Greetings!

I was wondering how much the game was playable for solo with a mono sphere deck? By mono, I mean heroes with the same sphere. Until now (all APs from Shadow of Mirkwood / Dwarrowdelf / Against the Shadows save Morgul Vale - should play this one next week!), the only consistent mono sphere deck that seems to work are spirit ones (actually, that's the only way I can beat "eascape from dol guldur" solo!) or tactic ones for scenarios with tons of siege / battle quest (Into Ithilien, siege of cair andros... I suppose Blood of Gondor would also work...) but I have yet to built mono leadership / lore deck that are working. Do you have any suggestions?

Try Monoleadership outlands! It's quite good and you can use Strength of Arms to ready all your Outland allies if you're in for a big round of questing and combat.

My suggestions for heroes through against the shadow:

Mono leadership -- Hirluin/Theodred/Aragorn Outlands deck.

Mono lore -- Denethor/Elrond/Mirlonde. Scrying is very powerful solo, and Elrond/Vilya is very powerful also.

Mono tactics -- except against battle/siege quests this will be tough. The only questing allies you'll be able to get are Radagast, Gwaihir, and Eagles of the Misty Mountains, each of which costs more than one turn of resources. I might go with Theoden-Boromir-Gimli to quest for 8 and ready Boromir for emergencies, hoping to get through the quest before threating out.

You should be able to build a host of competitive mono-leadership decks. Mine usually rely on Sword that Was Broken and/or ally Faramir (and / or Visionary Leadership) and using A Very Good Tale to dump out allies.

Mono-lore is a little harder, since by its nature it is kind of a support sphere, but traps can work wonders, and there are plenty of powerful heroes to pull from.

You should be able to build a host of competitive mono-leadership decks. Mine usually rely on Sword that Was Broken and/or ally Faramir (and / or Visionary Leadership) and using A Very Good Tale to dump out allies.

Mono-lore is a little harder, since by its nature it is kind of a support sphere, but traps can work wonders, and there are plenty of powerful heroes to pull from.

I don't have A very good tale yet. Problems with card draw with leadership... maybe a very good tale correct just that! Tried Timely Aid but it's kind of costy though. And ally Erestor is good, best card draw effect for leadership (in my collection, at least), still, kind of somewhat costy.

My suggestions for heroes through against the shadow:

Mono leadership -- Hirluin/Theodred/Aragorn Outlands deck.

... tried that exact leadership combo but it won't works... just toooo slow...

Outlands takes a while to get going, but once it gets going it's very impressive. Which quests did you try the combo against?

Outlands takes a while to get going, but once it gets going it's very impressive. Which quests did you try the combo against?

Mostly the ones in Heir of Numenor (Pelargir / Ithilien), which was terrible. Steward was always a failure, but it took time to realise I will fail (Fun but LONG scenario!), so a bit frustrating... then I decided to go back to basics and breezed through Passage through Mirkwood, but what deck does not? Real challenge was Journey down the Anduin... simply can't pass the Troll... feel weirds because I've beaten that quest with really weaker decks (at least on paper)... but never ever with a outland deck. Might be just plain bad luck... still...

You should be able to build a host of competitive mono-leadership decks. Mine usually rely on Sword that Was Broken and/or ally Faramir (and / or Visionary Leadership) and using A Very Good Tale to dump out allies.

Mono-lore is a little harder, since by its nature it is kind of a support sphere, but traps can work wonders, and there are plenty of powerful heroes to pull from.

I don't have A very good tale yet. Problems with card draw with leadership... maybe a very good tale correct just that! Tried Timely Aid but it's kind of costy though. And ally Erestor is good, best card draw effect for leadership (in my collection, at least), still, kind of somewhat costy.

Oh you're right--I missed that you don't have the Hobbit boxes yet. For those interested, here's a link with the card pool we're talking about here:

http://ringsdb.com/find?q=c%3AAtS%7CDD%7CSoM%7CCore%7CKD%7CHoN&sort=sphere&view=list

It looks like your best option for card draw in mono-Leadership would be Sneak Attack + Gandalf. You might be able to get away with Valiant Sacrifice, too, depending on the deck.

The more cards you get in your pool, the more viable mono sphere solo decks become.

The strongest cab be Lore with a lot of scrying and controling the Encounter deck, threat management with Lore Aragorn and shadow cards with Burning Brand, healing...

The more cards you get in your pool, the more viable mono sphere solo decks become.

The strongest cab be Lore with a lot of scrying and controling the Encounter deck, threat management with Lore Aragorn and shadow cards with Burning Brand, healing...

That's what I'm trying to implement, yet I fall short to make something that works well outside the Shadow of Mirkwoods cycle.

disregard this

The more cards you get in your pool, the more viable mono sphere solo decks become.

The strongest cab be Lore with a lot of scrying and controling the Encounter deck, threat management with Lore Aragorn and shadow cards with Burning Brand, healing...

That's what I'm trying to implement, yet I fall short to make something that works well outside the Shadow of Mirkwoods cycle.

The best bet for a good solo play is a 2 sphere deck. Tri sphere decks also require more cards to be well balanced (and some heroes that combo well together).

The more cards you get in your pool, the more viable mono sphere solo decks become.

The strongest cab be Lore with a lot of scrying and controling the Encounter deck, threat management with Lore Aragorn and shadow cards with Burning Brand, healing...

That's what I'm trying to implement, yet I fall short to make something that works well outside the Shadow of Mirkwoods cycle.

The best bet for a good solo play is a 2 sphere deck. Tri sphere decks also require more cards to be well balanced (and some heroes that combo well together).

That's what I've realised. And then again, I have a hard time creating Lore/Tactic and Spirit/Leadership decks that work. All my decks are either Leadership/Lore or Spirit/Tactics. Tried some 3-spheres deck, works rather well in most dwarrodelf/mirkwood quests, but impossible (for now) in the Against the Shadow cycle (Solo, I've only be able to beat these scenarios with Tactic/Spirits deck... well, except Encounter at Amon Din... and I suppose I could beat Assault with whatever deck, just don't really want to play that scenario solo anymore...)

Lore/Tactics is the natural home of Ents. Try that.

Yep, Tactics + Spirit and Leadership + Lore always work better when put together. Abd Lore + Tactics is not so bad either.

That's what I've realised. And then again, I have a hard time creating Lore/Tactic and Spirit/Leadership decks that work. All my decks are either Leadership/Lore or Spirit/Tactics.

Sounds about right. I talked about different sphere combinations in this blog post: https://wardenofarnor.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/how-do-the-spheres-combine/ - some of what I said there becomes less relevant as the card pool advances and the spheres bleed into each other more, but with your sort of card pool it'll be pretty applicable, and to sum up the pertinent point here I said that Leadership/Lore and Spirit/Tactics are the most natural combinations for solo, while Lore/Tactics and Leadership/Spirit tend to get very specialised and thus be better suited to 3 or 4 player games. Lore/Tactics in particular really isn't solo viable until a decent way into the card pool because it can't muster the willpower for questing.