I tend to try to build decks to take on a cycle, rather than a specific quest, so the announcement of the second instalment of The Hobbit inspired me to build a deck to take on the whole hobbit "cycle", and to try a different deck type to my norm -

As a solo player, i've pretty much never seriously tried to use tactics, but I thought the scenarios in the hobbit might lend themselves to tactics quite well, so I constructed a Lore/Tactics dwarf deck, that uses low cost cards (most of the deck costs 0, 1 or 2), and can easily shuffle resources around using Bifur (and a song of battle) to play even the three-cost tactics cards.

So far I'm impressed with Goblin Cleaver and Foe hammer - very useful. Nice to see tactics getting some usable cards that aren't ridiculously expensive!

I've played against all three hobbit quests several times, and its 3-2 vs the trolls, 3-0 vs the second quest, and 1-1 against the riddles.

Feint is in there mainly for the trolls, and helps get the drop on them. In the third win against the trolls, i finally managed to find the treasure (probably about the 15th game vs this scenario with different decks, and my first time finding the treasure).

Any comments/suggestions?

Give it a try - tactics can be used effectively solo!

Heroes (4)
Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit)
Bifur
Ori
Gimli

Events (15)
3 x Foe-Hammer
3 x Goblin Cleaver
3 x Khazad! Khazad!
3 x Burglar Baggins
3 x Feint

Attachments (13)
3 x Legacy of Durin
3 x Song of Battle
3 x Dwarrodelf Axe
1 x Blade of Gondolin
3 x Dwarven Axe

Allies (22)
3 x Erebor Record-Keeper
3 x Erebor Hammersmith
3 x Miner of the Iron Hills
3 x Erebor Battle Master
3 x Longbeard Map-Maker
2 x Dori
2 x Bofur (The Hobbit)
3 x Gandalf (Core)

Add Treasure to the deck as necessary.

Cool. Thanks for the suggestions. I've decided the Hobbit quests are impossible. I tried with two people, and we were clobbered. Any suggestions on how to best get past them?

legolas18 said:

I think the key to the first quest is to go really slowly through the first quest stage, building up plenty of allies and resources on Bilbo, and trying to get a troll camp into play. Its ok to quest unsuccessfully to give yourself more build-up time. Depending on your deck that can give you a force big enough to burn through the encounter deck with questing, or to build an army to fight.
With my deck, the battle master is very good here, as is Gimli, as you can't take on the trolls with more than one attacker initially. Depending on your force, a battle master can make short work of the first troll, or defend an attack with Gimli to get some damage tokens on him, and power him up.
If you have the Record keeper, you can defend and attack with Gimli in the same turn. Weapons can make this easier, as can Goblin Cleaver.

If you have a choice, take out Tom first, as that will make dealing with the rest easier.

The second quest is much easier. Again, some slow play through the first (well, second) quest stage to build up some allies/weapons is useful, and you can generally avoid the stone giants. Try and hold back some Baggins resources for when you hit the next step, as you want to try and limit the number of cards that get revealed to 1.
So far, I've never failed to kill the Great Goblin the turn he hits play. After that, the rest of the goblins aren't particularly tough, so just mop them up with a few characters while the rest of the force you've built by this point quest.

The third quest is the hardest, in my opinion. No matter how well you build your deck for it, its still mostly luck. The problem I've had on a few occasions is that I run out of cards in my deck while still trying to riddle, due to the card draw in my deck, so I try not to accelerate my card draw to much. The Goblins aren't too tough, but with the extra reveal and some surge going on, you can get a lot out quickly, so try and hold back enough to fight and defend, even at the cost of questing unsuccessfully in the early turns, until you've stabilised.
I generally get the extra resource from the ring every turn, and hold them on Bilbo for facing riddles with the more specific conditions. If i hit a riddle that says name a cost, i generally say 0, as there are a lot of 0 cost cards in the deck. If i hit one that says cost, sphere, type…then i throw the resources in, as the more cards you hit on that, the more chance you have of riddling successfully. And you only get three fails.

I hope that helps you!

Yeah it does. Thanks! The biggest problem is that I don't have Khazad Dum yet. I'm planning to get it pretty soon, but right now I only have the core, the hobbit, and 3 of the shadows of mirkwood packs. So I'm having a tough time with that. Are the cards in Khazad Dum that crucial to have in these quests?

legolas18 said:

not so much the dulexe pack, but there are many many powerful cards in the following dwarrowdelf cyle - elrond, glorfindel, imladris stargazer, daerons runes, battle master is the most powerful attacker in the game with a dwarf deck, and the main one for hobbit number 1 to get an easy win - elbererth gilthoniel….with that card you can instantly get rid of a troll enemy and put it out of play

rich

richsabre said:

True, on the whole the player cards from Dwarrowdelf are stronger, but I think Bifur is one of the best heroes for running a smooth multi-sphere deck. Essential, no, but well worth having.