Welcome to the LOTR Solo League. This month we'll be playing three quests from the Hobbit Saga. The quests are:

1) Over the Misty Mountains Grim (OHUH)
2) Flies and Spiders (OtDS)
3) The Battle of Five Armies (OtDS)

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 Thorin, Beorn, Ori, Nori, Balin, Oin, Bard, and Bombur

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 Over the Misty Mountains Grim 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 Battle of Five Armies it does not matter how many tokens I needed to defeat Spiders and Flies.

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 Hobbit saga, GH/Dreamchaser 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 Hobbit saga, GH/Dreamchaser 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 Hobbit saga or GH/Dreamchaser. More is better.

3rd) The number of heroes used from the Hobbit saga. More is better.

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

5th) The number of cards outside Hobbit saga. Less is better, and core cards are considered "outside" for this tiebreaker.

6th) Performance in December's Solo League (if you didn't play or finish October'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 March'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 March's league. February's cycle will be chosen by the winner of December's league.

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

Over the Misty Mountains Grim: January 13th
Spiders and Flies: January 20th
The Battle of Five Armies: January 27th

8 ) I've created a google spreadsheet for results here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pemKSSKckPdrWYovc1jA0jlwLw1mWWwzLrIUYGI49nQ/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.

IMPORTANT NOTE: For these three quests, assume that you were able to get all the treasures in previous quests. So for the 2nd and 4th quest you have Glamdring, Sting, and Orcrist, and for the final quest you also have Mithril Shirt, Arkenstone, Thror's Golden Cup, Thror's Hunting Bow, and Thror's Battle Axe. (This means if you want the Necklace of Girion, you need to use the guarded attachment). You are not required to add any of these treasures to your deck, and none of them (or the Magic Ring, which you must have in your deck for the 2nd and 3rd quests) count against the 50-card minimum.

First quest went excellently.

I managed to get To the Sea and some honour guards and questing Noldor into play early to help set up my eventual defenses against the Stone Giants. By the time I engaged them they were -1 Attack and I could pass around and heal up the damage. Progressing to Goblin town things became fairly easy with Beorn being made to defend scores of low attacking Goblins and able to one round kill the Goblin King when attacking with Glorfindel wielding his Elven treasure blades. No tokens used.

Next was onto Flies and Spiders, here Beorn was a champion, being able to soak up almost all of my poison. Gollum turned once but the bear smacked him back into line. What's worse is that I drew Stinker as a shadow effect 3 times so thankfully I had tons of threat reduction to manage that. With Bilbo and his ring being able to ready a character each round (I picked Beorn first obviously haha) I was able to power through and stave off the Spider swarm for a second win with no tokens.

Onto the final round Battle of the Five Armies. This was what Beorn was made for. I managed to draw Hobbit Ally Gandalf round 1, so I saved up and played him round 2 and he, combined with his readying ring really helped punch through the battle and siege quests while I gained enough willpower to take on the standard quest. I drew mostly enemies that Gandalf, Beorn and treasure-hunting Glorfindel made short work of and all in all it was an awesome battle. The best moment was in the final round Beorn was killed by Bolg, only to be brought back by Glorfindel who had all three resourceful cards equipped and a Fortune or Fate. The bear retaliated on Bolg with the assistance of Glorfindel and he was put to rest. And also no tokens used.

Total for all three rounds 0

I was the only one who took a token on Over the Misty Mountains Grim. It happened like this:

Turn one, I didn't have any dwarves that my Ori/LeDain/Thorin deck could play (mulligan failed), but I did have Sneak Attack and Gandalf. I calculated I could kill the Giant on turn one with Orcrist's help and direct damage -- the setup reveal was Guffawing of Giants, which I assume is actually a whiff in setup, but hey -- I can take out the Giant anyway. Just need to make it through questing (sending Ori and Bilbo).

And out came Galloping Boulders to bedevil my 3-hp questers. Applying to Bilbo ends the game immediately, so wasn't an option. But losing Ori was so demoralizing I scooped without even seeing what it surged into. I probably shouldn't have, I still would've been able to take out the giant, and I did have Narvi's Belt in my deck (though not in hand). Cruel irony -- I had Hardy Leadership in hand, but hadn't played it because I wanted to use a resource for Sneak Attack.

