Graendal's Journey

Opening Hand: Graendal Lady Colavaere The Art of Intrigue Lucky find (for Cairhien) Characters: High Lady Estanda High Lord Meilan High Lord Geuyam Lord Daricain Lord Meresin Lord Talmanes Shaidar Haran Gray Man x 2 Eamon Valda Jaichim Carridim Bain Chiad Galldrian Fade x 3 Troops: Trolloc Footmen x 3 Trolloc Raiders x 2 Dark Friend Band x 2 Trolloc War Band Human Rabble x 3 Challenges: Testing Fate x 2 Gather Allies x 2 Forced Back Advantages: Cairhien Future Returns Saidar Angreal Battle Hardened x 2 Longbow Herb Bag Resupply Raw Recruits Events: Healing x 2 Personnal Growth Connections x 2 Lucky Find x 2

Introduction: This deck is *not* tournament legal. It contains little more than 50 cards and more then 50% of characters troops. It had been designed far before the tournament rules had been published, and I'm too lazy to test another version with more cards. :oP It does *not* contain all the key cards that would make it even stronger simply because either I don't own them, or because I didn't want to deliberately use broken cards and/or waste the fun of the game because of too many good cards. If you think it is not strong enough in your environment, you can start the game with Barthanes (a must have in Cairhien decks, probably too strong, to my mind), and use Liandrin, Trolloc Fist, Aracome, Geofram Bornhald... You could also use three of each of the good cards (to begin with trolloc raiders or connection...) and remove the least useful cards. But the efficiency you will add will probably remove the fun and variety this deck contains. It's up to you. Another way to improve the deck is, of course, to use the (almost broken) Fortress of Light. With Valda and Carridim, your opponent won't be able to gain control of it and if you add at least Naeblis and Shayol Gul, you will gain three free pattern tokens that your opponent won't be able to contest. Powerful, but not fun... :o( I'm also using Future Returns with a one card per turn limit (for the current ruling really makes it a broken card) *and* I don't use it in my starting hand. Once again, if the deck isn't strong enough, just remove the other player advantages so that you can lucky find it a.s.a.p and allow multiple card drawn per turn. Strategy : Easy to sum up... Recruit many good characters in order to get a strong recruiting base for either allegiance specific characters or DO troops. Use your multiple card drawing engines to get many cards to recruit, and rush for the Last Battle. The Cairhien Nation will allow you to recruit with ease thanks to the many Intrigue dice of your starting characters. The combination of high damage (Fades, Aiels) and high support (Colavaere, Meilan...) characters will make your forces very balanced during all challenge and thanks to the multiple recruiting strategies, Graendal won't have to be the center of all your plots, contrary to many other decks. She can fight in challenges and still allow you to recruit a couple of dark one troops with Tear characters (and intrigue converted to combat), or you can recruit Cairhien characters (*and* even pay twice the price easily) while many of your other characters will fight for you in challenges. Play tips : First turn, send Graendal to the Pattern and burn a small token to get Colavaere out with the Art of Intrigue. If unopposed, Graendal will probably get the token back. Otherwise, she will either prevent the opponent from gaining it or somewhat damage any light character participating to the challenge. *BUT* if Rand goes to the Battleground on the first turn, you can expect a First turn Aviendha, or Gareth Bryne, or Moiraine so don't be silly and keep Graendal standing down... :o) Then Lucky find for a Cairhien and put it into play. Use the Art of Intrigue for a free opposition to the Pattern challenge in any case. Second turn, put Colavaere on Cairhien in order to get at least two or three tokens on Cairhien. Graendal can either try to recruit a character you've just drawn or go to the Pattern and oppose/damage the light character or get a free token. Use the Art of Intrigue on either Pattern or Cairhien depending on the participants of the Pattern Challenge. Your main goal for the moment is to have enough tokens on Cairhien to easily recruits with your recruits, and *not* to gain quick Pattern tokens. Then recruit as many characters as possible (troops come only after), so that you can easily recruit other characters or troops afterwards. Don't hesitate to burn pattern to put Meilan or Valda into play. Testing Fate will bring them back to you later. Once you have a high damage character into play (Talmanes, Aiel, Valda), play personnal growth for combat then use a Longbow to scare the opponent and make him keep his weak characters at home. A battle hardened will help you here too. You can also put a testing fate into play even with no neutral token to gain. Your opponent will probably not oppose you very much, so it's time to burn a couple of Pattern tokens to put either Valda or Meilan into play, and get you Pattern tokens back before the end of the turn. Of course, this trick won't work twice on the same player... :o) When drawing a lucky find, try to get your hand on a Future Returns or Raw Recruits (with trolloc raiders, you will either get a another card small drawing engine or no opposition for troops on the Battlefield) and play them as soon as possible. By the way, Aiel *can* generate combat symbols for advantages even if they can't recruit troops or characters. If an annoying opponent's character (Tom, Berelain, Perrin...) hits the table, use Forced Back to get rid of him whatever the risks. And as usual, beware of overruns. If there is a small smell of it (many troops and no characters opposing you and a curious twist on your opponent's lips :o) you can either send all your characters including Graendal to play a healing on your biggest character (or avoid losing any character by putting a point of damage on all your characters). Or make your characters stand down and have your troops crush the opponent. And last but not least, the art of intrigue, will allow you to add free support or opposition in any needed challenges *even* if you don't send any character/troop on it. Deck rating An easy deck to play with. The only difficulty will be to determine who would be better in challenge and who you'd better keep for recruiting. The lack of difficulty also makes this deck rather boring to play. There is no real challenge or complex strategy involved. A couple of tweaks would probably make this deck a little more fun to play with. You will play more characters (and probably more troops too) than your opponent, and your characters will be almost better than the light nature "classic" set (Lan, Nynaeve and co). Thanks to a couple of challenge, reaching the 4 Pattern necessary for Fades won't be really hard, and then, gaining Dominance won't give you many problems. Once a good drawing engine is put into play, it's an easy victory. I'd say that only an optimised Be'lal troop deck would reach the Last Battle victory even more easily. Unless you're particularly unlucky on many dice throw, luck shouldn't affect this deck very much thanks to the many characters and symbols resources available. Only the first few turns (when gaining control of Cairhien) need some good dice throws for Colavaere to be quickly on fire. Difficulty : 5/10 Fun : 6/10 Efficiency : 8/10 Luck Effect : 5/10