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| QotW: Traveling a River with the Kitchen Sink | |
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Some Sort 3652
I went to a deckbuilding guru and said: "Oh wise guru, what must I do to achieve enlightenment?"
The guru responded: "You must make yourself one with everything."
So I did.
Last week, Darkling Door built a deck called One of Each that included one copy of every card. I was inspired by his approach to the quest of the week and wanted to create a deck that didn't just include every card-- it played played it, too. So that's the goal: to put on the table absolutely everything we can possibly put on the table, all at the same time.
The traditional way to do this would involve a dedicated fellowship and one of the remaining infinite (or arbitrarily long) loops. But that's played out. We're going to do this straight up, and to make it extra legit, we're not generating a single extra resource or drawing a single extra card for the entire quest. With 1229 cards in our deck, it will take us a minimum of 1223 rounds.
Ideally we would do it without including a single event, but some events are required because they put allies into play (such as Ranger Summons), and there are about 90 other attachments that we'll only be able to get into play if we include one single copy of another event. (I doubt you'll be able to guess which event without peeking.)
With optimal luck, we should be able to do this in exactly 1223 rounds, but we'll plan on 1300 just so we're not feeling rushed. To survive 1300 rounds, we'll need some sort of repeatable threat reduction-- preferably from our heroes since finding what we need in a 1229-card deck is a dicey proposition. This means either Galadriel or Frodo Baggins-- I've gone with the latter because someone needs to carry The One Ring, and as you can tell, theme is very important to me.
(Also, Galadriel would automatically violate our "don't draw a single extra card" goal and people might start mistaking this for a power deck. Frodo, by contrast, has the "advantage" of cutting our resource production by 1/3rd.)
Unfortunately, "everything we can possibly put on the table at the same time" is not the same thing as "everything which can be put on the table". There are six unique characters with two ally versions: Gandalf, Anborn, Bofur, Elfhelm, Faramir, and Bilbo Baggins. We must choose one version of each.
Additionally, our hero choice locks us out of another unique ally. Helm of Secrecy would get us around this, but would also double the number of events we're running, so I decided exclusion was the lesser of two evils.
Favor of the Valar, Friend of Friends, Seasoned Forager, Power of Command, Well Preserved, Inner Strength, and Strength and Courage limit the number of copies that can be in play at the same time, and Wandering Spirit cannot enter play under any means. Finally, Kahliel's Headdress is unplayable without Kahliel, who does not fit into our required hero lineup. We could once again use Helm of Secrecy + Galadriel to work around that, but it would once again require a second event and double our card draw.
All of the unplayable cards are included in the sideboard (along with the encounter keyword allies) as a testament to my shame.
The next question becomes: how are we going to survive 1300 rounds against an encounter deck that is presumably trying to murder us that entire time? The answer is: we softlock the shit out of it.
Fortunately for us, this week's Quest of the Week is Journey Along the Anduin, the most eminently softlockable quest in the history of the game, a quest that features not one, not two, but three different ways to rig all reveals from the encounter deck indefinitely as well as not one but two different quest stages that can accept any amount of progress without clearing.
The first method features Thalin + Eastern Crows. An old (and dubious, but fun) ruling holds that when he is committed to the quest, Thalin deals his 1 damage so fast that, if the enemy only has a single HP, it is defeated before it can even trigger Doomed or Surge keywords. This means every time an Eastern Crows shows up we get a free reveal and then immediately shuffle the Crows back into the encounter deck. If we can achieve a state where the encounter deck is nothing but two or three copies of Eastern Crows, we can coast indefinitely until we stop questing with Thalin.
The second method relies on Banks of the Anduin. If we can explore Banks of the Anduin before the staging step, we put it back on top of the encounter deck and it becomes our reveal for the round. Provided we can keep exploring it before staging, we will never reveal any other encounter cards.
The third method simply requires progressing to the third stage, at which point the encounter deck stops staging cards for the rest of the game. This method is the easiest, but by the time you've achieved it you've pretty much already won the quest, so it will be avoided.
The Anduin method is generally superior to the Crow method since it works even with a full encounter deck, but to do it we'll need some cards from our deck-- and at 1229 cards with no extra draw, we can't count on seeing those any time soon. So we'll aim for Thalin + Crows to get started.
We'll enlist a partner deck to help keep us alive while we work on softlocking the quest. Any deck will work as long as it can pull enough weight to deal with two reveals per round largely on its own, but it helps if the partner is low-threat enough to avoid engagements since we definitely don't want to lose any copies of Eastern Crows or Banks of the Anduin as shadow cards. (I'd also recommend adding some copies of Shadow of the Past to protect against that eventuality.)
Also, treachery cancellation and/or healing (to protect against Necromancer's Reach) is very welcome, and while she's not as necessary, Firyal can make setting up the softlock go a lot faster. (When she commits to the quest, pitch every card that isn't an Eastern Crow or a Banks of the Anduin.)
