Core Only Solo Deck to beat Deadmen’s Dike 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Goal

• See whether a revised core deck can beat Deadman’s Dike.

The Deak

Event hough you can lose this quest, by running out of cards, I ultimately felt that it was better to still stick to a 50 card deck, albeit with Will of the West available, because ultimately it is these core 50 cards that you to reliably get.

Key Goals:

• Get Celebrían's Stone to improve questing and provide access to spirit resource and Steward of Gondor on Aragorn to support card play.
• Get Gimli “safely” to 4 damage and add Dwarven Axe to give him 8 attack. Use Feint and Quick Strike to help with attacks.
• Get Henamarth Riversong in play to anticipate the encounter deck. There are a lot of nasty enemies that you want to minimise.
• Sneak Attack and Gandalf helps a lot; Using Gandalf for card draw is often a good option.
• Try where possible to use Denethor at end of the round to manage encounter deck and keep away really bad enemies.

Other assorted cards

• Will of the West is there in case deck gets low or you want to reduce the effect of some of the cards that harm you when you’re discard pile is large.
• Dwarven Tomb provides flexibility in accessing Spirit cards.
• Unexpected courage on Denethor or Gimli is useful.
• Protector of Lórien can help keep Denthor safe when blocking, and on Aragorn it can help with questing.

Deck performance.

After I settled on something close to this deck, I’m 2 wins from 5 plays (with a 3rd play that was very close to a win).

Quest Logs

This just outlines the steps

Attempt 1.1: Defeated in Round 7.

I went in blind to what is meant to be a tough quest using an earlier all leadership deck.

A few thoughts:

• More unique allies would be good.
• You could create a bigger deck if running out of cards was going to be an actual issue with 50 cards.

Attempt 2.1 Defeat in Round 5

This really is a step up in difficulty. I felt like I got quite a few good cards. I was efficiently bringing out allies. I got Henamarth Riversong into play. I got healing. I got Sneak Attack and Gandalf in the opening hand. I got Celebrían's Stone on Aragorn, which gave me a a decent bit of willpower. But for the fact that I didn’t have Steward of Gondor, you could say everything was going well. I had citadel plate on Gimli and was just about ready to do some serious damage. But by Round 5 threat was already out of control, I had 3 enemies in the staging area.

Except every card from the encounter deck felt brutal. In the early rounds, I got some locations that were nasty. Then I got enemies that were brutal.

Reflections:

• In this quest, you feel rushed. You don’t feel like you have time to get setup.
• You need serious willpower, attack, and defence.
• I guess the question is whether I need to give up on my approach
• I probably need more questing from the start. I could do with Steward of Gondor and Celebrían's Stone early.

I would still like to see whether the deck is fundamentally doomed or whether there is at least some potential.

Attempt 2.2 Victory

• See quest log: https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/58396

Attempt 3.1 Defeat I thought that 2.2 was fairly lucky. And I thought that the deck could be improved. First, Will of the West seemed like a good card to add in order shuffle cards back into the deck. And perhaps a Stand and Fight could be good if I get Celebrían's Stone and Steward of Gondor I would have the money to pay for allies in the discard.

Reflections: This playthrough did not go so well. It was going okay in the early rounds. I got Henamarth Riversong early so I often knew what was coming (although there is quite a bit of surge in this deck). I got Gimli beefed up and I did get Celebrían's Stone. But critically, I didn’t get Steward of Gondor, and I didn’t get Gandalf. And I also found the encounter deck to be quite brutal. In particular, the e started compounding, triggering more enemies. And it was too much.

Changes?

• I think the question is whether a slightly larger deck is good here. Perhaps in the end, you don’t want to hang around for very long if you can help it. And you want to maximise the chance of getting key cards. Any card added is decreasing your chance of getting key cards. And perhaps with Will of the West you can remove the issue of running out of the deck.

Attempt 3.2 Victory 103

Round 7, 39 threat, 4 damage on Gimli; 22 cards left in the deck

I felt like the encounter deck was a bit more gentle this time. I was able to get on top of the two opening enemies pretty quickly. Gimli got to four hit points quickly. Henamarth Riversong came out early. I didn’t get Celebrian Stone. And I didn’t get Steward of Gondor. But I did get two Sneak Attack Gandalf. That really made all the difference. In addition to the primary benefits of big questing, and direct damage. It also gave much needed card draw. So I had a couple of #Feint to handle Thaudir. I also saved up carefully to get Faramir into play. That provides the massive questing needed to clear phase 2 quickly.

I handled the transition to stage 2 with a quick strike for the remaining enemy and a feint to stop Thaudir. Then Stage 2 was cleared in two rounds. Round 1 focussed on doing massive damage on Thaurdir with Aragorn, Gimli, and Sneak Attack Gandalf, and stopping the attack with Thaudir. Then Round 2 was a massive quest for something like 20.

I often held back Denethor to check the top card in the refresh phase, which is probably a good strategy in general, where possible, given how bad some of the cards are.

As an aside, in general, The Shadow World was not that bad in solo, as I typically cleared all enemies or had only one left. So, discarding 0 or 1 extra card was not that bad. And it actually gave Iaron an extra willpower.

So, that went quite well.

Reflections:

• It makes me think that just going with a clean 50 card deck might still be best.
• The two times I have won, losing all my cards has not been a big risk.
• You don’t always even get Celebrían's Stone on Aragorn so there is a question of whether it leans too heavily into Spirit.
• It might be better to have Dwarven Tomb to allow going through the discard pile to pick out a relevant card and having fewer copies other Spirit cards.

Attempt 3.2 Defeat (but almost a Victory)

In Round 8, I was one resource away from being able to play Dwarven Tomb to play A Test of Will to prevent an army of Undead from emerging. Ultimately, that was too many enemies and my heroes got wiped out. But to see how close things otherwise would have been, I played it out where I got a “loan” on that resource.

That led to “Victory” in the 11th Round: 100 + 45 + 9 = 154

Reflections

• In this game, Will of the West helped. I might have still finished with a few cards remaining, but it would have been close.
• Dwarven Tomb worked reasonably well in that it gave me some flexibility with playing spirit cards without loading up on too many copies.
• It’s about a 50% chance of drawing Steward of Gondor (with 3 copies) in the first 10 cards (i.e., opening hand + first 4 rounds). If you mulligan based on whether it’s present, it goes up to about 65%. But often you don’t want to mulligan, because you might have some other good cards that you don’t want to lose. And when you don’t get Steward of Gondor early, you can be a bit light to pay for all the Spirit and related resources.
• This quest has some really punishing cards. In particular, Cursed Dead can get really bad as the scenario drags on.