The One Suicide Deck

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Inspiration for
One Turn Deck 0 0 0 2.0
The One Suicide Deck 5 1 0 1.0
The One Suicide Deck (copy) 0 0 0 1.0
The One Suicide Deck (copy 2) 0 0 0 1.0
The One Suicide Deck (con) 0 0 0 1.0
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Seastan 41852

The seed of the idea for the main combo loop comes from a discussion on discord with Marcelf. Marcelf in turn credits the idea to Emmental on the French forum.

Overview

This deck is only meant to survive the first turn, as it relies on Justice Shall Be Done. But during the first planning phase, it will give every hero on the table infinite resources, it will allow every player to draw their entire deck, no matter the size, and it will reduce each player's threat to 0.

I call it The One Suicide Deck, as given the above, it is trivial to build any other deck(s) to pair with this one and take down every quest in the game.

Proxies

Dwarf Pipe is a proxy for an upcoming card Spare Pipe. Strength of Will is a proxy for the upcoming card Smoke and Think, a 0 cost spirit event that reduces the cost of the next card you play by 1 for each Pipe you control.

Setup

The goal, as usual for these combo decks, is to start by drawing your whole deck. It's relatively easy in this case, as almost every card you play is going to draw you more cards, but here is the general strategy I use:

  1. First priority is to play Ioreth, then Scroll of Isildur, then Bartering, then Sword-thain. This gets you a 4th hero for just 1 resource. The reason you want to do this first is that from now on, all your Scrolls will be free, your Mithrandir's Advice will draw 4 cards, your Legacy of Númenor will get you 4 resources, and your Justice Shall Be Done will get you 12 resources.
  2. Priority 2 is to play Justice Shall Be Done. It can be found easily with Word of Command.
  3. Priority 3 is to draw up the rest of your deck. It's hard to fail at this if you've achieved 1 and 2 I find. Just keep playing Mithrandir's Advice, and putting it back into your deck with Galadhrim Weaver and Scroll of Isildur. The Galadhrim Minstrel and Spare Pipes are great at digging those card draw events back out again.
  4. With an empty deck (or just less than 4 cards left actually, you can start the combo).
  5. Finish playing all your allies and Pipes (use up your last Barterings to make your Pipes free).

The Combo

First, I'll demonstrate the threat-reduction combo, which can reduce a player's threat by 1 with no net cost, and can be repeated indefinitely.

Initial state: Empty deck, Host of Galadhrim on top of your discard, 2x Galadhrim Minstrel, 2x Galadhrim Weaver, and 1x Galadriel's Handmaiden in play, 4 Pipes in play, and Smoke and Think in hand.

  1. Play Smoke and Think (0 cost) with 4 pipes in play to reduce cost of next card by 4
    • Play a Host of Galadhrim for free, pick up 2 weavers, 2 minstrels, and 1 handmaiden.
    • Play the 2 weavers, shuffle in Smoke and Think and the other copy of Host of Galadhrim into your deck (the Host you just played has not entered your discard pile yet as you are still resolving it).
    • Play the 2 minstrels, grabbing the Host of Galadhrim and Smoke and Think that you just shuffled in.
    • Play the Handmaiden, reducing a player's threat by 1.
    • Host of Galadhrim is resolved, discard it.
    • Repeat

Now that you can reduce player's threat at will, the next part comes easy. Simply perform the above loop, but also play either Deep Knowledge or Legacy of Númenor, and use your third weaver/minstrel to cycle it back to your hand. After doing so, perform the the threat reduction loop enough times to get everyone back to 0 threat again, and repeat.

You can use this loop to recycle any event you want. You could include 1 copy of Ravens of the Mountain and 1 copy of Grim Resolve, and with your infinite resources and event recursion you could complete many quests that way, even with no partner deck. With a couple clever additions, like an event that deals damage or gives your hero a stat boost, you could solo many quests with additional win conditions, like a boss enemy.

Against a Dire quest, where the Handmaiden does not work, you could generate infinite resources by recurring a threat neutral event like Gaining Strength, then give everyone else infinite cards/resources by recurring The White Council.

Finally, given that you can run this deck alongside a deck built with every single card released so far and have them play out the entire card pool in the first planning phase, I don't think you'll have much trouble beating whatever quest you want.

