I must have tried to defeat this quest 20 times before I finally did it. The real triumph was that I did it with only 4 Dwarves in my deck - Bofur and three Veteran Axe Hands. Originally, I tried about 15 times with leadership/tactics comprised of Boromir (HoN), Prince Imrahil, and Beregond. I really wanted a full Gondor-themed deck. But, the truth is I could not find a way to use Prince Imrahil enough to be worth his threat level, and I was having severe threat problems by stage 4 every time I made it there. The solution ended up being the addition of spirit Glorfindel (FoS). Not only did he come in at 6 threat less than Imrahil, he also provided me the much-needed threat reduction, when revealed cancel effects, and shadow cancel effects. I also brought with him Light of Valinor x3, Unexpected Courage x3, Ancient Mathom x1, Elrond's Council x3, Imladris Stargazer x1, Arwen Undomial x1, and Bofur x1.

The other good thing about grabbing a spirit hero, was that it forced me to reconstruct my deck. It's not that I had a bad deck, but there are soo many cool cards that sometimes it gets really hard to eliminate them. Since I was running a tri-sphere deck, I knew I couldn't keep some of the higher cost cards for fear of not acquiring enough resources. There is only about ~7% chance of drawing Steward of Gondor during initial draw, so you can't rely on that.

Even after I taliored my deck, I found myself taking cards out that didn't serve me in the game. If I drew a card and it didn't fit an immediate need, I discarded it permanently. This is what it took to defeat this quest. It took me six tries with Boromir, Beregond, and Glorfindel. Let me say that this was, by far, the hardest quest I have ever attempted.

I would gladly post my player deck and strategy (as best as I can remember) later, if anyone is interested. I did not use much of my player deck, as I was able to defeat the quest in six rounds with a final score of 95. I probably only drew about 16 total cards, and had about 4-5 in my hand upon completion.

Just wanted to update this post and say that I finally soloed Siege of Cair Andros last night. Again, it took me about 20 attempts to do it. I finally settled on a mono-tactics sphere with my heroes of Thalin, Legolas, and Beregond. I chose Thalin at the very end, because there are just so many enemies, anything that can soften them up with immediate damage was most welcome. Legolas was used to boost quest progress and to slay enemies in the staging area with Hands Upon The Bow. Beregond was used primarily as a quester…questing for 6 with the Gondorian Shield was a beautiful thing. I went with monosphere for two reasons. One, I wanted to have no barriers in getting allies out of my hand. Two, there is a nasty treachery that does nothing to a monosphere deck and there are archers that do damage to each different sphere you have in play (so, could be up to three damage every combat phase).

My strategy was to travel to The Banks first, The Citadel second, and The Approach last; because The Approach was the least burdensome (stage 3) to my deck out of the three. I ended up successfully travelling to all three, however. I also did not even plan to actually clear stage 1, becuase once all three locations are out of play, you automatically go to the next stage available anyway. This happened to be stage 5, because I travelled to all three locations already.

Cards that certainly helped me were drawing Horn of Gondor right away, drawing three Defenders of Rammas for potential 12 siege questing, Hands Upon The Bow, and Hail of Stones. Eagle allies also came in handy as did Born Aloft to bring back allies.

Good job man. My main contention with soloing these uber-difficult quests is that when I finally squeek out a victory, it's usually after about 20 times trying, and then I am not as convinced that my deck construction had much to do with the victory next to the fact that after 20 times, I was bound to finally draw an easier string of encounter cards. It would seem that chance has more to do with being victorious against some of these quests.

I am able to beat Ithilien most of the time with a mono-tactics deck, running Beorn, Legolas and Beregond. I have yet to beat Cair Andros solo. I know how good it feels to finally win against certain quests, so again, great job! Keep on freeing Middle Earth from the tyranny of the Dark Lord!