I absolutely love this game! After two flawless playthroughs of Redhorn I am considering keeping score and becoming one of those session report blogger people. Every scenario gets better than the last. Ive played through KD and cycle 2 in difficulty order. Im starting to think of it as more like complexity level than how hard it is as watcher and rtr at 4&5 gave me a bigger headache but i can see there are arguably more complex mechanics in redhorn. In KD I felt the 7 was by far the easiest. The 5 was the hardest and the 3 was in the middle
Anyway to the strategy: two decks both starting at threat 24. Denathor, Bifur, and Thalin for the first deck and Frodo, Eowyn, and Dunhere(welcome back haven't seen you since core's river snipers). The magic number for Dunhere is 4 (5 for mountain wargs) after Thalin softens them up. For this reason I have 3 blades of gondolian and dwarven axes in there and without a starting hand of at least one a mulligan is necessary. The idea is dunhere nukes the crows while Denethor controls the deck. Everyone else quests and bifur takes thalin's resource. In two games ive only ever had one cost 25 golbin get through. For this reason Arwyn can give her resource to Thalin as the only other tactics cards in there are 3 quick strikes 3 hails and 3 feints as emergency measures, all only cost oneresource as well.
With 3 dwarven tombs and 3 test of wills and 3 condition removing dwarves you'll almost always have something on hand when you need it.
Everything else is standard, Rohan questers, ancestral knowledge and record keeper combos.
What can be done better: right now Im considering replacing rewarded frendships with favor of the ladys as the attempt to get the lore/tactics threat down in early game when attachments were played on dunhere were futile. There are 3 Gandalfs in the lore deck anyway. There is also a huge overkill of location nuking in this deck set so I may give lore/tactics some exchanges for one song of travel with minstrels and 3 Elrond's councils. This would make me consider 3 more test of wills on the lore side.
The strategy was inspired by my extremely lucky two hero deck for RTR. I always felt low threat wasnt the way to go in cycle 1 because after 15 all kinds of orcs came after you anyway but now im ready to retire the defender and bladed Legolas infavor of willpower progress.
Lastly I've become a proxy master. All these cards I have 3 of are represented by same cost and type cards. Two excess ride to ruins are dwarven tombs and a veteran axehand is my third axe.If you know your deck its extremely easy to remember in a co op game i see no need for mult core. 2 favor of the lady and one unexpected courage are 3 unexpected courage and next playthrough 3 dunedian quests will be 3 favor of the lady's.