[minion; vs. hero/fw] Rings for Points up North

[Zarathustra]

Starting Company:

Whispers of Rings
Foul-Smelling Paste

Lieutenant of Morgul
Pon Opar
Radbug
Odoacer

Backup Characters in Deck

Baduila
The Grimburgoth
Elerina
The Mouth
Tom, Burt, William

Resources

3 Perfect Gold Ring
3 Gold Ring that Sauron Fancies
1 Scroll of Isildur
1 Thrar's Map

1 Regiment of Black Crows

1 Ice-Orcs

3 The Lidless Eye
3 Great Eye
2 Eye Never Sleeping
2 We Have Come to Kill
2 Voices of Malice
2 Test of Fire
3 Crept Along Cleverly
3 Dark Tryst

sideboard

1 Test of Fire
1 voices of Malice
1 eye Never Sleeping
1 Smaug Roused
2 The Reviled Ring
2 The Oracle's Ring
2 Magic Ring of Savagery
1 Long Grievous Siege
1 rumour of the One


Play Tips

This one isn't tweaked yet, but I have high hopes for it. An optimal company arrangement would look something like this:

27 GI:

6 Elerina with Oracle's Ring controls Lt of Morgul with Reviled Ring
6 Baduila with Oracle's Ring controls Pon Opar
8 Grimburgoth controls Radbug with Reviled Ring
6 Tom and Burt, Tom and William, or Burt and William
1 Odoacer

Just go to the Withered Heath and Grey Mountain Narrows and stay there. Provided you don't get creamed by Elf-Lords on your first turn, you should be able to avoid most hazards without any trouble at all. Make sure to keep rings flowing through your hands to counter Rolled Down, and don't forget to use Whispers.

Point Breakdown

Optimally, you should hope to get all 4 Spirit Rings, though of course the magic rings are quite handy as well. If you get the optimal group out, you should have something like the following for points:

Character: 17
Ally: 1
Faction: 4
Item: 12 (+4 with Rumour)
Misc: 1 (LGS)
TOTAL: 35 (+4).



Any ideas to speed it up or tweak it out?

[Lord Leuber]

I'm not so sure about the Gold Ring that Sauron Fancies. It can't get Spirit rings and only gets magic rings on 1 to 5. I realize you don't want the Bright Gold Ring because you want to stick to , but even then the Least of the Gold Rings is better, getting magic rings at 1 to 7. Or you could forget about the magic rings and go with Trifling Ring (+3 DI against characters) so that you never blow a test.

[Bandobras Took]

Perhaps a Dunlending Spy to use Catch an Elusive Scent instead of Odoacer? Any trip where you can get both the Scroll and a ring to use with it has got to be a good thing, and you've already got a lot of rangers.

[Zarathustra]

Good point on the ring selection. I forgot which did what.

@bandobras: the idea, at least, is that I can spend 5 turns in the withered heath/grey mt narrows playing 5 items (with the help of the map), 1 faction, and 1 ally. That gives me the full breakdown and plenty of points. I hadn't actually looked at the crappier gold rings to realize they don't even get spirit rings, however. Might need to change things up to account for that....