The partner deck will eventually die off so we're only staging one card per round, and in the spirit of the challenge, it won't pass anything across the table to help us out (other than dealing with the reveals while we're getting set up). If the partner deck can voluntarily kill off its own heroes (using e.g. Treebeard, Caldara, Folco Boffin, Boromir, or a discardable MotK like Gaffer Gamgee), that's even better! Otherwise, it will have to let its heroes get killed off by enemy attacks, which will take some precious cards away as shadows and might disrupt our setup.
But with proper planning, this isn't necessary. I used this deck and killed one hero off with a Dol Guldur Orcs reveal and the other two with attacks from the Hill Troll (which burned one Banks of the Anduin and one Eastern Crows as shadow cards, leaving me with 1x and 2x of each, respectively-- enough for my purposes).
Once the softlock is achieved, you can speed through the next 1200 rounds or so while you draw out the rest of your deck. Because the average cost of cards in this deck is less than 2 (approximately 1.896, in fact), even generating two resources per round (because Frodo keeps spending his) means as soon as we've drawn all of our cards, we have the means to pay for them. At that point, it's just a question of "how do we get all of these cards down at once?"
Songs of Wisdom, Battle, Travel, and Kings give us all the resource matches we need, and most allies can simply be played at will. Guardians of Rivendell will force us to discard 6 cards, but that won't be a problem. Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond, and Saruman should be saved as they only last a single round. Silvan Refugee should be saved since we'll be bouncing some characters in and out for a while. Wilyador and Dwarven Sellsword should be saved so we don't have to pay their upkeep any longer than necessary. Northern Bowmaster and Misty Mountain Journeyman must wait until we're engaged with an enemy, while Dúnedain Hunter and Dunedain Pathfinder must wait until the encounter deck has 5 or more cards again. (Once it does, the Hunter will give us the engagement necessary to play the Bowmaster and the Journeyman.)
Flight of the Eagles is playable as soon as we have an Eagle down-- I recommend Vassal of the Windlord to make it cost efficient. Ranger Summons requires a Dunedain hero; Thalion will satisfy requirement as soon as we clear three sidequests. The Rangers of the North must damage an enemy when they enter play, but we can toss that six damage on the Hill Troll we've left sitting around without issues.
(Speaking of, the sidequests can be played and explored at our leisure once the quest is softlocked. We can only have one copy of each in the victory display, but other copies can remain in play to give us a place to hang our Long Defeats and Roads Go Ever On. Prepare for Battle would force us to draw extra cards, but we can avoid this by ensuring we never have more than one card left in our deck at a time.)
Finally, Tom Bombadillo! produces an ally that only lasts a single round, so we'll save it until we can control his appearance and force it to a time more to our liking.
Getting all the attachments into play can be trickier. Any attachment that is not restricted and not limited (e.g. Unexpected Courage) can be placed anywhere we want-- I like to pile them on Frodo. Any attachment that is not restricted but limited to one per hero (e.g. Love of Tales or Expert Treasure-hunter) can be spread among all three heroes; most sphere or trait requirements can be met via songs or trait-granting attachments (such as Nor am I a Stranger, Elf-friend, or Diligent Noble). Any card that is restricted but can be played on allies or characters can be stuffed on one of our many non-unique allies.
(Speaking of Diligent Noble-- doesn't it violate our "don't draw any cards" goal? Nope: player responses are always optional, we'll simply opt not to use it.)
With the particular softlocks we're setting up, Guarded attachments are a breeze; you can play a Guarded (Enemy) or Guarded (Enemy or Location) attachment at any point and it will discard an Eastern Crows from the top of the deck and then add it to staging. From there, trigger Anborn's response to shuffle the Crow back into the deck and claim the attachment. As long as you don't play more than one per round, you're golden.
Guarded (Location) attachments are a bit more work, but not much; you have plenty of ways of blowing up a Banks of the Anduin during your planning phase-- Asfaloth, The Riddermark's Finest, Woodland Couriers, Born Aloft with Meneldor. Don't worry about cards going to your discard pile, we'll get to that in a second. My personal favorite approach is Frodo with three Fast Hitches and Bilbo's Walking Song.
Once explored, Banks of the Anduin goes to the top of your deck where it can be pulled for your Guarded (Location) card and freed using the same methods. (A Burglar Indeed! also works while the Banks are guarding an attachment.)
Anything that attaches to enemies or locations can be played whenever, though I recommend waiting until the encounter deck is back since the only valid targets in play at the moment are likely not long for the world. Also, Favor of the Valar is free to attach to your threat dial whenever you'd like.
The real sticky wicket for attachments is restricted attachments that can only attach to heroes. By my count, there are 102 such attachments; factoring in Thalion, Sword-thain, and Golden Belt, we can only have slots for 13 of those at a time (and one of those slots goes to The One Ring).
The key there, though, is "at a time"-- you see, a character must be a hero for these to attach in the first place, but once attached the character needn't remain a hero. (Most of these attachments-- such as Blade of Gondolin-- will stop working if the attached character loses the hero type, though some-- such as Silver Harp-- will not. Regardless, all will remain attached.)
