I've been going through the campaign for the first time and this quest has been driving my crazy. I'm trying to take Sam, Merry, and Pippin all the way to Mount Doom in solo. Due to the resolution of the quest (recording enemies that escape), I have been trying for a perfect run, not knowing how difficult it would be. Three decks and 30+ attempts later, I finally succeeded. I'm asking for advice on how I could make my deck better since I'm just an amateur deck builder at this point and I feel like I had a lot of luck with my win. (I had great luck with Sting, I had one lucky turn where I was able to Sneak Attack Gandalf and Beorn into the same combat phase, and I also pulled an opportune The Dark Lord's Summons on the 2nd to last turn which cleared the Crossroads.)

My first deck tried to set up Straight Shot with Speak Your Promise! and Frodo (LoS). I could pull it off an average of twice per game, but it was rarely set up when I needed it the most and I found myself sometimes using Speak Your Promise! when I needed to ready Frodo as another defender.

The deck that won it for me was this , after about 8 attempts. I needed Frodo (MoF) for a powerful start and would sometimes use him to trigger Frodo's Intuition on the first turn (the added willpower is great since it's easiest to place progress on the first turn). I mulligan for any starting hand that would allow me to handle a first turn Oliphaunt, even if it's Feint or Rosie Cotton for a defense boost. Also, there are 6 allies in the deck that can engage enemies out of phase. I would discard Westfold Outrider after combat to engage an Oliphaunt so my allies weren't affected. Another neat trick is to engage a Haradrim Soldier during the planning phase; Sam can defend for free since his response will trigger after the Soldier's forced effect and Sam will go into the quest phase with +1 to all stats (not to mention the bonus card from Pippin). I'm thinking of swapping out a couple of events for Master of the Forge. I think it was Sting that really helped with my win, so having Master of the Forge to fish it out next time would be nice.

Any thoughts? (I own cards up to the Voice of Isengard deluxe + all sagas but I'm fine with proxying).

I'd love to give tips, even though I have neither played the quest nor own that many player cards; but your deck won't show up when I follow the link. It says you're using too many heroes. At any rate, a perfect run of JttC with a Hobbit deck is impressive, so I don't know if there would be too much too improve.

Thanks for the heads up. I've just updated the deck and moved the 4th hero (Frodo) to the sideboard. Hopefully that works.

I checked it out, it seems like a pretty tight deck! I myself don't have any tips for you personally, sorry. You might want to get some deckbuilding giants to help you out

First of all it is very hard to get a perfect run on this one. It is the moment where the saga get really hard. You will have many hard times with battle of pelenor and then black gate open and mount doom.

About the deck I try to rely a lot on allies on such decks. When you have a low threat you get weak heroes. So trying to put attachment and ready tools on them is less efficient. And there is plenty good tools to play with allies with a low threat. They are the top cards of the secrecy keyword (celduin traveler, ithilien lookout, rivendel scout, timely aid). They work well with a very good tale to make an efficient way to get many and/or big allies early in the game.

I'm not a big fan of tactics in solo play, and especially on a context of heroes with a low threat. That is why I choose Spirit Merry over Tactics Merry all the time.

I have two decklists that I don't play often but who can give you an idea of what I talk about:

With spirit Merry: http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/67078

With tactics Merry: http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/6026

Assuming you have earned the Valiant Warrior boon earlier in the campaign, all you need to do is play a copy of Ceorl or Fearless Scout to enable the use of Hunting Party. Hunting Party would let you discard the Oliphaunts without ever having to engage them.

So keep a leadership resource each time you go to the quest (you can keep one and do a sneak attack or this depending the situation). You get screwed if a treachery get him later on the quest phase but it has very few chance to appear.

This card won't be enough to have this clean run easy, though because it is still a quest where 2 cards are revealed each turn + a location who grow each turn (the cross road himself). Is nightmare version was the fifth hardest for your one deck @Seastan and it was not the nightmare cards who were responsible I think.

Good luck!

Thanks for the replies.

@Rouxxor Those look like great decks. Unfortunately, I chose to permanently increase my threat by 2 rather than take The Searching Eye burden which makes staying in and getting into secrecy a little more tricky right from the start. At one point in I retconned that decision to try out a Timely Aid type deck - it worked reasonably well but I wanted to go for a deck where I didn't have to rely on being in secrecy for the power plays.

@Seastan Hunting Party looks excellent for this quest, especially since there will always be an enemy in play at the beginning of the quest phase. I chose the Noble Hero boon though (so Sam could get Leader of Men) so maybe using Mighty Warrior+Fearless Scout would be a good bet.