Hey Everyone, we are launching our first One For All challenge! We are going to be trying to take a single deck through every quest in the game! Check it out and lend us your aid! Together we will attempt to thoroughly defeat the forces of Sauron!

https://reflectioninhennethannun.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/one-for-all-july-community-challenge/#more-502

Interesting. I will post some nightmare games in the month

This is a fun project! Hopefully life will slow down a bit at some point and I can knock together a couple of hours to contribute.

Good choice, I've been meaning to build a Dale deck anyhow

After only one game I don't think I will continue to play. I just always think about card I would like to change. I'm not even involved in the game I'm playing. So I will just prefer to play my own Dale version instead of having a bad time. Sorry to let you down. I'm happy to see that people already put many scenario down!

¨I'm not surprised that few players actually record nightmare quest. But I'm surprised that you don't even put them on your sheet. In particular since the original One for All challenge was mostly on nightmare (all quest existing in nightmare was played only in nightmare)

I totally understand. The hope in the future is to expand the challenge should it go well and include things like nightmare mode. As mentioned in the post this is a beta test of sorts!

Thanks for giving it a try!

Hey everyone, here’s the first update on our July Challenge! 33 quests down so far! Check it out and join us if you haven’t already!

https://reflectioninhennethannun.wordpress.com/2018/07/06/one-for-all-july-update-1/

Another thought regarding improvements to the system: You could make the deckbuilding itself a community event, where many players work together with a specific deckbuilding goal (like "build a Rohan deck" or "build a deck based around OHaUH Gandalf"). You'd have to implement some rules to limit one or two people from taking over the whole design though.

Even after building and publishing my One Deck, other people were quick to point out possible improvements (like swapping in Quickbeam). So even experienced deckbuilders can benefit from community input. So it could be exciting to see what a community can build together.

Not to mention, you might see greater participation in the playthroughs if players had a small hand in crafting the deck themselves.

That’s a great idea ? I was mostly trying to start a little simpler to see how things would go. If you have any ideas on how you’d implement that I would definitely be interested to hear it.

the next thought in my mind was to select the deck by submitted suggestions and then poll but building a whole deck would be cool as well!

I think it would be best to up the complexety step by step. So for next month go with a poll for 3-5 decks and once this works go for deck building.

As communication will be an issue I suggest to first have a poll about a Concept (aka Rohan Deck etc.), but for the first time I wouldn‘t mind if a Theme was just selected by you (the challenge was your idea to Start with)

Now comes the tricky part. My base idea is to have „Deck-Core“ which will be altered by the Community. Let‘s Stick with a Rohan Deck for example. Most will use Spirit Théoden and a bunch of Rohan allies. Therefore have the person to propose the deck concept create a corresponding deck. Once it‘s published everyone gets the opportunity to propose 3 (or whatever number seems fit) changes. 1 Change could be considered to be the exchange of 1-3 copies of one card for the same amount of another card. After everyone had a chance to write down their ideas we make polls for them and if a change gets 50% or more up votes it is accepted. I would limit the inital „deck-core“ to 50 cards so we end up with a 50 card deck.

It is a lot of organization and even using stuff like discord the speed of the building process seems rather slow. Another fair point is the possibility that by deciding the changes independently syngergies can be destroyed very easy.

I wouldn’t mind staying with the idea to just have a poll of 3-5 decks and the one to win we use this month. But if more people would like deckbuilding as part of the challenge this is my idea how it could be done.

I think a poll for a choice of decks is a good idea, rather than diving straight into community deck building. Maybe having a poll for the next one or two, and having the deck building running in parallel so it's ready for the one after?

In the solo leagues for Legendary the top finishers are given choice of elements for two months out. There's three main decisions I see in a deck:

1) What is the theme of the deck (trait, key card, etc.)

2) Given the theme, what is the hero lineup?

3) Given the hero lineup, what is the deck contents?

You could farm those choices out to the participants that knock off the most quests, giving 1st place first choice of element, and so forth. This would also serve as incentive to play, though you'd probably want to limit repeat winners. So if A, B, and C played the most in July, you could give them the choice for September:

A) I'll pick the deck contents

B) I'll pick the theme -- I want to play with Hero Dori

C) I want the lineup to be Dori-LeGimli-SpLegolas

A) <sometime later> Here's the decklist.

I'm not opposed to community deckbuilding, that's more-or-less what my stereotypical decks are trying to do after the fact. But such decks are likely to turn out less powerful and/or less interesting than they could be. If we do community deckbuilding then we need to allow a full month for the polls/discussion to drive that process, so again should be done well in advance.

