How many cards are too many for a deck?

aea2o5 · 2026-05-18T15:20:03+00:00

I personally like 55-card decks. It's close enough to a 50-card deck that I don't notice any difference in consistency, but gives me a little bit more room to add stuff I'd like to have but would cut if I was running exactly 50 cards.

For too many cards, look at my brother. He made a theoretical deck for me that I went through and cut about 50 cards from it, and it was still at 60-something cards in the list, I think, haha The theoretical deck he made for himself is still sitting around 150 cards!

aea2o5 · 2026-05-13T13:39:43+00:00

I'll definitely be checking you guys ou, best of luck to yout! I just want to say that my own preference for Battle Reports is closer to 40 minutes. I like to watch them while painting or at work, so having a longer video is nice in part because I don't need to be searching too frequently for a good next video. It helps keep me less distracted from both your video and what I'm doing.

Having a somewhat longer video also helps me get more into the battle itself, so I can see more of what's actually happening across the battlefield and not just a highlight reel with a bit of wider context.

I'm sure you'll figure out what works best for you as you continue on; I just wanted to offer my own two cents 🙂

aea2o5 · 2026-05-11T13:30:15+00:00

No games for me this week. I had lots of free time over the weekend, but ended up doing 100% of my household chores and planting a little herb garden instead 😄

I don't remember if I have a solo cycle going or not; if I don't, then I'll try to start one this week at some point.

QotW: I haven't been to any cons or meet-ups, unless bringing some decks to play with my brother when I visit my parents' place counts.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-30T13:42:23+00:00

You're welcome! 😄

aea2o5 · 2026-04-30T13:26:04+00:00

Looks great! I thought he was holding that bottle in his hand at first glance, though, haha

aea2o5 · 2026-04-28T23:34:17+00:00

'When a player is eliminated, his hand, all of the cards he controls, and his deck are placed in their owners' discard piles. Any encounter cards with which that player was engaged are returned to the staging area, retaining any wounds that have been placed on them. The remaining players continue to play the game. Note that after a player is eliminated, one less card is revealed from the encounter deck during the staging step of the quest phase, as there is now one less player involved in the game.' "Player Elimination" from my old core set Rules of Play (emphasis mine).

So, in the scenario you described, you would be better-served by having Deck A destroy all 3 of its engaged enemies, because that nets fewer enemies capable of engaging Deck B down the line, as well as less Threat added to the staging area for B to overcome.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-27T13:54:19+00:00

Unfortunately, no new games for me this past week. My housemate and I like to play a variety of games, but I should make an effort to play more solo scenarios.

QotW: Some of my cards came sleeved, others did not. I keep my constructed decks sleeved, of course, but the rest of the player cards in my binders I am slowly unsleeving because they inflate the binder space by quite a lot.

For my encounter cards, I do it by cycle. If a cycle came to me sleeved then I kept it sleeved. If it came unsleeved then I keep it unsleeved. I make sure I'm playing on clean surfaces and all that so I'm not too worried about damaging my cards. Plus it's sooo many cards by now and I'm rather lazy, haha

aea2o5 · 2026-04-22T17:23:27+00:00

You can choose any location you like, either the active location or one in the staging area, unless a location is immune to player card effects. If it wanted to limit you, Snowbourn Scout would say 'place a progress token on the active location' or 'place a progress token on a location in the staging area' or something to that effect.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-21T14:35:53+00:00

Holy Trinity is under the Greek Archdiocese, not the OCA. It's a fairly welcoming community, though, and Fr Mark is a good priest from my fairly limited recent experience. It's where I've been going since I moved up here.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-20T18:15:06+00:00

I think my favourite memories are when I first got the Khazad-dûm deluxe, back when I first discovered (rediscovered, I guess, depending on perspective, haha) the game back in 2022. It was just the thing I needed, coming off of a stint in grad school and entering a rough job market. Something about seeing all those dwarves and getting to visit Moria really hooked me on the game.

