitely)

A Test of Will x3 (Always nice to have 1 of these in hand + 1 extra resource available)

Hasty Stroke x3 (Same as above)

Light in the Dark x3 (Kind of useful to buy yourself an extra turn to reduce your threat or get rid of a guy once your threat is reduced below his level...but I certainly wouldn't have 3x in here if there was a better card available.)

Strengths:

* Allows you to utilize several very powerful key characters from other spheres without having to worry about the resource crippling dual-sphere decks suffer from.

* Spirit threat reduction buys you much more time than most decks, allowing you a few extra turns to get your combo's in place. Once you have a strong established base, you can theoretically reduce your threat forever and be untouchable while still dealing with threat buildup through your awesome location-killers and Dunhere.

* You start out with an awesome quester right away, ensuring you won't suffer from any early game threat bumps.

Weaknesses:

* Like all decks that are not Lore, this suffers horribly from a lack of card draw. Gleowine is very necessary, but the deck really needs something else. This game could really use a neutral Gleowine-like character.

* If you get a crappy draw, you're in trouble. The mulligan rule helps that a lot, but sometimes you'll end up with a hand full of out of sphere characters and nothing to do with them. Though you have a few extra turns to deal with that because of your low threat, it can still kill you if the shadow deck gets a good draw.

* The deck is fairly expensive. This isn't that big of a deal - 2 turns is worth a Beorn, and this deck isn't putting characters out as fast as other decks, instead relying on fewer, more powerful characters. But it is still expensive, and honestly only Leadership has a great resource engine.

Possible Changes:

* Swapping Eleanor for Aragorn. You lose a major advantage (your starting low threat) and you are open to a turn 2 Troll attack unless you draw well, but you gain a major resource boost with the attachements he can bring in. Aragorn works best here because of his 'gain the spirit icon' attachment, but theoretically you could bring someone cheaper in just to unlock Steward of Gondor + their 1 resource guy.

* Swapping Eleanor for Berevor. This is a more viable option in my mind as your threat isn't nearly as bad (27) and Berevor singlehandedly solves your card draw problem. She can also purchase Gleowine turn 2 'honestly', and makes Daughter of Nim make more sense. But your Spirit resources take a pretty sizable hit, as it now takes a solid 3 turns of production to get Beorn out, and it makes it much harder to 'save' a couple resources for your cancellation cards.

Thoughts?

Ahzrab said:

 Or Steward of Gondor + Anything :)

Nice session report. :)  Would you mind listing your deck makeup?

Oh I forgot another possible change to that above decklist: add Theodred instead of Aragorn. Your threat is still super low, he singlehandedly fixes your resource problem with his ability and SoG. The only thing you're missing is more card draw, which can still bring the deck to a crippling halt.

ClydeCloggie said:

I agree.  This is a "legitimate play" because it uses quite the 3 card combo that you have to set up.  Brilliant insight to find this one too!

CAlexander said:

With Theodred, you could use Sneak Attack to bring Beorn in on the cheap for one turn, as long as you don't use his ability, then return him to your hand and then discard him on the next turn.

After thinking about it, ensuring it worked and playing around with some cards, I think this deck works best splashed with Spirit, namely Theodred.

* Your resources are much more stable, as mentioned earlier. Between SoG and his own ability you more than make up for losing the 1 Spirit per turn that Elanor provides.

* Celebrian's Stone is awesome on Eowin.

* Snowborn Scout is really good and can still be played turn 1. He synergizes well with Spirit's 'anti-location' theme. Also, in a pinch, you can buy Faramir 'honestly'.

* Most importantly, it allows access to Sneak Attack. This not only hands you the awesome Sneak Attack/Gandalf combo, but allows you to Sneak in the allies that might be clogging up your hand if you don't see early Stand and Fight's.

* One last thing: you have super Rohan-trifecta flavor!

I've put together a prototype now and will post results in a separate thread. Sorry for the highjacking :)

I do not want to break Your holiday, but before engaging even more should You answer whether page 4 of instruction clearly bans it?

Spheres of Influence
There are four different spheres of influence in The
Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and each has its
own distinct flavor and identity. Most player cards fall
under one of these spheres, represented by a unique
icon, as well as by a unique color on its card border.
Each hero has an emphasis in one of these four spheres.
A hero’s sphere dictates the types of cards that hero
allows a player to use.

If You do not have proper hero You cannot use OOH cards in Your deck.

But you are using a card from your own sphere. The issue is whether the abilities on said cards allow you to bring in allies from other spheres.  Stand and Fight clearly says that it does. Sneak Attack is not specific, but does not contradict it, either. You are paying the cost of the card, not the cost of the ally. And if indeed the idea is to ban the use of allies belonging to different spheres in decks, then I find that to be a restraint on creativity and ingenuity that should not happen in a card game unless there are specific game breaking results derived from it. I don't see any, so far.

If the fact, that ad hoc created deck beat second quest twice in the row does not convince You, nothing will :).

Sky said:

I'm convinced if you play 100 games and win 99%.

2 games hardly count as a benchmark.

Sky said:

I don't see the deck as ad hoc. It is deliberately constructed to take advantage from on of Spirits strongest mechanics (discard pile recursion). It also isn't fool proof because without Lore the deck has to rely on luck, a mulligan, and delay tactics to make sure it gets the cards it needs.

Sky:

Have you played a lot of TCG's before? I don't want to sound snarky, but if you have you'll know that a mechanic has to be seriously abusive before most companies even begin talking about issuing errata. Just look over to the Warhammer: Invasion forums, which finally (after almost a year) have been able to get the game un-broken. Allowing you to play a few cards from the discard pile for full cost does not even come close to abusive. I think that once the deck is finely tuned, it MIGHT be able to win 60/40 against Scenario 2.

And, to quote page 27:

"A tournament deck must contain a minimum of 50 cards. Additionally, no more than three copies of any card, by title, can be included in a players deck. Within these guidelines any combination of allies, attachments and events can be used in the player deck."

And, later, under advice,

""A player should also make sure that all the cards in his deck belong to a sphere that maches at least one of the heroes' resource icons, lest he find himself with a dead card he cannot hope to play."

There is nothing barring a player from doing so, so the deck works. As others have said, the question isn't 'can you include an out of sphere card', it is 'Sneak Attack work out of sphere', which we have come to an almost unanimous conclusion that it does.

Don't forget the golden rule that the text on the card supercedes the rules of the game.  And I'm pretty sure "Stand and Fight" specifically mentions that you can use it one cards of another sphere.

If this game would have concrete walls around its spheres, with no leeway at all to include cross-sphere use of cards, it would be a much less interesting game. For me, the benchmark of a game that got this wrong was Decipher's LotR-TCg with all their cards that were only playable on one specific character. And the four unique sphere concept of this game still worries me in that respect. For that reason alone, this deck with its inventive use of Beorn is already very good news.