I was so flustered I forgot to even use the token I had earned on my next attempt -- but it didn't matter. Turn one I had two Erebor Record Keepers and the sadly nerfed We Are Not Idle, which let me exhaust Ori to pay for both and get to five. I had both Fili and Kili in my hand, but since I had Narvi's Belt as well I was able to play that, play Kili to fetch the other Fili from the deck, and exhaust them both for A Very Good Tale (pulled Longbeard Elder and a third ERK), getting to nine dwarves on turn two. The rest was easy.

Here's how we did on the first quest (outside cards in parens):

0 General_Grievous (17)
0 Thanee (20)
0 naverag (25)
1 dalestephenson (23)

Spiders and Flies went smoothly, as I was able to get to five dwarves on turn one with a Dwarven Sellsword and a ERK. I knew the Sellsword would disappear when the spiders caught us (no resources), but I was able to get Gimli and another dwarf into play to make sure Ori's passive text stayed active, and so Thorin could get an extra resource after being readied. But no one else had to take a token either:

0 General_grievous (17)
0 Thanee (20)
0 dalestephenson (23)
0 naverag (25)

So with the final quest remaining, these are the standings:

0 General_Grievous (17)
0 Thanee (20)
0 naverag (25)
1 dalestephenson (23)

I went for a fairly typical Dwarf swarm but with a slight twist in the form of Tactics Legolas, which opened up Unlikely Friendship as well as his excellent ability - and the fact that these quests give you cheap, strong and easy-to-draw Weapons is an added bonus. It did mean taking slightly longer to hit 5 Dwarves for Ori, but between Legacy of Durin (even nerfed), Foe-hammer and the previously-mentioned Unlikely Friendship I wasn't short on draw.

The first two quests were fairly straightforward, finding the various engine pieces fairly quickly and somewhat steamrollering the quest from there. I've never actually beaten The Battle of Five Armies before, and it's tough for a tri-sphere deck, particularly one that can't Siege quest much, due to the resource discard of 4B. My first attempt found neither Steward nor Unlikely Friendship and I quickly got overrun. Second attempt, with 1 Valar token, I was forced to use Bilbo's search ability turn 1 to find Thror's Golden Cup, which did yield Steward. From there, combined with Legolas's ability to put progress tokens on the quest stages even when I couldn't quite make progress by questing, it was a fairly standard Dwarf swarm victory.

I don't own Dreamchaser, so I didn't make any particular attempt to restrict my deckbuilding in order to do well on the tiebreaker.

Thank you for organising this, dale, I've played LoTR so little recently (although I've continued to read Discord and forums) and this inspired me to actually play again

Agreed thanks Dale this is a lot of fun and has really encouraged me to get out there with some out there deck-building I wouldn't normally play. You rock man!

Battle of Five Armies turned out to be not so stressful, as good luck with the reveals (only two Bolg-induced surges during the game) allowed me to place progress on all three quests in the first three turns, and build up a mighty Bolg-killing army. Bilbo had Magic Ring, Sting, and Mithril in turn one, and Sting's effect failed to kill his attacker only once. Other players weren't so lucky (outside cards in parens):

0 General_Grievous (17)
0 dalestephenson (23)
1 Thanee (20)
1 naverag (25)

Final standings:

0 General_Grievous (17)
1 Thanee (20)
1 dalestephenson (23)
1 naverag (25)

General_Grievous used a Beorn/Smeagol/SpGlorfindel secrecy deck instead of dwarven swarm like the rest of us, and it paid off.

General_Grievous gets to choose the cycle for March, Thanee gets to choose a quest to play, I get to choose a quest to exclude, and naverag gets to pick a supplementary cycle for player cards. Thanks for playing!

Thanks Dale! It was a lot of fun running Beorn in a secrecy deck and he worked remarkably well alongside Smeagol. Well since March is my birthday month how about Ringmaker cycle to celebrate?

Thanee has picked Three Trials for his quest, and I'm excluding Nin-in-Eleph because I hate that miserable slog. RNG says To Catch An Orc and Dunlap Trap for the other two quests, so the mandatory hero list is TaEomer, Grima, Celeborn, and Idraen. Now Naverag gets to pick a supplementary cycle.

AFAICT we've never used Khazad-dum/Dwarrowdelf as the supplementary cycle, and it's a cycle I own (as is Ringmaker), so let's do that.