Revised core - Passage through Mirkwood - campaign speed run

Goal: personal score record with core set only and in campaign mode so aim to have no hero deaths and same heroes as Dol Goldur deck.

General thoughts about strategy:

• Score benefits from healing and threat reduction.
• Score benefits from wound prevention.
• Score benefits from high questing ability to minimise rounds. Need to win in as few rounds as possible unless can achieve score improvement greater than 10 in single round.
• In a speed run there is less benefit from high cost cards as game over before they pay themselves off, or perhaps before you even have resources to play them.

11/2/2022 Round 1: Nice starting hand of low cost cards for Spirit/Lore team so I decide not to mulligan even though no Unexpected courage. On the Leadership/Tactics side it's an obvious mulligan as the starting hand is full of high cost stuff and no Steward of Gondor. I mulligan and get a better hand of low cost stuff but still no Steward. Played Henamarth, a Snowbourne Scout, and Horn of Gondor on Gloin. During questing I prevent Necromancer's reach with Test of Will. Discard cards to get enough willpower to finish first quest. [Card draw from Mendor] Travel to Old Forest Road and ready Beravor and also use Strength of Will to immediately finish off the location. Defend with Beravor against the Forest Spider and took the only hero wound of the game. Then used Blade Mastery on Legolas and add Mendor's attack to kill the spider and complete the second quest card. [Card draw from Mendor] Randomly selected 'Don't Leave the path' and chose Ungoliant's spawn as one of the two spiders to add. [End of round 1]

Round 2: My initial plan is to kill off my allies in combat and then finish Ungoliant's spawn with my heroes. Problem is I can only generate 8 attack on my Tactics/Leadership team, including Mendor. I do have Swift Strike but that still leaves me one damage short to kill the boss. After looking at the willpower situation I decide to exhaust Beravor to draw two cards from my tactics/leadership deck hoping to get something to help, preferably a Sneak attack as I'm holding Beorn. I get exactly what I want, drawing a Sneak attack and a Gandalf so I can now switch up my plan. I play Defender of Lorien on Eowyn and she then goes questing with Gloin and Gimli. Threat level gets to 12 with another spider also appearing, and I use both Eowyn's ability and Defender of Lorien to match it. Next I optionally engage Ungoliant's spawn and then another spider for each team comes down. At the start of the combat phase I sneak attack in Beorn and then kill off the Snowbourne Scout using my Swift Strike to get two wounds in on Ungoliant's spawn, also getting a resource token on Gloin (from horn) and then drawing another two cards with Valiant Sacrifice. (Didn't need to do this but it felt cool) I defend with Beorn against the other spider. On the other team I kill off Henamarth and get another resource token on Gloin and then play Ever Vigilant to ready Beorn. I also play Galadrim's Greeting at this point to improve my score as I now know I don't need my Hasty Stroke. (Legolas was exhausted by an Encounter card and I could have prevented this but didn't need to) Then finally Beorn attacks with Mendor getting the last 7 wounds needed to kill Ungoliant's spawn and win the scenario. (9 attack against 2 defense)

[Final score 62 with only 1 full round completed.]

Thoughts: many player cards did not feature at all even as discarded cards due to the speed. Wondering if my draw was lucky but on the other hand I didn't even see Unexpected courage or Steward of Gondor. Very happy with how it played out.