Hi. Try as I might I cannot beat this quest. I've played all sorts of decks 2 handed solo and single solo. I really want to beat it 2-handed but have no idea what decks will work. I've used decks of my own and from rings DB.

I think it's harder than difficulty rating 5.

Can anyone give me some pointers or list decks that are successful against this quest for me to try?

Thanks

PHIL

You're in luck, I don't usually keep my decklists, but I do keep a quest log of all my plays at home 2-handed solo, wins and losses. That records the heroes I used, and I happened to have saved these two decks on ringsdb. I won in a single attempt. I'll link the two decks first:

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/54982 (direct damage deck)

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/50636 (willpower "direct progress" deck)

And here is the writeup from my quest log:

June 17, 2017

Danny played: Thalin, Mablung, and Argalad.

2nd deck: Aragorn (Leadership), Arwen, and Lanwyn.

Long game, 2 hours and change. Played solo 2-handed. I had a pair of decks meant to deal direct damage and direct progress, although the direct progress deck was mostly a willpower deck with progress effects peppered in. Mostly it was blocked by the Blocked Passage encounter card effect. During this game all possible encounter cards came out at least once. All 3 side quests came out and were defeated. The questing deck got set up faster than the damage deck, but both took a good long time to get set up. I purposefully lingered on stage 2. Dunedain Remedy did a good amount of healing, bouncing between Aragorn (with Steward) and Mablung. The Brood Mother survived one round longer than needed to, because the On Track Forced effect failed to find me an "On Track" card, which meant the objective got flipped and I lost all progress on quest stage 3. That made the spider immune to damage for another round. I nearly lost a hero 1 turn as I did not have a defender and the attacker had 5 attack. I used up Lanwyn's final resource as I planned to let her die, spending it on an Elven-light in the discard pile. Lo and behold, this drew me a Sneak Attack, which I used to play Gandalf and kill off the enemy (which already had 1 or more damage on it). The Brood Mother died with exactly the right number of damage -- if anything had gone wrong I would have gone 1 more round. Good thing I didn't, too, as the damage deck had 48 threat at the end of the game.

I used Noldor Mill for that entire cycle inc. Beneath the Sands.

Cheers guys. I'll set up the decks and have another go. Loving the game but I don't always have a lot of time to sit and ponder what decks to use. And i do find deck building the hardest part of the game in terms of getting everything in like card draw, resource gen, healing, threat reduction etc.

I have 3 cores and everything to date. There's too much selection. I often get analysis paralysis when deckbuilding. 🙂

I'm not sure what Noldor Mill looks like. Can you post a link to a good example.

Cheers

Phil

1 hour ago, asgardianphil said:

Cheers guys. I'll set up the decks and have another go. Loving the game but I don't always have a lot of time to sit and ponder what decks to use. And i do find deck building the hardest part of the game in terms of getting everything in like card draw, resource gen, healing, threat reduction etc.

I have 3 cores and everything to date. There's too much selection. I often get analysis paralysis when deckbuilding. 🙂

I'm not sure what Noldor Mill looks like. Can you post a link to a good example.

Cheers

Phil

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/11371/noldor-1.0

There are a lot of different flavors, but most (including mine) use To the Sea! To turn all the cards you get into virtual resources for allies. I like Silver Harp so I can hang on to key events later in the game.

I started with the Noldor Mill declines recommended playing solo one handed. I played 3 games and lost them all. 😖

The deck itself was amazing with really good synergy. The twins were powerful and could hold off the brood spider with caregiver healing.

Game one started grinding at the 3rd quest when I couldn't get the on track to flip. Lasted about 4 turns before I ran out of allies and that was the end. The second game again got stuck trying to flip the on track at the 3rd quest and lasted about 8 turns and went through the entire encounter deck but the on track cards would only appear for everything but the track test. Had to scoop to stop the inevitable grind to death. I had run out if cards in my deck and was just getting light of valinors back to use them on the imladris caregiver tonheal ellohir to defend against the brood spider boss. 3rd game I got a spider nest on the quest 1 reveal and a spider nest on the first encounter card for quest attempt one. I scooped with having only two spider nests in the staging area and only 3 heroes out. 6 threat if i dont travel and a brood spider boss if I do which would kill a hero turn 1 combat.

I'm going to try the other two decks later in the week

So I've played the two decks that Grandspleen kindly posted and I cant break the synergy that the encounter deck throws at me. It's so tight. Every thing I get out from the decks that starts looking promising for me then the encounter deck goes nope! Smacks me down and then punishes me for it. I've played the duo deck three times now.

You got anything else? 🤭

Just watching an online run through on YouTube and I've noticed I've been treating side quests that are the current quest as the main quest and so not placing progress when off track. So I could have been clearing craft remedy even when off track. This side quest is the only side quest that crops up in all of my games so far. And it crops up a lot and always when I have damage on my characters from forced off track treachery which always hits me multiple times in the game. I've never read the other two quests as they've never come up other than shadow cards. I guess if I had read them I'd have realised I was making a mistake. ( in my defense though, the sands of harad rule book doesn't explain the difference between side quest and main quest. It just explains about the current quest. Researching further I found a reference to the main quest vs side quest on the ffg blog for the release of the lost realm. ) I've also been missing that blocked passage only triggers when on track which is a big thing to miss.

Going to have another go now with these two decks

On 4/29/2019 at 10:23 PM, asgardianphil said:

Just watching an online run through on YouTube and I've noticed I've been treating side quests that are the current quest as the main quest and so not placing progress when off track. So I could have been clearing craft remedy even when off track. This side quest is the only side quest that crops up in all of my games so far. And it crops up a lot and always when I have damage on my characters from forced off track treachery which always hits me multiple times in the game. I've never read the other two quests as they've never come up other than shadow cards. I guess if I had read them I'd have realised I was making a mistake. ( in my defense though, the sands of harad rule book doesn't explain the difference between side quest and main quest. It just explains about the current quest. Researching further I found a reference to the main quest vs side quest on the ffg blog for the release of the lost realm. ) I've also been missing that blocked passage only triggers when on track which is a big thing to miss.

Going to have another go now with these two decks

The Sands of Harad rules say:

Quote

Side quests are never considered to be a part of the quest deck. The top card of the quest deck is called the “main quest.”

But it is easy enough to get confused with some rules in this game, even after years of playing it.