5 hours ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

You should have asked here for tips! We would have you loaded up with strategy.

I’ll remember that Thanks man.

11 hours ago, theagesthrough56 said:

Congrats to YepesNopes for his Nightmare run (would love to hear about his win against Return to Mirkwood with a starting threat of at least 35, that must have been epic).

Well, I modified my deck to face these three particular quests. The deck has the capacity to lower its threat by 54 during the course of a game! (3 The Galadhrim's Greeting, 3 Elrond's Counsel and 1 Will of the West) and I put 1 O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! as an extra meaning to deal with the Troll or a bad timed Attercop Attercop spider.

Actually, I sort of cheated in Journey down the Anduin. Of course, with a starting threat of 35 I was forced to engage the troll on turn 1. The first attack was soaked by Frodo bringing my threat up to 39 on turn 1! On the second round I could play O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! from the top of my deck thanks to the wizard pipe, relegating the poor hill troll to the bottom of the encounter deck. I beated the adventure without fighting a hill troll once...

Conflict at the CarrocK is very easy for this deck, so not a big deal here.

But Return to Mirkwood felt epic, or at least for poor old Frodo, who I nominated MVP! (with Firyal's consent) In turn 2 he got caught in a web, just to get killed in turn 3 by the hummerhorns that I was forced to engage due to my high threat. Luckily, Landroval swooped last moment to bring him back (sort of a drastic way to remove a condition from a hero, but effective). After this, Frodo stayed exhausted the whole adventure to prevent the discard pile Tantrum effect. Yet another epic sacrifice from this hobbit!

EDIT: In my opinion Firyal has changed forever the solo playing mode of this game, she trivialises it a lot.

2 hours ago, Yepesnopes said:

Well, I modified my deck to face these three particular quests. The deck has the capacity to lower its threat by 54 during the course of a game! (3 The Galadhrim's Greeting, 3 Elrond's Counsel and 1 Will of the West) and I put 1 O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! as an extra meaning to deal with the Troll or a bad timed Attercop Attercop spider.

Actually, I sort of cheated in Journey down the Anduin. Of course, with a starting threat of 35 I was forced to engage the troll on turn 1. The first attack was soaked by Frodo bringing my threat up to 39 on turn 1! On the second round I could play O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! from the top of my deck thanks to the wizard pipe, relegating the poor hill troll to the bottom of the encounter deck. I beated the adventure without fighting a hill troll once...

Conflict at the CarrocK is very easy for this deck, so not a big deal here.

But Return to Mirkwood felt epic, or at least for poor old Frodo, who I nominated MVP! (with Firyal's consent) In turn 2 he got caught in a web, just to get killed in turn 3 by the hummerhorns that I was forced to engage due to my high threat. Luckily, Landroval swooped last moment to bring him back (sort of a drastic way to remove a condition from a hero, but effective). After this, Frodo stayed exhausted the whole adventure to prevent the discard pile Tantrum effect. Yet another epic sacrifice from this hobbit!

EDIT: In my opinion Firyal has changed forever the solo playing mode of this game, she trivialises it a lot.

I wouldn't have thought of playing O Elbereth Gilthoniel in a non-secrecy deck, but actually, in a high-threat Vilya deck, it makes sense. Genius move, man.

I don’t think you can play O Elbereth Gilthoniel (response) with Vilya (action).

When I need to play it, I do it from the top of the deck, to be able to use Gandalf’s resources as well.

Question about the valor rules for the mode:

I read the first post as you/I start with 6 cards in hand and your mulligan, correct?

Do you receive resources as normal on your hero’s at start and each turn or do you only get them by spending a token?

Same question regarding card draw at the top of each turn.

Yes, you receive the card and resources on the start of each turn as normal. The tokens just give you some extra help in between your starting hand and the scenario setup.

So to take an example, suppose I have two valar tokens from losing Journey Down the Anduin already, and I am playing the SpEowyn/TaGimli/Thalin deck. My opening hand (after mulligan) is 2x Northern Tracker, 2x Winged Guardian, Unexpected Courage, and Gandalf. I use the first Valar token to draw a card, which turns out to be Galadhrim's Greeting. I decide to use the second token to place a resource on Eowyn, so she will be able to put Unexpected Courage on Gimli first turn. I then reveal a card for scenario setup -- lucky break, it's a Hill Troll. Now I move to the first turn and each hero gets a resource, and I draw a new card (Quick Strike). The game proceeds normally as there.

If you have three tokens and use them to place a resource on each hero, it plays exactly as semi-easy or "sleazy" mode would; giving you extra resources like easy mode but not altering the encounter deck.

On 9/3/2018 at 3:49 PM, PigsAreOurEquals said:

I like the idea but only own the first quest. I ll try to submit my result on that one as a sign of support.

