If you can't get down to 50 cards that's fine. 50 cards should have been described as the minimum.

Another run with another deck, based on Dunehere, the worst of my solo deck: http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/6030

Firs try I loose on a 10 threat location revelead when they was already a active location. I was unable to get enough willpower to equal the staging area, so I can't travel to it, so I can't have enough willpower so I can't travel... I loose on a very few turns ^^

Second try I was able to get more willpower, and to block many times with a powerful Fastred (captain of gondor, Golden Shield, arwen boost) to manage my threat and I attack many time with a not that strong Dunhere since I only found one weapon during the first 10 turns. I use carefully my test of will and hasty stroke on very destructive effects and manage to stand even some bad turns where multiple enemies with small threat come out. I do not kill the troll until I get enough willpower to get the stage 2 on one turn. I know there is still 2 necromancer's treachery thad deal one damage to every exhaust character on among 30 cards and if any came when I'm staging out I'm probably unable to recover the lost of those 7 allies. No one is revealed but I fail to do so for one point (I reveal 8 threat :x). I clean again the staging area and have to do it again. I take +6 threat but nothing else horrible. I still have to deal with 6 enemies, and 3 engage me even with my galadhrim greetings. I manage to keep everyone alive and kill two of them. Then I have to block less, don't reveal anything and kill on a few turns the enemies that stay on the staging area.

So I get already one valor point.

And then Conflict at Carrock

I experience 4 time a very similar game: I achieve to delay the arrival of the troll until the turn 5 or 6 (the maximum is 7 in the nightmare) with a decent threat (like 26). After that the threat of the staging area explode and I'm unable to egal it with my willpower so I go under 34 in a few turns. I sometime can kill 2 troll in the staging area before that happens but then I have the subsequent problem:
- I have hard time to defend against 5/6 or even 7 attack. Especially when this happen twice per turn;
- It is really long to kill 5 defense enemies with Dunhere even if he is perfectly build up.

With many tries (and many valor point) I would be able to pass it, I got a little bit unlucky on location. But then I would have to face return to mirkwood who is even harder. I don't want to struggle that hard and I prefer to retry with another deck, and let that poor Dunhere deck on his box. It is not strong enough to face nightmare (in normal mode it would have been way more easier for many reasons).

On 9/5/2018 at 8:34 PM, 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).

Cool, I'm lucky enough to have these already. Some months I don't manage to play 3 quests so I think I will start early...

Here's how we did against Conflict at the Carrock (cards out of single core + Mirkwood in Parens)

0 Wandalf the Gizzard (9)
0 Velensk (9)
0 yepesnopes [nightmare] (28)
0 Eyeballertbb (30)
0 Zura (33)
0 Authraw (35)
0 dalestephenson (37)
0 Rahlan (39)
0 Rouxorr [nightmare] (41)
0 throughtheages56 (41)
0 stevew980 (43)
1 CaffieneAddict (0)
1 Orcstalker (28)
3 Lithicbee (39)
8 Corbetta (0)

For the most part the trolls went down easily, but both of our minimum purchase contestants failed to make it through.

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

0 Velensk (9)
0 yepesnopes [nightmare] (28)
0 Eyeballertbb (30)
0 Zura (33)
0 dalestephenson (37)
0 Rouxorr [nightmare] (41)
0 throughtheages56 (41)
0 stevew980 (43)
1 CaffieneAddict (0)
1 Wandalf the Gizzard (9)
1 Authraw (35)
1 Rahlan (39)
2 Orcstalker (28)
6 Lithicbee (39)
8 Corbetta (0)

The final quest is due Sep 26th at 11pm EDT, which means it's not too late to join up and add your results.

The final quest is due Sep 26th at 11pm EDT, which means it's not too late to join up and add your results.

It is a little bit weird, since the results only influence who choose scenario for November why do you have an empty space between the end of Septembre league and the beginning of October league? Of course we can begin october league whenever we want, so does @PigsAreOurEquals but if we don't this let 26 days instead of a month and I don't see what is the gain.