P.S. Why Gaffer Gamgee? Well, he's one of the cheapest lore heroes, which gives you more breathing room for playing doomed cards, and his Hobbit trait will net you 3 cards with 3 plays of Drinking Song, compared to (MotK) Gléowine's 1 extra card. He also saves you 1 resource by allowing you to use Hobbit Pipe rather than Wizard Pipe as your 4th pipe.

Thanks again to Emmental and Marcelf for pointing out the potential in the Host of Galadhrim-Galadhrim Weaver-Smoke and Think interaction.

28 comments

May 30, 2020 Marcelf 1347

Congrats and thanks @Seastanthis is so impressive as usual! The idea of the combo must be credited to Emmental on the French forum! So thanks to him! Now I am looking forward to see what can be done in true solo with this combo ;)

May 30, 2020 Seastan 41852

@Marcelf It was actually very easy to draw up the whole deck, so you could add some more cards to the list to make it a potent solo deck. First add Song of Kings and Song of Battle. Then:

The only quests it would have trouble with are those with an artificial time constraint that prevents you from winning turn 1.

May 30, 2020 Marcelf 1347

I see you can twist the combo deck to make it effective in true solo. But what I like about your combo decks is that it often gives me ideas to improve decks that are effectively playable. So thanks again!

May 30, 2020 死锁 283

you don't need Grim Resolve to combo with Ravens of the Mountain, because all doom card can ready Saruman.

May 30, 2020 Seastan 41852

@死锁 True, for some reason I thought Saruman was limited to once per phase. That makes it easier for sure.

May 30, 2020 askelad 628

What the damn hell? this absolutely insane!

repeated Risk Some Light also lets you stack the encounter deck however you like.

using The Hammer-stroke instead of Hail of Stones combined with Pursuing the Enemy lets us bypass Grim Resolve.

The Evening Star lets us clear any non-immune location.

May 30, 2020 Seastan 41852

@askelad Great ideas! And actually @死锁 pointed out that we don't even need Grim Resolve (or Song of Kings) since we have unlimited readying already with Saruman and our doomed events.

May 30, 2020 askelad 628

since multiplayer is clearly a solved problem here, what do we cut when trying to jam in some solo-win cards (Ravens of the Mountain, Pursuing the Enemy, Lords of the Eldar, The Hammer-stroke, maybe a Cram or 2 to use boosted erestor for several actions)?

May 30, 2020 Seastan 41852

@askelad I would just throw them in. This deck draws itself much easier than previous combo decks and should be able to handle an extra 4 cards no problem. If you cut any card draw to make room you'll wind up with a less reliable deck I think.

Cram for an extra ready I guess if you need to make extra attacks? But there are not normally multiple immune enemies. For defending you have plenty of chumps.

May 30, 2020 死锁 283

@SeastanSo I think 3x Word of Command is better,and cycle Risk Some Light can make sure you can use Ravens of the Mountain to place progress.Surely Lords of the Eldar is the easiest way to kill an immune boss.What's more, Messenger of the King need you add 1 Gaffer Gamgee in your deck.A Good Harvest may be better than Song of Travel, becuase all combo is in 1 phase, and you do not need play 0 cost card, and when you cycle A Good Harvest by combo, you can use card from any sphere.

This is all card I think need to change in this deck. but still there are some quest you can't beat(at least in a easy way), for example, fire in the night, you need to place enough progress in quest phase and take 6 turn to kill the boss, in this way Erestor will be a big trouble and you can't use Justice Shall Be Done.

May 30, 2020 死锁 283

@Seastan Can you give me a way to see spoiler card of 9-5 ? No spoiler makes me crazy.

May 30, 2020 Seastan 41852

@死锁 Smoke and Think is a 0 cost spirit event, so Good Harvest won't work for that. Hobbit Pipe is also a 0 cost spirit attachment.

I'm not sure what you mean by the 9-5 spoiler.

And yes some quests are incompatible with Justice Shall be Done, like Helm's Deep.

May 30, 2020 askelad 628

well, i just added a bunch of cards without cutting anything (58 cards total) and it went smoothly 3 times in a row. I need to find quests that this deck can't beat, or this would not just be the One suicide deck, it would just be the One deck period.

