Starting threat of 34+ is not bad when you run Gandalf Elrond and galadriel. Maybe excluding these heroes? Or wach hero needs to have 11+ threat

Well here's what I'm thinking. I'll start a new challenge at the beginning and halfway point of each month. So I was planning on starting a new challenge on the 16th of this month. Sound good? And yes, I'll definitely choose my challenge more carefully this time.

Final Score: 75.

Rounds: 3 completed (won in combat phase of round 4).

Heroes Sam, Merry (Lore), Pippin (Tactics)

Strategy: Get high threat by failing the quest with all the trolls in the staging area after they appear. Then they all engage, and you play A Good Harvest + Out of Sight to prevent them from attacking. Finally, use a combo of Steward of Gondor, 2x Gondorian Fire, 3x Fast Hitch/Cram, and 2x Blade of Gondolin (all on one Hobbit) to take out all the trolls and complete the quest in one fell swoop. All this is easily obtained thanks to Peace and Thought, Deep Knowledge, Sneak/Gandalf, Daeron's Runes, and We are not Idle providing massive card draw. Legacy of Numenor, Tighten our belts, and Steward provide the necessary resources.

Just beat the quest with a Sam/Tactics Merry/Lore Pippin Ent deck on normal. got a cluch Tighten Our Belts on the first turn, and was able to get three ents in play (including Treebeard) on the second turn. Spent about 3 rounds on the first stage, ammasing an army of tree people, and then went to the second stage. Got almost overwhelmed by the threat in the staging area (including 2 sharpshooters in there), but my high hp allies prevailed, and I took out the trolls one by one and won eventually.

This was fun! Can't wait to hear what the next challenge will be. I really like this as it gives me a reason to play the game by myself as I await the expansions.

Alright. Why don't we have suggestions?
"Like" the challenge idea if you... Well, like it.

And the challenge is still going, so feel free to continue posting your stories!

Great idea legolas18. Here are some ideas (some of which I've seen around, some of which I came up with)

1. Mono-tactics: The Redhorn Gate

2. Decks with only cost X cards, where X can be 0,1,2,3,4 etc

3. Female-only heroes/allies

4. Aragorn-Legolas-Gimli deck

5. Three handed, all 9 members of the fellowship: Journey in the Dark.

I ended up at 116 points.

Was using the classic trio of Black Riders Sam, Merry, Pippin. The quest gave me a few set backs (Despair twice slowed the game down a lot). I didn't pack many allies and hence, not a lot of willpower in the deck, but was eventually able to tear the trolls up using A Good Harvest and Thicket of Spears to set up Merry + Beorn + readying shenanigans in combat. After that it took one more round to clear the Carrock.

All told I had 8 rounds completed, no damage, 40 threat and 4 victory points (a Hill Troll joined the 4 divas at the end).

I like the idea of playing Passage Through Mirkwood with a single hero. Bonus points would be awarded if you beat the quest with a hero that nobody else used (since I'm guessing Gandalf would be a popular choice).

This was a great challenge, so don't beat yourself up. Seastan did not disappoint with his performance and that's what these kinds of things are all about, so even easy ones can be fun. Here are a few suggestions (X is used as a "fill in the blank"):

Beat X quest in X turns.

Beat X quest with 0 threat.

Beat X quest with only Hobbits or Rohan or Dunedain or Eagles or X.

4 handed shadow and flame nightmare (has it ever been done?)

Journey to Rosgabel with mono tactics (not even sure it's possible)

Build a deck around X (a bad or underused hero, like Dwalin for instance).

I also suggest we compete for best score and declare a winner after a "season". I'm motivated to try and beat Seastan score :-)

Surely Journey to Rhosgobel Mono-Tactics must be possible... Now I want to try it.

How about beating Into Ithilien without any Tactics cards?

Was the Blade of Gondolin x2 meant to explore The Carrock and place the 1 progress on Stage 2B? I don't think this works since the Carrock is made into the active location as soon as you complete Stage 1B and it is immune to player effects.

Final Score: 75.

Rounds: 3 completed (won in combat phase of round 4).

Heroes Sam, Merry (Lore), Pippin (Tactics)

Strategy: Get high threat by failing the quest with all the trolls in the staging area after they appear. Then they all engage, and you play A Good Harvest + Out of Sight to prevent them from attacking. Finally, use a combo of Steward of Gondor, 2x Gondorian Fire, 3x Fast Hitch/Cram, and 2x Blade of Gondolin (all on one Hobbit) to take out all the trolls and complete the quest in one fell swoop. All this is easily obtained thanks to Peace and Thought, Deep Knowledge, Sneak/Gandalf, Daeron's Runes, and We are not Idle providing massive card draw. Legacy of Numenor, Tighten our belts, and Steward provide the necessary resources.