Next month will be drawn from the Dreamchaser cycle, which I believe is widely available, so unlike Mirkwood you would be able to purchase them if you would like (you might not want to, of course.) Randomly selected quests will be:

Voyage Across Belegaer (from Grey Havens Deluxe) [heroes are Cirdan and Galdor]

Flight of the Stormcaller (1st AP in cycle) [hero is Leadership Denethor]

Temple of the Decieved (3rd AP in cycle) [hero is Elfhelm]

The top three of this league will help determine what November's quests will be, I wanted substantial warning so that potential players can acquire the quests if they want (and they can find them).

Good to know. I think I’ll hop on, if only to screw around. I don’t actually plan to “win” but it’s a good excuse to play and revisit old quests. I’ll use the following deck:

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9802/mono-spirit-secrecy-ohuh-gandalf-1.0

28 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

Next month will be drawn from the Dreamchaser cycle, which I believe is widely available, so unlike Mirkwood you would be able to purchase them if you would like (you might not want to, of course.) Randomly selected quests will be:

Voyage Across Belegaer (from Grey Havens Deluxe) [heroes are Cirdan and Galdor]

Flight of the Stormcaller (1st AP in cycle) [hero is Leadership Denethor]

Temple of the Decieved (3rd AP in cycle) [hero is Elfhelm]

The top three of this league will help determine what November's quests will be, I wanted substantial warning so that potential players can acquire the quests if they want (and they can find them).

Will the deck construction tiebreaker still include a single core, or just those packs?

Deck construction tiebreaker will include a single core + Grey Havens + Dreamchaser cycle. I figure a single core should always be fair game, since everyone will have one. (Well, unless they started with the Limited Edition Starter...)

When I got home and started actually constructing my deck I realized I’d made a bad decision in including Elven Light with no discard mechanism. So I made a couple changes. Technically that probably disqualifies me but that’s ok.

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9806/mono-spirit-secrecy-ohuh-gandalf-2.0

I beat Journey on the first attempt with no tokens used despite never seeing Light of Valinor, Rescourceful, not seeing Gandalf until the last turn, starting with a Goblin sniper on the board and drawing the 2nd Troll on turn 3. Having Treebeard, Arwen, Hama and Sam in my starting hand saved me.

Conflict defeated first attempt, no tokens used. Again ended up with both Hill Trolls and a Goblin Sniper out before I completed stage 1. But Pelargir Shipwrights are great for soaking damage and the trio of Gandalf, Treebeard, and Spirit Glorfindel are good at taking down trolls. I had the questing strength to power through the Carrock, even with 12 threat in the staging area and once I had Jubayr defending at strength 4 (with Arwen help) it was just a matter of time.

Return to Mirkwood has not gone as well. Two attempts, two failures. The first time I hit both treachery’s raising my threat by 8. I threat out needing just one more turn to power-quest through. Attempt #2 had an Attercop drop on me turn 3 when I wasn’t prepared for it. Combined with being on stage 3 and not being able to play cards, and everything went downhill. I’ll try again later this week.

I successfully Returned to Mirkwood on the third attempt, no tokens used.

I was a little luckier with my draws, avoiding the worst enemies and treachery’s. An Attercop still found me, but I was ready for it, using Treebeard, Gandalf and Glorfindel to do the final damage, though it took 2 rounds to kill and cost me allies Hama and Sam.

After the three games I made a couple more adjustments to the deck, swapping one Celduin traveller, Bilbo, and one Hobbit Pipe for two copies of Gamling and one Will of the West.

1 hour ago, Stevew980 said:

I successfully Returned to Mirkwood on the third attempt, no tokens used.

I was a little luckier with my draws, avoiding the worst enemies and treachery’s. An Attercop still found me, but I was ready for it, using Treebeard, Gandalf and Glorfindel to do the final damage, though it took 2 rounds to kill and cost me allies Hama and Sam.

After the three games I made a couple more adjustments to the deck, swapping one Celduin traveller, Bilbo, and one Hobbit Pipe for two copies of Gamling and one Will of the West.

I thought we couldn't do multiple attempts with 0 tokens?

As I said- I wasn’t too worried about the rules and more concerned with just playing. I can be counted as having used whatever the minimum number of valar tokens was, even though I didn’t need them.

Your score is the number of tokens earned. If you find it more enjoyable not to use them that's fine, but they count against you for scoring all the same. Since you won on the third try, your score would be 2 for that quest.

Stevew980, I didn't see you on the spreadsheet so I added your results there. If I'm counting correctly, you used 43 cards from outside Mirkwood + single core.

