I got the Heirs of Numenor box delivered a couple of days ago, and so far i'm really enjoying the new quests and mechanics. Finally getting to give some tactics cards a good workout, where they;ve previously been gathering dust.

I've been playing solo, and after a couple of attempts I got through the first scenario (started out with my Spirit/Lore Frodo/Aragorn/Glorfindel deck, and that got murdered…which was a suprise, as its bested every quest so far, including dol gulur). Built a Leadership/Tactics gondor themed deck, largely with cards from the new set - Boromir (new), Beregond and Imrahail as the heroes, and mostly gondor cards (splashing outside for vassal of the windlord and winged Guardian). That deck did much better against Peril in Pelargir, beating it on the second attempt.

The second quest, into Ithilien, I walked through on the first attempt. As i don;t tend to look through the encounter decks before my first play through a quest, I'm not even certain what most of the cards in that deck were.

The third, however….The Seige of Cair Andros…is an amazing quest. I really like the design thats gone into it. But i've tried it about six times now, mostly with the gondor deck, but also breaking out my dwarf deck, which is generally pretty tough, and been trounced every time.

One game i managed to clear two battlegrounds, just losing the approach, but got slaughtered when i got into the next quest phase - several of the powerful enemeis came out and battered me to death (literally, one of them was the battering ram). The enemies in this quest are really tough…I'm wondering just how winnable this is going to be solo.

Has anyone managed to win this quest solo, or am i going to have to wait for a friend to play to stand a chance of beating this quest?

four more attempts, still no victory. I got pretty close - I won all three battlegrounds, and moved to the final battle - though with some seriously wounded heroes - then the masters malice killed most of my allies, and i was left facing three orc battering rams, a seige raft and the harad archer.

Yeah, that lasted a long time.

The number of seriously tough enemies in this quest is unbelievable….these guys make the enemies of the early quests look like pantomime villains.

Great fun playing the quest, though!

So i retooled my deck slightly…saying goodbye to the new Boromir, and adding in the original (shifting the balance of the deck from Leadership/Leadership/Tactics to Tactics/tactics/Leadership)

Gave the Seige another go…a lucky early draw of two Dunedain Mark (on Boromir), a pair of winged guardians, one of the gondorian guy with similar stats (can't recall his name just now), a gondorian spear for beregond, and i quickly won all three battlegrounds. Inflicting a damage with beregond and his spear on defence, followed by an attack from the 5 str boromir nailed most of the enemies (occasionally backed up as needed by Imrihail), while seige questing was left to the trio of 4 Def allies, and I was on to stage 5, having removed 2,3 and 4 from the quest deck.

Bad news here, as I hit the Mumak…a massive beast! gradually sacricficed my allies to it, as i continued to take out other enemies that came up, and quested with boromir and imrihail…then a final turn gandalf put me over the top on the final quest phase.

So i'm pleased to say, after many attempts, my first solo win against Seige of Cair Andros!

Love what FFG have done with Heirs of Numenor. Hope the new cycle is all this good!

Sounds like a very exciting and challenging quest. I can't wait to try it out !

Thank you for your detailed feedback.

I beat it the other night with an all tactics deck using Legolas, Hama, and Thalin. It was close and I had 48 threat at the end, but it was a good fight and a lot of fun. Only lost one of the locations as well.

Yes really cool quest! I love it. Most previous quests looks boring and monotony against HON. Really cool job FFG!

I made it….. It was not easy….. 184 final scores……. Dwarfs still quite powerful in solo game.

I generally play 2 decks solo and to be quite honest I am amazed that you "walked" through Ithilien without even knowing the scenario!! That is a beast of a scenario and is by far the baddest ass "level 4" difficulty I have ever seen.

