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DECIPHER.com > The Lord of
the Rings > Expansions
> Shadows
Find Another Way
by Zach Shephard
The imminent release of Shadows has some players worrying about the compatibility
of old Shadow cultures with new ones. Many naysayers have insisted that
the new cultures will be inferior to the old.
I for one am confident that many of you will find fun ways to use the
new Uruk-hai, Evil Men, and Orcs. However, there is still something for
those of you that liked things the way they were...
Ringwraiths. Although now referred to as the "Wraith" culture (to
include the Nazgûl, spirits of the Dead Marshes, and Dick Clark),
their cultural icon remains the same. As such, all of your favorites like
Úlairë Attëa, Úlairë Toldëa, and the Witch-king
will be compatible with the Wraith cards released in Shadows. Lemenya will
also be compatible, but he's not anybody's favorite.
With that in mind, being assigned the task of making a Wraith decklist
was certainly exciting for me. I had the flexibility of working with a card
pool that had been growing for over three years, and although this versatility
led to several different ideas, it wasn't long before I decided exactly
what I wanted to do.
Ever since the dawn of time (give-or-take five minutes), man has searched
for alternate ways to get ahead of the game. Whether it's cavemen attempting
to trap dinosaurs with a primitive form of flypaper, or astronauts considering
the advantages of a really big slingshot over rocket fuel, we've always
known there had to be another way.
However, we haven't always had the excellent options that our caveman
and astronaut brethren did; sometimes we're stuck using things like Despair
to win a game of Lord of the Rings.
 As
many of you may know, Despair gets about as much attention from gamers as
does their personal hygiene. If you can manage to pull off the victory condition
of this card, you've probably already won anyway. Since the release of Despair,
there have been a few other cards to take advantage of alternate win conditions
– but never before have I been as excited about one as I am about Shapes
Slowly Advancing.
With this new Wraith-culture bomb, all you have to do is discard a Nazgûl
in the regroup phase to add a token to the condition. Once four tokens have
accumulated, your opponent's Ring-bearer is corrupted, regardless of their
remaining resistance. Of course, the Free Peoples player does have the option
of returning a companion to their hand to prevent the token from being added.
Furthermore, if your condition gets discarded, you're out of luck.
So, there are three factors we need to take into account for a deck centered
around this card: keeping your Nazgûl alive to the regroup phase,
keeping your condition protected, and finding a means of dealing with an
opponent's option to prevent your token from being added.
First of all, let's look at keeping those Wraiths alive. These days, companions
are big enough to eliminate Ringwraiths left and right, so we can't really
count on winning skirmishes. Instead, let's fight as few skirmishes as possible,
so companions with low damage bonuses won't have as much of a chance to
kill our minions. To do this, I've chosen a large group of non-fierce Nazgûl,
many of which can heal themselves in the skirmish phase. All Blades Perish
will also help, by preventing directed wounds and skirmish damage. Furthermore,
Between Nazgûl and Prey will allow you to assign your minions where
you want them, thereby ensuring they aren't overwhelmed by some insane Elf
with a boat. Since Dauntless Hunter is finding a new home on the X-list,
including four copies of this four-cost event shouldn't be a problem.
But the usefulness of Between Nazgûl and Prey doesn't end there.
The biggest threat to Shadow conditions today is Galadriel, Lady Redeemed.
She has a great ability to control the board, but fighting isn't exactly
her strong point, as she would disintegrate if you slapped her with a pillow.
With that in mind, assigning an enduring Nazgûl to Galadriel will
almost always land her in the dead pile.
The other primary means of condition removal these days comes in the form
of Elrond, Herald to Gil-galad with Vilya and Secret Sentinels. It's hard
to tell how much play Elrond (and allies in general) will see with the triumphant
return of the Anduin Confluence, but I'm preparing for the worst, and plan
to hit Elrond hard. You can only play one copy of the Confluence in your
adventure deck, and most players that use Elrond pack him in multiples.
One option to deal with this is using the maneuver event Fear, but its usefulness
is limited since the Free Peoples player gets the first maneuver action
– all they need is one shot to take out your hard-earned tokens.
Solution? Úlairë Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders. Four copies
of Nelya means that whenever you play the Confluence to discard your opponent's
allies (namely Elrond), you can fire the site right back into your adventure
deck for future use. It's too early to say if such a precaution is even
necessary, as the presence of the Confluence alone may cause players to
shy away from allies all together, but it's something to consider nonetheless.
Although this decklist may want to cut a Nelya or two to comply with shifts
in the meta, it still can't hurt to have some control over the adventure
path these days, at least until you find out whether or not people are still
packing allies in your area.
The other main option for condition removal on the Free Peoples side is
Gandalf. Between Nazgûl and Prey has the potential to overwhelm the
Wizard early on, but two copies of Too Great and Terrible have been included
just in case. Too Great and Terrible with Toldëa assigned by Between
Nazgûl and Prey can do five wounds to Gandalf in one shot, and that's
not too shabby.
So we've got a way to keep our Nazgûl alive, and we've got a way
to get rid of those who discard conditions, but we're still missing one
factor – the prevention of tokens from being added to Shapes Slowly
Advancing.
Being that the deck uses so many support cards to do things other than
killing off a fellowship's main fighters, the Nazgûl aren't so hot
when it comes to filling your opponent's dead pile. Since this is the case,
your opponent can simply return companions to their hand in the regroup
phase to prevent tokens from being added to your auto-win condition. Then,
during the next turn, they can replay all of their companions without fear
of being punished for the twilight they dump in the pool since your Nazgûl
won't do much to hurt them.
