Questing shmesting 1.0

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• 1.0

This looks fabulous! Let me know if you try it out.

...It looks like what you did was pare down the deck to just readying effects, attack/defense bonus, and the like, counting solely on Legolas's ability to make progress. Now, maybe this is the right way to go — I'm a newbie, and not very learned in this lore — but I do have the following questions:

1) What about threat control? The only threat control you have there is Favor of the Valar. This would mean you'd need to win really fast or threat out. My original deck (which was never finished; it needed pairing down, as you noticed) was a tri-sphere deck, partly to deal with this issue: have lore Aragorn for his one-time threat reset, and spirit Merry for ongoing threat reduction. Plus I had The Galadhrim's Greeting.

2) Lore Aragorn also allowed Ravens of the Mountain, which is the other direct-progress placing card (besides Legolas). Perhaps this is worth trying to work in?

3) What about location control? This way you need to use Legolas's ability for all the locations as well as for quest progress. I had put in a bunch of cards (spirit & lore) which did direct location control — The Evening Star, Asfaloth, etc. Isn't this important?

...All of which is to say that while I like what you've done, would love to try it & hope it works, I feel like a version of my deck might be worth doing too. Obviously, as you noted, I have way too many cards in it. But I think a slimmed-down trisphere might be worth a try too.

(But thanks for thinking about this with me! And, again, I am new to the game & you may well be right and I wrong.)

PS: In your deck, Rohan Warhorse has no Rohan heroes to go on. You could throw in Nor am I a Stranger to make someone one. But it's a restricted attachment, which means it would either have to go on Aragorn/Merry, or it would have to replace one of the Blade of Gondolin's on Legolas (which seemed essential to me).

There are no right or wrong answers. Mine is just one way to go about it. You do what you think is right. The main thing you need to sort out though is being able to dig out which cards are most important to you.

In answer to your comments, I have included Gandalf for a little more threat reduction but really it is about getting Legolas loaded up with two blades as quickly as possible and killing lots of enemies too power through quests. A lot of people seem to say this so I don't know whether I'm reading it correctly or if there has been an errata but Rohan Warhorse says or Rohan hero. They're meant for Merry so you can use his ability to ready Legolas. Arod should be enough location control for most quests but and wait no longer should also help with not drawing too many locations.

I think I was just misreading Rohan Warhorse; you were right. Sorry.

I did a second draft of my "no questing" deck; it's now down to 63 cards. Still too many, but a lot closer...

If you want some threat reduction you should go for Secret Vigil. Followed can help offset the threat gain during the quest phase. Also Beorning Guardian can be quite good for location control

@Alonewolf87 I did think about Secret Vigil but couldn't remember the name of it! I'm not sure about Followed though as the purpose of the deck is to kill as many enemies as possible as soon as possible, so it is unlikely that there will be an enemy engaged with you during the quest phase. Beorning Guardian is a good shout - a little expensive for what he does but in you are quite limited on options.

Played 3 times against the first quest and lost twice as a shadow effect killed my Defender of Rammas both times so I had to take undefended attacks! Have therefore added in 3 copes of Sterner than Steel to take care of shadow effects. The Spear of the Citadel can be used to activate it. The 3rd time I stormed it but I will admit that I did quest with Aragorn Gandalf and Bofur.

Huh. Interesting. In my version I was thinking A Test of Will would cancel shadows; but I can see why you'd need something, and in a monosphere Tactics, Sterner than Steel sounds like a good choice.

And it sounds like you're on the way there, even if it's not quite fully non questing yet...

Hey, just wanted to mention that I returned to this challenge and was able to win (against Passage to Mirkwood) thrice without questing once. Here's the deck: ringsdb.com