The Rods of the Five Wizards 1.0

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• 1.0

In my prepping for con of the rings 2025, I have prepped this deck that i'm excited to see hit the table!

Deck Goal: One goal. Make a workable 5 Istari deck that showcases the might of the wizards of middle earth. Most cards in this deck are geared towards getting the Istari into play, and then giving them as many actions a turn as possible.

Opening Turns: This deck has a very strong start given that the blue wizards start with their Blue Staff out that can be used to gain a resource, scry for spells, or thanks to Rods of the Five, they can be used to ready. This deck runs a small stable of characters, so finding allies is a top priority. For this reason, Word of Command is a valuable first turn card. It isn't strictly necessary since scrying for it is so easy with the staves, but saving a step is good. Other awesome early cards would be Luin Cultist to fuel the spell recursions, and Master of the Forge to help find key attachments. Probably the best early strategy comes from being able to get Saruman and The White down early, but getting an early Gandalf can also be a game changer.

Once you have an ally or two down to reinforce the blue wizards, this deck begins to shine. It may look on paper somewhat finicky, but the blue wizards are REDICULOUSLY good at cherry picking cards from your deck, so combos are trivial to pull off with this deck. Also, the combos i'm going to point out below help empower the deck, but the raw stats and readying power of the Istari is what makes this deck so potent. Combos to Aim For

Diligent Noble &Elessar = Gandalf or Saruman defending multiple times per turn. Or Gandalf Questing/Defending/Attacking in one turn.

Doughty Ranger&Chieftain of the North = Saruman swinging twice each turn.

Luin Cultist&Word of Persuasion = Word of Persuasion is one of the best cards AleP has made IMO, and it shines here. The Cultist's are great early game to help recycle spell cards, but late game they can be used to dramatically reduce the cost of this spell. I've taken control of some BIG enemies for virtually nothing using my three cultists to slash the cost of this card by quite a bit. On that note...

Word of Persuasion&FollowedLive Bait = Ally Nazgul! This combo has given me some ridiculously good allies. If it seems like a steep combo to get (3 cards!) you'd be surprised how much the blue wizards can scry what they need from the deck. This combo also doesn't come up every quest, but when it does, it is beyond amazing.

The Renewer&Steward of Gondor= Obviously steward is an amazing card, but it's not here for the money. (Okay, the money helps), it's here to make sure you can quest with Saruman and then use him for combat as well.

Rods of the Five& all the Staves= It is important to remember the Player Objective. All of your Istari can use their staves to ready every turn. That's why Saruman's Staff and Radagast's staff are in here despite the general lack of things for them to do with it.

How's it Done: I'm running a two handed Saga campaign on Nightmare with this as one of the two decks. It just beat the Uruk-hai quest with only a few quests giving me a loss.

P.S. Radagast is also in this deck! It's nice to remember than when you exhaust an Istari for spells you can exhaust him because... what else is he gonna do?