May 30, 2020 死锁 283

@SeastanI mean spoiler of The Land of Sorrow, the 5th pack of 9th cycle

May 30, 2020 askelad 628

Risk Some Light beats the hunt for gollum, journey to rhosgobel, watcher in the water etc

problematic quests: the hills of emyn muil,flight from moria, shadow and flame to name a few...

May 30, 2020 Tegyrius 126

Elf-friend on Saruman with Lords of the eldar solves combat. There are many ways to get a couple of doom cards into hand for the combat phase. Also, do you need three song of travel? Great deck. After all the problems with loops in GoT, why didn't they just put a 'limit per phase' on every card?

May 30, 2020 死锁 283

@Seastan We can use Wizard Pipe instead of Hobbit Pipe, but smoke and think is really a big problem. So you are right Song of Travel is necessary. But actually, both pipe and smoke can be play after you draw all your deck, which means you sure draw all the Song of Travel (or A Good Harvest instead). So I believe change 1-2 Song of Travel to A Good Harvest is still a good idea.

May 30, 2020 Seastan 41852

@死锁 Yeah I agree, 2x Good Harvest and 1x Song of Travel is more optimal. Also, here is a link to the remainder of the 5th pack spoilers.

@Tegyrius I found that having spirit access early was really useful for using the weavers to shuffle the Mithrandir's Advice back in. But dropping 1 or 2 for Good Harvest would work, and would let you run some leadership or tactics tech cards.

@askelad There's quite a few quests that cannot be beaten in 1 round, especially more recently. Anything that relies on exploring a number of active locations/side quests, like Emyn Muil, Steward's Fear, Fire in the Night. Anything with a round counter limiting advancement, like Helm's Deep or Treachery of Rhudaur, or even The Mumakil. Then there are weird quests which take away your heroes/cards like Dol Guldur, Escape from Mount Gram, To Catch an Orc, Long Arm of Mordor, The Uruk Hai. There's just so many odd quests nowadays that I don't think a combo deck like this has any chance of being a true "One Deck".

May 31, 2020 Marcelf 1347

I don't think Good Harvest is so good here, because you don't want to be in a situation where the Weaver shuffles Good Harvest in your deck.

May 31, 2020 Seastan 41852

@Marcelf You can play Good Harvest at any point during the phase, so I don't see why you would be in that situation.

May 31, 2020 doomguard 1923

nice deckbuilding. can see nerf of the host incoming (once per phase would do it).

to the probabilities: that deck needs as mentioned it needs 4 cards to work in the 1. planningphase. that seems unlikely, even with 10 cards in the planningphase, and perhaps +4 for runes or deep knowledge. to keep the engine roling there must be at least a mithrandirs advice or the justice shall be done.

perhaps i am wrong and with the drinking songs and the seeing stones u get easily your whole deck on your hand, it "seeems" to me like about 50/50. beacause of the 4 card-combo you need at atart.

May 31, 2020 Fingolfin 1

Great deck! As it is meant to be played with a teammate (or three) you could drop Ioreth and Sword-thain and ask them to play with a Lore hero and Desperate Alliance. With three other players there is an excellent chance of one of them having Desperate Alliance to provide the 4th Lore hero.

May 31, 2020 Seastan 41852

@doomguard Check out @askelad's comment above. He added 8 extra cards to the deck and still managed to achieve the combo 3 times in a row. I have never failed to achieve it either. So the success rate seems to be much higher than 50/50.

Jun 01, 2020 Marcelf 1347

@SeastanMaybe I am biased because I am trying a solo version without erestor and JSBD, but I don't want to waste a copy of A Good Harvest if I can't launch the combo afterwards.

Feb 14, 2021 ira212 256

@Marcelf Why wouldn’t you want to use Erestor? Did this deck lead you to the Saruman Helm of Secrecy Fellowship deck? I just came across this deck from there, and it’s awesome! :)

Feb 14, 2021 Marcelf 1347

@ira212Thanks! yes I tried to do a solo version of this combo deck that can actually beat quests where you can't win turn one. and in this case Erestor is not the best because you would have to discard your hand. And indeed this deck inspired me a lot for the Saruman Helm of Secrecy Fellowship!

Feb 14, 2021 ira212 256

@MarcelfDid you come up with something that worked?

Feb 14, 2021 Marcelf 1347

@ira212No I gave up the pipes and came up with the saruman Helm of Secrecy deck :D