Works for me, although I don’t think DB needs an asterisk on the card (since the effect resolves after the attack is resolved and not before).

For that matter, FLAME SWORD should probably have an asterisk instead of a star, but hey it’s not a huge deal. 😛

Love this deck, but I tried to print it out at a print shop and got an error. Has anyone else experienced this and found a workaround? I would print the 10YA version but I prefer the stronger version of cowardly defense.

I ran a play test of Smaug and Balrog vs. Treebeard and Elron. Smaug went first, Elrond last.

All of the characters lacked movement. Some damage was exchanged with many minors plus Treebeard taking some damage, but Treebaird laid into Balrog, and Balrog ran away. Treebeard stepped deep into enemy territory and hit Balrog a couple more times, taking him down to 5 HP. The Balrog played A8 + A8 and had just enough to kill off Treebeard. It took Elrond a bit, and Balrog did additional damage, but Elrond finished off Balrog and had an injured Ent on his side to take on Smaug. Elrond played defensively until WEAK SPOT came out, then used his A11. Smaug battled, made it close, but lost.

Balrog has some major weaknesses that rob from his overall strength. He has to discard a lot. FIRE WHIP is weak. I found myself discarding it for DURIN’S BANE, which you really need to save for defense, because he doesn’t have any big defense at all. Add to that, you kill him, and he’s got nothing left, no minors to bother you. It’s such a huge difference in this game. I’m trying another draft, with max HP. This version of DB would actually have failed to kill Treebeard last game so I don’t know, but it would be better in a lot of games.

Smaug had a bad draw, but I was really disappointed in him, to the point of wanting to adjust him. Displaying his A8s, Elrond just used his MITHRIL for 2 of them, defended with D4 on the third, and kind of shrugged it off. Smaug doesn’t have a lot else for offense. He really needs FIERY EXPLOSION. I might make BREATH into an A9 because it should probably be better than Cave Troll and just as good as powered up Aragorn.

Elrond is a hard ass. He’s as tough as anyone. Great offense, great defense, great movement, some game-changers — you name it, he’s got it. He got a really good draw and crushed the game.

Treebeard doesn’t have to be as strong as the others, but he has a lot of offense to bring to the party and a lot of defense and staying power to carve through. I kind of think he should have a card that activates the Ents and has them do some damage, but I don’t know what card it would be. FURIOUS KICK is fun and cool though it actually doesn’t fit the deck very well.

Hmm, I don’t know what a “build the wall then break the dam,” would look like, but I took a look at that Lowbacca deck and you’re thinking of something like this right?

Treebeard: 18 HP, Blue Deck
2x Ents: 5 HP, Minor Orange+ Deck

3x Nasty Little Orc
A4*: If Treebeard did not move using the move die this turn, then this card’s value is 8 instead of 4.

3x ????

2x Boulder Toss
THROW BOULDER does 2 damage to a character Treebeard could attack at range. That character may not move on their controller’s next turn.

2x Furious Kick
A6: [same effect]

1x Entmoot
Draw 4 cards. For every space Treebeard has moved this turn, draw 1 less card.

1x Release the River!
Treebeard may not move until this effect resolves. At the beginning of your next turn, all characters in a straight line away from Treebeard receive 4 damage.

Any thoughts on this Treebeard deck? It’s kind of fun even if it lacks a strong deck theme.

Note that I’ve udpated Elrond to have more of an “action manipulation” theme. I haven’t tested that deck out and it looks very strong, but otherwise I’m happy with where it is landing. As for Isildur, I wouldn’t mind seeing better ideas, but his is a working deck as well. I’m satisfied with all 3 bad guy decks.

So once we finish this Treebeard deck, we’ve got a 6-set expansion, bringing this LOTRED set to 32 total decks. That’s a good number that allows for endless possible matches.

Hello !
There are small problems with Eomer and Frodo/Sam’s links. Frodo’s first and fourth link all link to his major Talent Cards, and the card backs are unavailable. As for Eomer, it’s his second and third links which both lead to his Major basic cards. Minors’ basic cards are unavailable as well…
That said, everything else is tip-top, and I can’t thank you all enough for making all this nice material so easy to access !
Excellent archive work.

Ran a couple of play tests of Sauron + Balrog. The first game, they defeated Isildur and Elrond, the second they defeated Isildur and Aragorn. Isildur didn’t draw much defense either game, and went down without doing much either time. This left too many HP for Elrond or Aragorn to dispense with on their own. Aragorn would have won the second game had the SHARDS OF NARSIL REFORGED been played early but it was the last card in the draw pile and Arwen had already been defeated.

Sauron is quite tough but I’m not a fan of cards like WILL TO DOMINATE, like we’ve talked about. A simple offense card like A4 no action or perhaps direct damage would round his deck out. It’s not like he needs more strength, he’s tough to bring down and the LOTR + DARK MACE combo is very effective so A4-no action might be too good. He does need something else though, he really just stands around waiting to draw DARK MACE.

