Month: February 2026

Hey everybody,
Last week, I wrote about one of the decks that I’ve been enjoying recently with Lord of the Rings LCG, headed up with Celeborn and Legolas. It’s an elf/hobbit hybrid kind of thing, but while it can somewhat take care of itself, it definitely needs the support of another deck to handle everything that I can expect to have thrown at me from a scenario! As I said in that post, though, I’ve been enjoying playing this game with two decks working together, and have fallen into a split of Leadership/Tactics, and Spirit/Lore. Today, then, we’re looking at the Spirit/Lore side of the house, headed up by Beravor, Idraen and Glorfindel.

I say these three are heading up the deck, but in reality this is a Glorfindel deck that is aiming to support the Leadership/Tactics deck, and along the way there are some Dúnedain cards to help along the subtheme of Beravor and Idraen. But we’ll get to that later. 

Glorfindel is a spirit hero who blew me away when he first came out in the Dwarrowdelf cycle, as he has 3 willpower, 3 attack, 1 defence, and 5 hit points, for the starting threat of just 5! His previous incarnation, a Lore version from the core set, had a starting threat of 12. However, the biggest drawback to his card here is that you have to raise your threat by 1 when he exhausts to commit to the quest. Well, whaddaya know, Light of Valinor came out in the very same pack, and attaches to a Noldor or Silvan hero, and has the ability that the attached hero does not exhaust to quest. Perfect! Should be stapled to him.

Asfaloth is Glorfindel’s special horse, and lets you exhaust him to add 1 progress token to any location (2 tokens if he is attached to Glorfindel). So the idea is basically to send Glorfindel on the quest, he doesn’t exhaust, but if any locations come up, Asfaloth can exhaust to place 2 progress on there, and Glorfindel is still ready for the fight. It pairs well with Legolas’ horse, Arod, who lets you place progress on locations if Legolas has destroyed an enemy this turn. There are some additional cards that are fun to play on him, such as The Favour of the Lady for +1 willpower, or Silver Circlet for +2 willpower, though I prefer to attach that to Idraen as Light of Valinor can of course be discarded from play by many different effects.

Fair and Perilous is another great card to use for attacks, as you can add a Noldor or Silvan character’s willpower to its attack. Glorfindel is the perfect target for this as he’d be attacking for 6, though Celeborn can also benefit from this, getting an attack strength of 5. Something I usually try to do is give Glorfindel a Rivendell Bow from the other deck, to give him Ranged; Legolas is great and all, but the way I’ve set up this Spirit/Lore deck, it’s not great for defending, and I think there are better chump blockers in the other deck, so having the option to shoot over with Glorfindel, especially if Fair and Perilous has given him +3 attack, is great.

Glorfindel isn’t the only Noldor character in the deck, however. I have all three of Elrond’s children in here, as well as Gildor Inglorion, an expensive ally at 5 lore resources (especially in a deck with only 1 lore hero) but his stats are fantastic. My preferred play here has been to play Valiant Determination on him, so that he doesn’t exhaust to quest, and because Fair and Perilous targets a Noldor character, I can use it on him to quest for 3 and then still attack for 5 in the next step. However, having all of these guys does mean there are five different, unique Noldor characters, so Elrond’s Counsel is an auto-include to have in the deck and keep down threat. I recently played Return to Mirkwood and was able to keep Gollum under Glorfindel because Elrond’s Counsel was counteracting the threat gain from having him. 

It’s not just Noldor, though, as there are also plenty of Silvan characters in here to benefit from Celeborn’s hero ability to give Silvan allies +1 to all stats. Cards like Haldir of Lorien and Mirkwood Runner are always nice to have in the deck, Haldir is a really solid body, while Mirkwood Runner, having the ability to ignore an enemy’s defence when attacking alone, can be really useful against smaller enemies that might be a waste to send Legolas to hunt down.

Mirkwood Long-knife is an interesting card, and unfortunately has never come up in my games with these decks so far. However, the plan for it is to attach it to Celeborn, who is also my prime target for Unexpected Courage in this deck-pairing. Celeborn can then quest for 4, ready with Unexpected Courage, then attack for 3 later on.

I know that might seem strange, because having Beravor in this line-up might lead you to think I have placed it on her as a start, to aid with card draw. However, I’ve never been the biggest fan of this playstyle because it feels very much like you’re interrupting the actual game to just draw cards. Which is all well and good, of course, it is a card game after all, but I would rather be taking actions that are directly affecting the game state, rather than just drawing cards that I’ll likely not be able to play due to resources, etc! 

