Thought I'd post this here - see if anyone has any recommendations for changes I could make. Looking forward to possibly getting a chance to test this later on this evening! Plus, since its a neutral sphere, it will not ever be on the front page of RingsDB!!

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/2580/gandalf-stridin-solo-1.0

I like the concept! But if you want to mulligan for Strider it needs to be a 3 of.

I like the concept! But if you want to mulligan for Strider it needs to be a 3 of.

Ah yeah, I made that change without noting it in the deck. Dropped Narya to add in the 3rd Strider. Will address that later! I Added in my 3rd proxy that way last night after I had already turned off the computer. Thanks for reminding me!

Why no Support of the Eagles? Also, no A burning Brand?

I actually tweaked the deck significantly, as solo Gandalf in true solo was hard to pull off in many quests that start with threat in the staging area, forcing you to either find a resourceful, strider, or something equivalent to begin. If you didn't find those in starting hands, it flopped badly. So I subbed in Glorfindel, and Lights of Valinor, along with Vanish from Sight, so that as my threat raises I can still pretend to be in Secrecy if needed.

Support of the Eagles is a great suggestion! I found room for it and will try it out hopefully later on this weekend. That will make Gandalf a superb blocker! I don't know how I overlooked that one. Thanks!

A Burning Brand I feel is already covered with Gandalf's Staff, as it allows you to discard a shadow from a non-unique enemy. Yes, it won't work for uniques, but Eagles can be there to hopefully absorb those hits possibly. Gandalf's Staff also offers a little bit more versatility, if there is no defending from our favorite Istari needed. I can see how it might be useful though - but also with Support of the Eagles, you could potentially have a Gandalf blocking for 7! Hopefully blunting any enemies blow.

One hero is risky... Gandalf with his abilities could be comboed with Tactics Boromir, to wich you attach Strider.... and then destroy everything!

I realized I suggested a new version of the deck with Glorfindel and did not post it. My bad!

Here it is: http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/2609/gandalf-trying-to-stridin-solo-4.0

Thought I'd post this here - see if anyone has any recommendations for changes I could make. Looking forward to possibly getting a chance to test this later on this evening! Plus, since its a neutral sphere, it will not ever be on the front page of RingsDB!!

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/2580/gandalf-stridin-solo-1.0

Just as an aside, RingsDB calculates sphere affiliation based on which sphere has the highest number of cards in your deck, but it doesn't consider Neutral in that calculation. So if you build a deck with 49 neutral cards and 1 tactics card, RingsDB will treat it as a Tactics deck.

More broadly, the problem I have with one-hero decks is exactly the one you ran into. Two-hero decks are already pretty hard because they cut your economy by a third, and they reduce the number of starting actions available to you by a third. One-hero decks take that already heavily-gimped start and cut it further in half. There are cards to help with the economy (Resourceful) and the actions (Strider), but with only one resource a round, it will take you 2 or 3 rounds to get them set up even if you draw them, (which is about a 50/50 proposition if you're mulliganing aggressively), and during those 2-3 rounds you're getting worked over by the encounter deck.

In the two-hero meta, heroes who help cover for the economic hit are pretty vital-- specifically, Leadership Denethor and Hero Arwen. I wouldn't say you can't build a decent 2-hero deck without either, but they're definitely the cornerstones of the archetype (Gandalf / Glorfindel is a fine pairing, and I've made a Pippin/Sam deck that worked fine). Leadenethor can drop both a Strider and a Resourceful in the first planning phase, which would greatly speed up a 1-hero start, but the odds of getting both are pretty slim without any other draw. (This is why I like pairing Denethor with Beravor, Galdor, or Erestor in 2-hero decks.)

Really, I can't see 1-hero decks ever becoming a thing capable of beating any except for the very easiest quests unless the developers start releasing cards specifically for it. Like, a hero that gave you 4-X resources per round, where X was the number of heroes you controlled. Or one who gave you +1 resource and +1 card when he was the only hero on the table.

Agree with all your points. Mainly just wanted to do it for thematic sake and also to push the new Strider attachment to its limit, but that did not work nearly as much as I wanted.

Thanks for the clarification on how RingsDB will treat it as a tactics deck. I saw it show up on the front page once or twice with it in the Tactics section, so I figured there was something working under the scene that allowed for that to happen, specifically that I had a bunch of Tactics cards.

I was able to get this to table a few days ago as a 2-hero deck and it worked out pretty well. Strider + Light of Valinor gave me plenty of options, though yes, the lack of a 3rd resource was limiting in some cases. Surprisingly, I never saw a Resourceful in my first game at all, and managed to do just fine, and 2nd game I might have seen one two rounds before the end of the match, so again it was kind of negligible (Gandalf's Staff, Expert Treasure Hunter + Hidden Cache + Wizard Pipes on both Radagast and Gandalf worked wonders, as one player at the table put it: "that is [was] disgusting"). Probably won't try the 1-hero approach again unless something else comes out to support it specifically.