Now that I have swept through Hunt for Gollum. What is a good deck for Conflict at Carrock.

Since Frodo Baggins was the new hero, is there any good deck that would utilize him?

Happy New Years BTW.

happy new year

carrock - defintaly a tatics game in my opinion, no questing really, however you need low cost heros, lowest you can go, so that the 4 trolls which which will wreck havoc if they all engage at once, can sit in the staging area until you have enough cards in play to take em down one by one.

carrock is basically a slow build up of resources and allies until the fight with the trolls happens, then it goes pretty quickly

as for frodo, yes he's good as he can cancel deadly attacks and add as threat, but to be honest your threat going up quickly isnt something you want in this quest so given that frodo is spirit i would say you want some galahdrims greetings and gandalfs and get that threat down quickly then you can add cards at leisure and still use frodos ability, also with spirit you can cancel SACKED! cards which can destroy your chances of winning

i think you want alot of buff cards- i.e. dwarven axe/ gondolin blade/ dunadain attatchments that give +1 attack and defense (dunedain mark and signal) give them to gimli and get unexpected courage on him and youve got yourself a tank, the downside to this is that would mean you having a leadership/tactics deck which will put your threat sky high to begin with.......

carrock can be either incredibly easy or incredibly hard, depending on your card draw, so its a bit of a 50/50 with me

so to sum up i would say - low cost heros, cards to increase stats, plenty of allies, threat reduction, and treachery cancelling, so......maybe Tactic/Spirit with elanor to cancel when revealed, gimli as tank, and im not sure about the other, you dont particularly need alot of questing here, so im thinking another tactics hero

richsabre said:

Sacked! cannot be canceled.

radiskull said:

yes i really should stop posting half asleep

I played today with Gimli, Denethor, and Elanor and got completely demolished. Here are some problems I ran into.

Once the Trolls are in the staging area, threat will spike to above the 34 point

Trolls are very tough and get buffed by each other and the Carrock

I was able to use a forest trap on one of them.

Overall, they beat me to paste in short order. Even Gimli was unable to do much damage to them. I am open to suggestions to win since I have heard many people say this is actually a very easy scenario.

the only way i have ever won against this quest was taking the trolls down one by one, if they all engage you its pretty much game over, so that said my tactic is threat reduction. everything to keep threat low

- low cost heros, galdhrims greeting, gandalfs (sneak attack if possible so you can use again)

doing this i can get my threat incredibly low (and i mean well below 20) then i use a spirit deck to give me alot of questing power to ensure that it goes up no more than the 1 point in the refresh phase....doing this should ensure you plenty of time before they can engage and keep the threat down at the same time...

thats my strategy, but im sure there are others, as you can see its rather obvious weakness is needing a good start hand but remember you can always take a mulligan, an option alot of players forget about

Try Theodred - Eowyn - Legolas. Or Theodred - Eowyn - Gimli.

Generally speaking, this is very easy scenario for solo player if you use turtle strategy. Some cards can be very nasty like early sacked or early snake when you have noone to defend. But even if they come into play, you can still win. I won game when sacked was encountered in first turn and another game when it came in second turn. Still, sacked is the most feared card and can make you lose a game easily (especially if there is a single sacked in early game or double sacked in middle game).

Anyway, a few tips:

- slowly build an army, enemy encounter deck is sending just 1 card against you each turn and you should be able to control the game during stage 1B. There are only few sacked cards in deck so you should not be drawing them frequently.

- do NOT flip to stage 2B before you are ready. In other words, do not overcommit characters to quest. Usually Eowyn + Theodred is enough. And remember that Legolas ability is optional.

- wait for Grimbeorn and buy him. Statistically you have much higher chances of finding Grimbeorn before you get sacked.

- remember that there are virtually no nasty shadow effects that can hurt you, this makes blocking / leaving attacks undefended much easier

- remember that some enemy cards are helping you . Despair is a real winner here. Same for misty mountains goblins. You can even leave them in play so they can attack you each turn while you block them efficiently. As an effect, they help you control progress during stage 1B,.