I have some cards like Fast Hitch and Hobbit Pony in this deck simply to support Sam Gamgee, as well, which perhaps feels a bit odd but given these decks are designed to be played together, I quite like having cards in like this, because it does make both decks feel like one big fellowship. I also have the standard sort of support suite of cards like Galadhrim’s Greeting, Lore of Imladris etc. In the games that I’ve had with these decks, it’s interesting to see how this deck is usually the one doing the work of the quest, while the Leadership/Tactics side of things is handling enemies. Of course, there are still cards in that side that will work on this side as well, Rivendell Bow being a case in point, so it’s nice to see that sort of cross-pollination between the decks. 

This is definitely a different style of deck build though, as it is pretty much all support. Glorfindel could almost be a fourth hero on the other side, and Beravor and Idraen exist merely to facilitate the deck as a whole. I could put Silver Circlet and Unexpected Courage on them, but that’s not really the point of the deck. However, I’ve still kept some Dúnedain cards in like Northern Tracker, Súlien, and even Eldahir on the Leadership side, just to keep a little flavour.

All in all, it’s a pretty enjoyable deck pairing that I’ve had some good games with, especially as I’ve been tackling the Voice of Isengard quests. It’s not overpowered, but rather does the job well, and I think makes for a pretty enjoyable experience!

Hey everybody,
Almost four years ago now, I wrote a post about building decks for Lord of the Rings LCG, but it was mainly focused on a pair of tri-sphere decks that I had made for the game, back when I was still pretty new to the idea of playing the game with two decks. Of course, Lord of the Rings LCG has seen a massive resurgence for me so far in 2026, and I have played about fifteen games since New Year, which is more than I have played in the previous two years combined. While it might not be about to topple Marvel Champions as my all-time favourite card game, it is currently having so much time in the sun that I’m really quite surprised!

As a result of all these games, though, I have been trying to really embrace the fact that you need to build decks almost constantly for this game, so in the last few weeks I’ve built six different decks, three pairs, and pretty much before each game I have tinkered a little with those decks to ensure they stand a chance. My current decks are a mixed pair that lean heavily into Elves, although there is a decent smattering of Hobbits and some Dúnedain in there, as well. It was really enjoyable to put these decks together, as while I enjoy building an all-dwarf deck for the internal synergies, it feels really good to have a good mix of Hobbits, Elves and Men as a sort of “fellowship” or whatever. I’m not some kind of expert deck-builder – for example, I insist on only including one copy of Gandalf in a deck because it should feel like a real event when he shows up – but I thought it’d be fun to break down the decks I’m currently playing.

Now, there are four spheres in the game, and I think the best way to play is two-player (or in my case, two-handed solo) with dual-sphere decks. There are many ways to break this down of course, but the rhythm I have fallen into for the time being seems to be Leadership/Tactics, and Spirit/Lore, with two heroes/one hero being the ratio. Today, I’ll be looking at the Leadership/Tactics deck, which is headed up by Celeborn, Sam Gamgee, and Legolas. I have 24 Leadership cards, 23 Tactics cards, and 3 neutral cards. The Tactics ratio is quite high, considering I only have one Tactics hero (and one copy of Song of Battle to attempt to resource-accelerate). However, many of my favourite Tactics cards cost 1 resource, with only 5 cards costing 2 resources or more. This is therefore somewhat acceptable, as I don’t need to worry too much about affording cards – the only issue arises where I have too many Tactics cards in hand!

The main goal of this deck is to power Legolas up. As a hero, Legolas is one of the best; he has Ranged, so can shoot enemies engaged with other players for 3 attack strength at a minimum, and he has a response that allows him to place 2 progress tokens on the current quest when he takes part in an attack that destroys an enemy. That’s fantastic, so let’s make him better. Either Rivendell Bow or Bow of the Galadhrim is great – the former gives Legolas +1 attack because he already has Ranged, whereas the latter gives him +1 attack anyway, or +2 attack if he’s attacking an enemy not engaged with him. The Galadhrim bow, however, is Restricted, and characters cannot have more than 2 Restricted cards. This becomes important depending on whether he is also wielding his blades. Rivendell Blade is an amazing card – it gives an enemy -2 defence when you attack, and it can attach to Noldor or Silvan characters, so you can stick these blades on allies as well as heroes! The Blade of Gondolin is particularly useful for Legolas because it allows him to place an additional progress token on the quest when he destroys an enemy, and gives him +1 attack when going against an Orc enemy. So it’s not always going to be great for the attack buff, but will certainly come in useful for adding progress. 

