Welcome to the LOTR Solo League. This month we'll be playing three quests from the WoR/Ered Mithrin cycle. The quests are:

1) Roam Across Rhovanion
2) Fire in the Night
3) The Ghost of Framsburg

Here are the rules:

1) Each player will construct a 50+ card deck, then use that exact deck against all three quests. You may use that deck freely against any quests (include the three quests in the league) prior to the run for testing purposes, but you may not use any trial runs for your official results.

2) At least one of the heroes must be from a box with those quests. This means that you must have at least one of Haldan, Thranduil, or Spirit Dain.

3) Your score against each quest will be how much help you need to defeat it, based on the Grace of the Valar variant invented by Seastan. It works like this:

For each token you have, after you draw/mulligan your initial hand you can choose to draw a card or give a hero a resource. This happens one at a time, so if I use my first token to draw a card, I see the card before I decide whether to use my second token for a card or a resource.

The original variant starts at zero tokens and gains two tokens if you lose quickly (first five turns) and one if you do not -- however, for the purposes of this league I will allow you to start a quest at any number of tokens, and adjust by as many as you want. The only rules for adding/reducing tokens are these:

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.

So for example, if I start with six tokens against Roam Across Rhovanion and defeat it, I can play it again with 0-5 tokens. If I then try with three tokens and lose, I can play it again with 4 or 5 tokens. If I try with four and lose, I can play it again with 5 tokens. If I win, my final score for that quest is 5, and if I lose my final score for the quest is 6. (Alternatively, I could've decided that 6 was a good enough score the first time I played it, and just have my final score be 6 without playing again.)

Remember that tokens do not carry over between quests. When playing The Ghost of Framsburg it does not matter how many tokens I needed to defeat Fire in the Night.

4) You are not required to publish your deck, but providing a ringsdb link is encouraged (otherwise I may need to ask you for your decklist at the end of the month if required for a tiebreaker). You are required to reveal which Heroes you used, and how many cards in your deck came from outside GH/Dreamchaser, WoR/Ered Mithrin and a single core. Do not include outside heroes in this count, only cards in the deck itself.

5) Tiebreakers have frequently mattered and decided last month's league. Here are the tiebreakers, in order:
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1st) The number of outside cards (i.e. not from GH/Dreamcahser, WoR/Ered Mithrin or a single core) used in the deck. Do not count outside heroes in this count, only cards in the deck. Less cards is better.

2nd) The number of heroes specifically from WoR/Ered Mithrin or GH/Dreamchaser. More is better.

3rd) The number of heroes used from this list: Haldan, Thranduil, SpDain. More is better.

4th) The number of cards in the deck outside GH/Dreamchaser and WoR/Ered Mithrin. Less is better, and core cards are considered "outside" for this tiebreaker.

5th) The number of cards outside Roam Across Rhovanion, Fire in the Night, and Ghost of Framsburg. Less is better, and core cards are considered "outside" for this tiebreaker.

6th) Performance in July's Solo League (if you didn't play or finish June's League, a median performance will be assumed). Whoever did worst wins this tiebreaker.
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6) 1st place gets to choose the cycle for October's league, 2nd place gets to choose a quest from that cycle, and 3rd place gets to choose a quest *not* to be used from that cycle. In an effort to expand the diversity of decks used, the last place player will choose an additional cycle that may be used for deckbuilding in October's league. September's cycle was chosen by the winner of July's league.

7) Weekly deadlines will be on Monday at 11pm Eastern. Only the final deadline really matters for scoring (and can be delayed if requested) -- the first two deadlines are only to be included in intermediate standings.

Roam Across Rhovanion: August 12th
Fire in the Night: August 19th
The Ghost of Framsburg: August 26th

8 ) I've created a google spreadsheet for results here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qbFjwvU_0lgP6-ji7d2WIm8-WsAO_Dbnh-thz7Ze_gE/edit?usp=sharing

To join the league, merely add your name and information about your deck to the spreadsheet, then enter your results as you have them. Please give a link to your deck if you built or published it on ringsdb, but it is not required.

If you wish you may run additional decks against the quests and record your results (I hope to do this), but only the first entry will be considered for the competition itself.