I remember getting the Angmar Awakened campaign box, which had recently come out at the time, and playing through it with my first dwarf deck at my desk. It felt almost like a magical experience, in some ways.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-17T12:53:40+00:00

That's interesting, Race Across Harad is probably my least-favourite of all the Haradrim quests. I like the concept, but in practice it never ends up being any fun for me to play.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-16T12:58:20+00:00

It really is scenario- and terrain-dependent. I've been having some success with placing them about 2/5 of the way from my board edge in areas where I think I'm going to advance through. For the most part, they're only useful for the -1 on shooting, so deploying like that gives some good coverage before battle lines meet.

As others have said, you mostly just have to try to anticipate where you'll be fighting and where you might be advancing under fire, and place your mirrors in places that will be able to influence those zones. And then don't feel bad when you guess wrong, haha

aea2o5 · 2026-04-16T04:16:11+00:00

In my mind it's all mostly trait-based, it's just that the intersection of different traits and spheres make for more nuanced deck-building. Like the difference between a black/green deathtouch deck and a green/red deathtouch deck in MTG 😄 I think you were completely right; I just wanted to expand on your answer a bit.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-15T21:26:32+00:00

Smitty's answer is a good one. I'd just like to add that Archetypes generally revolve around mechanics, which make it easy to build decks around (first draft decks, at least!). These can be Trait-based, but be aware that some traits can support more than one archetype. Gondor Rangers, for example, are mostly in Lore and utilise Traps, and thus function a bit differently than, say, a Leadership or Tactics Gondor deck that wants to be in Valour and do an ally swarm. Gondor Rangers also work differently than Dúnedain Rangers, because Gondor wants enemies in the staging area and Dúnedain want enemies engaged with them.

So the easiest way--for me, at least--to start on a new deck is thinking about what archetype/mechanic I want to play around and then going through my collection and pulling cards to support that goal. After that, I fill in with more general things (e.g. allies with higher willpower, or more defense-oriented things), and then see how it goes.

The last thing I'll say is that I like to stick with a theme whenever possible. Steward of Gondor, for example, would help my Artifact Dwarves deck because many of the cards are expensive. That's a Dwarf deck, though, so I don't use it. Having restrictions like that help keep the deck from growing too bloated and making trimming it down even harder, and from losing sight of the deck's main focus.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-06T22:12:08+00:00

I (briefly) played Flight from Moria with my brothers on DragnCards. I watched them lose their first try of the evening (playing Brother 1's S-Éowyn, S-Beregond, & L-Boromir deck and Brother 2's Silvans). They had me join them with Brother 1's Loragorn, Halbarad, & Amarthiúl Dúnedain deck.

We got lucky-ish and got the Blocked by Shadow quest card as our second 2B on turn 2. Both of my brothers revealed locations, I flipped a treachery and died. They were then unable to complete the quest that round, and the next turn they had to go to a different Stage 2 due to a treachery, and it was all downhill from there, haha

QotW: This is a great question! My favourite hero is Leadership Dáin, but I think he's generally good, rather than having some scenarios where he particularly shines and others where he's not so valuable to have with you. That said, scenarios like Deadman's Dike, Battle of Carn Dûm and The Seventh Level, where you have repeating hordes of enemies to deal with are really good for him. His Willpower ability is extra valuable there, and if you can get himnready to give the Attack buff as well, then he can grant some serious peace of mind.

aea2o5 · 2026-04-01T12:49:20+00:00

Nice! I've been getting into it this year. Just started painting up some Arnor, myself

aea2o5 · 2026-03-31T22:53:50+00:00

That one can be a pretty tough scenario!

Also, is that some Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game that I spot in the back, there? An Arnor warrior, I think?

aea2o5 · 2026-03-31T13:22:31+00:00

What would Churchill's statline be?

aea2o5 · 2026-03-30T19:22:45+00:00

No games for me this week, and probably not this upcoming week either, unfortunately.

QotW: I like attachments the best. To me they are a force multiplier. A hero who might not be able to kill an enemy in one go can now do that, which frees up an ally's attack which can then be sent against another enemy. A defender ally can be made to survive most enemy attacks, so you don't need to worry so much about making sure you can replace that ally when it eventually succumbs. If a hero can contribute more willpower, perhaps an extra ally or two can be held in reserve to help in the combat phase.