- the worst thing about sacked card is that it limits your resources. Use cards that help you with that like Theodred/Steward/Radagast. If tactic hero gets sacked while Radagast is in play, you can still play a lot of eagles and many tactic cards are not blocked. Remember that if hero gets sacked, you can use resources which ALREADY are available on him. So if you have 15 resources accumulated on theodred thanks to steward of gondor, you can choose to sack him when sacked is encountered. Theodred will not get any new resources, but existing amount of resources should be more than enough for the entire game. If you play Lore, you may consider using Iron Hill Miner (dwarf, cost 2, can remove attachment from hero when it comes into play). Another way to "unsack" a hero is to play Landroval and get the hero killed, so hero will return to play and be free! (and you can even sneak attack landroval). I used this once or twice when I was playtesting Landroval usefulness.

- when you have your army ready (a lot of allies and grimbeorn in play), you have several possibilities:

a) lower your threat to 33 or less and flip to stage 2B. All trolls go into play but they do not engage you automatically. Instead, you choose to encounter Louise and kill him in first turn. Your threat goes to 36 and 37 in next turn when all remaining 3 trolls engage you. Then you kill the trolls in 2 maybe 3 turns , but they are easy to defeat , you can block with grimbeorn or lose some cannon fodder.

b) lower your threat to less than 30 . 20-25 sounds really ok, but even 30 may be enough. Engage trolls 1 each turn and make sure that you commit enough characters to quest so threat does not go up. This way you can be killing trolls while they are isolated. Save Louise to be the last troll. This is a little bit risky strategy if you have no ability to counter frightened beast (eagles are your friend in this quest) and you need quite a lot of allies in play (so you can both quest and attack efficiently).

c) optionally, if you use elfhelm and have a lot of firepower, you may risk fighting with 4 trolls in the same turn. For example you have 36 threat and all trolls attack you. You get + 8 threat (elfhelm gives you -4), you kill Louise at first possible moment. At the end of turn you have 2 or 3 trolls still standing and 45 threat, so you still have a couple of turns to finish the job before threat goes up to 50. You can use feints instead of elfhelm.

excellent points above, and to help that strategy use longbeard map maker, then you can control how much willpower you commit to a quest not going over 1b before you're ready

Yeah, long beard map maker is really nice to control the progress if you have steward of gondor engine running. It is quite efficient if you play Dain + Bifur + 3rd dwarf deck as Bifur helps you to manage resources. (I know that Khazad is still not released, but since Bifur has been already previewed, I made a proxy for playtesting, used Frodo for this because of the similar stats)

Also, Faramir is rather easy card to help you manage quest progress . Wait until you see new encounter card, and either use Faramir ability, or not. Or instead of Faramir, you can use Henamarth Riversong and just take a look at the encounter card and then decide who should go questing.

I play it with spirit/leadership and is very easy to beat that scenario...just gather your forces in the stage 1, and enter to the second one with lower threath

I tried to play this with a tactics deck and a lore deck (both mono decks). I was hoping that my tactics would amass an army and my lore would get enough cards and forest traps to engage the trolls. At least that was the theory. I tried to play that way and my threat level skyrockeded and I was not making any progress on my quests.

Back to the drawing board.

Any ideas how we can win Conflict at Carrock with 2 decks???

If I remember correctly, we won it using mono Tactics and mono Leadership decks. This was the first game in which Thicket of Spears saved our bacon - twice!

I go a very different way here as i like control decks. I think tactics is a terrible way to go against this quest, as at this time tactics is very weak... it has a few aps to go b4 it comes into its own as a usable sphere imo. I think that at the time carrock came out tactics was extremely weak and best avoided.

You can easily get though this quest using a spirit lore deck.. card draw engine running off Bilbo and using dunhere to attack directly into the staging area. Then use a leadership splash for steward and marks. Mark came into the game at this time so you can get your marks on dunhere and attack for 6 into the staging area.. you have card draw off Bilbo instead of beravor, so use UC on dunhere.. keep your threat low with sneak attack gandalfs and greetings and tomb+greeting... then you can use UC to get dunhere to attack multiple times into the staging area.. killing off the trolls and other mobs with out feeling any pressure. Use Minstrels to hit your song splash (+2 quest power is awesome) and so on..