I couldn't decide whether to do a Noldor deck with SpDain, a Woodman deck (with ???), or a Silvan deck with Thranduil. But I decided to instead try to play Gandalf every turn:

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/12749/playgandalfeveryturn-1.0

It took a while for me to defeat the first quest, as Gandalf was late. Never late -- ha! But the stages fell in the right order for me to stall, so I made it through once he showed up.

Here's how we did against the first quest, Roam Across Rhovanion (outside cards in parens)

0 dalestephenson (22)
0 Thanee (37)
4 philipneri (0)

All three decks particpating are using different mandatory heroes -- a Dale deck with Haldan, a Caldara deck with SpDain, and Play Gandalf Every Turn with Thranduil.

Plenty of time for you to make your own deck.

Fire in the Night is tough, my first attempt I used six tokens, but couldn't get my combo together quickly enough to stop the town from burning down. The second time I doubled to 12 tokens, which didn't draw into my combo but did give me the cards/resources to buff Thranduil's defense to survive dragon attacks -- then he was able to block the shadow-free initial attack and keep the town from burning down until Gandalf came on line. Once I was playing Gandalf every turn I managed to get staging under control, stalled with two quests in the display until the quests I needed fulfilled were mostly done, then triggered the end game and finished it off.

I could try again with 7-11 tokens, but my son is in town so I tore down my deck to construct our saga fellowship. Still, even if I succeded with 7 I'd be at the bottom for this quest (outside cards in parens):

0 Thanee (37)
5 philipneri (0)
12 dalestephenson (22)

And combined standings through the first quest:

0 Thanee (37)
9 philipneri (0)
12 dalestephenson (22)

Still a week left, so it's not too late to put a deck together and join.

I only played each of these quests once before this league so it was an interesting exercise putting together a deck. I ended up slotting Dain into the Dale deck which I had used for my first run through this cycle. I haven't tried Haldan yet, although I could only seem to come up with a support type deck with him. I love Silvans, but they never seem to do quite as well as I want them to.

Roam across Rhovanion: No issues at all. I even managed to stall at stage 1 for a couple of turns because Urdug snuck off. Only real thing of note is the terrible luck I had with Hobgoblins - Elfhelm and Glorfindel for attachments. Also I hate the Lost in Wilderland encounter set. 0 tokens.

Fire in the Night: Easily my favourite quest from this cycle. Apparently it doesn't like me back as the first attempt ended in turn 2 when a Goblin Troop ended Cirdan. Round two started only a little better as my Sidequests were in order: Route the Goblins, Douse the Flames and Defend the Town. Still, my Valar token allowed me a turn one Steward, and several turns of Gandalf use got me ahead in the game. All 3 copies of Narya were in the bottom 13 cards of my deck which was annoying, but I persevered and defeated Dagnir on turn nine. 1 token.

The Ghost of Framsburg: Nothing too remarkable for this one. Got a little lucky with Hazard reveals, and Elfhelm trivialises the incremental threat gain. Didn't see Fram until the very end. 0 tokens.

Tokens for the month: 1

While conditions doomed my first attempt at Ghost at Framsburg, the other players had no issues. Here's the tokens we took in that quest (outside cards in parens):

0 philipneri (0)
0 rees263 (11)
0 Thanee (37)
1 dalestephenson (22)

The two spirit Dain decks dominated the overall standings:

0 Thanee (37)
1 rees263 (11)
9 philipneri (0)
13 dalestephenson (22)

Thanee is first and gets to choose the cycle for October, rees263 gets to choose a quest from that cycle to play, philipneri gets to choose a quest not to play, and I get to choose a supplemental cycle for player cards.

Thank you for playing. Next month we'll take on three quests from the Haradrim cycle.

Thanee has chosen LOTR saga. rees263 now gets to choose a quest from the saga.

Let's try Helm's Deep

On 9/11/2019 at 3:47 AM, dalestephenson said:

Thanee has chosen LOTR saga. rees263 now gets to choose a quest from the saga.

Awesome I have all the Sagas so I'm in this month!

philipneri excluded Black Gate (at Thanee's suggestion). Randomly chosen quests were Journey in the Dark and Breaking of the Fellowship. I've chosen VoI/Ringmaker for supplemental player cards. Mandatory hero is at least one of Gandalf, Treebeard, and SpTheoden.