Goodbye Uruk-hai! That's how many players welcomed Standard Format when it was first announced. And since Standard is now the format of choice for most high-level tournaments, the relatively condition-free Uruks have definitely taken a back seat while condition-heavy strategies like Moria swarm and Sauron trackers now dominate the field.

This means that nearly every Free Peoples half-deck needs a way to discard conditions. Before The Battle of Helm's Deep set, it was relatively easy to splash Gandalf (along with Sleep, Caradhras, Deep in Thought, or Grown Suddenly Tall) or Elven allies (and Secret Sentinels) into a deck, but Grima, Chief Counselor has changed all of that. In decks that already contain three non-Gandalf, non-Elven Free Peoples cultures, such as the popular Help in Doubt and Need strategy, an alternate method of condition removal is needed. If that deck uses Rohan, then Fortress Never Fallen is a good bet.

Even if a deck already uses a culture with good condition removal, Fortress Never Fallen still has its advantages. Most cards that remove conditions are events, which clog up a player's hand if they are not needed immediately. Fortress Never Fallen, on the other hand, is a condition that can be played to the support area during any fellowship phase. Also, in a deck that uses Rohan and Gandalf cultures along with conditions, Sleep, Caradhras and Grown Suddenly tall will discard the Free Peoples conditions along with the Shadow ones, and Deep in Thought can be difficult to use because a player must be able to spot four twilight tokens in order to play it. The versatility of Fortress Never Fallen overcomes all of this and allows it to be incorporated in many Rohan deck types.

Fortress Never Fallen also has another huge advantage - there is no limit to the number of conditions it can discard. This makes it particularly effective against decks that rely on many conditions, such as Moria swarm or the recently popular Sauron (and Rohan usually has little problem winning skirmishes against these deck types, allowing the tokens to be easily stacked on Fortress Never Fallen).

The only draw back to this unique condition removal is the placement of tokens. This draw back is negligible when you consider how easy it is to get Eomer to win a Skirmish - the man rarely looses, problem solved! Being a condition itself it is susceptible to cards like Saruman's Power and Beauty is Fading which can discard Free Peoples conditions. It looks like Rohan is becoming more and more popular since the inception of Standard format, seems there is a place for them in almost every deck type, just remember that when you look for your next condition removal - Fortress Never Fallen may just be the way to go.

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