How many copies of core do you run. Also from your question about frodo you sound like you may be playing in order.. dose this mean you are using a restricted card list? Restricted means you are only using cards that were released at the time the Ap was released.. so in this case core+HFG+CatC?

I really love this quest and have played it a lot with different decks and can post some when i know your restrictions. I even have a deck made from a single copy of core + the 2 aps that owns it.. so card pool shouldn't be a problem

booored said:

For two or more players it's extremely beneficial if one of the players is playing Tactics. This one player can concentrate on getting rid of all enemies, while the other player(s) deal with the questing and supporting the Tactics player.

jhaelen said:

Well the title of the thread IS - Good SOLO deck for Conflict at Carrock .. also ontop of that the player is playing RESTRICTED so he only has core+HFG+Carrock to play with, and tactics was undeniably weak back then.

booored said:

I am open to any ideas on the table at this point. I saw a video of a guy winning Conflict at the Carrock on youtube using Bilbo, Frodo, and Dunhere. It was amazing to see how he did it.

I think that the game might be pretty scaled for the number of players used. At first glance, having more decks means fewer trolls per deck to fight. But when everyone gets beaten to paste the number of decks becomes meaningless. Having a mono deck keep it`s threat low and stealth into the fight and pick off trolls one by one might be a clever way to use a single deck.

what jhaelen was saying about 2+ player games is totlly true. I also think the best course is to split the decks into roles, and a quest / combat deck works great in 2 player.

I can selfishly recommend this thread:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/724924/as-low-as-it-gets-building-a-scenario-specific-so

In this thread you can find three things:

1. A dissection of Conflict at the Carrock, which should help you build a good deck in general

2. A deck that I have built specially against that scenario. You might be missing some cards, but I think it is only a small margin.

3. A session report

Maybe this is helpful to you.

For 2 decks, I can recommend:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/662483/hammer-and-anvil-a-strategy-template-for-two-playe

There you can find a strategy template for two complementing decks, maybe you even want to use some sort of deck from the first threat as a new Anvil for the Carrock.

Good luck.

wow, interesting deck.. i wish this entire forum would just mobe to BGG btw... anyway.. I'm going to give this a shot as it is like the exact oposite of how my deck runs.. the scroe is a litle high, due to the weak mshowing for spirit... but still looks like a real solid plan. I love the way you break down the quest... good bad ugle trecheries for example.. THIS is the real key in that thread.. it is encounter deck breakdown that enables you to win imo... either way looks fun! I Do think Gloin / plate / self preservation is one of the best resource engines in the game, even better than steward in some ways. Add some songs and you can pay for any card every turn.. as ur running tactics mocking makes it even better.. I think people think og gimli to fast when thinking of double plate.

cool stuff

This deck work quite well against Carrock.

Total Cards (50)

Hero (3)
Bilbo Baggins (THFG) x1
Frodo Baggins (CatC) x1
Glorfindel (Core) x1

Ally (16)
Gandalf (Core) x3
Gildor Inglorion (THoEM) x1
Gleowine (Core) x1
Haldir of Lorien (AJtR) x2
Henamarth Riversong (Core) x1
Rivendell Minstrel (THFG) x3
The Riddermark's Finest (THoEM) x3

Attachment (20)
A Burning Brand (CatC) x2
Ancient Mathom (AJtR) x2
Fast Hitch (TDM) x3
Forest Snare (Core) x3
Protector of Lorien (Core) x3
Song of Kings (THFG) x1
Song of Travel (THoEM) x2
Steward of Gondor (Core) x3
Unexpected Courage (Core) x2

Event (14)
A Test of Will (Core) x3
Dwarven Tomb (Core) x2
Lore of Imladris (Core) x3
Sneak Attack (Core) x3
The Galadhrim's Greeting (Core) x3

Shadow of the Past (RTM)x1

booored said:

I included a Song of Travel in later versions, which makes Gloin all the more awesome...

