Fortress of Dark

Starting Hand Graendal Pedron Niall Far Reaching Influence Into the Fight Characters Galldrian Lady Colavaere Lord Barthanes Lord Talmanes Lord Meresin Lord Daricain High Lord Meilan High Lady Estanda High Lord Geuyam Liandrin Sedai Shaidar Haran Fade x 3 Chiad Eamon Valda Jaichim Carridim Geofram Bornhald Troops (10 cards) Trolloc Fist Trolloc War Band Trolloc Footmen x 3 Trolloc Raiders x 3 Dark Friend Bands x 2 Advantages Hidden Discoveries Raw Recruits Future Returns Momentum Cairhien Al'cair'rahienallen The Art of Intrigue x 3 Battle Hardened x 2 Fortress of the Light Naeblis Shayol Ghul Challenges Testing Fate x 2 Border Clash x 3 From the Shadows x 2 Events Healing x 2 Overrun x 2 Heroic Efforts Lucky Find x 2

Introduction This deck is tournament legal and should be played with all pending card drawing restrictions (to begin with Future Returns). It contains many rares but only a handful are really necessary to the deck. For instance, if you don't own a Trolloc Fist, just replace it by a Darkfriend band or a Human Rabble. The deck will be a little weaker but strong enough if your opponent plays in "the same league". This deck is a variant of my Graendal's Journey. It uses most of the best characters in the game recruited during Graendal's Journey to Tear, Cairhien or the Fortress. It will use Pedron Niall as an additional card drawing engine and firepower. It will also use the Fortress of Light/Contested Advantages in order to get up to four free Pattern tokens. Strategy Like many Graendal decks, this one is character heavy. It will use the best available character for the dark side and use the Forsaken's power to the maximum. It starts with Pedron Niall in order to have an additional card each turn (50% more !) and a high value character with DO allegiance. It is by far worth burning your initial Pattern tokens. Then you will 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 Fortress played in combo with Naeblis and Shayol Ghul will get you at least three Pattern for nothing. Once you have Cairhien and Cairhien characters, recruiting won't be a problem thanks to the intrigue conversion to politics or combat *and* you will get a fourth Fortress Pattern token. The combination of high damage (Fades, Aiels) and high support (Colavaere, Meilan...) characters will make your forces very balanced during all challenges 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/or 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 a challenge. Play Tips First turn. Try to get your three politics for Pedron. If you succeed go to the challenge and play Far Reaching Influence on Pedron Niall for an additional life point and opposition. If you can't get the three politics, then play Far reaching influence on Graendal and she will get the three needed politics next turn. Wasting the first turn is fairly frequent with this deck but once Pedron hits the table, you won't even think twice about this wasted turn. Then recruit as many characters as possible (troops come only after), so that you can have a strong character base. Then you can easily recruit other characters or troops afterwards. Don't hesitate to burn pattern to put good characters into play. Testing Fate will bring them back to you later. 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 your Pattern tokens back before the end of the turn. Of course, this trick won't work twice on the same player... :o) Wait for Cairhien before playing your Border clashs since they are used not only to give Pattern but also to add a token to Cairhien and speed the use of Al'cair'rahienallen. This player advantage is tremendously efficient when Galldrian and/or Colavere/Bathanes are participating to a challenge. Your Cairhien characters (boosted with The art of Intrigue) will drop lots and lots of damage tokens. When drawing a lucky find, try to get your hand Fortress of Light or Cairhien. The former will give you Pattern tokens and the latter will help you to convert intrigue into combat or politics and recruit easily. Or you can try to get a Player's advantage and draw one of the three card drawing advantages to increase Pedron Niall's card drawing mania. 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. It's really great if you want to gain control of a Naeblis *and* still have all your characters in the Pattern challenge (no opposition possible from the light player). Deck Rating All in all, this deck archetype may be one of the strongest Dark deck available (if you consider the crazy card drawing advantages as already errataed : Future Returns, Taking Advantages). You will draw *lots* of cards with Pedron Niall and many of those cards are free to play so you won't have to discard. The challenges will help you to keep racing for the Pattern while you are still developping your most important strategy based on Character and World advantage. This advantage-based strategy is somewhat hard to play since you always have to decide what challenge is the best for this turn (Cairhien, Testing Fate...) and where to use your characters/troops for the most efficient result. Even a light Aes Sedai/Tar Valon deck cannot prevent you from gaining Cairhien since your deck contains both Cairhien characters and Eamon Valda who will slow the opponent or Border Clash and boost your strategy. You have probably all the interesting characters playable in a dark deck *and* those wonderful dark one troops. You will get almost no recruiting problems once you've dropped a couple of characters and you will play at least three or four cards per turn during the whole game. It's fun, it's fast and it's efficient. As for luck effect, you will need a decently lucky throw on the first or second turn in order to start quickly. If you can't get the three necessary politics, that's not really a problem. The game just won't be too easy. May be the light player will get a chance after all... :o) After the first few turns, and unless you're particularly unlucky on many dice throws, luck shouldn't affect this deck very much thanks to the many characters and symbols resources available. Difficulty : 7/10 Fun : 8/10 Efficiency : 9/10 Luck Effect : 6/10