The best way to get around this strategy is to make sure they can't replay
those companions, and that's something we achieve with a card on the Free
Peoples side of our deck:
The White Arrows of Lorien. Exert an Elf Archer companion during the archery
phase to make your opponent discard two cards at random from their hand.
Four of these with four Elven Bows and Legolas, Greenleaf, means you can
clear out your opponent's hand every turn. Knock out their companions and
they won't be able to continue preventing tokens from being added to your
condition.
Clever players, however, will find an easy way around this: don't play
any minions. Without minions in play, you'll never see the archery phase,
and hence won't be able to use the White Arrows. The disadvantage to this,
though, is that your opponent's hand will start to clog – without playing
minions and having companions bounced to their hand, they won't be getting
through much of their deck.
Still, a hand-clog may not be enough.
Your best bet is to just double-move if they don't play anything. Curse
Their Foul Feet is good to make sure such a strategy is safe, while companions
like Cirdan and Gil-galad can hopefully hold their own. You should only
need a few double-moves, because with your opponent returning companions
to his hand every turn, he/she won't be able to keep up a similar pace for
long.
Even if you never get the chance to use your White Arrows, there is a
possible alternative – a card that most people probably thought would
never see play after it received errata way back in the days of Fellowship
Block...
The Mirror of Galadriel. Your chances may be slim of hitting that companion
in your opponent's hand, but the chance is indeed there. And if your opponent
returned more than one companion to his or her hand, your chances of pulling
one suddenly increase. Although it could be useful, the Mirror certainly
isn't the game-breaker it once was, so I've only included a single copy.
With all of the exerting from White Arrows and the Mirror, your Elves
really need some relief. Although Tums will help with the heartburn they'll
surely get after eating some of Glorfindel's world-famous chili, this won't
do anything to remove the wounds they've accumulated throughout the game.
To deal with those dastardly little red tokens, we've got Shoulder to Shoulder
and Gimli, Bearer of Grudges. This combination doesn't eliminate wounds,
but it moves them off of your elves just before the archery phase, and that's
important. A copy of Nenya and Shadow Between help round out the solution
to the wound problem.
Another potential difficulty that any post-Shadows deck may run into is
corruption. With Sam, Son of Hamfast getting the boot, many players will
turn to burden-related strategies for their Shadow sides. As such, I feel
that the first Elf event to go into most "Elvent" decks these days should
be Elf-song. However, being that this deck uses Gimli (who has a rather
low resistance) as Ring-bearer, the Elf-songs alone may not be enough. The
ninth companion in this deck is Pippin, Hobbit of Some Intelligence. Granted,
he only removes a single burden, but sometimes one burden can make the difference.
Furthermore, wounding decks could give you trouble since your fellowship
exerts so often. Pippin heals a wound (always a good thing, regardless of
what you're playing against) and can take four archery wounds. If nothing
else, he makes a darn good speed bump.
I chose Answer to All Riddles to allow for more exertions with Shoulder
to Shoulder, but if you see a lot of corruption rearing its ugly head in
your meta, switching to the Ring of Rings will be a big help.
Aside from that, the Free Peoples side of this deck is fairly standard
– Galadriel uses obscure events to discard conditions and possessions,
Cirdan overwhelms stuff, and Aragorn, Ranger of the North is just too good
not to splash.
Remember that the focus of the deck is primarily on the Shadow side, attempting
to get a corruption victory with Shapes Slowly Advancing. So keep those
Nazgûl alive, discard your opponent's companions, and whatever you
do, stay away from Glorfindel's chili!
Ring-bearer
Gimli, Bearer of Grudges
The One Ring, Answer to All Riddles
Free Peoples
1 Glorfindel, Revealed in Wrath (Starting)
1 Legolas, Greenleaf (Starting)
1 Galadriel, Lady Redeemed (Starting)
1 Arwen, Fair Elf Maiden
1 Gil-galad, Elven High King
1 Cirdan, The Shipwright
1 Aragorn, Ranger of the North
1 Pippin, Hobbit of Some Intelligence
4 Elven Bow
1 Mirror of Galadriel
1 Aiglos
1 Nenya, Ring of Adamant
1 Ring of Fury
4 White Arrows of Lorien
1 Shadow Between
1 Tale of Gil-galad
2 Shoulder to Shoulder
4 Curse Their Foul Feet!
4 Elf-song
Shadow
 2
The Witch-King, Black Captain
2 Úlairë Attea, Thrall of the One
3 Úlairë Toldea, Thrall of the One
3 Úlairë Enquea, Thrall of the One
2 Úlairë Cantea, Thrall of the One
4 Úlairë Nelya, Third of the Nine Riders
2 Úlairë
Otsea, Seventh of the Nine Riders
4 Shapes Slowly Advancing
4 All Blades Perish
4 Between Nazgûl and Prey
2 Too Great and Terrible
Adventure Deck
 (0)
Buckland Homestead
(0) Woody
End
(1) Anduin Confluence
(2) Caras Galadhon
(2) Chamber of Mazarbul
(2) Osgiliath Reclaimed
(3) Harrowdale
(3) North Undeep
(3) Old Forest Road
Zach recently spent weeks trying to convince NASA that slingshots
are a superior means of launching space shuttles. Another restraining
order has been added to his growing collection.
October 29, 2004
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