By Zach "Rubber Chicken" Shephard

In last week’s installment of “Leaving the Shire,” I discussed the general tips for building your first deck. Today I’ll be going into greater detail on construction of a Free Peoples side.

Let’s get things started by discussing the most important resource to the Free Peoples player: companions.

SELECTING YOUR TROUPE
One of the first tips you may remember from my Deckbuilding Basics article is the suggestion to use nine companions. You don’t have to have all nine companions in play at once, but they are your most valuable resource, so you’ll want to have a full nine available (and if you should decide that you want to have a large army of companions in play at once, it’s not as much of a risk as it once was, now that Ulaire Enquea, Lieutenant of Morgul has been rotated out of Standard Format).

There’s not much of a scientific method concerning which companions you should choose – just try to stick to 2-3 cultures (for fear of cards like Grima, Chief Counselor, and to ensure that most of your support cards will work on multiple companions), and select which characters you think will have the greatest effect on your chances of winning (for example, Durin III, Dwarven Lord is going to be more effective than a Dwarf Guard. Heck, he’s going to be more effective than a dozen Dwarf Guards). Some decks will require multiple strong skirmishers (such as Rohan), whereas others will want to avoid direct fighting whenever possible, preferring to wound minions to death before the skirmish phase (like some Elf decks do with massive archery totals).

If you’ve selected several companions from the 2-3 cultures you’ll be playing, and still find yourself with a companion slot left over to put you at nine, try using a “splash” companion. A “splash” companion is a character in your fellowship with an ability that is useful entirely by itself, in just about any deck – no support cards are necessary. For a list of my five favorite splash companions, check out last week’s “Marching into Mordor” article.

STAY AWAY FROM THE SHADOWS
Obviously, there’s more to a deck than just companions. There are many things that your deck needs to prepare for, even if you don’t encounter these situations in every game. The first potential problem to look out for is corruption.

With the loss of Sam, Son of Hamfast to the X-list (that being the list of cards that are illegal to play in Standard Format), corruption has become an incredibly viable means of winning the game. Each deck needs to take preemptive measures to ensure that their Ring-bearer doesn’t fall to the shadow. Not every culture has some form of burden-removal like Glamdring, Foe-hammer, or resistance improvement like Scroll of Isildur. This is something you should keep in mind when you’re choosing which cultures to play – if your primary culture can’t remove burdens or increase resistance, try pairing it with a culture that can. Any version of Gandalf fits the bill nicely, as he brings with him the aforementioned Glamdring, Foe-hammer, as well as cards like Watch and Wait and Ease the Burden. The Shire culture also has a decent amount of burden removal, so keep that in mind.

If any version of Frodo is your Ring-bearer, you don’t have to worry about corruption quite as much – this Halfling starts with a beefy ten resistance (or more, if you use Frodo, Resolute Hobbit or The One Ring, The Ring of Rings), and won’t be bogged down with burdens as easily as some other Ring-bearers.

If you should find yourself using a non-Frodo Ring-bearer (all of which have lower base resistances than our furry-footed friend), then consider using The One Ring, The Ring of Rings – it gives an instant +2 resistance, and every little bit counts.

CONTROL THE BOARD
Another topic not touched on in my first deckbuilding article is the importance of condition and possession removal. Most Shadows these days either use conditions or possessions (or both) to some degree, and you need to be ready to deal with these threats.

This capability of controlling the board falls under the same category as corruption protection – not every culture has what they need to deal with everything, so match up cultures to cover weaknesses.

Condition removal is something that Gandalf excels at (that crazy wizard is good at just about everything) with cards like New-awakened and Grown Suddenly Tall (the latter of which is the ultimate in condition removal technology). Elves can also hold their own with Seclusion and Company of Archers. These are the two cultures to be looking for if you find yourself taking a hard hit from conditions on a regular basis.

Possession removal is a little easier to come by, it seems. Rohan has Arrow-slits, Gandalf has Roll of Thunder, and anyone can use Derufin (he’s an excellent splash companion if your deck can’t discard possessions otherwise).

If you’re a Dwarf player, you can make all of the above cards obsolete with the most versatile removal card in the game, Blood Runs Chill. This card makes a Shadow player discard Shadow cards equal to a Dwarf’s damage bonus, which means minions, possessions, conditions – whatever they have available. Keep in mind that the default meaning of “discard” in this game is to “discard from play,” which is what makes Blood Runs Chill such a powerful card.

