I finished Into Ithilien nightmare with zero tokens. I have to say that I had the impression it was easier than in non nightmare mode. Are there more locations than in non-nightmare?.

With a Resourceful and Firyal in my opening hand, I could play her on the second round, which was crucial, as she avoided a Mumak to show off in round 2!! Thanks to Thurindir, in my first and second rounds, I quested against Gathering Information. I used Gathering Information to fetch Scout Ahead and bought myself a few more rounds. Thanks to Firyal, I kept discarding those enemies that I did not feel like facing. Glorfindel ended up riding Asfaloth, so those locations with big amount of quest poins were not an issue anymore.

Seeing that the friends of Celador were not showing up (one showed up as a shadow card ) and that my threat was rising (27), I decided to stop turtleing and run for the win. After stage 1 was cleared, I took control of Celador and with a board full of ents, it took me one round to clear stage 3 and another round to clear stage 4, sneaking pass the big Mumakil Elite with the help of a few counsels from Elrond.

I will now tackle The Stewards Fear. I don't think that one will be that easy. In any case, I know I won't be able to do a perfect run with this deck, as Steward of Gondor is totally a must for The Druadan Forest nightmare. I am curious to see how many Valar tokens do I need to pass that quest with my deck

Finally, I won against Into Ithillien with... 10 tokens. The last 5-6 games, I was very unlucky on my starting hands (almost the same cards each time, and not the good one...).

19 hours ago, Authraw said:

Got a nice free day...

Congratulations! This month is much harder than october's.

I am still testing decks with 0 cards from outside the cycle and I had a similar idea of putting in Beravor for the needed card draw, but instead of going with Hirluin and outlands, i was trying with Beregond and gondor allies. I can handle into ithilien pretty well, but is almost impossible to put enough willpower in the Steward's Fear.
As Rouxxor said, now I will keep playtesting trying to improve your deck.

I completely forgot how brutal Into Ithilien can be. On my second turn, a Watcher in the Wood (threat up by 5) surged into a Blocking Wargs (bye-bye Envoy of Pelargir) surged into a Forest Bat. All of a sudden my willpower dropped from 13 to 8, I had 2 damage on Celedor, 3 on Boromir, and 2 on Hirluin (who'd taken an archery damage the first turn). I now had to engage Southron Company and the Bat. Southron Company gets an Overgrown Trail, so bye bye to the 5 progress I'd managed to accrue on the quest. Then Forest Bat gets a Haradrim Elite shadow, so attacks again getting a second Watcher in the Wood as shadow, so threat up by another 2. So, at the end of the second turn, I've got a combined total of 6 health left on my heroes and allies (just Celedor), I'm engaged with 2 nasty enemies, my threat has ballooned to 37 (soon to be 38), and I have zero progress on the quest. Cool.

EDIT: Just in case it wasn't clear, I lost.

I finished The Stewards Fear nightmare with zero tokens.

Nevertheless, this one was tougher. I needed three runs to get that score. On my first run, I had a glorious starting hand were I played Resourceful on Mirlonde and Quickbeam. I quested with everything. The encounter deck had a nasty surprise... I revealed a Sewers which added and extra card from the underworld deck to the Fourth Star. I cleaned the location and under it, two Murderous Turncoats were waiting for me. With two immediate attacks of 5 from the staging area, two of my heroes were dead. That was the end of the first run.

I did a second run with 1 Valar token (to start with 1 extra lore resource) which I won without sweating too much. With Two Resourceful, Gleowine and Asfaloth in my starting hand, and cleaning Gathering Information on the second round to summon Firyal, I had pretty much control all over the game. The Plot card I draw was Up in Flames, which I could counter act thanks to my Will of the West, which I had to fetch from the discard pile with a Dwarven tomb. On stage 3 I discovered the Hand of Castamir who got boosted with one The cabal's champion. Yet, he was not match for the ents and Glorfindel. After defeating the Hand, I quested hard with all my troop and beated the adventure. Full of confidence, I decided to try again with zero Valar tokens.

The third run was weird. My starting hand was plain bad. No Light of Valinor, no Resourceful and no Firyal. At least I had Quickbeam and Asfaloth, but that forced me to look for Light of Valinor upon completing Gathering Information. Without Firyal in play I felt "naked". Luckily, the encounter deck insisted on throwing only treacheries at me, which I kept cancelling relentlessly with an endless battery of A Test of Will and Halfling Bounders. I reached stage 2 and neither Firyal nor Treebeard have showed up yet, but I had 3 Wellinghall preservers in play! This time the plot I revealed was Assassination, which is by far the easiest to deal with for my deck. Brave Mirlonde turned to be the target of the assassins. Finally, by the end of Stage 2, Firyal and Treebeard decided to appear! When I revealed stage 3, Telemnar's Bane appeared. Without any boost, his attack was defended by a dutiful Galadhrim Minstrel to immediately by trampled by the throng of ents.

