11/14/2023 0 Comments Lotr steward of gondorThere is no conceivable world in which Pippin becomes next in the line of succession to inherit the throne of Gondor-but to imagine a world in which Pippin finds himself in Denethor’s service, all I need to do is read The Return of the King. Now I just have to imagine a reason why Denethor might support the actions of the Hero in question. This requires a lot fewer mental gymnastics for those of us who get a kick out of building thematic decks. Why bake theme into the cards at all if I’m just going to throw it away?Ī less drastic thematic fix is to reinterpret the card as not representing the character being the Steward of Gondor so much as having the support of the Steward of Gondor. After all, I’m basically throwing out the theme of the card altogether and substituting something entirely different. I can just rename it something appropriately regal-sounding and move on-but as a theme-loving player, that has always felt like a shallow solution. ![]() More than once, back when the Dwarrowdelf cycle was yet young, I recall playing the card on Dáin Ironfoot and christening him “The Steward of Gondwarf”. Sometimes I have found it useful, however, to bend the theme of cards a bit to help justify playing them on other characters. The Title trait found on Steward of Gondor seems to drive home the idea that the original intent behind the card was indeed to make the attached character the literal Steward. Yet the card as written works equally well on just about any Hero. Does that mean that anybody can become the literal Steward of Gondor? I have trouble imagining, for instance, Théoden taking up the white rod in service of a land over which he holds no claim, not to mention even more outlandish options like Bilbo Baggins or Treebeard. But mechanically speaking, the card has no such limitation-it can be placed on any Hero. I don’t think anybody would have any qualms about playing Steward of Gondor on Denethor, the actual Steward of Gondor himself. I can never decide what role I want it to serve in the deck, and I often wonder if the game would just be more fun if it weren’t part of the card pool.īut why? What makes me so hesitant to use so powerful a card? Thematically, it’s a little weird That’s pretty great!īut despite everything it has to recommend it, I’m often conflicted whenever I find myself building a deck with Steward of Gondor in it. A Core Set staple, it has been with us since day one, providing us with an extra 2 resources per round (and the Gondor trait) for any one Hero. There’s no denying that Steward of Gondor is powerful. Steward of Gondor has been on my mind ever since it featured prominently in the deck I built to defeat Nightmare Peril in Pelargir. ![]() It is this scene that drives him to his own funeral pyre, never knowing that those ships are actually bringing Aragorn and his relieving force to save the city in its hour of greatest need.Nightmare Into Ithilien has been giving me trouble this week (curse your extra attacks, Haradrim Elite!) so I’ve decided instead to write about a particular card with which I have a… complicated relationship. ![]() The last, and terribly ironic straw, is that he finally gives in after seeing the black ships of the corsairs of Umbar coming up the river to spell doom for the city. Despite the fact that Sauron can not overcome him, what Denethor sees in the seeing-stone feeds his growing despair, compounded by the death of Boromir and Faramir, as he believes. Nonetheless, it is the Palantir that become his downfall. It was with the knowledge that he gleans from the Palantir that Denethor is able to prepare so well for the movements of the enemy and lead his people as well as he does. Not only is Denethor an equal to Gandalf in conversation he is actually able to wrestle the will of Sauron himself and win. The great testament to Denethor’s character, however, is that, unlike Saruman, he proves to have such integrity and strength of will that Saruman can not corrupt him or overthrow his will. It is almost exactly in this way that Sauron actually ensnares and corrupts Saruman in the first place. He also has such confidence in his own will that he decides to look into the Palantir in Minas Tirith, though he knows the seeing-stones are compromised by Sauron.
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