CUTTING SOME "FILLER" EVENTS
Condition removal, possession removal, and burden control are all great to have, but you have to cut something out if you want to keep a trim deck (remember that I recommend a deck going no higher than seventy total cards if you have no drawing abilities, such as No Pauses, No Spills). In my Beginning Deckbuilding article, I recommended using close to a dozen skirmish events, plus any filler you wanted to round out your 30-35-card Free Peoples side. This may be a good place to start, but once you’ve graduated to more advanced deckbuilding, you’ll realize that a lot of those slots need to be devoted to the three categories I’ve outlined above. Winning skirmishes is great, but it won’t mean a thing if the one condition in your opponent’s support area is costing you the game.

A QUICK REMINDER
This is something that was discussed in the last volume of “Leaving the Shire,” but I feel it’s important that I give a brief review. You need to make sure your companions are strong enough to survive and win skirmishes, and this means that many of your card slots should be devoted to permanent strength boosts. Be it possessions like Gondorian Blade, artifacts like Narsil, Blade of the Faithful, or conditions like G for Grand, permanent strength boosts are usually superior to temporary pumps (such as events like Sharpen Your Swords and one-time conditions like Thundering Host). A few temporary boosts are nice to put you ahead of some larger minions, and they shouldn’t be overlooked entirely, but they still only work once – more often than not, you’ll want something that adds to your strength for a large portion of the game.

WHAT I'VE BEEN PLAYING
What good would this article be without an example? I’d like to wrap up this installment of “Leaving the Shire” with a decklist and strategy review of the Free Peoples side I’ve been playing online for the past few months. It covers all of the weaknesses outlined above, has incredible double-moving potential (with the occasional triple-move, thanks to Radagast, The Brown), and wins a fair amount of skirmishes.

Ring-bearer and One Ring
Isildur, Bearer of Heirlooms
The One Ring, The Ring of Rings

Free Peoples (32)
1 Aragorn, Strider (Starting)
1 Denethor, Lord of Minas Tirith (Starting)
1 Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver (Starting)
1 Faramir, Son of Denethor
1 Garrison of Gondor
1 Derufin
1 Elendil, The Tall
4 Gandalf, Leader of the Company
1 Radagast, The Brown
2 Anduril, Flame of the West
2 Gondorian Blade
1 Narsil, Blade of the Faithful
2 Glamdring, Foe-hammer
4 Sapling of the White Tree
1 Scroll of Isildur
2 Grown Suddenly Tall
2 Out of the High Airs
1 Garrison of Osgiliath
3 Sharpen Your Swords

The first thing you may notice is that I have ten different companions (remember, using more than nine companions is a bad idea, because one of those companions will become a useless card once the other nine have been played). One of these companions, however, is Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver. Pippin rounds out my starting fellowship, simply because I needed a one-cost companion. At site two or three, I return Pippin to my hand to wound a roaming minion twice (or return him to my hand for no effect, which is perfectly legal, if none of the minions in play are roaming). By returning him to my hand, I can discard him – if he’s not in play and he’s not in the dead pile, he doesn’t count towards my nine-companion limit.

For condition removal in this deck, I have two copies of Grown Suddenly Tall. Yes, it will discard my conditions as well, but I only have a single condition in the whole deck, so I’m not too worried about that drawback – it’s worth it to annihilate a huge group of my opponent’s support cards.

Derufin is my possession removal, and being that he’s not a “splash” companion in this deck (since he’s part of a culture that I’m already using), he can also hold a Gondorian Blade or get pumped with Sharpen Your Swords to win a few skirmishes.

To defend against corruption, I have two copies of Glamdring, Foe-hammer (it’s unique, yes, but I want to increase my chances of drawing it in a timely fashion), a Scroll of Isildur, and The One Ring, The Ring of Rings.

Two Gondorian Blades, two copies of Anduril, Flame of the West, and a single copy of Narsil, Blade of the Faithful give me some great permanent strength boosts. To make sure I can win against those super-sized minions, I’ve got Sharpen Your Swords and Garrison of Osgiliath.

At site three, I use Denethor, Lord of Minas Tirith's ability to take Elendil, The Tall and Narsil, Blade of the Faithful into my hand from my draw deck. Once I get six Gondor artifacts out (playing with four copies of Sapling of the White Tree helps to meet this goal), Elendil with Narsil will be at a base strength of fourteen – not bad, if you ask me. Even if Elendil can’t win his skirmish, his six vitality allows him to take hits without being overwhelmed easily. Then, in the regroup phase, I’ve got Out of the High Airs to clean up those minions I couldn’t kill and allow for an easy double-move.

Just remember, the number-one key to deckbuilding is to playtest, playtest, playtest. The best way to discover a deck’s weaknesses is just to play game after game, and once those weaknesses have been identified, you can make some card changes to greatly improve your chances of winning.

Come back in two weeks for the next installment of “Leaving the Shire,” which will focus on Shadow deckbuilding strategies!

-Zach "Rubber Chicken" Shephard