This deck caught my eye today because the Beregond/Eowyn/Glorfindel combo was one of my standby decks for years, but using Tactics Beregond and Spirit Eowyn. This deck is a new take on one of my favorite combos!

Created and uploaded to Ringsdb by user Thejuggler2000, Beregond Keeps a Low Profile starts at a fantastic 21 threat and aims at keeping that threat low with Berergond’s ability. With one copy of Elrond’s Council, the deck will possibly dip into Secrecy mode and copies of Resourceful can be played.

The deck description indicates the deck has been used to play some saga quests including the quests in The Road Darkens, so I will test it against some of those scenarios.

Test 1 – The Ring Goes South

Great experience! I haven’t played this quest solo in a while and it was fun. With 7 starting willpower and a solid defender, the deck has a good aggressive opening turn. I was lucky to draw Light of Valinor on turn 1 and keep a constant cycle of enemies engaged with me to keep my threat down the entire game. By turn 6 I was still at 22 threat.

Desperate Defense proved worthwhile when I engaged the Great Warg Chief midway through the game, keeping Beregond safe against a 6 attack with no armor at all.

With solid willpower curve, the deck kept the locations from piling up and things went smoothly. I was able to use Eowyn’s +9 attack against the Watcher in the Water near the end and rescue Frodo right away.

I quested through to victory two turns later on turn 8. This scenario isn’t that hard solo, but this deck handled the quest easily. The constant low threat is so powerful since you can choose when you want to engage enemies in most quests and maintain control of the quest and never lose allies to a meaningless defense. This deck manages to field 31 stats worth of heroes for only 21 threat!

Test 2 – Blood of Gondor

With a well rounded set of stats on the board I decided to try it against Blood of Gondor, a difficult but fun quest with enemies unexpectedly engaging. Eowyn won’t help nearly as much, but her 10 attack ability will take down the Black Numenorian! I know this deck wasn’t designed for Siege/Battle style of quest, but it might be fun anyway.

Well,the first attempt didn’t go too well, but the second play ended with a win. This quest can be swingy depending on how many enemies surprise you with the “hidden card” mechanism, but it was fun. I was able to yell “I AM NO MAN!” (silently in my head) and kill off the boss enemy early in the first attempt. Eowyn’s ability is so useful in the early game in so many scenarios!

Since there are effects that raise your threat, it was difficult to ever get into Secrecy mode, and most all of the enemies are low engagement cost anyway, but the low starting threat gave me more wiggle room if I needed to unsuccessfully quest to have a solid combat phase.

The first play I kept the quest in “siege” mode using a Defender of Rammas as a champion quester, but an Orc Ambusher killed him off and I stalled out and couldn’t clear locations, then I was swarmed with enemies since too many of my characters were trying to quest.

The second attempt I cleared the Crossroads location that gives the quest the Siege keyword and the deck functioned much better questing with willpower rather than Defense.

By the time I got to stage 2, my board was set up to Siege quest fairly well and I won within two turns, in spite of not having much of a board presence. Skinbark proved very helpful for stamping out orcs in a single blow.

Test 3 – Journey in the Dark

This quest was mentioned in the deck description as being unsuccessfully attempted. I wasn’t able to kill the Balrog, but I did end up winning, which says good things about the strength of the deck!

Again, the low threat and strong starting willpower gives the deck a great start. Without Light of Valinor for the first few turns, I wasn’t questing as heavily, but I got to the Chamber of Mazarbul on turn 3 but it took another 5 turns to get out. The Balrog showed up much earlier than I hopped, but I managed to keep him at bay by blocking with the allies I had built up while clearing the board of the other enemies that showed up. I escaped on turn 14 after spending 5 turns engaged with the Balrog.

Card Choices

The deck has a great choice of heroes and they work together wonderfully. I’m starting to like Spirit Beregond more and more! The deck works well as is, but as always, I have some thoughts on card selection based on my (limited) questing experiences here.

My main comment centers around the interaction between attachments and events. Foe-Hammer and Sterner than Steel are both excellent cards, especially for their 0 cost! But you have to have weapons and/or armor to trigger both events. To make these events more reliable, I would tend to include more of these key attachments in the deck. Any time I’m running Beregond, 3x Gondorian Shield seems like a good idea to me! Livery of the tower is also a good supplement and could help Beregond survive against big enemies like the Balrog. Adding one copy of Gondorian Shield, and possibly cutting Blood of Numenor (possibly in favor of anothe Livery of the Tower) might make Beregond be a little more protected from large attacks and shadow effects through a game.

The same thing applies to Foe-Hammer. The deck includes 4 weapons, and it look seem like enough, but if you’re looking for consistency, especially without an abundance of card draw present, 6 weapons (instead of 4) will make for a more reliable situation for triggering Foe-Hammer. Dagger of Westerness is excellent in the deck as well since your threat level is constantly being reduced by Beregond and Council of Elrond! In my longer Journey in the Dark quest, Glorfindel was able to kill things by himself with two Daggers! Great choice!

The spirit events all were very helpful and seem like excellent choices.

The ally selection contains a lot of single copies of unique characters. Some of these allies are strengthened by the general low threat of the deck (Boromir and Maggot. I found Defender of Rammas a very useful ally in every game and was never sorry to see him show up in my hand. He might be worth 3x. Skinbark is slow to get moving, but he proved an excellent killer in two of these games. Bofur will help find those weapons, but he’s expensive enough that I would hope to have at least one weapon in play by the time I would feel good paying 3 for him. Farmer Maggot can potentially drop two damage on an engaged enemy, but he might cost more than he’s worth in this deck with a single Tactics hero. I found it most helpful to give Eowyn the Resourceful attachment since all the Tactics allies were fairly expensive and well over 1/3 of the cards in the deck need Tactics resources.

It might be beneficial to switch out a couple of the expensive Tactics allies with ally Legolas. Not only will he provide you with reliable card draw though the game, you can attach those additional copies of Rivendell Blade to him to make him more deadly!

If you’re collection allows, another one or two copies of Unexpected Courage will help you get more value out of your high value heroes like Beregond and Glorfindel.

The deck includes Golden Shield and Snowmane for Eowyn which could turn her into another solid defender. This can work well, but again, it might be more consistent, to try to add value to Beregond who is already defending by using Unexpected Courage on him rather than including two different attachments for Eowyn. Its worth pointing out that Golden Shield doesn’t work well with Sterner than Steel since its exhausted when the character is declared but before the shadow effect is revealed.

The only other comment I had was a little more card draw might help the deck move faster. Foe-Hammer and Gandalf help, but one might consider adding some Ancient Mathom to make it move even faster.

Final Analysis

The deck works! It works well! High willpower, high defense, high attack and low threat is a killer combo. I recommend giving this deck a try! I critiqued some of the player card choices a bit, but those are tiny adjustments that are debatable. The deck is strong and fun to play! Go over to Ringsdb and give it a like, then play it and tweak it to your liking! Thanks to Thejuggler2000 for posting the deck!