Was the Blade of Gondolin x2 meant to explore The Carrock and place the 1 progress on Stage 2B? I don't think this works since the Carrock is made into the active location as soon as you complete Stage 1B and it is immune to player effects.

Final Score: 75.

Rounds: 3 completed (won in combat phase of round 4).

Heroes Sam, Merry (Lore), Pippin (Tactics)

Strategy: Get high threat by failing the quest with all the trolls in the staging area after they appear. Then they all engage, and you play A Good Harvest + Out of Sight to prevent them from attacking. Finally, use a combo of Steward of Gondor, 2x Gondorian Fire, 3x Fast Hitch/Cram, and 2x Blade of Gondolin (all on one Hobbit) to take out all the trolls and complete the quest in one fell swoop. All this is easily obtained thanks to Peace and Thought, Deep Knowledge, Sneak/Gandalf, Daeron's Runes, and We are not Idle providing massive card draw. Legacy of Numenor, Tighten our belts, and Steward provide the necessary resources.

I thought about that. The Blade of Gondolin places progress on the current quest. It is a game framework effect, and not a player card effect, that instead places that progress on the active location, so I figured it still works. But it turns out you are right, and buried deep in the FAQ (p13 of FAQ 1.7) it says that Legolas' ability cannot place progress on immune locations. This "immune to player card effects" again proves to be one of the most confusing rules in the game to me.

When I made the attempt I played one more round just in case the blades ended up not working. I amassed 1+10 more points, but if you swap out the 2 blades I had for 2x Secret Vigil, my actual score is 75+1+10-2-2=82.

Complete a journey down the Anduin without using allies. I think it would be kinda hard one because you will need much willpower at stage 2 (which is kinda hard to achieve without any allies) and of course combat would be harder too.

What you think?

Just beat it after 8 try's. But once I got Steward of Gondor and Gondor Fire going on Pippin I crushed it. Good fun keep the challenges coming.

10 completed rounds = 100
Total combined Threat = 28
Total damage on Heroes = 2
Cost of dead Heroes = 0
Victory points = 6
TOTAL SCORE = 124

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Thanks for all the reports and suggestions!

Tomorrow I'm going to change the challenge. The challenge I've chosen is going to be as follows:

Quest: Into Ithilien

Challenge: Beat the quest using only Spirit or Lore decks and heroes.

Sound good?

Sounds great!

My recommendation is to start a new thread for the new challenge so we can continue to discuss this one here if we want to.

Do you mean by monospheres, or a deck can contain any combination of spirit and lore cards?

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Thanks for all the reports and suggestions!

Tomorrow I'm going to change the challenge. The challenge I've chosen is going to be as follows:

Quest: Into Ithilien

Challenge: Beat the quest using only Spirit or Lore decks and heroes.

Sound good?

Slightly disappointing for me because I've done that before. I built a Lore/Spirit deck specifically for Into Ithilien (admittedly it was intended for multiplayer, but it works solo as well).

And another question, since we have a sphere restriction there, and by the FFG's own design, Neutral is not a sphere - can we include Gandalf hero?

And actually, does "Spirit or Lore decks" mean we can't even splash other spheres? Because if so my existing deck would actually be ineligible since I splashed in a couple of Eagles via Elrond.

Hahaha

Whoa guys. Okay, I had in mind the challenge of doing this quest WITHOUT Leadership or Tactics, so I'd say no splashing. I'm not saying that you have to do it monosphere, although that's what I would do. Personally I think you guys who usually do it solo should really try it two-handed. It really amps up the challenge.

And Authraw, you really think I should start a new thread? I will if people want me to. I was just going to keep them in the same thread.

Also, I am sorry PocketWraith if you've already done this. It seems I can't please everybody, but you could always just try a different deck.

Well I haven't had a chance to try this challenge yet, but I wouldn't want to derail the thread once you start a new challenge.

It's ultimately up to you though, you're the one spearheading it. It honestly doesn't matter that much, it'll be fun either way.

I would like that there would be a new thread for the new challenge. I think it would be better like that

Alright, two people have spoken. Moving to a new thread!