I confess, I was never a huge fan of Against the Shadow Cycle when it came to the player cards.
Outlands were okay and (despite the common opinion around the forum) found them to be variable enough, but when I opened pack after pack containing Mono-Sphere Boosters, my initial excitement for this Gondor Cycle went down the sink; mono sphere decks were not a viable solo deck option for me.
Sure I've had some success with mono sphere decks against particular scenarioes, but I couldn't see them as versitile deck that can go through multiple quests with little or no motification. And it is very important for me for decks to be able to win against multiple situations (early enemy rush, location piling, sustaining while waiting to complete quest objective) because I am simply too lazy to rebuild decks often.
However, after today I've became a huge fan of mono-sphere decks, for they were the answers I was looking for against Escape from Dol Guldur.
Every since I started to play this game, I had one quest that I could not defeat with consistency no matter how hard I tried. Soon it became my goal to come up with a deck that can triumph over Dol Guldur, but failed time after time.
Losing 1 out of 3 starting heroes, minimum of 4 cards during first round, restriction of playing one ally per turn, possibility of losing an objective and having to recycle encounter deck, and to have enough attack strength to kill the Nazgul in one or two rounds and quest through last stage in one or two rounds..... I couldn't come up with a single deck that could deal with all these horrid things Dol Guldur throws at me, until today.
Ironically the solution I've found was a mono-spirit secrecy deck.
I personally thought mono-spirit to be the weakest of the mono-sphere decks and laughed at the idea of building a secrecy deck without leadership sphere.
But this deck has triumphed where might of Dwarves and Outlands and Vilya has failed.
By using Spirit Glorfindel, Spirit Pippin, and Frodo as my heroes, I had nice low starting threat of 18; that's lower than engagement threat of King Spider!
The deck had very little of my most used Spirit cards; no Zigil Miner, no Stargazer, no Test of will nor Hasty Strokes.
Instead it was filled with cards I never thought I'd be using.
Emerys whom I thought I'd never use because I never planned on using Spirit mono sphere deck made a great blocker,
Hobbit Pipes that I didn't even consider using in a Hobbit deck became valuable source of card draw (along with Ancient Mathoms). This was the reason why Pippin ultimately triumped over Eleanor and Caldara.
Out of Sight provided much needed defence against early rush of enemies should it happen,
A Watchful Peace gave me much needed breathing space, especially combined with Northern Tracker.
and even Damrod found his way to my deck and did turn a lose into a victory once or twice.
It is bit early to to say mono-spirit deck has conquered Dol Guldur because I've only played 10 games so far, but 7 of them had been victory and half the victories were achieved with Light of Valinor in my hand and Glorfindel as my prisoner, so I'm hoping my win ratio will keep (or be better) as I play more games and continue to refine the deck.
Finding the solution against Escape from Dol Guldur totally changed my view on Against the Shadow Cycle's player card and I am actually warming up towards Caldara and Theoden as well.
...... too bad that even though I can now win against Escape from Dol Guldur, there is a nightmare Escape from Dol Guldur to go through before I can say I can win against every scenario with consistency.
I don't even know where to begin with the Nightmare version of the quest.
Has anyone else tried mono-sphere decks against Escape from Dol Guldur? And if so how was your experience?
