So, I've been playing around with various deck ideas and now that we have the Song cards available, I'm putting together a 4 color deck that will hopefully be balanced enough to take on anything(well, aside from Escape from Dun Goldor....).

Hero thoughts:

Beravor(10)

Frodo(7)

Gimli(11)

So, starting threat 28, not bad. Frodo can eat any unexpected damage, as well as Gimli to pad his passive. Beravor is a good questing/card draw here. I'm thinking of using Stewards of Gondor, Sneak Attack and For Gondor!, and the +2 WP as my only Leadership cards. Then, I'll focus mostly on blue and red allies with green support cards(snares, heals, card draws).

Thoughts?

I've run a 4-sphere mono deck with Legolas/Eowyn/Beravor/Song of Kings. It beat Anduin on the first try, but Leadership never came into play.

Session report here

The Leadership cards in the deck were just 2x Sneak Attacks, 2x Steward of Gondor, and Celebrian's Stone, with 2x Song of Kings. I realy liked how the deck played out and it seemed to cover all the bases well.

Obviously such a deck would have a really difficult time against Dol Guldur, but for the other scenarios you should be OK.

I just can't seem to find a good use for Legolas. I'm hoping that at some point they incorporate more Ranged cards like Rain of Arrows that make me want to put him into my deck. As it is, I'm not all that crazy about any of the Tactics heroes, but I find Gimli to be the best terms of overall damage. Slap a plate on him, let him take some hits and he can one-shot some pretty strong mobs by himself. I think the strongest I ever had him was 2 plates and 11 damage tokens on him.

13 Attack Damage was enough to KO a Cave Troll in one hit. Oh, and he had UC as well. lol

idk about Eoywn...her 4 WP is amazing, but she can't fight, can't defend, only has 3 HP...I'd rather take Frodo with 2 less threat and his passive.

I can't seem to play without Eowyn. I find her willpower too good to pass up and she frees up other heroes to do something else. I like Legolas a great deal, as well. His ability coupled with a Blade of Gondolin is great to continue to advance scenarios, even if you are struggling to quest. I was a bit disappointed that he doesn't seem to be that useful in the Hunt for Gollum due to the lack of enemies. Though for what I've heard about Carrock, tactics may be a must.

BeeGentle said:

Legolas depends on enemies being available to kill, but he then becomes one of the best heroes in the game. In my deck with Legolas, Eowyn and Beravor was actually a big reason why it did so well. Eowyn quests, Legolas attacks, and Beravor can help out with either of those two, defend, or draw cards. Clearly both Legolas and Eowyn have weaknesses, that's why you need other heroes and allies to offset those.

OK, I've fined tuned this thing and I've been absolutely demolishing everything other than Escape From Gul'Dor with this deck:

Heroes:

Bervaor(10)

Eowyn(9)

Thalin(9)

Allies(16):

3x Gandalf(centered around him and his entry abilities)

1x Henamarth Riversong(very underrated!)

2x Erebor Hammersmith(attachment returns, mostly for Born Alofts)

1x Miner of the Iron Hills(kind of a plug card...he's cheap and can occasionally be meaningful though)

3x Rivendell Minstrel(feeder for SoK)

2x Winged Guardian(good cheap blocker)

3x Veteran Axehand(cheap blocker but also 2 dmg for only 2 G)

1x Eomund(solid ally for 3 G)

Attachments(15):

2x Protector of Lorien(amazing quest pusher or shield wall w/ Beravor)

3x Song of Kings(obv)

2x Steward of Gondor(incredibly strong...3G a turn for Eowyn or Beravor)

1x Celebrian's Stone(goes well on Eowyn to rake 6 or 7 WP a turn)

1x Horn of Gondor(also strong if you can get it with all of the Gandalf rubberbanding)

1x Unexpected Courage(Beravor loves this)

3x Born Aloft(best card in the game atm, imo)

2x Forest Snare(Nice for unexpected bigs that you'd rather not have attack...looking at you Hill Troll and Muck Adder)

Events(16):

2x Feint(1G says you can't attack me, sweet!)