Enter this deck's lone event, Bartering. (Probably not the one you expected, eh?) We can name a Sword-thain, attach two attachments, then Barter back the Sword-thain and play it on a new ally. By my count, there are 78 unique allies that can accept restricted attachments, more than enough to accommodate everything we want to play. (This is also how we get any attachments we don't have a trait-match for, such as Beorn's Welcome and Ring of Thrór.)
This puts Bartering in our discard, though. How to get it back? Play The Elvenking on Thranduil, quest with him, trigger The Elvenking to return a Galadhrim Weaver to your hand, then use Thranduil's ability to replay it and shuffle the card back into your empty deck, where you'll draw it next round.
We can also use The Elvenking with Galadriel's Handmaiden if we want to drop our threat to zero before restoring the encounter deck; after 1223 rounds we'll have exactly enough resources to play everything, trigger Bartering 50 times to get all of our restricted attachments, play the Handmaiden 30 extra times to drop our threat to zero, and have six extra resources worth of walking-around money. The fact that everything works out so nicely is proof positive that the fates want us to do this.
We won't have the required characters to play Gandalf's Staff, Saruman's Staff, Vilya, Nenya, Narya, or two of our Wizard Pipes until we finally play our single-turn allies, so we can save those for now.
Once we've played all we can play, it's time to put the encounter deck back. Quest without Thalin, watch all the Eastern Crows surge into each other until the deck is empty, then shuffle the discard back in. From here, we can play the rest of our cards-- the Hunter and Pathfinder can pull an enemy or location, once it is engaged with us we can play our Journeymen, Bowmasters, and Forest Snares, and if we saved our Guardians of Ithilien, we can immediately play them to push the pulled enemies back into staging and onto some waiting traps (like Ranger Spikes). (If we didn't save our Guardians of Ithilien, Born Aloft can get them back for us.)
Once we reveal a few locations, we can attach our Ancient Mathoms and Elf-stones and Guarded Ceaselesslies and the like. We also have enough resource generation to support the Sellswords and Wilyador now. (Per a developer ruling, we can even pay Wilyador's upkeep with Radagast or Treebeard's resources.) If any nasty treacheries show up, we can cancel them with Halfling Bounder and use our Weavers to get him back again afterwards.
Once our restricted attachments are all played, all of our location and enemy attachments are out, and every other ally except for the single-turn superstars is on the table, we're done bouncing the Weavers to recycle Bartering and Bounders, so it's safe for the Silvan Refugees to join the party. Now it's time to softlock the quest again.
Commit Firyal and all three Rhovanion Outriders to the quest, trigger Firyal's response first to discard the top encounter card, then trigger the Outriders to put Banks of the Anduin on top of the deck and take it as your reveal during staging. Repeat until there's only one encounter card left, then engage an enemy (preferably one in a Forest Snare) and take that last encounter card as a shadow card.
The next round, play Tom Bombadillo!, which will shuffle Tom Bombadil into the (empty) encounter deck and guarantee his reveal that round. Play Elrond, Galadriel, Saruman, and Gandalf (if you want, use Gandalf to finish off the Hill Troll who ate the 6 damage from your Rangers of the North and Saruman to disappear the other Hill Troll if he's also out, immediately advancing to Stage 2a), give them their rings, staffs, and pipes, let Tom Bombadil show up during the quest phase, and bask in the fullest board you can possibly produce.
I'd give advice on how to win the quest from there, but I think you could figure it out on your own.
| 8 comments |
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Jun 15, 2024 |
Jun 21, 2024
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Jun 21, 2024Thalin + Eastern Crows doesn't work. In a reply from Caleb , he says "Thalin’s ability actually prevents the Eastern Crows from entering play by dealing its 1 damage “as it is revealed” - that means it’s Forced effect will not trigger because it isn’t active yet. So you will not shuffle it back into the encounter deck by itself. " |
Jun 21, 2024
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Jun 21, 2024
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Jun 22, 2024
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Jun 22, 2024
Nate French would never, though. ;) |
Jun 24, 2024In a plot twist, it turns out Caleb actually issued TWO rulings on Thalin / Eastern Crows in 2014. The above was one of them, but the other was: "If Thalin destroys Eastern Crows when it is revealed from the encounter deck, it will trigger its Forced effect and get shuffled back into the encounter deck. If it was the last card in the encounter deck, then it will be placed back as the only card in the encounter deck. Cheers, Caleb" I don't have dates for each ruling so I don't know which came first and which came second-- and whether he intentionally changed his mind or if he just ruled different ways on different days. I do know it gives me more ammo for continuing to play Thalin this way (since it's one of the few reasons to run Thalin at all anymore). |
Bad news, but you can't do this.
According to Encounter keyword rules :
So Tom Bombadillo! + Flight of the Eagles + Ranger Summons can't be fully combined, because one can only have 3 set-aside cards :/
(Another totally dumb rule of the game imo)