So with the game out a week I'm sure a lot of obsessive deck builders like me out there have been experimenting a lot. So, what are your thoughts on 'best solo deck' so far? I think it comes down to Spirit/Leadership, Leadership/Spirit and Leadership/Knowledge.

Spirit/Leadership (otherwise known as 'play all the Rohan guys') is my current deck and is discussed in depth in another thread, but is my favorite so far. The ability to pull guys like Beorn and Gleowine with Stand and Fight is just awesome, and the threat reduction is incredibly powerful. I've got about a 75% success rate with this deck against the second scenario, and have yet to lose with it against the first (though I've come close!) I have yet to even make significant progress against the last scenario with any solo deck.

Leadership/Spirit is a bit different (using 2 Leadership guys + Eowyn), and is less combo-heavy. CS allows Aragorn to shop in either sphere and SoG added to that makes the resource engine in this deck stronger than any other deck out there. You can still use Greeting and Tomb to have killer threat reduction, but you lack one very important component that the other two decks have: card draw. In my experience this deck can run out of steam quickly, and you pretty much have to rely on Gandalf and Noble Sacrifice for cards. I haven't tested this enough to get some solid results, but it seems like a fairly strong deck.

Leadership/Knowledge was the first deck I created and tends to give you the best of both worlds: a great resource engine (though not as good as L/S) and a ton of card draw. You do run into an issue with threat, so despite her sheer awesomeness Berevor can seldom make the cut. But Knowledge has plenty of card draw without her and gives access to a ton of just really solid cards that compliment Leadership well. This has about a 60% success rate against the second scenario, and about a 90% success rate against the first. As with S/L, I don't even last through the first quest in the third scenario.

I've seen some 'tri-sphere' decks out there as well, but I just can't get behind that without some more resource pumping cards. Any other combinations out there that people have found to be reliable?

I am an avid deck builder as well, built an all Rohan deck, similar to the one that ended up posted here (a few differences, and I have 2 core sets, so a few 3x of unique cards were substituted out). It's obvious in the core set that abusing Gandalf is pretty key, which lead me down the path of abusing allies in general as well.

I do not see how that deck can quest the third scenario. I did substiture in Aragorn, because having the extra exhaust while you have a prisonner is key, no other changes to the deck. Assuming Eowyn and Aragorn are your 2 starters if Aragorn is the prisonner, just start over, no point in wasting your time...), I have gotten pretty far, but eventually just get overwhelmed with enemies in the staging area.

I actually had the most success on quest 3 with a Lore / Leadership build with Glorfindel and Gloin doing the rescue, I got to the third stage but died quickly once there. I did not get that far with any of my other builds (most of them variations of Spirit / Leadership).

In that scenario, the condition that traps one of your heroes is just killer if you get it early (I got it in setup a few times which just ends the game before it starts), so for now, with the cards you have, I think you need to luck into a great draw to get there, if possible at all. Interested in other's perspectives of course.

Seems like Tactics / Spirit might be good for this one, Gimli can get damaged early and then engage with big enemies that clog the staging area (loosing a few allies to block in the process), that is my next attemt.

CAlexander said:

That's what I've been using in my best attempt so far (I reached the third stage but hit threat 50 immediately after). I've been thinking it might also be worthwhile to use Gimli as a third hero. If Gimli is the prisoner and the game's been going well so far (i.e. you got the Steward of Gondor), defeating the Nazgul might be easier this way.

And yup, if Aragorn ends up being the prisoner, you might as well start over right away.

Still, I think this scenario may actually require less luck than the second one, but it's of course too early to tell since I haven't beaten it yet...

I think that leadership/spirit is the best right now, followed fairly close by leadership/lore. I just managed to make 50 card decks for each of these and I hope to try them tomorrow against the second quest. The farthest I could get to, with 30 card decks, was about halfway into the second scenario of that quest. And that was with leadership/spirit. Hoping to have better results with more filled out decks.

All of this begs one question, though. Where is tactics, right now? Unfortunately, it seems they are the weakest deck, at the moment. Just to see, I'm hoping to also try a full tactics/spirit deck soon.

Titan said:

I ran a Tactics/Spirit/Lore deck and it beat the 2nd scenario quite easily, much easier infact than my Leadership/Spirit deck!

I think if you combine Tactics with good control like Lore you can cause some serious havok. Gimli with two Citadel Plates...nuf said =P

DerBarchen said:

I had good success with Gimli/Legolas/Beravor. I've beaten the first scenario 3-4 times with it and got to 12 counters on the second quest of Anduin scenario. Beravor to quest to maintain threat, Gimli to defend until he's got several counters, then hopefully you've found a Beorn by then, to keep the board clear with Gimli and Legolas attacking (keeping counters on the quest). I don't get to use Beravor's action that often, but she's mostly there for the 2 wp.