On 7/6/2018 at 4:56 PM, Devaresh said:

Hey everyone, here’s the first update on our July Challenge! 33 quests down so far! Check it out and join us if you haven’t already!

https://reflectioninhennethannun.wordpress.com/2018/07/06/one-for-all-july-update-1/

If someone is interested, here are some notes I took of the games I played (if this is still relevant: Mountain of Fire Spoilers?

1) Stone of Erech
In itself this isn't a too difficult quest, and the Willpower Brand offers helps a lot to close out the quest before the night overwhelms you. However this was one of my worst plays of the quest ever. I had quite a slow start and the first night objective was already gone when I arrived at stage two. Then it was a pretty smooth sailing, until the lord of the dead showed up. Man does Dale blow when all text boxes go blank! A Sneak attack Gandalf also didn't really help (his effect can't trigger, as it would happen after he enters play - and then his text is already blanked, right?). Hoping to get this over quick I took an unnessecary undefended attack, which got Galadriel killed (Shadow card: +4 Attack) "Luckily" it was already midnight and the loss of willpower, didn't really matter as it was battle questing now.
Score: 120

2) The old Forest
First game I took a gamble: I had all my important attachments, but no allies. With the possibility of a three card draw first turn for only one ressource this didn't seems to bad, but I didn't draw into allies in time and got location locked. Upps.
Second game I got my allies and smashed through the quest. Old man willow got his 12 damage, but Tom didn't want to show up
Score: 98

3) Fog on the Barrow-Downs
With Galadriel negating the threat increase from stage two I decided to turtle a little and build up quite a nice army. Not really seeing what could stop me, I travelled to the standing stones and entered the great barrow. Looks like I didn't play the quest in a long time, as I really couldn't remember I am only allowed to keep as many allies as I have enemies engaged (ofc zero :D). With 80% of my dale allies and attachments either dead or back in my hand, Sneak attack Gandalf and a brave Warden of Healing freed me from my grave and a combination of traffic from Dale and Faramir shipped the quest home. The Encounter deck was tame after I got lost in the barrow and could have punished my overextension. Again no help from Tom
Score: 89

4) Mount Doom
I had a very rough battle with this quest during my first campaign playthrough and was quite interrested how Dale would do against it. The quest demands high willpower and action advantage, mainly from heroes. And while the heroes have nice willpower, once attachments are in place, the deck has no other form of readying than spare hood and cloak, making readying a hero a three card combo (lookout, hood and a long lake trader to repeat it).

First I tried to only focus on questing, completely ignoring sentries and warriors, what didn't get me past stage three, when I got overwhelmed by enemies/threat. After a few tries I think I got quite a tame opener (where I got a surging treachery that revealed another card in my first two games in round one, instantly forcing allies to have enough willpower) with a plain of gogoroth and a mordor road with no allies in play. I had altered my game plan so far that I would go for sentries once my threat would pass 40 (as nastier enemies could now engage).
I managed to pass stage one with only one lookout, Mirror and silver harve in play allowing me to pretty much pick what I need from my deck, while saving some ressources. Galadriel was a great help, as she handled tests up to four cards on her own (I found you pass at least 3/4 tests when sending as much willpower as there are cards to discard - ofc upping the amount a little in the later parts as failing would have been a HARD hit).
Advancing from stage two to three (while only adding a long lake trader to my ally count) I decided it is time to go for maximum speed and brought every ally to the table I could muster. It was a tight race and I think I again had quite some luck, as there were no tests beside the one forced by stage three (which I had to pass, as two nazguls were wating in the staging area). It still took three rounds to get through stage three. Could have been done in two, but then I wouldn't have anything left to travel to mount doom. Having two stacked up sentries helped as I could handle enemies and didn't instantly loose to the first greater foe revealed. Once at mount doom and in stage four it was easy pickings. My allies mustered for 19 Willpower (with the help of Faramir, who also was a HUGE boon for the tests) leaving every hero ready for the final test, which was passed easily.
Score: 138

I am pretty happy with the performace of the deck, especially against Mount Doom, which has quite some ally hate. I think I prefer Galadriel over Lanwyn (which I ran so far) and her package of Mirror and Harve. One thing I really missed was a form of shadow cancellation, even though I don't think it would have made a notable change in the outcome of my games.