Finally, we’ve got Legolas’ specific horse, Arod, who also plays into the theme of Legolas destroying enemies, as once you do so, Arod can exhaust to place a progress token on any location. Very handy, though I think this type of Legolas-on-horseback-dual-wielding is used in more Tactics-heavy decks, as it can make him fairly decent at placing progress anyway.

There are a couple of events that I like to use with him, mainly Hands Upon the Bow. It allows you to exhaust him (or any other character with Ranged) and declare an attack against an enemy in the staging area with +1 attack. So it basically gets to bypass engagements, and gives Legolas up to 7 attack and ignoring 2 of the enemy’s defence, before the enemy gets to make an engagement check. It works similar to Quick Strike, which would be for 6 attack. Swift and Strong is another event that lets you ready up a character after they have attacked and destroyed an enemy, and exhaust a weapon to get +2 attack on the next attack. So that could see Legolas attack with Hands Upon the Bow for 7 attack, destroy an enemy, then exhaust any of his weapons to ready him and get 8 attack from Swift and Strong. All the while, he’ll be placing progress tokens from all his many tricks for destroying enemies.

That’s pretty much the main suite of support for Legolas, though I do also have Marksman of Lórien ally who costs 3 resources, so she’s on the more expensive side, but has 3 attack and when she enters play, an enemy in play gets -2 defence until the end of the round. This works into the Rivendell Blade strategy, and either helps out if I haven’t drawn the Blade yet, or else helps to really reduce that defence if need be.

The Marksman does bring me on to the Leadership portion of the deck, though, which is a classic Silvan deck idea headed up by Celeborn. When I say “the classic Silvan deck idea”, this is mainly around Silvan allies entering play and maximising the ways they can be bounced back to hand to take advantage of powerful “when this card enters play” effects. Celeborn himself gives a Silvan ally +1 to all its attributes when it enters play, and crucially this is under any player’s control. With the O Lórien! attachment, you can exhaust it to lower the cost of those allies by 1, so rather than costing 2 or 3 resources, instead they’ll be costing 1 or 2.

In addition to the Marksman in Tactics, I have three Leadership allies who all do great things when they enter play. Orophin lets you return a Silvan ally from the discard pile to your hand; Naith Guide lets you choose a hero who doesn’t exhaust to quest when she enters play, and Greenwood Archer lets you ready a hero when he comes in. Admittedly, the Greenwood Archer is more of a corner case, as not many heroes would be exhausted when Greenwood Archer is played in the planning phase, however it’s a cheap ally with Ranged who can help out in a pinch. 

There are several events that let you return a Silvan ally to your hand to gain a benefit, starting with The Elvenking, which functions a little like Unexpected Courage and readies up a hero. Elf Guide lets you return an ally to your hand to add 1 resource to a hero’s resource pool. Feigned Voices is a very important card, and lets you return a Silvan ally to hand to prevent an enemy attacking a player. This one came in really useful in a recent game, where I’d almost lost a hero on the other team before playing it. Finally, Host of Galadhrim is a 4-cost neutral card that lets you return all Silvan allies to hand, and play them again at no cost, but only as a planning action.

There are a couple of Noldor allies that I also have in the deck, mainly for flavour I guess. Galadriel of course, as Celeborn’s wife, is always nice to have as she lets you search the top 5 cards of your deck for an attachment that costs 3 or less and put it into play. She’s discarded at the end of the round like Gandalf, but she does bring 3 willpower, which is great for an ally. Having a lot of utility attachments in the Leadership portion, and weapons in the Tactics portion means she can be really useful! 

There are some useful cards in the other spheres as well, particularly Lore, but I’ll be discussing those next time…

Legolas and Celeborn are definitely a favourite combination for me, and I’ve built a few decks over the years now that include this pairing. In the current deck, they’re fighting alongside Sam Gamgee, who brings a few Hobbit-related shenanigans to the table as well. This is mainly around engaging enemies with an engagement cost higher than my threat, but also some tricks from the likes of Rosie Cotton and Halfling Determination that allow me to buff Sam’s attributes. There’s a particular combo I’d like to achieve that involves Red Book of Westmarch (each Hobbit gets +1 willpower), Merry (when he enters play, each unique ally gets +1 willpower) and Rosie Cotton (choose a hero and add Rosie’s willpower, attack or defence to that hero’s attribute). It may have been ruled otherwise, but if the Book gives Rosie +1 willpower, and Merry gives her +1, then you add her now-4 willpower to Sam’s 4 willpower (3 plus the Book), he can quest for 8 willpower alone!

At any rate, this post is already getting much longer than I’d expected, so probably time to shut up! Next time, I’ll be looking at the Spirit/Lore “support” deck that I built to play alongside this one, and seeing how that works to complement the Silvan strategy…