I imagine a fair number of you have at least seen my blog even if you're not regular readers:

https://wardenofarnor.wordpress.com/

Here's something I've had in mind as a possibility pretty much since I started the blog and figure now is as good a time as any to do it - I like doing deckbuilding challenges, but I'm not especially good at coming up with interesting ones to do, which is where you guys come in.

I'd like to crowdsource some interesting ideas for deckbuilding challenges I can do if you have them. They can be whatever level of specific or vague you like. You can restrict the card pool I use (progression-style, minimum purchase, random or specific selection of packs, whatever), stipulate using specific cards or combos, target a specific quest or just ask for a working deck that fits the other conditions. Just try to make them interesting.

Obviously depending on how many suggestions I get I may or may not be able to do all challenges people give me, but for each challenge I do I will put a post on the blog talking through my deckbuilding process and then have either a written play-session report or a video of me attempting a quest with the deck. If I'm doing a video for a given challenge I might actually just stream it, though finding time to stream may be difficult for me over the next month.

Oh, and of course I'll post in this thread to let everyone know when I've done a challenge.

So if you can think of any deckbuilding challenges you'd find it interesting to see someone attempt, please post in this thread and I'll see if I can get it done!

RNG all 3 heroes and a quest. You can play on sleazy mode (full encounter deck, start with 2 resources per hero). No Songs, no Steward.

I enjoy the fact that you make a point of including lesser-used cards in The Line Unbroken, generally including each card at least once. Here's a suggestion: Randomly choose heroes (pick 3 out of 5, or else 2 out of 3 and choose the last hero). When you build your deck, at least a third of the cards in the deck (17 in a 50 card deck) must have a RingsDB popularity of 1: http://hallofbeorn.com/LotR?Sort=Sphere_Type_Cost&Popularity=1&PopularityOp=eq

It won't be an especially strong deck (though there are some decent dwarf cards in that list), but I imagine that this will present some tough deckbuilding choices and result in an interesting, unique deck.

Edit: Alternatively, you could have half your deck consist of cards with a popularity of 2 or less: http://hallofbeorn.com/LotR?Sort=Sphere_Type_Cost&Popularity=2&PopularityOp=lteq

What fun! I miss the deckbuilding challenges we did a few times on the forums, this reminds me of those.

Okay, here's my challenge: Defeat A Shadow of the Past without using any Lore, Leadership, or Spirit cards.

Make Forth Eorlingas work with a medium to high threat deck.

Build a deck with only Warrior heroes and one copy of each ally with the Warrior trait and win Battle of Pelennor Fields or Helm's Deep with it (doesn't have to be a solo game). Hall of Beorn lists 40 such allies spread across neutral, tactics, spirit, and leadership.

Random Minimum Purchase with the added caveat that you must use at least one card from each pack and two cards from each expansion.

Build a deck that revolves around Mutual Accord.

Attachments only.

Attachments only.

That's easy. Tankagorn would have, what, 15 from his toys, 12 from the useful Signals, 3 Unexpected Courage. Then probably Weapons and Armor for Beregond. And Glorfindel and his toys.

Use only cards that begin with a certain letter (the word a counts0.

Use only cards that begin with a certain letter (the word a counts0.

I've thought about doing this sort of thing before. I think I came to the conclusion that the best letter was G. But that was a while back and the card pool has grown since then.

Use only cards that begin with a certain letter (the word a counts0.

I've thought about doing this sort of thing before. I think I came to the conclusion that the best letter was G. But that was a while back and the card pool has grown since then.

Gondor's Steward (aka Steward of Gondor), doesn't count Seastan!!!

Play Mount Gram with no captured cards except your two extra heroes.

Try to construct as many viable decks as you can from the whole card pool without reusing any cards.

Try to construct as many viable decks as you can from the whole card pool without reusing any cards.

We recently played through the Core Set and Shadows of Mirkwood like this (what we actually did was use only the cards we had, which meant 3xeverything + some extra core set cards). There is just about enough for this. It was really fun. I wouldn't like to do any of the other cycles like this though.

On 22/01/2017 at 2:29 PM, sappidus said:

Attachments only.

I picked this and a challenge suggested on the Warden of Arnor facebook page as the first two suggestions to try. Here's the blog post discussing my deckbuilding process: https://wardenofarnor.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/deckbuilding-challenges-no-attachmentsall-attachments/

I'll be streaming my attempts to actually beat a quest or two with these decks this Sunday, 8pm GMT, at www.twitch.tv/pocketwraith if anyone's interested in watching.

A Rohan deck that can take Steward's fear Nightmare.

Build the absolute, ultimate, best solo-deck you think you can build.

EDIT: No sideboard

On 1/22/2017 at 1:55 PM, 987654321 said:

Use only cards that begin with a certain letter (the word a counts0.

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On 02/03/2017 at 3:24 PM, PocketWraith said:

I'll be streaming my attempts to actually beat a quest or two with these decks this Sunday, 8pm GMT, at www.twitch.tv/pocketwraith if anyone's interested in watching.

Just under 2 hours until the stream!

Going live now!

www.twitch.tv/pocketwraith

Turned in rather late, but it was fun to watch! Some real nailbiters Especially Assault on Osgiliath was tense till the last card^^

Well, those games were... interesting. Turned out a bit tougher than I expected, maybe I should've picked some easier quests. I think the decks could've performed better with some better luck on the encounter deck draws, and perhaps also some more considered play on my part - decks with weird restrictions like these ones need to be played a bit more carefully than decks which are just built to be straight up powerful.

As far as I know there isn't an easy way for me to divide up the twitch VOD, so I'm thinking I'll just export the whole thing to youtube, but I'll try to find the time tomorrow to go through and note in the description when each separate game begins. Thanks to everyone who came and watched, or who watches on youtube once the VOD is up there!

I forgot to actually link that VOD here. Here it is.

I will be getting back to some more of the proposed challenges hopefully soonish (though some of them are proving harder to build for than I anticipated), but for now, this Sunday I'll be streaming my attempts at Seastan's hero auction. The challenge for that was more in the bidding than actually getting the deck to work, but it still should be interesting if anyone wants to watch.

https://wardenofarnor.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/deckbuilding-challenge-the-middle-earth-hero-auction/

8pm (BST) this Sunday, www.twitch.tv/pocketwraith.