EDIT:
Just played "We must away, ere break of day" before going to bed. There isn't much to say, except that emptying the encounter deck, while keeping your threat low is pretty easy, so i didn't want to make a new post. The main danger are the treacheries as roast them or boil them, wind-whipped rain and hungry troll all are serious trouble for this game plan. But as most of the encounter deck gets discarded I only got hit by one roast, which killed three allies.
Score:93

Thanks for sharing the summaries! These will help a lot in talking about the overall results! If anyone else has any notes like this they want to share please do!

Two more quests before the weekend is over

The Black Gate opens
The quest opend great with trading a warrior of dale for a harmless location (which even would proof handy later on), Nenya and Galadriel's Mirror got into play for a total of 4 threat. I had two sentries and sneak attacks with a Gandalf, but neither allies to really help questing nor king of dale to pay th sentries (this was my hand after my mulligan, the inital hand was abysmal). I looked for king of dale with the mirror, only to see I would have gotten it next turn and a sentry got discarded (what would end up being no big deal as I didn't get armor attachments until much later). Still first turn was ok. Next turn I tried to pull out a harve to stop the discard from the mirror, only to have it discarded. Disappointed by the mirror I discarded it later to a shadow effect as king of dale is a necessity, nenya kept me from increasing my threat by 3 or more each turn and bow of yew on my trusty warrior made the enemies killable (either alone by him or with Aragorns help). I tried to minimize my losses, but as I wasn't able to set up a defender with more than 2 armor (except the occasional Gandalf) every enemie hurt and the direct damage started to kill of people (as a warden of healing threw himself in the way to stop saurons mouth from murdering a defenseless hero). In round six I revealed 5 enemies, got pushed above 66 threat and faced 8 attacks, killing each and every ready defender and hero

I feel this deck should do better against this quest as just one attachment boost the sentries to a point where they survive a hit of every enemie and spare hood and cloak allows for a ton of defends and Faramir (if he'd show up) should keep questing in check. Two more ressources definitely seem very possible. Even though I am not happy with the result, I don't feel like replaying the quest right now as there are still many quests left to try.
Score: 6 Ressources

The Tower of Cirith Ungol
Nothing too special about this quest. Took my time in stage one, as I wanted a set up sentry and enough damage to kill the watcher in one go before travelling to it. This was the tense moment of the quest. After the watcher's destruction some orcs tore themself apart, but a ton of archery damage piled up. As I didn't have Nenya and couldn't play my wardens I countered by spitting out allies. The orcs were no match and Frodo soon free. The final escape took one round as Faramir let my little sneaky army out of Cirith Ungol, even though the watcher made a comeback only to be demolished with ease.
The only danger I see here is the first stage, as you might be forced to advance before you are ready, as location lock can become a serious threat. If you want to kill Schagrat, who can only be damaged and defended by heroes AND can only take combat damage, the quest would go on for a while (the most damage possible is Frodo, Brand and Bard attacking together for 8 with the Frodo who can boost his attack, but you also have to find a way to defend his 5 attack damage). As leaving him up has no downside (even in campaign mode you can just sacrifice something like the mithril armor; you could even say to make it more thematic ) I just kept my threat low enough to ignore him.
Score: 95

Finished Nin-in-Eilph. I had never played that quest....so after two stalled attempts to get a handle on the encounter deck, I was able to claim victory. Sinking Bog is terrible, but especially for a Dale deck.

I enjoyed participating in the challenge. I think one positive side effect of the challenge is that lots of players get to comment on the same deck. It is a good community event also. Thanks for thinking it up.

This deck is very strong against Helm's Deep, at least if you take Poisoned Counsels and don't draw it early. This was definitely the easiest play of Helm's Deep I've had.

1) Attack on Dol Guldur

I ever only played this one at the fellowship event in epic multiplayer mode, but remembered that my buddy and I got some serious beating from the encounter deck. And round one went exactely that way. I had to take a defense with Brand against the starting enemy. Necromancers Rage was the shadow card and instead of taking one damage Brand was dead. Obviously the loss of him during round two was not to be compensated...
Round two didn't really start well either. I lost the sentry I hold on to, to the mirror while looking for king of dale. And got a host of Dol Guldur turn one. But what first looked like one of the worst cards to get turned out to be pretty ok. With only one threat, archery and progress removed at the end of the round I could ignore him for now. Managed to kill of the starting enemy and got a nice amount of willpower ready, not revealing another enemy during stage one and got the army of Dol Guldur, though I was miles away from power of Lorien, I really don't see how you could achieve 30 progress. However from there on the Quest was pretty easy. I had enough WP to get the benefical effect of the stage of my choice and obviously got rid of the host, what also net some serious damage on Dol Guldur. The random effects were ok, as the city strength went up once, I had a trader or warden to discard and had only dupes of Faramir or king of dale in hand as I was forced to discard it.
It's really all about getting a good start and using the three turns of "set-up" (I also used the response on stage one when ever possible).
Score: Forgot to to this ?

