#solosundaychallenge - Journey Along the Anduin

Over on Instagram @swordandboardgames started the #solosundaychallenge where people post weekly solo gaming 'challenges' and people share their experiences of playing it.

I was 'hosting' the challenge for 6th March 2022 and to celebrate the recent release of the Revised Core set I choose LOTR LCG and the core's 2nd quest Journey Along the Anduin.

I deliberately wanted to build 'weird' decks that forced me into a different playstyle. I'm still playing 'progression' (with cards unlocked from the first 2 cycles and 2 hobbit saga boxes) but I did use a couple of cards here and there from later sets.

I settled on the idea of trying to one shot the Troll with ranged attacks, and so tried to make this funky 2 hero mono tactics ranged deck, with some secrecy in there too. That definitely felt 'weird' to me, especially considering Tactics has ZERO secrecy cards haha. You hard mulligan for Resourceful and if you hit it then it makes up for the lack of resources due to only having 2 heroes. And a super low curve helps too, virtually the whole deck costs 2 or less. Starting with 20 and 23 threat on each deck gives you plenty of time before the Troll becomes a problem.

The idea of the Tactics deck was to create 2 ranged powerhouses with Bard and Legolas. When set up the deck can one shot the troll, either by reducing it's defense to 1 or 0 and then doing a big ranged attack, or the ultimate combo of Bard + Marksman of Lorien/Rivendell Blade + Straight Shot.

Blade of Gondolin, Legolas's ability and Bard's 2 Willpower can also contribute to questing/progress too.

The deck generally wants big enemies to be engaged with the other player to trigger Bard's ability, but the high amount of allies with Sentinel negates that 'cost'. Hands Upon the Bow, Straight Shot and Great Yew Bow are also great for dealing with the tricky enemies that stick around in the staging area like Goblin Sniper or Wargs.

I knew that, with the Tactics deck being so one dimensional and with the scenario requiring a decent amount of questing (especially the 2nd quest card) I'd need to make a support deck that was more well rounded.

I wanted to keep this 2nd deck's threat low too, otherwise it'd get stuck with the Troll. So Pippin came in, helped delay engagements and gives a little bonus for engaging enemies too. 23 starting threat gives plenty of time to set up before the Troll becomes a problem.

The deck ended up being a fairly standard Lore & Spirit support deck. Controlling the quest with Test of Will, Secret Paths and Radagast's Cunning. Helping in the combat phase with Hasty Stroke and Stand and Fight. Warden of Healing to keep people alive. Denethor and Henamarth scrying the encounter deck. Pippin, Eowyn and allies like Arwen and Escort from Edoras questing. And the deck can stop the Trolls and other big bads with Forest Snares too.