Salutations Everyone,
After having read about The LOTR LCG Progression Series started by Mitch and Matthew at Cardboard of the Rings, I decided to give their idea a go myself.
In doing so, I hoped to present myself with a challenge, discover combinations and cards that I had never used (or long since abandoned in favour of seemingly better cards) and also to prove to my brother that it is not necessarily impossible to win most adventures solo if you only possess a fairly 'limited card pool'.
To that end, last night I created a solo deck to play through the Hunt for Gollum, using only the cards in the core set and the aforementioned Adventure Pack.
Here is the deck I used:
Aragorn, Theodred, Eowyn ( Starting Threat - 29)
Northern Tracker x3, Gandalf x3, Faramir x3, Guard of the Citadel x3, Snowbourn Scout x3, Lorien Guide x3, Westfold Horsebreaker x3, Steward of Gondor x3, Celebrian's Stone x2, Unexpected Courage x2, Dunedain Mark x3, Ever Vigilant x3, A Test of Will x3, Hasty Stroke x3, Grim Resolve x2, The Galadhrim's Greeting x3, Dwarven Tomb x2 & Sneak Attack x3.
I won on my first attempt after around 15-16 turns, but wasn't sure if I had forgotten to play Stage 2B correctly once or twice. With that in mind, I decided to play again, and this time implement the scoring system that I had always ignored in the past.
The second time I won again, after 13 turns, with a final threat of 32, no dead heroes, 2 damage on Theodred and 2 Gladden Fields in the Victory display. I believe this left my final score at around 158pts (apologies if I've got this wrong).
Playing in this way was a suitably rewarding experience as it confirmed all of the things that I believed it would. Flushed with success, I decided to move on to Conflict at the Carrock with the same deck (rather foolish I know).
Before starting, I removed a few cards from my deck and substituted them with a few player cards from The Conflict at the Carrock. I had hoped, upon starting this scenario, that I would find Grimbeorn or his bee pastures early on and then use my Aragorn/Theodred resource ramp to add him to my allies ASAP (albeit with some minor changes to the deck).
I started off doing rather well and was lucky enough to get a really strong line up of other allies by around turn 5. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worst when I ended up accidentally blasting through stage 1 thanks to the low threat of a Hill Troll that entered the staging area during the 5th Quest Phase.
As my threat was exactly 34, all five trolls in the Staging Area engaged me in the following Engagement Phase. To put it mildly, they squashed me into jelly. I tried again and lost again at around turn 6.
As this quest is listed as difficulty 7, I wasn't too dismayed by these two crushing defeats. I was also aware that the deck I was using was likely not the best design to tackle the challenge this quest presents.
In fact, it confirmed what I had always felt, and that is that this mission was a more multi-player friendly experience, at least when attempting it with the limited card pool.
Thank you for taking the time to read this...I'm now off to Rhosgobel...