The Balrog looks better with weak basic melee cards replacing FLAMES and 22 HP. He’s still a tough SOB but not so unbeatable. I think he’s looking pretty good. FIRE WHIP doesn’t really fit the deck but the card represents the whip from the movie pretty well.

Isildur is pretty good but he doesn’t look overpowered. He really doesn’t have great offense unless there are conditions in his favor. If you were to kill all his allies and isolate him, he really don’t have much to beat you with, well I guess except an A8 and an A12 which is actually quite a lot.

Even though I haven’t seen him lately, I was thinking about EYE OF SAURON and really, his ONLY DEATH card that skips a turn isn’t that great. You use one action and one card to deny your opponent 2 actions. It’s ok but nothing game changing like YOU WILL DIE. Maybe we can replace NO LIFE IN THE VOID and ONLY DEATH with some cards that give him more offense should the Mouth go out early. NLITV is actually an offense card but he might need more of a killing card, maybe A6-attack-from-anywhere or something.

So I’d like to come up with another card for Sauron, maybe tweak the Eye and potentially come up with something different for Isildur, but otherwise I think all of this is coming together pretty well. You could play any of these 5 decks right now and have fun. We mostly just need to finish out Treebeard.

I feel like this is the neglected child of the expansion. 😛

My take is it reminds me a lot of your Obi and Ani deck; as in it’s a deck that doesn’t do much it just beats you ’cause it’s so tough. Isildur has an A8 plus two A6s that are easy to power up and if you kill his tough minor (who has big attacks too) then you have to contend with an A12 that Isildur can search or recycle. And if you ignore Elendil to target Isildur then you have some solid staying power to get over. Their only real weakness is no direct damage, which they don’t really need.

If Elrond and The Balrog weren’t so tough (and if Sauron wasn’t intentional a bad match-up against them) then this would probably be the strongest deck in the expansion right now.

Here’s a rough draft I came up with for the Knights (as a 3-character deck).

3x Knights of Ren: 8 HP each, Brown + Weak Melee Decks

3x Hunters
A6: Apply the following based on the number of Knights adjacent to the defender. 1: Move the defender up to 4 spaces. 2: Move all Knights up to 4 spaces each. 3: Both 1 and 2.

3x Martial Prowess
A3: Apply the following based on the number of Knights still in play. 1: Move the attacking Knight up to 6 spaces. 2: The player controlling the defender loses an action next turn. 3: Playing this card does not count as an action.

2x Heavily Armed
Draw 1 card. For every Knight still in play, draw an additional card.

2x Encircle
A5: Apply the following based on the number of Knights adjacent to the defender. 1: Draw a card. 2: Add 2 to this card’s value. 3: Add 4 to this card’s value and draw 2 cards.

1x ???
A10: Apply the following effect based on the number of Knights in play. 1: Discard 2 cards at random. 2: You lose an action on your next turn. 3: Discard a card to draw a card.

1x Reinforcements
If you have 2 Knights in play, place a destroyed Knight adjacent to any other Knight with 4 hit points remaining. If you have 1 Knight in play, place 2 destroyed Knights to any empty spaces with 3 hit points each.

The only new characters from this movie I could see a deck being made for are The Knights of Ren. I mean, I know in the film they don’t do much, but they look cool and in the EU they all have names and unique specializations. Don’t know if they should be a triple personality deck or 2 two personality deck (although I’m not sure if they are worth making two decks for).

How about something like this for Hux?

COORDINATED ATTACK you have the option to discard 1 maybe 2 cards to have it not count as an action.

CHARGE WEAPON you reshuffle your COORDINATED ATTACKs instead of your FIRE WEAPON

Replace RUTHLESS ATTACK with BETRAYAL: Choose an opponent to discard 3 or 4 cards. Hux draws 3 or 4 cards.

Dream move: 2x Coordinated Attack with discards, Charge Weapon, Betrayal

My first suggestion would be to drop FLAMES and replace them (and his A1/D2s) with a Weak Melee deck. Both to reduce his direct damage and because this is a more standard build for a single character deck. My next suggestion would be to switch his blue deck back to red. I would rather do that then lower his HP. Of course, if we do that then we might not need to make any other changes.

BTW, here’s how I see the power levels (roughly):
Sauron
Balrog, Smaug
Gandalf, Saruman, Elrond, Witch-King, Eye of Sauron
Aragorn, Isildur
Treebeard

So I ran the Balrog and Sauron’s Eye against the big boy team of Gandalf and Elrond. To my surprise the bad guys won.

Balrog is really, really tough and probably needs to be toned down. With his FOE BEYOND ANY + FLAMES, he’s just a ticking bomb, a complete and total direct damage wrecking ball. He stepped up and killed Pippin. The good guys retaliated by taking down the Eye without the Eye getting off any specials at all. The Mouth had a lot of defense and got off an A8 but that’s all the Balrog needed. Gandalf didn’t have a great game and the Mouth took a lot of Gandalf and Elrond’s firepower. Elrond still hit Balrog with an A12 and a 4-point WATER HORSES but didn’t find the second one fast enough. Once Balrog started going through his deck a second time he just cycled for A8s and direct damage until he had enough to kill everyone. It was extremely close at the end but the Elves didn’t have enough to finish him off.

