Starter - Helm's Deep Walls

Format: King Standard

Author: Phallen

Ring-bearer:
Ring:

Adventure deck:

Free Peoples Draw Deck:
2x
1x
1x
1x
2x
4x
1x
2x
1x
3x
1x
3x
1x
1x
2x
4x
1x
1x
1x
2x

Shadow Draw Deck:
3x
2x
3x
1x
1x
4x
4x
3x
2x
1x
4x
1x
3x
3x

Notes

Elves defend the walls of Helm's Deep from Uruk-hai Berserkers. Also Gandalf arrives at first light on the fifth day, whatever site that happens to be.

Free Peoples: (Starting Legolas and Haldir. I recommend a low bid, 0-2)
There's a line of Elven cards concerned with the top card of the draw deck and they're collectively known as "Elven telepathy" cards. Using Gandalf's text to stack cards on top of your deck is more consistent than relying on your own psychic abilities in my experience. After that, you follow up with Galadriel or Forearmed for the benefit (sometimes on top of Gandalf's -3). Forearmed reveals cards while Galadriel discards them, so there's some interesting opportunity to plan ahead with the cards that you stack. You could even plan for double moves with Naith Longbow and Greenleaf.

This start could be a bit rocky so I may swap Haldir for a version of Arwen. I had considered Gimli too, but you've got to stay under 4 cultures and I don't like the idea of a thematic deck which forces you to kill off a character for meta reasons.

This deck can be incredibly strong -- you can get -10 on a minion almost effortlessly Galadriel and Forearmed, and very few minions will survive that. Just remember that you only get 4 of them, you've got to make each one count. Rather than thinking of them as ways to win skirmishes, think of them as ways to remove minions and hopefully open the door for a double move. You can't always do this, of course, but if you never capitalize on the opportunity that Forearmed creates then you're not going to get the most out of this deck.

Shadow:
One of my favorite shadow sides, beatdown with some opportunity for tricks and planning. More to it than just "play the biggest minion that you can every site," even if only slightly :P Use Seige Engine to play an Uruk-hai for a token, Sappers and Engineers add a token on their own, then exert your Uruks as needed to generate even more tokens. Your machines are quickly armed and ready to wreak havoc on your opponent. I would recommend storing some tokens on one copy of Siege Engine too -- you never want to be stuck having to choose between using a machine and saving tokens for your Berserkers. There is some risk that you wind up having to discard your last Siege Engine to protect your other machines though, which is something you'll have to judge for yourself.

Of course, you can and often should use the other machines as token storage too. I typically put 6 tokens on one Scaling Ladder so that Slayer can exert twice to remove 5 of them, discard it and another Scaling ladder to heal back, and then remove 5 tokens somewhere else. 2 wounds to every companion just like that. There is one counter, though: because it's a skirmish action, there has to be a skirmish happening to use it (not necessarily the Slayer's skirmish). If your opponent assigns minions in such a way that all assigned companions will die after the first round of wounds, there will be no skirmish phases left and no opportunity to use him a second time.