I am building a new deck for The Lord of the Rings Card Game.

My heroes are to be Elrohir, Elladan and Glorfindel. They are from the Leadership, Tactics and Spirit spheres respectively.

The main focus of my deck is Tactics and combat, so I can fight off the annoying spiders in Mirkwood. What are some good Tactics cards?

• Bofur – allows you look in your deck for a weapon
• Gondoran Spearman – does damage directly to an enemy
• Vassal of the Windlord – cheap attacker
• Watcher of the Bruinen – defender who can also attack
• Winged Guardian – very tough defender
• Blade of Gondolin – good against Orcs and helps with quests
• Rivendell Blade – gets past enemies armour (I get to use this because all my heroes are Elves)
• Foe-hammer – allows you to draw more cards after winning a fight
• Feint – stops an enemy attacking for a turn
• Goblin-cleaver – does damage directly to an enemy

How about Leadership?

• Steward of Gondor – gives me more resources to pay for stuff
• Sneak Attack – puts Gandalf into play cheaply and gets him back again (Gandalf is uber-powerful)
• Snowbound Scout – helps with quests and can chump block (chump block means to take a hit and die on behalf of a hero)
• Dunedain Watcher – can cancel bad fight cards
• A Very Good Tale – can play ally cards cheaply
• Celebrian’s Stone – boosts a hero’s ability to quest
• Dunedain Mark – boosts a hero’s attack
• Dunedain Warning – boosts a hero’s defence

and Spirit?

• Arwen Undomiel – good on quests and boosts defence
• Escort from Edoras – good at quests
• Imladris Stargazer – can look at top few cards in your deck and reorder them
• Northern Tracker – great at making progress in quests
• Westfold Horse-Breaker – can allow a hero to do another thing in a turn
• Unexpected Courage – allows a hero to do another thing every turn (awesome)
• Light of Valinor – allows a hero to do something else after going on a quest
• Ancient Mathom – allows you to draw cards after a successful quest
• Miruvor – does several useful things
• A Test of Will – cancels bad cards when questing

I do need to be careful since with three separate spheres, each has only one hero to pay for playing cards. I should avoid expensive stuff unless it is particularly good.

Based on the above lists, here is the start of my deck, focusing on cheaper cards:

• 3 x Gandalf (he is great at everything, but only hangs around for one turn before buggering off on some wizardly errand or other)
• 2 x Gondoran Spearman
• 3 x Vassal of the Windlord
• 2 x Veteran Axehand
• 3 x Rivendell Blade
• 3 x Feint
• 2 x Goblin-Cleaver
• 1 x Blade of Gondolin
• 3 x Sneak Attack
• 3 x Snowbourn Scout
• 3 x Steward of Gondor
• 2 x Arwen Undomiel
• 2 x Unexpected Courage
• 2 x Light of Valinor

This isn’t a full 50-card deck. It needs to be filled out with cards that will compensate for having no access to the Lore sphere, which is mainly healing and drawing.

I shall go through all the sets I have and create some lists of what cards in each sphere provide the various effects.