The Three Trials (Solo) 1.0

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• 1.0

The Three Trials is a quest that can be quite hard solo. The first issue is that you must be able to take an attack from a boss-type enemy every single turn. You will also be required to make consistent progress on the quest so that you can avoid location lock, which is exacerbated by locations like ancient forest which will increase the amount of threat that locations in the staging area contribute. And finally you have the last stage where the guardians return and engage the player who holds their respective keys. In solo this obviously means you will be engaged with three boss enemies at once. The last real challenge is that you must clear the Hallowed Circle location to win, but when you travelled to the Hallowed Circle each guardian engaged with you will attack. This results in you having to take 6 boss attacks in one round if you try to immediately travel to the Hallowed Circle. Chump blocking might seem like the obvious choice, but the Cave Barros prevents a player from having more than 5 allies while it is in play. You can see why this quest is so tough!

With all that in mind, I really wanted to build a deck that could consistently beat this quest. Because blocking is so critical I was instantly drawn to Beregond. Halbarad is a great hero here because he will be able to always quest without exhausting. Glorfindel is my last hero because of his low starting threat, good attack, and spirit resource. There are a lot of nasty shadow effects that often target the guardians, so shadow effect control is pretty important. Inner Strength is critical and should be played on the first turn. Armored Destrier will also allow you to cancel a shadow effect if you are engaged with multiple enemies, which will happen a lot. Every Unexpected Courage you draw should be placed on Beregond to prepare him for the endgame. Silver Lamp is critical for knowing which shadow effects to cancel and which to not worry about. Resource acceleration like The Day's Rising and Steward of Gondor should go on Beregond and you should prioritizing spending Glorfindel's spirit resources first.

The general strategy is to go to The Trial of Intuition first. This is where you will hopefully be able to build up a little. If you get The Stone Barrow here, then you may have to rush through it, but otherwise this is a great chance to play your attachments and build up a few questing allies or Treebeard. You can also try and clear the quest or defeat the guardian if they are nasty and then turtle after eliminating one or both of those threats. Be careful to stay at or under 5 allies so that Cave Barrow doesn't get the best of you.

Once you move on from the Trial of Intuition you can choose whichever trial is easiest for you next. If you don't have treebeard or sneak attack/Gandalf out you probably want to go to The Trial Perseverance next. It's important to note that at some point you will want to have and keep a relatively harmless location, ideally Grim Foothills, in the staging area. Once you complete that trial move onto your last trial.

Before you obtain the last key, make sure that the location you had previously left in the staging area is the active location and that you have West Road Traveller in hand. When you move on to The Antlered Crown quest card you will have to engage all three guardians again. At this point, Beregond should be able to take on these three attacks without any problems. In your next planning phase you will play West Road Traveller and switch the active location with Hallowed Circle and be able to circumvent its travel effects. You should have a very healthy pool of resources and can use Sneak Attack/Gandalf and Lay of Nimrodel to boost Beregond's Willpower and quest through for the win.