Balrog should be at the Smaug level while Sauron the Dark Lord should top them all IMO, but right now Balrog is tops. The FLAMES card might be too much direct damage. Or, he might need fewer than the 24 hit points he had this game, or possibly both.

The problem with CORRUPTION is that the deeper you get into the game, the more likely your opponent’s minors are destroyed and the more likely they have cards to burn in order to avoid the damage. At least the “increasing” version of it alleviates that problem a bit, but he probably doesn’t have enough killing power on his own.

VOLCANIC ERUPTION is his movement card, so I’d be loathe to lose that one, but it could be 2-3 direct damage instead of 2 cards. Still maybe NO LIFE IN THE VOID needs to be an “attack from anywhere” card just to give him enough punch.

Earlier I had a crazy match of Sauron and the Witch-King (team mace) vs. Eye of Sauron and Smaug and I wanted to share a bit of how it went down.
Sauron and Witch-King opened with bad draws, but still scraped together enough offense to kill off the Mouth and leave The Eye in a bad position especially since the Mouth didn’t get off any of his offense.
Smaug’s BURNING BREATHE did nothing against the POWER OF THE RING and NO MAN CAN KILL ME.
Double DARK MACE turned the tide in team mace’s favor in the mid-game.
Without the Mouth all the Eye could do was throw CORRUPTION at his old self with OK effect, but the duel ended with Smaug in the corner getting pounded on by team mace and ultimately falling.

One last note, I had to stop and think for a moment about what happens when ONLY DEATH’s effect meets WILL TO DOMINATE’s effect. I just assumed Sauron doesn’t get the card draw.

I’m actually thinking INVISIBILITY ATTACK should be an A3. You could potentially string 3 of them together with a STING to do 12 unblockable damage. But, you need an exact set of 3, which almost never happens. Even doing 9 damage will be almost never, but it would give the “invisibility no action” effect a little more bite. It’s not like Bilbo is really tough though his defense is very good.

Looks like I missed the deal.

I’ll start by saying that I don’t personally have a problem with the idea of this deck; I used to love playing an old game called “The Third Age” where the final boss battle is against the Eye of Sauron and all your characters run up and hit The Eye with their swords. It was crazy stupid fun.

Anyway, my problem with this deck is the lack of any overall theme. I’d like to see more cards like ONLY DEATH and give Sauron more cards that limit what opponents can do and let that be his theme.

The Mouth of Sauron looks good though; I just wish you could make a reference to “BfME 2” where the Mouth could remove his helmet and shoot a red beam of death as if The Eye was behind the helmet.

I don’t know how attached everyone is to this design, but here’s something I’ve been cooking up as an alternative.

The Balrog: 24 HP, Blue Deck

3x Durin’s Bane
A4*/D4: *When attacking, you may discard a card to add 4 to this card’s attack value. When defending, if the attacker is adjacent they receive 2 damage.

3x Wings of Shadow
Move The Balrog up to 7 spaces. Draw a card.

2x Foe Beyond Any
All characters the Balrog can attack receive 4 damage. You may discard a card to draw a card.

2x Roaring Inferno
Look at the top 5 cards of your draw pile. Put 3 in your hand and discard the rest.

2x Flame Sword
A*: The attack value of this card is equal to the number of cards in your discard pile up to 15.

5x Flames
The Balrog does 1 damage to one character he can attack. Playing this card does not count as an action.

4x Ignite
The Balrog recovers 1 hit point. Playing this card does not count as an action.

Hey Roman,
deck looks very well made like always.
Can you check the download link please? It is not working.

I’ve put together a draft. Let me know your thoughts!

So, I don’t know why I only just now noticed this: Sinbad and Arthur both have Feint and Regroup cards that are only a boost value of 1 in my copy. Is this the same in your copy or am I just the victim of an unlucky printing error?

I’m a huge fan of SWED, the Geektopia decks, and The Mandalorian, so this is as good a time as any to join in the fun. I posted some suggested additions on BGG to build on your fantastic initial ideas here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2318656/fan-deck-mandalorian
Would love to know your thoughts!

There are plenty of candidates for a Legends expansion; Treebeard (already has a deck), Beorn, Eagles, a Mumakil, The Watcher in the Water, etc. But, I don’t think I’d be hugely interested in either making or playing those decks (except maybe an Eagle deck that poked fun of their Deus Ex Machina status). Galadriel is probably the best choice for another deck, but like you I don’t think I’d play her that often.

I think we have a nice little mini set going and should just stick with finishing the four we have.

I’ve taken this deck for a spin a few times and it’s always under performed. I mean I don’t think it’s a weak deck, but 21 HP plus a red deck, power defense that drains your offense, and no minors equals a relative fragile deck. He looks like he can have a good game what with 6 killing cards, but I don’t know.

Concerning a “Legends” expansion, I’m pretty sure the deck list is set in stone right? (Sauron, Elrond, Isildur, and this guy?) In which case, my Sauron deck is coming along and they are draft forms for all the other decks so what’s the next step?