Looks interesting (I love the card draw and support cards Lore provides) but I see two problems: resources and threat. Your threat starts incredibly high, which is probably why you aren't having success with the second scenario. And without Leadership being part of your team, split/sphere decks have a really tough time with cash flow. That being said Tactics is the trickiest sphere to make work right now, so keep up the good work!

I've found NinjaDorg's "Shadows of Mirkwood/The Old Forest" Scenario to be a great one to play solo against. It's certainly a challenge, without the immediate slap in the face that the Hill Troll scenario presents you with or the low difficulty level of the first official scenario. If you haven't checked it out yet, I definitely would.

I put together a 50 card Spirit/Tactics deck with two core sets and found it effective against the first and second scenarios (haven't tried it against the third yet).

The heroes are Dunhere, Eowyn and Thalin and the starting threat is 26, which seems to be on the lower side. The basic idea is to keep the threat level as low as possible with 3x Gandalf and 3x Galadhrim's Greeting (plus 3x stand and fight for extra Gandalf uses and 2x Dwarven Tomb to get back Galadhrim's Greeting). Eowyn and Thalin quest (so any enemies that appear take a bit of damage), along with other allies if the threat is low enough that I don't have to worry about getting engaged by enemies. Dunhere then picks off enemies in the staging area without having to engage them. If I get my threat low enough, I'll almost never be engaged by enemies and can sit back with Dunhere taking out enemies. For the enemies with defense higher than 2 (like the hill troll), I generally wait until I've got a good supply of allies on the board and then engage them myself when I'm ready (this is where the tactics cards like feint and allies help, especially Beorn (who I can either get into play by using Thalin's resources or by discarding him with Eowyn's ability and using stand and fight to bring him back with Dunhere and Eowyn's resources, which is sometimes easier)). Northern Trackers and Lorien Guides help deal with locations. I can often avoid traveling to undesirable places and rely on the trackers to clear the staging area of locations.

The deck is slow, but between the threat reduction and Eowyn's questing ability, I have the luxury of taking time to draw the cards I need and develop my resources to play them.

When the deck works, it seems to work really well. If the threat level gets too high (above 35 or so I'm finding), then it starts to fall apart unless I draw into some major threat reduction cards quickly. I've got 1 win and 1 loss against the 2nd scenario. In the win, I was able to keep the threat below 20 for most of the game and grind out a win with a final score below 20. In the loss, the threat crept up into the 30s and I ran out of reduction and was overwhelmed in the 2nd stage.

I'll be trying the third scenario soon to see how it holds up.

Sounds like a good deck idea Twentyft, do you have a deck list ?

I do indeed have a deck list. Here it is:

Hero (starting threat: 26)
Dunhere (9)
Eowyn (9)
Thalin (8)

Ally (19)
Beorn (T) x2
Gandalf (N) x3
Gondorian Spearman (T) x3
Lorien Guide (S) x3
Northern Tracker (S) x3
Wandering Took (S) x3
Veteran Axehand (T) x2

Attachment (8)
Dwarven Axe (T) x2
Horn of Gondor (T) x2
The Favor of the Lady (S) x2
Unexpected Courage (S) x2

Event (23)
Feint (T) x2
A Test of Will (S) x3
Dwarven Tomb (S) x2
Fortune or Fate (S) x1
Hasty Stroke (S) x3
Stand and Fight (S) x3
Strength of Will (S) x2
The Galadhrim's Greeting (S) x3
Will of the West (S) x2
Swift Strike (T) x2

I've played around with the spirit/tactics deck in the third scenario several times. I managed 1 win and 7 losses. The losses generally happened pretty quickly. In 4 of the losses, I got almost no progress on the first stage before the threat level killed me off. In the other 3, I managed to rescue the prisoner, one time getting into the 3rd stage before losing again to the threat dial.

The one win happened because of luck more than anything, I think. Thalin was prisoner, and I got a Galadhrim's Greeting, Northern Tracker and Wandering Took in my starting hand. Got the tracker out on turn 2, which helped me keep my threat down by dealing with locations, questing with Eowyn. Wandering Took came out the following turn. The luck really kicked in, though because I was able to play all 3 of my Galadhrim's Greetings, plus 2 Gandalfs (one re-used with a stand and fight). Then I used Will of the West to reshuffle the discard pile back into my deck. I bided my time on stage one, clearing all three objective cards, but not claiming one until I was ready. With threat sitting at 21 and a Gandalf and Stand and Fight back in my hand (more lucky draw), I took Gandalf's Map for Eowyn (she doesn't attack or defend in this deck anyway) and moved on to stage 2.

