Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not asking for tips or decks on how to beat this quest. I have already beat it quite handily with a few different decks (also got a win on my first try).

What I am struggling with, though, is that there aren't so many archetypes that really work against this quest. I really like it and I'd play it more often, but there is such a narrow pool of deck types that can deal with the Balrog's attacks that you really have to tech against the quest to beat it. For instance, I couldn't just pull out, say, a top-tier Ent deck, because it just can't defend six attack round after round; regardless of the deck's power level (a bit like Journey to Rhosgobel).

Essentially, what are different decks/strategies you've employed to take down the Balrog. I can really only think of three (and a half) ways:

Chump swarm (most reliable IMHO)

Tower Defender (incredibly hard)

Frodo (really limits deckbuilding)

and cheese (Nori, Galadriel, threat reduction event recursion)

Are there any solutions to take standard power decks up against Shadow and Flame? Just to give it more replayability.

It sounds like you've delineated your options pretty well there. The only thing you might have missed is that you could use healing or damage cancellation to help absorb the excess damage from the Balrog's hits.

Actually, that makes me wonder if you could use an Ent deck so long as it has enough healing. Hmm...

Derndingle Warrior (when self-damaging) plus Hauberk of Mail can defend for six, and it can heal easily and automatically with Wellinghall Preserver.

I guess Bloof/Fire and Steward would do the job, too.

One thing I have found about this quest that I really like for replay-ability: Setting your threat to zero at the start lets you go with much more expensive heroes than normal.

For example: Elrond - Lore-Glorfindel - Treebeard would be crazy threat normally

All 3 abilities synergize to some extent ... healing, bonus healing, benefit from healing
Starting with 3*Lore, you have a lot of combos like: Advance Warning + Noiseless Movement + Scroll of Isildur ... it's not going to stop the balrog, but it can shut down a lot of the other stuff in the deck and the Balrog isn't so bad when you know it's just him.
Some of the secrecy cards can give you a fast start

Gandalf - Elrond - Grimbeorn might be interesting too

On 9/3/2018 at 3:01 PM, dalestephenson said:

Derndingle Warrior (when self-damaging) plus Hauberk of Mail can defend for six, and it can heal easily and automatically with Wellinghall Preserver.

Works until you reveal Inner Flame or Fiery Sword, or the shadow on Leaping Flame or Whip Lash.

I think an Ent deck does work though as long as you're consistently putting out 2 Ents a round and he's only setting fire to 1. You'll eventually gain a foothold.

Derndingle Warrior has 5 hp with the Hauberek, so even with self damage a +3 attack (9 total) won't kill it if it was healthy before -- though it'll take four Wellinghall readies to get it back to full health (two if Elrond is a Lore hero). Unfortunately that Fiery Sword sticks around. Whip Lash shadow is also a problem, though if you're playing Hauberek (leadership) you have access to Balin or Dunedain Watcher (or Hasty Stroke if playing with SpBard). With the common LeFaramir/Bifur/Mablung the main hope would be getting lucky and avoiding Derndingle-killing cards until the angry Ent army is ready to rock and roll. Between self-damagers and Booming Ents defending piddly orcs you should be able to get up to Balrog-smashing attack totals relatively quickly.

In my experience certain quests are built in such a way that only kitting out your deck to beat that specific quest works, everything else kind of gets slaughtered. Still I have a buddy of mine that has an uncanny eye for deck building and he doesn't really theme or combine cards in a logical or expected way, he just knows how to pull cards into a deck that are optimized and seems to do quite well no matter what he builds. Certainly a more clever chap than I, but I will hand it to him that he seems to be able to break the game a lot easier than I have ever been able to and he doesn't even own it.

For what its worth, I struggle with this one as well.

Pre errata Hama lock used to make the work too.

Super defender with Beregond + gondorian shield is not super difficult to set up. You still have to deal with shadows and bring in healing but barring bad draw with the encounter deck it is a feasible option.

8 hours ago, BigKahuna said:

In my experience certain quests are built in such a way that only kitting out your deck to beat that specific quest works, everything else kind of gets slaughtered.

Many players use the same deck against all the scenario. This is what we call "Power deck". So it really depend of what deckbuilding you prefer to do ;).

And when I build a deck optimized with the full player card pool against shadow and flame (nightmare, but it doesn't really matter at this point) for 2 players I end winning constantly turn two (and sometime turn 3) with a Balrog who never get a chance to attack :p.