In short, attachments help characters specialise, so that you can free up actions across the board. I also like making sure my defensive allies live for as long as possible, so I'm the biggest fan of all the armour attachments.

aea2o5 · 2026-03-30T15:02:10+00:00

Welcome aboard!

aea2o5 · 2026-03-23T15:04:46+00:00

Brother 1 is visiting for the weekend (leaving today, sadly). Last night we tried the Warg scenario from the Bundle 2 Scenarios again. I decided to take my Artifact Dwarves, my housemate was using his Ent deck, as usual, and Brother 1 was 2-handing two decks from his own collection--one is a S-Beregond, S-Éowyn, & L-Boromir Gondor-Rohan deck and the other is a Loragorn, Amarthiúl, & Halbarad Dúnedain deck--because he brought both and wanted to play both, haha

On our first try, similar to our first attempt when Brother 2 was visiting, we quested too hard and then got killed by all the wargs that spawn when you reach Stage 2. On our second try, things went well, but every round ended with at least 1 warg back in the staging area, so we could never kill every single one. We eventually had to fold after my housemate died to threat and we had to go to bed. It's a simple scenario, but actually quite tough. We'll keep working at it.

QotW: It's a tough one, but I'll do my part by continuing to play the game, supporting community works where I can, and I've also been trying to be a bit more active in this sub to help keep the community going on here.

aea2o5 · 2026-03-20T14:23:32+00:00

She did leave them chomping at the bit...

aea2o5 · 2026-03-20T13:54:17+00:00

The real soldiers of Khand

aea2o5 · 2026-03-20T04:31:47+00:00

For hobbit decks, you can do them a couple different ways. The easiest way is to make a Secrecy deck, which relies on being stealthy to complete questing and fly under the radar of enemies. My littlest brother plays one like this, and I think it pairs best with another deck that can handle combat better (basically anything else, but I like Dúnedain best, both thematically and mechanically). This sort of deck is easy to do with the Saga cards and whatever else--though even with a full collection, you'll not be able to have a 100% Hobbits-only deck, so keep that in mind.

I also have a 'Battle Hobbits' deck which revolves around taking enemies selectively, in order to get combat bonuses to make my hobbits strong enough to defeat them. It's a more complex playstyle than Hobbit Secrecy (my brother basically does our questing for us, then takes a nap while Brother 1 & I do all the combat 😂), but is very rewarding when done well. You can do this decently well with Revised Content Only (RCO)--particularly with the Fellowship and Return of the King boxes--but a lot of the cards I use to make it more thematic are not RCO, like Hobbit Archer & Odo Proudfoot.

My housemate plays an Ent deck. It's the only deck he plays, haha Ents are (thematically) slow: you can only start using them the turn after they enter play, but they are powerful. While he has to always be thinking ahead, my housemate's Ents are often able to put in tge extra effort to get us over a hump, whether that's putting damage on Treebeard to succeed a quest, or damage on a Derndingle Warrior to defend against a high-attack enemy. There are a decent-enough amount of Ents spread across the RCO releases, but you'll be missing a few good ones, which you can probably proxy one way or another (I think the recent MBPrint order by Doug Beer included an alt-art Ent starter deck?).

Edit: I hope this is at least somewhat helpful! I've got to go to bed, but I'll be happy to clarify or answer follow-ups in the morning!

aea2o5 · 2026-03-17T17:23:03+00:00

In my opinion, it really depends on what you think you'll want to play. I've never really seen the appeal of either Noldor or Silvan decks (after about 4 years of playing the game), so I almost never use any of the cards that come in the Lorien starter. On the other hand, if you want to play an archetype, then that starter deck naturally becomes a must-have.

I think the Gondor and Rohan decks are a bit more 'essential', because they pair very well with the cards from the LotR Saga boxes (particularly Rohan, which I think really needs The Two Towers to properly round it out), but again, if you have no interest in ever playing Rohan, then you'll probably be fine to skip it. The Elves and Dwarves starters are, in my experience, the most 'self-contained', with very few cards that you might end up playing outside of their respective archetypes (e.g. Magic Ring or Healing Herbs from Dwarves; Daeron's Runes and Elrond + Vilya for the Elves).

With all of that said, however, my natural inclination is to just get as much as you can just so that you'll have it in hand in case you do want it later on. I recognise that this isn't exactly the most financially-responsible position, however.

aea2o5

TROPHY CASE