Christmas Deckbuilding

Season’s greetings to you all. In the approach to Christmas I found myself trying to think of ways I could get a bit of the festive spirit into my creative pursuits. Singing was easy enough to figure out, I just did an a cappella arrangement of White Christmas. Lord of the Rings was more difficult, but handily this year has seen the release of a hero who it seems more or less everyone likes to refer to as Santa, I thought I might be able to add a couple of vaguely Christmas-themed decks to my recently tidied up Gimmick folder.
Obviously both decks use Spirit Theoden, aka Santa, and thus both are Rohan decks by necessity. Fortuitously haven’t built a lot of decks with Theoden so this also serves as a means of expanding my experience. Beyond that, the first deck follows the intended theme via some of the attachments and events and side-quests, which can be used to offer benefits to the other players in the game, thus being a bit like giving out presents. The other is purely a fairly bad joke based on the hero choices. Both are kind of a stretch, being more just decent decks (well, probably, I only spent about 15 minutes building each of them and haven’t tested them at all) with a tangential Christmas link which I’m using as an excuse for writing this article, but whatever. Building decks is fun and I wanted to write something.

The First Deck – Christmas Presents

Heroes:
Theodred
Eowyn
Theoden (Sp)

Allies (24):
Eothain x2
Snowbourn Scout x3
Elfhelm x1
Eomund x1
Escort from Edoras x3
Gamling x3
Hama x2
The Riddermark’s Finest x3
West Road Traveller x3
Gandalf (Core) x3

Attachments (11):
Ranger Provisions x3
Ancient Mathom x3
Herugrim x2
Snowmane x3

Events (14):
Campfire Tales x3
Sneak Attack x3
Tighten Our Belts x3
A Test of Will x3
Ride to Ruin x2

Side-Quests (3):
Send For Aid x1
Double Back x1
Gather Information x1

Decklist on RingsDB

Valiant Sacrifice would be good in this deck and would even fit the presents theme since it can be played on any player, not just yourself, but I ran out of space, it’s 52 cards as it is. Anyway, this idea was pretty much all based on the idea of using Theodred, Ranger Provisions, Ancient Mathom, Campfire Tales and Tighten Our Belts to liberally throw resources and cards around the table, and then I just filled in the gaps with Rohan stuff. The specific inclusion of Riddermark’s Finest and Ride to Ruin allows more flexibility in triggering Mathoms and Provisions.
I did have the idea for this deck to have Grima instead of Eowyn, the idea being that if you’ve been good, Santa Theoden will come with his son to bring you resources and cards, but if you’ve been bad you’ll just wake up to a stocking full of Doomed. The problem was I would’ve had almost nothing to actually spend Grima’s resources on, even though it would again have potentially fit the presents theme to include Gleowine and The Long Defeat, but those were the only Lore cards I really wanted that didn’t cost 0, whereas there was plenty of Spirit I wanted to fit in.

Deck 2 – Santa and his Elves

Heroes:
Theoden
Galadriel
Arwen Undomiel

Allies (20):
Elfhelm x1
Elven Jeweller x2
Eomund x1
Escort from Edoras x3
Gamling x3
Hama x2
The Riddermark’s Finest x2
West Road Traveller x3
Westfold Horse-breeder x3

Attachments (18):
Herugrim x1
Map of Earnil x3
Mirror of Galadriel x3
Silver Harp x3
Snowmane x1
Steed of Imladris x2
Unexpected Courage x3
Asfaloth x1
Nenya x1

Events (14):
A Test of Will x3
Dwarven Tomb x2
Elven-light x3
Hasty Stroke x2
Helm! Helm! x2
Ride to Ruin x2

Decklist on RingsDB

As I said, bad joke, but the ‘Santa and his Elves’ idea occurred to me and I couldn’t resist doing it. I feel like it may work rather well though, actually. It’s relying somewhat on the Mirror to find the important singletons and then Silver Harp/Dwarven Tomb to avoid losing important things (obviously I’ll want to be sure I have a Harp before digging out Nenya or Asfaloth). The problem with Theoden/Rohan decks tends to be card draw, making Galadriel a natural pairing (and indeed one I’ve used before), while Arwen is shiny and new so I’d rather have her than Glorfindel (plus even more extra resources can’t hurt and she’s great with Elven-light).

So let me know what you think of the decks, I’ll probably give them some test plays in the next few days. And above all, have a great Christmas!