I've occasionally beaten a scenario in two-handed solo play where, with one deck skirting near the 50 threat limit, I've realized that that deck was probably lost, so the remainder of my play with it was meant only to set up the other deck for the best chance to finish off the quest solo.

I'm sure this has happened to others, so I was curious: has anyone ever explicitly designed a deck to do this? i.e., to help a perhaps slow-starting partner deck to make it through the initial stages of a scenario, without much regard for its own long-term safety. I'm thinking that Tactics Boromir could play a part in such a strategy. Or perhaps just doomed cards with Galadhrim's Greetings exclusively targeted at the other player. Sending Riders of the Mark across the board without ever expecting them back... That sort of thing.

It's *not* that I think that this would be a particularly advisable way to approach any particular scenario -- why not just run a solid deck that DOESN'T threat out in the first three turns? -- but I think it could make for an interesting thematic design.

Certainly sounds like a fun thing to try. Sadly I very very rarely get above 2 player, and this seems like it might be better as 3+ player experiment.

I was bored this weekend, and my thoughts turned back to this idea. So I threw together a mono-Lore deck that combined the doomed-Loragorn archetype with the Love of Tales-songs resource generator *and* the Wandering Took-Song of Earendil combo.

The idea was to pair it with an equally absurd partner deck with an astronomical starting threat and hope to nail the WT-SoE combo on the first turn (more likely than you'd think with the crazy draw of the doomed deck), so that the mono-Lore deck could drop the other deck's threat by a big chunk, use Loragorn's threat reset, and then *do it again* to get the other deck to a ridiculously low threat level. Then the mono-Lore deck would purposely threat out. Of course, in the course of doing all this, the other deck would also get a bunch of bonus resources and cards from Legacy of Numenor and Deep Knowledge, not to mention several key attachments (Steward of Gondor, Unexpected Courage...).

I sicced this Frankenstein against Conflict at the Carrock and thwapped it so hard that I actually felt bad for Louis and the other trolls. I don't know how this idea would fare against more modern quests, although I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work against any of the scenarios that don't murder you on the very first turn.

It was a fun thought experiment, although I don't plan on repeating it unless I get to feeling really mad at some scenario. Hmmmmm, on second thought, maybe it's time to break out Peril in Pelargir again...

It can be a very strong strategy with doomed cards + Lore Aragorn. The second deck should have duplicate copies of the doomed draw + resource cards, as well as copies of key attachments and some useful events.

Then you wait until after engagement one round and do the explosive doomed trick (draw a bunch of cards, gain a bunch of resources, drop threat with Aragorn in refresh), and make sure the sacrificial deck has low enough threat to last one more round. Then the following round the Aragorn deck plays a ton of allies, and the sacrificial deck plays a bunch of attachments on Aragorn + his companion heroes.

It's only good for two handed solo play, though, and mostly requires OCTGN because you want 6 copies of key cards. Also it's not /that/ much better than the doomed bomb Aragorn strategy anyway.