For those reading my "Drowning on the Anduin" thread, this is just the start of a discussion regarding my eventual woes with the "Escape From Dol Guldur" quest that I will attempt for the first time tonight.

Be watching as I will be posting my questions here.

Feel free to post your comments on this quest as well as any decking building advice you may have. I have 1 copy of the following:

Core, HFG, CaTC, JtR, and HoEM.

Are you playing solo?

(Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah, forum has a minimum post length)

Unless you talk me out of it, yes.

extremely hard solo quest. You may want to make some house rules for solo once you play it a few times and understand it better. It is extremely luck dependant. With the addition of Ziggy and the Belt it is now not that bad, but you do not have those cards.. maybe try proxy'n them.

booored said:

I will admit that i have no idea what that means. What House rules are you suggesting?

hendersondayton said:

just create some that represent the cards you dont have....at the chance of sounding like a complete d*ck i would say just dont bother with this one, unless you really want to beat it.....it can be unbelievably frustrating

richsabre said:

Try it again now you have Khaz rich. Run a Ziggy deck and use that Belt. 2 Lore Heroes and 1 Spirit. If the spirit is not taken cool.. cast Ziggy, if it is taken use the lore to cast Minstrel / song of travel. Then you can place the "Narvi's Belt" to cast any colour mana... Ziggy gets you the resources, the belt give you the color matching, and you can even play a 4 sphere deck very well.. even with only running 2 heroes for most of the time.

hendersondayton said:

A house rule is just some made up rules that you do to make the game more fun for your own private circle of friends and family and solo games. A lot of players make house rules in this game as solo play as it is so unballenced. As Rich said this quest is super frustrating.. so you can just never pay it like him, or you can play it a few times and then after you know what the quest is about make a small changes to the rules to make it more fun.

Examples of house rules that are fairly common that I have tried and think are fun for solo...

• A Journey To Rhosgobel - Start with no damage on Eagle and/or add 1 wound per round instead of 2.
• Return to Mirkwood - Raise threat by 1 or 2 instead of 3 per round and/or make threat dropping location effect first player.
• Play with 2 decks - any quest

Some common ones i think suck and do not recommend.. but hey make up your own mind...

• no resource matching to cast spells
• Play with 4 heroes
• Allow actions to happen at response speed

The point is that this is YOUR game, and you can do what you like with it.. the idea is to have fun.. not bash your head in rage at the quests.. If a quest is simply not fun.. try modding the rules a bit... though it is a good idea to fail a lot first so you have a well rounded idea of what the quest is about.

Proxies are when you say "this card is in fact this other card I do not own" So say you want to play with 3 UCs but can ont be stuffed buying 3 core sets... you can just say that "Keen Eyed Took" is in fact "Unexpected Courage" if you use sleeves you can also simply print out the card images and slide it in the front of your sleeve over the other art work so it looks better.

Proxy'n is very common and everyone dose it in CCGs as it is so hard to get the cards in that format... not so common in LCGs as far as I have seen, but it is a good way to test and see if you want to buy a pack or not (besides the quest) as you can build a deck with proxies and test them out. Most people use it to get 3 of the core sets with out buying them

Still haven't tried it, but I'm glad to see you've taken me up on the suggestion. Hopefully I'll have some horror stories to post after this weekend. The way I see it, if it can be beaten, why not try it? I'll just go in with full understanding that it's really difficult and luck-dependent, so hopefully I won't be bashing my head against the wall. I'll just keep remembering how good it felt to beat Anduin for the first time.

the thing is as more cards come out these quests should get easyer and easyer

booored said:

I've tried similar strategies with other quests and the problem is that with Narvi's belt being leadership, you'd need song of travel (for ziggy) and song of kings (for the belt) on your lore character at which point you don't really need the belt anymore (unless you have tactics as well) and it can take too long to set up.

I am waiting to get Dead Marshes. I really want to have the tactics song so that I can play a few of those cards without having to use a tactics hero.

I am going to give this quest a whirl a time or two with a solo, 3 hero deck..to feel all of your pain..before i start making house rules or playing two decks.

booored said:

This is true, and I'm not sure what hendersondayton has as far as APs go, but I'm poor and still have only a single core set. I'll be getting Emyn Muil from my wife on Valentine's day (she had me pick it out). That'll be my first AP. For the Dul Guldur challenge, I'm going to try to beat it with a single core set before adding my new cards.

I bet most people in the forums have talked Dol Guldur to death, having tried it when they first got the game last year. For me, it's still new, so I'm excited to explore it like everyone else has already done.

Budgernaut said:

likewise!! ive been dropping hints for my OH for road to rivendell thinking it would be out by feb 14th...but at this rate ill be lucky for redhorn haha

christmas and birthdays and v-day- best time to talk your family into buying you those 'card thingys'

Budgernaut said:

I put that in my original post.

Ah. . . so you did.

Ninjawa said:

yeah.. what was I thinking.. I thought the belt was Lore for some reason.. I am still relatively newt o Khaz... sorry ... Still I think that the belt could be key to Escape for solo players... I'll need to find time to play with this idea.

booored said:

Thats funny, I thought it was neutral for ages and even made up some decks that looked good on paper then realised it was leadership when I went to put them together. I think you are right though, the belt plus possibly Gloin could help get around the resource and sphere limitations in that quest. Maybe I should have another crack at it soon.

OK. What are everyone's deck creation suggestions? Losing a hero at the beginning really hurts. I would imagine a 3 sphere deck is a really bad idea..

Effectively, especialy if you don't have access to all the Songs or Narvi's Belt.

I would recommand playing 3 heroes of the same sphere. This way, at least, you're ensured that you'll be able to play your cards. But even then, you'll find this scenario very harsh solo.

It takes a proper alignment of objective guardian cards (you want a couple treachery if possible; forget the quest if you get 2 Dol Guldur Beastmasters along with Ungoliant's Spawn), the right hero being kidnapped (especially when playing multi-color) and a couple of early turn where the encounter deck gives you a break.

Sneak Attack + Gandalf is a must to progress in this quest. Any form of resource acceleration is also welcome (Steward of Gondor, Gloin, Zigil Miner).

Anyway, give it a few tries. You'll get a feel for the quest, but don't be discouraged if you barely get 10 % win rate. I don't think anyone has found the way to beat this consistently solo yet.

so perhaps a leadership deck is the best first attempt?

Couple questions:

1. In the initial setup, I drew two treachery cards to be placed on two objective cards. The first was Necromancer's Reach which I discarded without issue because nobody was exhausted. The second was Under The Shadow which I also discarded without issue because I have not started the game yet so I am not even in a phase. Were these the correct responses?

2. If I am good with how I handled #1, I now have two available Objective cards to attach to a hero. Can I attach either of these objective cards to the hero I chose as my "prisoner"?

Thanks

#1: Yes, drawing those two Treacheries during setup means they do nothing and the Objectives for them are now ready to be grabbed...

#2: however, all three Objectives can only be taken with an "Action:" and you can't do those during the setup, have to wait for the game to properly begin and grab them during the first available Action window.

but. there is nothing FORCING you to claim the objective cards when they become free right? You can just leave them in the staging area. It seems like you want to take them at the last possible second....given the forced text on each of them...

If they are unclaimed, the FORCED effect on the Dungeon Jailor card ("unsuccessful quest = lost unclaimed objective") doesn't happen.

hendersondayton said:

I think you have this backwards, if they are unclaimed (which means not attached to a hero), the Forced shuffles them back.