In stage 2, I rescued Thalin quickly, and then was able to quest with Eowyn, Thalin, and the Tracker, keeping the threat dial from rising rapidly and holding the Took and Dunhere in case I ended up encountering a creature that could engage me. I put Gandalf out and did the 4 damage to the Nazgul and quested with him to avoid a rise in threat and make progress on the quest. The next turn I got a Gondorian Spearman out. Turn after that, I used Stand and Fight on Gandalf again to do 4 damage to the Nazgul and after questiing with him and Eowyn and the Tracker, engaged the Nazgul. I defended with the Spearman, and chose the Took to die, but the spearman's 1 damage while defending killed the Nazgul. My threat at this point was in the high 20s and I had 12 counters on stage 2. I then got to 15 counters, but delayed taking the other two objectives for a few turns. This allowed me to get a dwarven axe on Dunhere, Favor of the Lady on Eowyn and to luck into drawing 2 Galadrhim's greetings and a dwarven tomb. I got my threat into the teens while also killing the Hummerhorns and the Chieftan at a distance with Dunhere, engaging the Chieftan when I could use swift strike to kill him on defense.

With my threat at 21, a gandalf in hand (I lucked into drawing him), nothing in the staging area and 15 travel tokens on stage 2, I started my last turn. Claimed the 2 objectives in the planning phase action window, raising my threat to 25. I dropped Gandalf, lowering the threat to 20, quested with everyone for a total of 12 will power, meaning no matter what came up in the encounter deck (the trechery cards had all been played and there was only 1 card left in the encounter deck), I'd get my 7 travel tokens, winning the game since the Nazgul was already defeated.

I ended up with threat level 20, all three heroes alive, but with a total of 5 damage on them, and the hummerhorns and chieftan's 9 victory points, giving me a score of 16.

I don't think the deck will perform that well against Escape from Dol Guldor consistently. In fact, given that in most of the games, I was utterly destroyed in something like 15 minutes, I think this victory was a perfect storm of luck. I needed the Northern Tracker in my starting hand, and also managed to use Galadhrim's greeting 6 times to lower my threat, as well as using Gandalf twice to take care of the Nazgul and a further 3 times to deal with threat. Thalin happened to be the random prisoner and I managed to draw a few spirit allies early, and tactics cards largely after he was rescued. More important than all of this, though, was the fact that the encounter deck was extremely kind to me. The few times I had to engage with an enemy, some of the worst cards just happened to be dealt for shadow cards (which didn't give them any effect).

As for the deck, it's basically working the way I want it to. It attempts to lower threat significantly and use a combination of the three heroes, the northern trackers and lorien guides to effectively control the game. Then when the time is right, it blitzes through the scenarios. If the threat level gets too high, the deck is destroyed, but if it gets low enough, the lock can be set. I find that as the scenarios increase in difficulty, it harder to set the lock (meaning more losses), but once it's achieved, the deck can cruise. I just got really luck and was able to get the lock in the 3rd scenario. I don't think that will happen regularly.

I am testing the 3 hunters deck (Aragorn,Gimli,Legolas)at the moment with some spirit cards in my deck (Celebrian's stone is a great card for Aragorn) for threat control and so far it runs very well.I must now test this deck in the third scenario and i will tell you if it is any good for all 3 scenarios.

ps:i don't know if this will be one of the best solo decks but i enjoy it very much.

This is crazy. With 1 (well, 3 if you buy more sets) celebrian stones as the only way to generate off color resources, you are bound to get tons of dead cards. I would not play russian roulette ...

guciomir said:

I just managed to win the third scenario solo, btw.

It was my 33rd attempt in total, and the 8th attempt using a single-set Spirit/Leadership 50 card deck featuring Aragorn, Eowyn, and Dunhere.

Naturally, the game featured several very lucky events, like Gandalf appearing twice for the rescue, getting Luck or Fate to resurrect a Dunhere slain by Ungoliant's Spawn after being entangled in spider webs. I made two successful trips to the mountains of darkwood, getting first the stone, and later finding a dwaven tomb. I was also lucky not to attract the attention of the necromancer while my lethally wounded Aragorn went adventuring.

My final score was 26 (including victory points for hummerhorns, ufthak and a jailor).

guciomir said:

Yes i forgot to say this.If you don't have 3core sets don't try this deck.Two of my friends gave me their boxes cause they don't play anymore.They prefer Warhammer so i have all cards X3 and i can build better decks.

3x throne of Gondor and 3X celebrian's stone is a must for this deck.

From spirit sphere i use:

3X Galadrim's greeeeting

2xThe favor of Galadriel

3x unexpected courage

I have a little promblem with the wen revealed cards but citadel plate gives to my heroes +4 hit points.Aragorn and Gimli with 9 hit points can help you a lot and you can also sacrifice some of your allys.