It almost isn't worth playing as I know exactly when I am going to lose every time, over and over.

When you travel to the Hallowed Circle at the end, each guardian attacks, then the combat phase is next. You have to defend 6 boss level attacks in a row. Then if you don't manage to quest through on the next turn (which requires a minimum of 12), you immediately have to defend 3 more boss attacks.

I'm just skipping over this one for now, maybe I'll look up a custom built deck later.

I find it's much easier to beat if you kill all 3 guardians before you travel to the hallowed circle. Nothing says that you have to travel immediately.

It does require at least a little bit of building for it, though, especially in true solo.

Killing them is probably a good idea but even that will take a few additional rounds. I tried that once and got location locked. Some of the locations in this quest do some unpleasant things too.

This is one of those quests with weird balance issues. 2-player is the sweet spot. Solo makes the Guardians oppressive -- although Onidsen pointed out a good tactical shift that you seem not to have considered, based on your response. Try a different strat and let it know if it influences your opinion of the quest's difficulty.

3- and 4-player makes the Guardians less challenging but you have a good chance of getting location locked if your table is not built properly.

Also, the Time effects are going to nail you more in higher player counts due to a higher chance of revealing that one treachery that reduces them and the fact that, in 4-player, revealing that treachery will automatically trigger any Guardian currently in play, since it will remove 4 time counters. You might see that come out twice in the same round. With Raven's Guardian in play, you'll get 1 damage to every character you control every time that card comes out.

That one location which limits the number of allies you can have will hit much harder in 4-player than it will in solo.

That's strange, I remember it being one of the easy ones, beating it on my first try.

I'll probably try a few more times trying to kill the guardians before traveling and not threating out. The time effects will be interesting.

Thanks all!

I remember this one being hard to design solo for. I had to change my hero lineup several times before I hit on a combination that worked.

I won very consistently in pure solo when it was released with Idraen, lore Aragorn and Beregond.

Beregond + shield defend the guardian, gondorian fire plus unexpected courage build the attack power you need to kill guardian in 1 hit in the final stage. Aragorn let you draw cards and reset you threat.

I figured gondorian fire or blood of numenor would factor into a solo deck somewhere. 😄

Yes, as boring as they are Fire and Blood solve many puzzle in this game...

In my defence I must say that I try to avoid them as much as possible. I don't remember to have used any of them after this quest in pure solo (and to defeat the balrog)...

You know, originally I was irritated with these scenarios that are seemingly designed without the solo player in mind.

But I realize now there are still plenty of scenarios in this game left, so I'm cool with writing a few of them off.