My latest deck was once again inspired by one of my card reviews, in this case Radagast. I was inspired in much the same way I was with the Master of Lore, because I’ve found Radagast to be somewhat similar to the Master of Lore in that he’s useful once he’s in play but difficult to justify spending early resources on. The utility once he is in play might be worth it though with the right setup.
So obviously trying to make use of Radagast meant Eagles, a deck archetype which I hadn’t touched for quite some time. But given the big difficulty with Radagast being the initial 5 resources some means of getting him into play cheaply seemed necessary. Elf-stones and Vilya were the big things I brought up in my review, Vilya being an obvious possibility because it would subsequently synergise with Radagast’s ability to use a Wizard Pipe. Actually one thing that was somewhat interesting about building this deck was that it was somewhat reminiscent of one of the first decks I ever built in OCTGN, some time before I started this blog, because that too was intended to try and make use of Radagast after I read the Tales from the Cards Card Spotlight on him. That deck lacked some more recent boosts to Eagles and the Wizard Pipe as a boost to Radagast though, in addition to the fact I’ve improved as a deckbuilder in the intervening time so the end results were very different.
An additional benefit to building around Vilya/Wizard Pipe is that Elrond’s ability to pay for allies of any sphere means he can be perfectly at home in an Eagle deck where any other Lore hero would make the deckbuilding more difficult as I tried to find uses for their resources. My next hero choice was the recently released Hirgon – the biggest problem with Eagles tends to be their cost, so cost reduction works out nicely, on top of which Eagles can tend to handle combat pretty well by themselves so questing Tactics heroes fit in nicely. Tactics Eowyn neatly rounds out the trio for that reason (going for more questing power also makes sense just to try and ensure Hirgon’s ability will go off as frequently as possible and help with Elf-stones as well).
Going back to building an Eagle deck being more used to other deck archetypes which have received more recent support was odd. Eagles are certainly still powerful, but they’re not as consistent as other things. There just aren’t enough Eagle allies to round out a deck, so I was forced to look elsewhere, and The Eagles Are Coming! while good is not on the same level as the more recent Entmoot. It’d be nice to see Eagles get some more support at some point – that’d also increase the chances of me doing more with them as the big reason I’ve neglected them for so long is that with so many possible decks I could be building I often gravitate to newer cards since they’re more on my mind.
Anyway, here’s the decklist:
Heroes:
Hirgon
Eowyn (Ta)
Elrond
Allies (32):
Radagast x3
Eagles of the Misty Mountains x3
Vassal of the Windlord x3
Winged Guardian x3
Descendant of Thorondor x3
Legolas x3
Defender of Cair Andros x3
Master of the Forge x3
Gwaihir x2
Grimbold x2
Warden of Healing x2
Landroval x1
Beechbone x1
Attachments (12):
Vilya x3
Wizard Pipe x3
Elf-stone x3
Expert Treasure-hunter x3
Events (6):
The Eagles Are Coming! x3
Word of Command x3
Sideboard:
Secret Vigil
Daeron’s Runes
Deep Knowledge
Feint
Hidden Cache
Azain Silverbeard x1
Beorn x1
Boromir x1
Grimbold x1
Yazan x1
I’m sure there are other ways I could’ve gone with this, but what I’ve got seems to work pretty well. So first of all I’d like to address the sideboard, because it really ties into how the whole deck ended up. Additional allies and Secret Vigils are just nice options, but the rest are quite interesting – I pushed Feint to the sideboard in favour of Grimbold because he’s an ally rather than an event, while Daeron’s Runes and Deep Knowledge were ditched in favour of Expert Treasure-hunter. ETH was originally included for the combo with Wizard Pipe/Hidden Cache to gain resources, and that’s a totally valid approach to take to this idea – but you can only Pipe one card each round, so I picked Vilya over Hidden Cache. At which point I could have taken out ETH in favour of other card draw options, but I kept it this way because I’d found it to work rather well. Since ETH and Hirgon both trigger based on questing successfully you can trigger ETH first to hopefully find a better ally to play than whatever’s already in you hand, and so I stuck with that as my primary means of card draw, and skewed the deck towards allies as much as I felt I reasonably could to keep it reliable. The Hidden Caches could reasonably still be subbed back into the deck to give the option of cycling them for more resources rather than using the Pipe for Vilya, or alternatively if they just go once when you’re digging for allies that’s still extra resources.
If you’re looking for things to sub out to make room for sideboard cards or anything else you want to throw in, the events aren’t too critical – Word of Command is a nice option to have if your deck just seems to be poorly shuffled but most of the time you shouldn’t need it, and The Eagles Are Coming! will tend to help you less in the long run than Expert Treasure-hunter. They also dilute the division of the deck between allies for ETH and attachments for Master of the Forge. Most of the allies aren’t specifically important but I’d try not to reduce the ally-count too much, so ideally replace allies with other allies.
In general, you want to try and Elf-stone (or blind Vilya) Radagast into play early on, and use Hirgon to play Eagles and other strong allies. Blind Vilya is pretty reasonable in this deck since there aren’t a lot of dud targets for it and potentially that way you can more reasonably save resources to play Radagast normally if the Elf-stones don’t work out. Master of the Forge can dig out important attachments leaving you able to very consistently hit allies with Expert Treasure-hunter. Once you have a Wizard Pipe on Radagast you should be consistently bringing out two allies per round – one via Vilya and one via Hirgon.
You can consider using Vilya or Elf-stones on the Lore allies even though they’re cheap, because they don’t work with Hirgon. Remember Elrond’s resources can pay for all the allies, and Radagast’s can pay for the Eagles. Remember that Hirgon’s cost reduction has a minimum of 1 so it doesn’t help with Vassal of the Windlord and you should just play that one normally. Descendant of Thorondor works great with Hirgon not just because he makes it more reasonably costed but also because you’re more likely to have a target enemy in the staging area after staging than in the Planning phase. Don’t worry too much about losing an Eagle or two early in the game, partly because you have plenty of them and partly because you can get them back later with Gwaihir. This deck can take a bit of time and setup to get rolling, so don’t be afraid to use Eowyn’s ability to save yourself early on – late-game you shouldn’t need it, so the only real concern is the threat raise.
The main other card which come to mind as another possibility for this deck is Unexpected Courage so Elrond could do more than just Vilya. That could certainly help with willpower, which can be a bit lacking. Perhaps The Red Arrow as well. Support of the Eagles while an obvious possibility is one I rapidly dismissed because my two Tactics heroes are both intended to quest and that’s it. I suppose one could try it with Unexpected Courage and Support of the Eagles together, but the other thing is that with all these powerful Tactics allies, both Eagles and non-Eagles, the heroes really don’t need to contribute.
I’ve only tested this deck solo – I’ve found it to have potential issues with willpower and threat but generally be strong once it gets going. It should work multiplayer as well, where it can focus more on being a combat deck, with the one issue being the proper timing of Elf-stone to bring in Radagast getting more difficult as more players are added to the game, and perhaps also that this deck has only limited amounts of Ranged and Sentinel, though that’d probably work out OK in most cases regardless.
Victory screenshot from a test-play against The Steward’s Fear:
Warden of Arnor 