Now I have to face The Druadan Forest nightmare. Without Steward of Gondor i my deck, I wonder how many Valar tokens I will need to defeat the quest... my bet is 5 ?

Yepesnopes, it looks to me like your score for that quest should be 2 tokens. From the rules:

Rule 1) If you lose a quest with X tokens, you cannot play that quest again with X or less tokens.
Rule 2) If you defeat a quest with Y tokens, you cannot play that quest again with Y or more tokens.

Since you lost the first time with 0 tokens, you can't play with 0 again. Since you lost the second time with 1 token, you can't play with 1 token again. So for your third run, you could not choose less than 2 tokens. There's no requirement that you use the tokens, so you don't need to replay the quest.

2 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

Yepesnopes, it looks to me like your score for that quest should be 2 tokens. From the rules:

Rule 1) If you lose a quest with X tokens, you cannot play that quest again with X or less tokens.
Rule 2) If you defeat a quest with Y tokens, you cannot play that quest again with Y or more tokens.

Since you lost the first time with 0 tokens, you can't play with 0 again. Since you lost the second time with 1 token, you can't play with 1 token again. So for your third run, you could not choose less than 2 tokens. There's no requirement that you use the tokens, so you don't need to replay the quest.

I've lost the first time with zero tokes. Then I have beaten the quest with 1 token. Then I have replayed the quest with zero tokens and win.

That is zero tokens right? (I edited my post to clarify it)

Sorry, I missed that you won with one token. So your score is one token -- since you had already lost with zero tokens, you could not try that count again for the league.

16 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

Sorry, I missed that you won with one token. So your score is one token -- since you had already lost with zero tokens, you could not try that count again for the league.

I corrected the spreadsheet. Thanks

For what it's worth, I found those rules a little confusing when I first read them, too. I don't think part 2 is strictly necessary, is it? Is there anything wrong with playing again with more tokens than a previous win (other than it not improving your score)?

There's a possible interaction with Rule 1 without Rule 2, although it's unlikely to come up in practice. Consider this sequence with only Rule 1.

1) I play with 4 tokens, and lose. I am now forbidden from replaying with 0-4 tokens.

2) I play with 8 tokens, and win.

3) Just for the heck of it, I play again with 12 tokens, and lose. I am now forbidden from replaying with 0-12 tokens, so my score can never be lower than 8 even through I never tried with 5-7 tokens.

I finished The Druadan Forest nightmare. I bet (with myself ? ) that I would need 5 Valar tokens to pass the quest, but I only needed 2

No secret, just a lucky starting hand. On my third run I got a very lucky starting hand with Treebeard and Firyal.

In my first round I played those cards plus Gathering Information, which I was able to complete on my first round thanks to Elrond's Counsel. Resolving its effect I fetched Light of Valinor.

Additionally, on turn 3 I draw Scout Ahead, which after solving it, it gave me 5 turn of total control over the encounter deck. During those rounds I draw important cards such as Gleowine, Asfaloth, a Warden of Healing and a Wellinghall Preserver. That is all I needed to set my board and beat the adventure.

Looking forward to play the next month challenge!

I did the Into Ithilien today, first game went down hill quickly after failing to clear Ithilien Road. Second time I got a good opening hand and pushed through.

I won the Druadan forest on my first try with 0 token \o/. I'm a bit surprised, because when we had some trouble with my girlfriend when we did it the first times.

So I end my first solo league with 18 token

14 hours ago, Miceldars said:

I won the Druadan forest on my first try with 0 token \o/. I'm a bit surprised, because when we had some trouble with my girlfriend when we did it the first times.

So I end my first solo league with 18 token

The less player there is the easier is the forest Druadan
- Master Yoda

Maybe. There is some scenario that don't scale well with the number of players. I don't remember what were the difficulties when we played it.

To me it is one of the easiest scenario in solo and one of the hardiest at 4 players. You get spoiled of all resources and then get many surge, you can't play test of will (since you don't have any resources) and have to face archery 18. It is the example I give about scenario who change a lot depending on the number of players (especially since most of scenario scale in the other way: the more player the easier).

Standings through the first quest (outside cards in parens):

0 Authraw (0)
0 Velensk (18)
0 Yepesnopes [nightmare] (41)
1 PigsAreOurEquals (0)
2 Zura (23)
10 Miceldars (27)

For those who (like myself) didn't post a score in time, don't worry -- only the final deadline counts, and in the US there's a Thanksgiving holiday between then and now. Of course, if you're traveling for Thanksgiving you may want to hurry it up a bit.

Only half the players managed to make it through Into Ithilien without tokens, this is a tougher quest than any of the ones we faced last month in Dreamchaser.

I took out some time to complete Steward's Fear this evening. A great quest but not nearly as punishing as Into Ithilien, but I also had a great opening hand with Steward and Henamarth Riversong.