My HoN experience has been similar though not nearly so successful. I'm still stuck on beating Pelargir with my Legolas/Gimli/Beregond and Bifur/Boromir(leadership)/Denethor decks. I can usually handle the damage output with Bergegond and Rammas defenders while Legolas and Gimli are destroying enemies (really fun to play "Keeping Count" on these two!) and the other deck buffing, healing, defending, and supporting. My problem has largely been shadow effects and brigands depriving me of my resources, cards in hand, and allies. PiP is one of those decks that I get close to beating everytime and it always manages to pull out some diabolical trick to completely throw me towards the end… kudos for the "intelligent and sinister AI" in that encounter deck.

Into Ithilien has pretty much just been an endless assault of enemies and I've almost been scared to find out what a "level 7" means for HoN (In Cair Andros).

These scenarios are very thematic and fun to play but are also very brutal, difficult, and frustrating. I almost feel like playing double decks makes it worse, as these scenarios seem to scale really well in difficulty and synergy in drawing two encounter cards (atleast) a turn is just plain evil with these encounter decks.

I am actually flirting with creating TWO mono-tactics decks and giving it a go… something I'd never have dreamed of until now.

I must go back and replay into Ithilien when I have some spare time to play again…I only played it the one time, and as it was a win I moved on to seige. But looking at all the comments about its difficulty, I can only assume I was incredibly lucky on the draw from the encounter deck.

Ply another couple of sessions and best results is 127 scores. With my Dain/Ori/Thorin deck.

Actually in the begining i build up my force allow enemies put undefended attacks on the battle ground locations. Mean time i just build my allies force.

Yes when BLocations is destroyed i have longer way to go but is not big problem for the dwarfs allies deck. In siege Dain and Gandalf still quest for 7 and if you have 10 allies you alredy can quest 17. Then you play Lure of Moria and you ready for fight! The bigest problem in this quest: Mumak( difficult to kill and every turn he kill 1 ally) and chain of shadow effect which is also mean dead to defender. So this quest is quite difficult but still manageable. Now wonna play coop game to see how is it in 2 ot 3 players game.

Just play 2 players game with 2 dwarfs decks. Dain/Ori/Thorin and Gimly/Nori/Thalin. Win very easy! Maybe just got lucky…… But with many dwarfs allies it was too easy. Dain is crazy powerfull in coop. Try tomorow again but i think even if it will be more harder is still not too difficult for dwarfs synergy decks.

Need to try Into Ithilien too.

I am having luck on the HoN quests solo with a Lore Aragorn, Elrond, Spirit Glorfindel deck. I tried siege for the first time today, and was able to beat it on the second time through. Enemy control is pretty huge, and the new ranger spikes are awesome!

These are really great quests! They really force you to balance every aspect of a deck.

Glaurung said:

today play another game and lost….. Previpus time just was lucky!!! I love this level of difficulty!

Actually there is 1 think which confuse me about a rules…….

Some enemy like Harad troops when they revelaed, they attack from staging area a first player. they got a shadow card, then they attack they got another shadows cards by the other shadow cards effect like make them +2 attack and then deal them another shadow cards and so on. then after attack reslove in the quest phase all shadow cards is remind on enemy cose by the rules shadow cards discard only at the end of combat phase. then later this enemy engage a player and attack again already in combat phase. so all previous shadow cards effect is still working right? So i mean if enemy got shadow cards with + 2 attack in the quest phase and shadow card is still deal to enemy during combat phase, enemy still get attack bonus right? Im sure yes but just want to hear what other players thinking?

From version 1.3 of the FAQ:

The phrase "Deal a new shadow card", to me, very clearly implies that once the current combat resolves, you discard this shadow card, then deal the attacking enemy a new shadow card and go through steps 1-4 of the combat phase using that new shadow card. In the case of Goblin Runners being dealt as a shadow card, if you kept it and resolved it again for the subsequent attack, you would have an infinite loop that means this enemy keeps attacking forever!

I've also tried this solo several times. I can only manage to explore a couple of the battle locations before getting trounced. My deck revolves around the lore Aragorn, the cheap Glorfindel, and the latest Boromir. I sail through most quests, but this one and Flames and Shadow appear to be impossible at this point. I'll post my deck later.. Good luck!