Still a lot of powerful heroes in this October league. I will again probably play it with several decks ^^

It's mostly for my convenience, so that I'm not trying to close one league and open the next at the same time. I also wanted to have a fixed time-of-week for reporting results. With that said, there's really no structural limitation to prevent anyone from playing the quests anytime after September 26th if they want -- or starting the next month's quests early.

I'm trying to decide whether to go with a Noldor deck next month or something with LeDenethor (monosphere Gondor?) I may flip a coin.

Ok. Now I understand your choice :). You can do both, I play LeDenethor in my Noldor deck ^^

I give another try with my mono spirit secrecy deck. I like a lot this deck and I hope to make great results with. But I begin with 3 insane game with the 10 threat location and combo with it in the first 3 turns (with a location that I'm forced to travel to, with another of those location). I write down the 3 valor point but I never use it since I want try to win without.

Finally I have a more classic game, with only this location on turn two, but with the ability to travel to it ^^. I etablish a plan that I repeat also for conflict at carrock: stall the game and draw almost my entire deck. and choose precisely who I want to engage. It was two easy win, except the moment where I think I will loose a hero because of the snake, but I don't since I was able to prevent the damage with Frodo ^^.

Then Return to mirkwood. As usually I need to be able to draw many cards to get many threat reduction cards. But it does not happen that good. I get my pipe very late in the game, and they get wiped quite immediately by treachery. So I just play an Elfhelm and finish quite fast the game.

On 9/3/2018 at 5:22 AM, dalestephenson said:

It's OK to make runs with other decks if you just want to try them, and add them to the spreadsheet, but only your first entry will be considered the "official" entry.

If I know that I would have immediately make my "official" run instead of having fun with nightmare with a deck that can win the contest anyway since it have too many cards outside the cycle. Next time I will be more prepared ^^.

Because I just do a perfect: no loose with a deck with only cards (heroes include) from the packs.

In each game I mulligan because I don't have steward of gondor in hand. And each time I was able to find it within the two first turns, two times thanks to Beravor. I put steward to Eowyn, and I use Theodred ability on himself or Eowyn depending on my need. Beravor have 2 purpose and need his unexpected courage to make both:
- Defend with fancy equipment (burning brand, defense signal);
- Draw 2 cards

I usually use henamarth at the end of combat phase, I don't like have it exhausted during the turn (for the necromancer treachery that may kill it, but also because I may miss his 1 attack). When I already have Grimbeorn in play, Bee Pastures in staging area and no enemy I use henamarth ability before the travel phase to choose if I want to shuffle the encounter or not.

I never use Son of Arnor ability, it could have been combo with forest snare but I usually was able to kill the enemies on the turn I engage them so they never stay in staging area. The only enemies who get trapped in a snare where an early Attercop and a hill troll... during conflict at carrock.

I always as plenty of chumpblocker: Snowbourn Scout who can get back for really cheap with Stand and Fight. I only sacrifice one of them but I was happy to have them in case something goes bad.

I'm quite impressed by the efficiency of this 50 cards deck with almost only core set cards. Way more powerful that deck I use to build back on this time ^^. I get many resources, draw many cards and make a total control over the encounter deck quite quickly and them I'm able to low my threat to 0. If I have to do this challenge another try I think I will play only one will of the west and probably play a second Gleowine.

I hope Angmar (5th cycle) will be selected by the winner :).

I thought Return to Mirkwood would be the bane of every solo deck, between the unfair threat rises, Attercop, and Gollum's Bite. But I got lucky and others demonstrated their skill. Here's how we did against the third quest (cards out of single core + Mirkwood in parense)

0 CaffieneAddict (0)
0 Orcstalker (28)
0 Yepesnopes [nightmare] (28)
0 eyeballertbb (30)
0 Authraw (35)
0 dalestephenson (37)
0 throughtheages56 (41)
1 GIBraag (0)
1 Wandalf the Gizzard (9)
1 Velensk (9)
1 Rouxxor [nightmare] (41)
2 stevew980 (43)
3 Zura (33)
4 Corbetta (0)
4 Naverag (14)
12 Lithicbee (39)

