Goal of the Deck

My initial goal was to explore heroes beyond Éowyn, Aragorn, Théodred, and Denethor in the revised core box, and I wanted a trisphere deck that used tactics. But then, I narrowed the constraints a bit further.

Ultimately, I wanted a deck that could reliably succeed against scenarios 1 and 2 of core box and Dark of Mirkwood scenarios.

This is what I ended up with for now. It performed fine on most of those scenarios, although it was about 50 / 50 on Anduin.

Constraints:

• Must have Beravor, Eleanor, and Legolas as heroes.
• Only use revised core player cards

Version History

I don't know whether the notes below are of interest to anyone else, but I guess they show how a new player explores the game and the early days of learning to deck build.

0.1 Version

This was a quick first pass, where I took a previous deck and took out leadership sphere and added tactics sphere.

I feel like I'm really going to miss Sneak Attack, Steward of Gondor, Celebrían's Stone, Faramir. They were integral to my last strategy of massive questing power, resource acceleration, and playing more Gandalf.

My first pass focused mostly on events and attachments for tactics. I also wanted to get novel heroes that I had not played with too much. I made some minor tweaks to get more allies from lore and spirit.

That said, the deck is not that balanced in terms of card costs. Tactics is currently very light in that it's all 1 and 2 cost cards and it only has 5 cards whereas lore has 6. That said, there is Gandalf to smooth out some of this.

A few tweaks I'm considering even at this stage:

• Something more expensive in the tactics deck (e.g., Beorn for a ultra high power ally or Citadel Plate to really protect my defender). Indeed, some solo quests, especially when starting with low threat levels (and with threat control, do provide time to build up resources); that said, without resource acceleration, this still might not be realistic.
• Maybe put Hasty Stroke back in and perhaps leave out Wandering Took.

0.2 Version

• I took out Lórien's Wealth because Beravor can handle card draw. And that should make things more balanced across spheres.
• I took out Wandering Took to give more space for other spirit cards.
• I added Hasty Stroke for better encounter card management
• I added The Favor of the Lady to help with much needed questing strength. It's not as good as Celebrían's Stone, but it has the benefit of not being unique (and also not restricted).

0.3

• I reduced a few spirit cards to two copies to reduce the cost profile.
• I added citadel plate to give tactics some high cost options if it starts building up resources.
• Ultimately, the heroes are fundamentally problematic for Anduin, because they'll typically only have 3 quest power on the opening turn, and the encounter deck is going to 1 threat for the hill troll plus two encounter cards, which would typically be about 5 threat all together, but could be as much as 11, but probably between 3 and 7 is quite common. And while you could quest for 4, that would leave nothing for defence. You might hope to get Henamarth Riversong to provide one extra quest point, and perhaps The Favor of the Lady early on, and that might get you up 5 willpower by the end of the second round. But by then, you're going to be needing to attack enemies, and you'd have to be lucky not to have threat levels blown out. In short, I struggle to see how a solo deck could survive against Anduin without at least perhaps five baseline will power from 1 or 2 characters. Éowyn in particular is great at the start because you have 4 willpower and you have heaps of cards, so if you need to spend a card to avoid threat being raised you can. And you have two heroes that can start to get on top of the enemies.

0.4

I made a lot of changes after playing a really long 21 round solo scenario of The Caves of Nibin-Dúm. There really are big differences between quests in terms. Some quests require you to have specific capabilities or threat levels from the very beginning. In other quests, you have time, but you still need to ultimately build up to being very powerful.

+2 Protector of Lórien  (would allow for greater questing and enables card discard for Faramir strategy)
+1 Faramir  (a tricky out of sphere strategy that if it works would turbo charge questing)
+1 Beorn (a high cost card thad would  give great combat strength in longer term games)
+1 Northern Tracker  (high cost threat management tool)
+2 Stand and Fight  (part of the faramir strategy)
+2 Daughter of the Nimrodel  (alternative healing strategy)
−1 Hasty Stroke  (perhaps 2 of these is enough)
−1 Blade of Gondolin  (Generally, I only need this on one hero; so 2 copies is probably fine)
−2 Citadel Plate  (long term card and probably only need on 1 hero; so 1 copy is fine)
−1 Horn of Gondor  (unique card; quite helpful for resource generation, but mostly I want to keep allies in play)
−1 The Favor of the Lady  (good, but allies are generally better, and probably only want on one always questing hero)
−1 Erebor Hammersmith  (he's quite high cost, so 2 copies is fine)
−1 Henamarth Riversong  
−1 Miner of the Iron Hills  
−1 Gléowine  (unique, so 2 copies is fine)
−1 Lore of Imladris  (with Daughter of Nimrodel, 2 copies is fine).

0.5

I'm further thinking that Protector of Lórien should be more strongly integrated into this deck's strategy. In particular, it gives flexibility in questing and trade-offs between retaining cards and discarding cards can be optimised in the Golden Window. This combined with card reveal of Beravor and Gleowine and potentially putting Unexpected Courage on Beravor would be a good combo.

This revised deck performed very well against Cave of Nibin Dûm in my first run. All the strategies, including both the essential ones (e.g., unexpected courage with Protector of Lorien, etc), and the longer term ones came together well (e.g., Faramir, Beorn, Citadel Plate).

I'll be keen to see how it performs against Journey Along the Anduin solo. It seems like the biggest challenge will be getting questing power rapidly up to about 5 in round 1 ideally from just 2 heroes. I think core cards that I'd want in hand would be Protector of Lórien, Unexpected Courage, The Favor of the Lady, Feint, Gandalf. After that, Blade of Gondolin and Veteran Axehand would be good. If I can prevent, threat from rising and vaguely keep control of enemies and locations, it would be round 5 before hill troll engages. Possibly The Galadhrim's Greeting would provide a little extra time to build up the ally base.

For the second phase, it would be great to pull off the Stand and Fight and Faramir strategy combined with lots of low cost allies.

For end of second phase, I imagine Protector of Lórien and card play combined with Legolas and Blade of Gondolin would create some flexibility of when to trigger end of phase. And in general, you really want to end Phase 2 with low threat and after the combat phase. So this combination could work well together.