Finally completed the Angmar Awakened cycle by beating The Dread Realm straight solo and 2-handed (progression mode, standard difficulty).

After the masochism I went through to beat The Battle of Carn Dum, I was surprised by the relative ease of The Dread Realm, especially straight solo (won 6/14 games with my unmodified Faramir/Erestor/Glorfindel deck from Carn Dum, save for the addition of the Delay the Enemy side quest). 2-handed admittedly was more challenging, took me 6 attempts to score a victory.

All in all, I enjoyed that one.

Although I could go on to The Grey Havens next, I'm thinking of taking a break from LotR LCG for a few months in order to try Arkham Horror LCG (which I have yet to try, even though I have everything up to the end of The Forgotten Age) or to give Mansions of Madness more table time... looking forward to more play not to mention getting more work done, rather than deck building.

With the final box I purchased finally in my collection (The Mountain of Fire) I went back to making the tweaks I wantedto make. In my Spirit/Lore Elf Deck, Gildor and a few other cards were removed for the ally sons of Elrond and more threat reduction. In the Hobbit/Ent Support deck (Hobbit heroes, ally Treebeard) Rosie Cotton and Quickbeam moved in and found their spots kept nice and warm. Lastly in my Spirit/Tactics Rohan deck, Theoden went from Tactics to Spirit and added Herugrim. Now we're ready.

In my first unconventional test run, I took the Elves on a Journey Down the Anduin. I wanted to see if they could handle that massive Hill Troll and see how all the new elements of the deck played together. This quest - the Hill Troll intimidates me but otherwise I find it a lot of fun and a good challenge. A perfect place to try out my new ideas.

Much to my surprise and satisfaction they absolutely crushed it! A Goblin Sniper came into the staging area early very early, but the Elves were ready. With very careful resource management, threat reduction and a lucky early healer draw, our heroes defeated the Hill Troll. Then came the fun. A second Goblin Sniper entered the staging area as we began phase 2. Even worse, the next two enemies were the wargs, the ones that go back to the staging area when there isn't a shadow effect on its shadow card. With a constant threat of 5 before draw the pressure was on! However the deck kept everything under control, reducing threat to under 20 and utilizing a timely arrival by Gandalf to kill a Goblin Sniper. When I got to stage 3 there were (only) 6 enemies in the staging area. One by one the foes went down and victory was claimed. I lost count of how many turns it took but my final threat was at 17!

Thanks for bearing with me in my excitement, I don't beat that quest solo very often!