Took a break from chores to run through Journey Down the Anduin with my Fastred/Dunhere/Bard. I was a little worried when I didn't see any weapons or armor in my opening hand, even after the mulligan, but it was smooth sailing -- the encounter deck gave me some weak enemies to bounce back to staging until the attachments showed up, so I was able to keep decreasing my threat and clean up with Dunhere. Once he got a couple weapons the Troll was dispatched without ever attacking, and in the end I only popped above 30 threat when Pursued by Shadow popped up at the end.

It's only the 8th and most players have finished the league already. Would a parallel two-handed solo league be a good idea?

Not sure that I totally got the scoring system, but hope that this is correct.... played JdtA three times and added a token each time after taking none for the first attempt, got CatC on the second play using a single token, and beat RtM on the first play, so I posted 2/1/0 for Valar tokens. In each case, the wealthy dwarf, who had become wealthy by stewarding Gondor, bailed out the team by either sneaking or buying an Istari wizard at just the right moment. Praise Eru for a "Stand and Fight" to finally beat JdtA as threat was running dangerously high , and the Istari just happened to already be in the discard pile. The first quest was miserable, as I pulled the second Hill Troll on the first encounter draw the first time around, just no way to beat that starting with 29 threat. A great choice by the moderator, as all three quests were fun to go back and revisit with some of the later cards.

2/1/0 is correct. The quests were randomly selected, so they could have just as easily been Passage through Mirkwood, Escape from Dol Goldur, and Hills of Emyn Muil -- I was actually not very pleased to see Return to Mirkwood be selected by the randomizer, because the threat increases are so much worse for a single-deck player.

I hate to tell you this, but Stand and Fight can't get Gandalf out of the discard pile, since it was ruled that his lack of a sphere disqualified him. I don't think much of that particular ruling, so if you want to pretend you didn't see this message I'll understand.

21 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

I hate to tell you this, but Stand and Fight can't get Gandalf out of the discard pile, since it was ruled that his lack of a sphere disqualified him. I don't think much of that particular ruling, so if you want to pretend you didn't see this message I'll understand. 

Actually, thanks for letting me know that, as this is a lot like golf; you just have to play it straight. I replayed the quest and made it with one Valar point this time as the encounter deck was a smidge kinder, so I appreciate the tip.

Hello,

Maybe I missed it, but where I can find a full explanation of the Grace of the Valar variant invented by Seastan?

Thanks

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/271926-easy-mode-variant-cycle-campaign-variant/

Note that there are a few changes between his variant and what is used in the league. Specifically:

1) There is no "fallen hero" concept or permanent threat issues.

2) You don't need to count the number of rounds -- you may voluntarily choose to take more than one valar token in the case of a loss, but are not required to do so -- and if you do take multiple tokens at once and win, you can backtrack to use less tokens (as long as you are using more tokens than all your losses against the quest).

3) Instead of summing your tokens used across an entire nine-quest cycle, it's just for the three quests in the league.

However, mechanically the tokens work just as described -- after the mulligan step, for each token you have earned, you choose to draw a card or place a resource on one of your heroes. The "group" in the case of this league is the single deck you are using.

Standings after Week One (cards out of single core + Mirkwood in Parens

0 CaffieneAddict (0)

0 Corbetta (0)

0 Yepesnopes (29) [nighmare]

0 Zura (33)

0 dalestephenson (37)

0 Rouxorr (41) [nightmare]

0 throughtheages56 (41)

0 Stevew980 (43)

0 dtwiley (???)

1 Wandalf the Gizzard (9)

1 Orcstalker (28)

1 Authraw (35)

1 Rahlan (39)

3 Velensk (9)

3 Lithicbee (39)

With a maximum of three tokens taken, I think everybody did better than a win in easy mode. CaffieneMode and Corbetta tied for the top spot against this quest, needing no tokens while taking all their cards (and heroes) from core+Mirkwood.

For those who haven't made a deck and played yet, it's not too late. The only deadline that really matters is the 24th.

Kudos to Caffeineaddict and corbetta for this 0 cards! Awesome!

Well, I'm a little bit behind, but I'm away for work for a few days this coming week, so I've been building a deck to take with me. Probably a terrible one, but at least it has a low starting threat after my mistake last time I played Journey Along The Anduin.

Not sure I'll get all the quests played, as I'd like to see some of the outside world, and I've not actually played through the other quests in the Mirkwood cycle - ideally I'd like to play them all in order... but who knows. I'm sure I can fit a few extra quests into my bag at the expense of... clean socks?

One question - you mention a 50-card deck. Is that the lower limit? I'm currently trying to whittle down my deck from about 108 ?

Kidding - it's at about 56, and I aim to reduce it more, but getting to 50 will be a struggle with my "madskillz".