The Raider Culture

This Strategy-Note article was written by a anonymous person and was published first on "Lord of the Rings Online (lotrtcg.decipher.com)".

The Raiders - Southrons and Easterlings, Men drawn to Sauron's cause by honeyed words, old hatred, and the promise of riches - are used to strengthen the army of fell creatures with which the Lord of the Ring plans to wipe clean the kingdoms of the west. Mercenaries and archers, they are full of tricks, and their presence not only hampers Frodo as he moves towards the Dark Tower, but threatens the armies of Gondor as well.

The Raiders didn't get much screen time in The Two Towers, but Decipher has managed to draw not just a full culture, but two distinct sub-cultures from the images available. While they haven't to date seen much top level play as a single-culture Shadow side, they're very popular in casual play, and some excellent combinations with other cultures has made their presence felt on the tournament scene. The advent of The Battle of Helm's Deep expansion, and the skirmish-winning presence of mumaks, is sure to make the Raiders popular as a single-culture Shadow side at the top level too.

The "pay a cost to wound" minions, such as Desert Spearman and Desert Warrior, can be effectively splashed into many shadow sides, and make a particularly powerful combination with a Sauron Hate strategy (a popular pairing in recent tournaments). This can be a very twilight-intensive strategy, but as much of this twilight is used after the shadow phase, the Raider's ambush capabilities can make it much more viable than it would otherwise be.

Another common pairing are the burden-adding Easterlings, such as Easterling Lieutenant and Easterling Guard, with the Nazgul that make use of burdens (Ulaire Toldea, Ulaire Enquea). The lower-cost Easterlings can make it much easier to get multiple minions out each turn, putting more pressure on the Ring-bearer, while making the powerful Nazgul more effective by triggering their game text more often. There are a number of Raider support cards for this strategy, such as Gathering to the Summons and Vision From Afar, and when it works it can be quite effective.

The final popular splash minions are the Southron archers. With a number of cost-effective minions, they can be added to a traditional archery deck, such as Moria archery or Uruk archery, particularly if you desire to avoid some of the more damaging combinations specific to each culture that can sometimes be difficult to pull off. One of the more popular recent combinations however is adding Southron Archers to a site control deck, leading to potentially very large amounts of minion archery late in the game.

Fun to play, able to surprise with events and directed wounding, and now able to win skirmishes and be fierce as well, Raiders will soon be a common sight in organized play. March on the armies of the Haradrim!