Steward's Fear can always be tough, as a Knife in the Dark can ruin your whole day if it picks the wrong ally. Here's how we did against that quest (outside cards in parens):

0 Authraw (0)
0 PigsAreOurEquals (0)
0 dalestephenson (5)
1 yepesnopes [nightmare] (41)
2 Velensk (18)
8 Miceldars (27)

So here are the standings after the first two quests:

0 Authraw (0)
0 dalestephenson (5)
1 PigsAreOurEquals (0)
1 yepesnopes [nightmare] (41)
2 Velensk (18)
18 Miceldars (27)

I got lucky; Knife in the back took out an errand rider instead of one of my Outlands army. Well, semi-lucky. Someone allowed our dog into my game room, she decided my outlands deck would make a great chew toy, and so my cards are severely battered. I'm afraid I will need to repurchase both Heirs of Numenor and The Steward's Fear.

There's still a week (and a Thanksgiving holiday before the final deadline, so it's not too late to catch up if you've signed up, or to sign up and beat all three quests if you haven't.

I'm having trouble to get myself into playing this league. I can't find any appealing list with 3 heroes within the cycle, and I'm not really enthousiast about playing almost exactly the same deck with Beravor and trying to be first (thanks to the 4th tiebreaker). I will try to make a decision and play until the deadline though.

Hang the tiebreakers and build a deck you want to play! If you are focused on building a perfect-tiebreaker deck you'll be severely constrained on the deck you can build, so unless you think winning is more fun than playing, that may not be the best way to go.

I do play what I want, and it is never subject to the scenario choice made in the solo league. The whole point of the league is to constrained the deckbuild to find way that I don't play in other case. I want to constrained myself in such a manner that reward me if/when I win. In this case it is about winning the challenge.

The whole point of the league is to have fun, which may take different forms for different people. If someone wants to play variants on the killer deck each league and enjoys that, good for them -- if someone else wants to construct 0-outside-cards with all in-cycle heroes, that's great too. If someone wants to handicap themselves by playing nightmare instead of regular, nothing wrong with that.

The past two leagues I've used the (eligible) stereotypical decks that use the least outside cards; I never played with my stereotypical decks before, so it was a good chance to see how they perform, and honestly they've done a lot better than I thought. I was going to do it for the next league too, except that one of the quests is from the box with Hero Dori, and I'm a big Dori fan. For some reason, none of the stereotypical decks use Dori.... Now I'm trying to decide whether to play TaEowyn/TaTheoden/Dori or LeAragorn/Arwen/Dori in next month's league. Maybe I'll flip a coin.

So I finally make a try. I just try to make a decent deck with only hero of the cycle and still wasn't satisfying so I get to the easy way: just play the Authraw deck. I found it balanced for what those quests ask.

Then I want to play each quest one time for testing, and only if I win it play it for real right after (with all important details still in my mind). I start with Into Ithilien. I have to send no one o the quest so I can try to kill the enemy on turn one and have a clear place for the next turns. In the first game this do work, but then I got one Harad every turn and I wasn't able either to perform the quest or the fight correctly. I loose my second hero on the same time I go at 49 threat...

I retry it and get two enemies who attack respectively at 5 and 8 on turn one. I could have won with a perfect hand. But I haven't anything like that.

At this moment I see no point at playing many games. I do know Into ithilien by hearth, especially the nightmare version, so I can do the real run, and start to get valor point since i have very few hope to win it straight.
And I play. On turn one I reveal a location, get 5 threat but kill the enemy. Then some outlands join the board each turn, and I sucess at dealing with the enemies on the turn they arrive, or at least the following turns, usually by scarifying a small non outland ally for each block. I finally got to the end of my deck and got those many outlands hidden there. I was engaged with a Mumak and I just decide to rush to the win (not that I can't last a few turn more, but it was cheaper than dealing with the annoying enemies I can get. I take all the steps on one turn, no matter if they where battle or siege.

Then steward fear. I just slowplay a LOT. Like exploring the active location only on turn 10 with a big boad already there. I loose many allies on treachery and enemies that deal 1 damage on each ally but succeed at protecting most of my outlands. I follow the advice found here and don't play my third knight of the swan because at this point I have enough attack, and it could only damage more my hero if I reveal the nasty treachery (that I already seen twice, but there wast still some in the encounter deck). I go to the stage 2 with the 2 clue already here. I have to reveal an additional card each turn because of the machination. I pass the stage 2 the following turn and kill the vilain on the same turn. And defeat the stage 3 two turns later, because of the treachery who end the questing phase.

Like I planned Druadan Forest was the easier. None of my choice was really relevant in this one. Weak enemies, weak treachery.

So I got good hands and don't face anything brutal from the encounter deck. It could have been quickly done with a steward of gondor in the first half of my deck in at least one of my game but I manage to win anyway ^^.

I let authraw, that does the most part of the job, my choice for the January league :).