2) A Journey to Rhosgobel

Ready to spend a long night on this one, I was really glad it only took two attempts. The first one followed the strategy Seastan used in his "one deck run" and I tried to clean Rhosgobel with the outriders while keeping our eagle friend alive with the Wardens. My Hand was good as I got the outrider, a warden, two bows and two traffics, meaning I could play the outrider turn one. However utimately only one athelas showed up and my warden got killed by a treachery right after he entered play.

I changed the plan for game two and wanted to advance to stage 2 as fast as possibe (and managed to do so right on turn one) to actually use the action on stage two (something I never ever did before). This worked wonders as I first got a forest grove and the next round an athelas, which was guarded by another forest grove, so three of these precious healing herps were pretty much found. But even with such an unblievable lucky opener it was a close game. A Spider got revealed followed by some bats, which only Wyliador could defend. While Galadriel picked up herbs like there would be no tomorrow, Brand gave his life once more, this time to a shadow card of an attack he didn't even defend. However one northern realm lookout and three spare hoods gave me all the action advantage I needed. And I stormed into Radagast's house to remove the 13 damage already piled up on Wyliador.
Score: 81

In order to consolidate threads a little bit I will start posting all update here in this thread! Way to go everyone with 62 quests completed so far! Here is our second update!

https://reflectioninhennethannun.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/one-for-all-july-update-2/

I didn't read the rules closely and didn't realize completions in Easy mode are not of interest. I've removed my entry from the Battle of Pellenor Fields. After the third loss on normal mode I dropped to Easy and steamrolled it. I'm sure it can be beaten on normal mode (since Sentry + Hauberk + Raiment can survive a witch-king hit), but I was ready to try something different.

It seems to me if we only record our successes, our collective win rate is going to be biased high. If someone else takes down Pellenor on the first try, that may end up being the only entry there. Are we more interested in seeing *if* the deck can beat all quests, or *how often* we expect the deck to beat quests? (Speaking only for myself, I'm more interested in the latter).

The card draw for this Dale deck is insane.

For me the idea behind a one deck 2 rule them all, is to see IF we can do it at least once.

Ofc the losses should be reported. I don‘t know how you go about the challenge, but I pick a quest and go for it until I win, meaning I don‘t have unrecorded losses for quests I haven‘t won so far.

In general this kind of community Event is better suited to check the IF than the HOW OFTEN, at least in my perspective. Not everyone plays the same quest the same and how often I win for me is more of a personal question. Or to say it different: I only care how well I do against a quest, but if I struggle, I just wanna see if anybody can do, what I, so far, could not.

I guess I'm not very interested in the "IF", in that I think any strong deck can beat any non-nightmare quests given enough attempts, absent some sort of mechanical interaction that makes it predictably impossible in advance (like Erestor against The Road to Isengard).

I don't actually go for it until I win, because I'm not patient enough. I never play the same quest with the same exact deck more than three times in a row without altering difficulty, and while I'm impressed with NathanH taking down Dol Goldur on the 29th try, I don't think that would be fun for me at all. OTOH, if there was some community event where "Everybody try to take down Dol Goldur three times", that sounds like fun. And if enough people try, *somebody* would win -- and by counting the attempts we'd have some rough community estimate for success rate. I'd love to see a feature on ringsdb where decks can be connected to a quest log, so you can try a deck and record your results.

Would the community estimate match a personal win rate? Probably not, skill matters and your win rate would likely be above the norm and mine may well be below the norm. But if I take a deck against a quest and beat it first try, I can't say anything much about my personal win rate, other than it's not 0%. It would take a *lot* of attempts at a given quest before I could statistically narrow down my personal win rate to within 20% -- but with a community, it might be possible to generate enough attempts to establish a statistically useful estimate, and use that as a rough comparison with other decks. I think that would be totally cool.

It probably wouldn’t match personal win rate, but it would be interesting to see what that might be. It would help pin down the relative difficulty level of quests.

. . .

And see how I shape up to all of you.