And now for the final standings of our first ever solo league:

0 Yepesnopes [nightmare] (28)
0 eyeballertbb (30)
0 dalestephenson (37)
0 throughtheages56 (41)
1 CaffieneAddict (0)
1 GIBraag (0)
1 Authraw (35)
1 Rouxxor [nightmare] (41)
2 Wandalf the Gizzard (9)
2 Orcstalker (28)
2 stevew980 (43)
3 Zura (33)
4 Velensk (9)
7 Naverag (14)
12 Corbetta (0)
18 Lithicbee (39)

Four players managed to complete all three quests without taking tokens. First place was Yepesnopes, despite being one of two nightmare players. Yepesnopes gets to choose the cycle for November's league, and his/her deck is here:

http://www.ringsdb.com/deck/view/119344

Second place was eyeballertbb, who gets to choose a quest to include once the cycle is chosen. His/her deck is here:

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9880/september-solo-league-mirkwood-cycle-1.0

I took third and get to choose a quest to exclude once the first two have spoken. My deck is here:

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9880/september-solo-league-mirkwood-cycle-1.0

Yepesnopes used an Elrond/Gandalf/Frodo Vilya deck to cruise to victory, eyeballertb used Leadership Gimli with Eowyn/Theodred from the core, and I used Dunhere with Fastred and Spirit Bard. Fourth place throughtheages56 used LoDenethor with SpMerry and Folco.

You're welcome to continue to add additional entries to the spreadsheet if you wish. Rouxxor has added several runs with different decks, and even ran a core/mirkwood deck (0 outside) against the regular quests for zero tokens. For my part I'm trying to test how many Valar tokens you need for a wholly unsuitable deck -- using my stereotypical Eagles deck (mono-tactics Thalin/Gimli/Legolas drawn through Khazad-Dum) I took 21 tokens to beat Journey down the Anduin and 20 tokens to defeat Conflict at the Carrock -- I haven't done Return to Mirkwood yet but I suspect it will be higher.

Thanks for playing, and I'm looking forward to next month's league.

Annoyed with Carrock for that 1 Valar token....

That was good fun. Need to find some time to do next month's challenge, as almost all of my weekends are booked up.

Now is the time to discuss any suggestions for altering the league mechanics/scoring/tiebreakers. There's already been some discussion in the parallel BGG thread:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2052446/september-solo-league-mirkwood-cycle

Personally, I'd like to see using the cards from the cycle/deluxe/core count more towards the score, rather than just a tiebreak, as that makes deck building a more important aspect than just using a normal power deck against the quests.

5 minutes ago, CaffeineAddict said:

Personally, I'd like to see using the cards from the cycle/deluxe/core count more towards the score, rather than just a tiebreak, as that makes deck building a more important aspect than just using a normal power deck against the quests.

Since there is multiple 0 score you can't make a score that matter (that get you a spot in the top3) even with a power deck.

Here is what I post on BGG:

Quote

Congratulations! This first league was pretty, with a decent number of participant. Great job!

I agree with you about the "fun" aspect of the league required. Don't put heavy restriction (like winning 3 times the same quest) or very few peoples will participate.

It is even more important since, right now, the point system is not good enough. We don't really care since it is for fun. But it will be really complicated to make a competitive league out of it anyway.

Actually the only way to win the contest is to:
- Make a score of 0 (if you don't there is no point to even finish your run);
- Register a deck with few (should be none if at least 5 people are looking for the win) cards oustide the cycle and the pack.

And the optimal strategy is, in fact, to wait until the end of the contest to make your run, and to perform it with a deck slightly better (for tiebreaker matter) that the previous 0 points champion. If everybody was doing so it would be very problematic. Hopefully players don't do this league for the win ;).

If we must discuss about a more fair system I advice you to allow multiple registration. Sure player can use time to get better results. I don't see that problematic. I see the pros: player will be even more involved in the contest, trying to beat each other. A nice competition.