2x Lorien's Wealth(goes well with Protector of Lorien or if you badly need to find a power card)

2x Thicket of Spears(emergency card)

1x Swift Strike(doesn't get much use but combined with Thalin's passive this can be enough to insta-kill some enemies)

1x Stand Together(another emergency card)

2x A Test of Will(treachery shutdown)

1x Fortune or Fate(sometimes people die...not often though)

1x Blade Mastery(good for finishing off a pestering enemy)

2x Sneak Attack(Hi, I'm Gandalf, here's 4 damage, cya)

2x The Galadhrian's Greeting(tremendous threat management card)

I think the biggest going for this deck is all the Gandalf manipulation and its versatility. You can use Gandalf to manage threat or damage big enemies(or Goblin Snipers), then combo with Born Aloft and Hammersmiths. He can even come in just to block or attack during combat phases then snap back into your hand.

The first few rounds need to be about getting a Song of Kings for Eowyn or Beravor and then hopefully a UC or SoG to keep things rolling. From there you get more resources then you'll need to keep spamming Gandalf every round. Also, you can draw a ton of cards and use Protector of Lorien to rush through a quest or location pretty easily.

I'm going to research the Nightmare rules carefully and then give this deck some runs at it when I get some more time.

Anywho, I thought I would post it for other solo players and see if you guys have any thoughts on possible improvements.

When you call Thicket of Spears an emergency card, I'm guessing your talking about playing it. I just wanted to point out that in this deck Thicket of Spears is only useful as a card to discard due to the fact that you have to pay for it from three different heroes' resource pools. I think you'd be better off with two copies of Will of the West so you can reshuffle your discard pile back into your deck. You will especially want it if you're playing the Nightmare variant.

All in all this deck looks really good. I think I'll try it out.

Very similar to a deck I built, only it used Legolas instead of Thalin. Beat Mirkwood and Anduin easily, yet to try Gollum and Carrock.

Thalin is very nice for any quests involving Eastern Crows. Unless you draw EC during setup...

Kiwina said:

My understanding is Thicket of Spears can be played if you spend 1 resource from each of your heroes. So, in that case it's very multi-color friendly. It doesn't say you have to spend 1 Tactics resource from each hero, just a resource. A card like Winged Guardian actually specifies a Tactics resource, so unless I'm doing it wrong, I think that's how it works and every now and then that card proves to be incredibly useful if I can't get a Feint or Sneak Attack to stop one of my heroes from getting crunched.

Will of the West will probably have to go in for a Nightmare run, which will just spin-cycle the whole Gandalf spam all over again. I'm guessing I would swap out Blade Mastery and maybe Protector of Lorien...I don't find that I need to use that all that much but it can be amusing to crank Eowyn up to 25 WP or something and just zip through a quest.

BeeGentle said:

It's a Tactics sphere card. All the resources spent on paying for it have to be from Tactics-sphere characters. The stipulation about "three different" characters is an additional requirement, not a substitution.

Since we don't have a Tactics song yet, you can't get this card into play unless you're running mono-Tactics.

Nlshelton is correct, you need three tactics heroes to play Thicket of Spears. The card doesn't have any text that would exempt it from the normal sphere requirements.

Hmm, I guess that's fair. Well, it's not a very important card for this deck anyway. So, just substitute Will of the West or Stand and Fight! for those.

I would say sub another Tactics event card for Thicket of Spears but Tactics events are generally pretty weak with the exception of Feint and Stand Together. If there were a Song of Whatever that gave you a Tactics resource I would probably swap Thalin for Theodred and use Tactics as the odd-man out instead of the way I currently I have it set up. Leadership has better all-around cards than Tactics, though Born Aloft is so strong in conjuction with Gandalf and Steward of Gondor that it's a must have. FFG really should have made Born Aloft unique or cost 1G, it's just too strong against the current quests.

Combined with the Hammersmith and Sneak Attack you can easily have Gandalf every round and never put him in the discard pile.