And I guess concerning the score, I made some wrong assumptions. Now playing in juicebox's tournament, I see people playing more "reckless" decks, only needing to win 1 out of 10 games (and maybe even playing more) with a stellar score. That deck was built with the "vision" of a "real" tournament where you better not lose a game. And that deck probably wins 10 out of 10 times against Carrock with a solid score (I have not played 10 games, but didn't lose one).

Hope that clarifies and glad you like it.

I'll post my deck, but there is probably a better combo (i'm only using cards from core, HFG, and C@TC)

Spirit/Leadship

Theodred, Eowyn, Dunhere

A test of will 2

The Galafhrim's Greeting 2

Ever Vigilant 2

A light in the dark 2

Gandalf 2

Mustering the Rohirrim 3

Eomund 2

Lorien Guide 3

Sneak Attack 2

Snowbourn Scout 3

Steward if gondor 2

The favor of the Lady 2

For Gondor! 2

Celebrian's stone

Northern Tracker 1

Unexpected Courage

Westfold Horse Breaker 3

Song of Kings 3

Dwarven Tomb

Faramir 2

Hasty stroke 2

Valient Sacrafice 2

Fortune or Fate

Dunedain Mark 3

I believe this deck could easily get you a negative score with cards from the other sets. I got a 24 score, and felt like i could have dragged the game out longer to drop my score lower, with fairly little risk to victory. I see a lot of suggestings on tactics deck... but i think it would be too hard to keep your threat down... and even the best tactics deck is going to buckle if all 4 trolls engage.

With this deck, the trick is to keep your threat as low as possible. The sneak attack gandalfs and Greetings help to do this. I am sure there is some sort of alteration of this deck that could get card draw... that would probably be ideal.

So you keep your threat super low. This deck is also a good quester due to to eowyn and various allies. In 2B, questing is vital... the threat is already 8, + what ever you are unlucky enough to draw. One of the lands can easy add an extra 6... so, you will be needing 12+ will power in this part of the quest...

Then theres the trolls. I did this by damage boosting dunhere. Since my threat stays as far bellow 34 as I can get it, i use him to slowly widdle down the trolls. In my second victory, i used the gandalfs for direct damage with dunhere to kill one of the trolls... my threat was lower than starting, and i felt confident enough to go with the damage. If you have grimbeorn and enough allies out When a troll is low enough of if you can get a combind 12 attack, engange, and then gang up on him. Sacraficing eomund comes in handy here if you want to risk it without grimbeorn. Basically, it takes a little longer, but if you can fly under the radar with that low threat, and widdle down the trolls, you can eventually win. Best of luck

Yes! I tried a variant of this deck and I found the mission a cakewalk. Thanks so much for the idea! I did not have 2 core sets or some of the other decks so I improvsed with some Dunedain marks cards to buff my heroes ( Just out of curiosity, can you put more than one of the same attachment on a character? I was not sure but the book does not say anything on the matter). Sneak attack with Gandolf is great for keeping threat low and/or attacking a troll. Having the big giant join you and putting self preservation on him makes him practically invincible against the trolls. Just fighting one troll at a time makes this scenario very easy, once you have enough allies and attachments in play. Forest snare makes catching trolls easy if you don't want to spend time calculating how much damage to do to kill a troll.

I heard some say that this scenario can be as easy as Passage through Mirkwood. I was sceptical, but now I see why.

Glaurung said:

peterstepon said:

Actually this deck can win against almost all quests quite well(KD quests as well). But Anduin (core set) and RTM is almost impossible to win.

I do not like that deck much personally. Glorfindel is a terrible choice imo for a hero for a solo player.. his threat is off the chart insane, his ability of healing is pretty average considering other healing options and his attack / quest power? Who cares.. as you are most likely only using him for questing anyway. I just think he is a really terrible choice. Apart form that I think the deck is pretty good, a very standard deck, prob one that mops people have build at some point, the only thing is that it has little outs for surprise moments. This is teh kind of deck that you quit mid game after some ravaging encounter card, as there was nothing the deck could do to stop it.