If you want to force people to accept a defeat instead of retry over and over until they got a perfect score you can add a rule "only one try per deck (can't play the same hero twice, can't have the same number of cards oustide of the packs for example).

But this is not that important. We want to play the october league as soon as possible :p.

My fear is that making card/hero restrictions part of the score instead of a tiebreaker will drive it to be a minimum purchase league instead of a play-what-you-want league. That's not *necessarily* a bad thing, but it's a different thing. After a few days of comments, I'll put up polls here and at BGG to see what players want to see in the league, so don't give up hope.

Rouxxor beat all three quests without tokens (non-nightmare) with a true minimum purchase deck -- only single core + CatC + RtM. That's impressive, but I don't want to force players to construct such decks in order to have a chance at winning the league.

1 hour ago, dalestephenson said:

Rouxxor beat all three quests without tokens (non-nightmare) with a true minimum purchase deck -- only single core + CatC + RtM. That's impressive, but I don't want to force players to construct such decks in order to have a chance at winning the league.

Regarding to the 0 valor points score of many players on this league I think that playing with few cards (possibly minimal purchase) will be required to win the league anyway. But I agree that letting it on a tiebreaker allow players to make a low score, and to consider it at an achievement. And it is great!

Here's a thought to facilitate interesting deckbuilding:

Rather than making the "non-penalized pool" of cards Core + Current Cycle, make it come from Current Cycle + any 12 cards. (The exact number is flexible, of course). In other words, you could still get a perfect score if you use up to 12 cards from outside the cycle, and the deckbuilding intrigue comes from the question "What 12 cards should I use?"

This system would also prevent people from bringing minor variations on the same Core Set decks each time.

I haven't think about it before but actually I'm not sure the core set will be included in the card allowed each time. The core set was, this time, part of the cards of the cycle since journey though Anduin was selected. Next time it is suppose to be only grey have + 2 packs.
Without the core set it will be almost impossible to make a deck with only the card selected. No need to add 12 cards rules. This is just about getting the closet possible to 0, while 0 is probably impossible to reach (but may be it is, I haven't started to look after the pool).

But if going for minimum purchase (so, allowing the core set) the september deck I use (the well famous TED) could be played with minor variation and work as well. Almost every month. It is less interesting.

I'm inclined to include core as not counting against but I'll put up a vote for that too. I can see that you could play the same deck with minor variations each month to get a 0 "outside" count -- you could take Xanalor's famous "Back to Basics" deck, swap out one hero (probably Theodred for LeDenethor) and fill it out to 50 with the best cards from the current cycle. It'd work fine.

However, I don't see a *fairness* issue with someone doing that. It's solid, but it's not overpowering, and I question whether it would be more likely to finish with 0 tokens than a Cirdan/Galdor/LeDenethor Noldor deck that supplements Noldor cards with core staples -- and it'd lose the hero tiebreak to the Noldor deck (core heroes do *not* count for tiebreak outside Mirkwood). So it's not the optimal deck, and not overpowered.

It would also be less interesting to me, and most players, I think. Even if I *could* run the same style of deck each month, why would I? I think a lot of the fun is trying out different decks, and I've got a ton of decks I haven't played with and a ton of different ideas I haven't built. Even if I'm going for a 0 outside build there's multiple different viable decks I could try, and since I just finished third with 37 outside cards I don't think I will go for a 0 outside build. So even if I could, I wouldn't. If there's some player who *enjoys* repeatedly playing the same tried and true deck against all quests with minor variations, let him have his fun -- it won't ruin mine. I just want to make sure that he doesn't have an insurmountable *competitive* advantage from playing that way.

If we take for granted that multiple players will construct 0-outside-card decks for competitive reasons, counting core cards will *allow* the same decks month to month, but excluding core cards will *force* the same kind of decks to be used within a month. Without supplementing with core cards, I don't think you could really do anything except Noldor with GH/Dreamchaser alone. (Now watch someone prove me wrong....)

I think that the rules should pushed toward a fun challenge. If your rules push the same deck to be able to win each time let face it: I will play it every time, and then play another decks. If the challenge wasn't something I look for I wouldn't participate to the league at all ;).

You speak about two decks, focusing about heroes. But I don't think Eowyn/Theodred/Beravor or Cirdan/Galdor/Denethor will be that different. The same three spheres, the same cards will be probably played (with minor exception like narya). As I want to get the perfect tiebreaker I will probably go with the second line-up and do approximately the same things.

Building without the core set, on another hand, is pretty harsh. I don't think I could manage to build a 0 cards oustide the packs anymore. Here is an example of what it could drive to http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/122576).

So it will create more choice about getting on with this kind of decklist or include some cards (steward, test of will and elven-light, lord of the eldar are the one who come first in my mind) to give a good boost to the decks. Or you can just restrict to the card of the cycle so you have less choice but win by the first tiebreaker. It it more interesting this way I think.

What about something like (just picking numbers as an example):

Your score is Valar tokens plus...

0..20 cards outside cycle+deluxe: 0
20..40 cards outside cycle+deluxe: 1
40+ cards outside cycle+deluxe: 2

And then exact numbers of heroes/cards outside cycle+deluxe as tiebreakers?

That deck is pretty grim Rouxxor, it's sad to see Rod of the Steward without Steward of Gondor. However, I notice that's it a minimum purchase (minus core) deck. Cards from other Dreamchaser APs don't count against you (with the possible exception of heroes in the third tiebreaker). If you throw in the other four APs, can you make a solid deck?

One of the polls will be whether we should count core cards as "outside" or not. One reason I'm inclined to count core as inside is that I think it helps the players who just don't have a full card pool. If a limited player has to resort to Daughter of Nimrodel for their healing needs because they don't have Warden of Healing, it seems unfair to count them the same -- though since this cycle has Ioreth in it, maybe that's a moot point. Maybe count core cards as half an outside?

I don't like elevating outside cards into the token count. If the winner is a zero token player (true this month, and IMO likely true next month) that means that a player using significant numbers of outside cards would be eliminated before they played, and I don't like that. I suspect the tiebreaker by itself is sufficient to incent driving the outside count down, at least for players who are focused on winning the league so they can make us play Angmar!

An idea I brought up on BGG for reward the best "extra" runs is to give the top finishers there the ability to blacklist out-of-cycle cards for the upcoming -- three for first place, two for second, three for third -- and this *can* include core cards for non-Mirkwood. So if applied to September's league and Ringmaker was chosen, Rouxxor could chose to blacklist Vilya, Beravor, and Brok Ironfist. I think this could alter the deckbuilding sufficiently to be interesting without being so restrictive that it would force the same decks to be run.

2 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

I don't like elevating outside cards into the token count. If the winner is a zero token player (true this month, and IMO likely true next month) that means that a player using significant numbers of outside cards would be eliminated before they played, and I don't like that.

Considering that a deck using cycle cards only is likely to require more valar tokens to win than one using a larger card pool, then doing something like that would be more like levelling different approaches to an even chance of winning.

Yes, that's certainly the tradeoff -- the outside cards increase the chance of a clean run, but work against you if others had a clean run. In this month's league, there were three players (Rouxxor, yourself, and GilBragg) who used the Theodred/Beravor/SpEowyn lineup with 0 outside cards, and the token count was 0, 1, and 1 -- if Rouxxor had used his minimum purchase first instead of chivalrously taking down nightmare quests, he would've won the league. Meanwhile the Dunhere decks had 0, 4, 18, and surrender [nightmare]. I'm not convinced the outside cards are enough of an advantage to justify a full token, though there's not enough data to reach firm conclusions yet.

Looking at only the official runs, here were the token counts grouped by number used (asterisk indicates nightmare run):

0: 1, 1, 12

1-10: 2, 4

11-20: 7

21-30: 0*, 0, 2

31-40: 0, 1, 3, 18

41+: 0, 1*, 2

My first impression is that it is more scatter plot than trend. I also note that a clear majority of players preferred to play 21+ in this league, though I think next league there may be more in the lower counts -- the league was won on tiebreak, after all.