Silver Bullet for Journey to the Cross-roads 1.0

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• 1.0

Journey to the Cross-roads (JttC) is a very difficult quest. For a solo player, they need to deal with twice as many encounter cards as they're used to, with at least half of them being enemies, and 3 of them being Oliphaunts. It's certainly a contender for the most difficult quest of the entire saga.

Here is a deck I've designed deck specifically to maximize win percentage against this quest. I've beat the quest 5 times in a row now, with one of those being Nightmare and one of them resulting in 0 enemies under the black gate, So I am now comfortable sharing this decklist and the strategy.

General Concept

It's an Outlands rush deck. No shame in pulling out the big guns here for a quest this hard. The basic premise of an Outlands rush deck is that it starts a little weak, but by turn 3 it's unstoppable. It turns out this is the perfect formula for countering JttC.

JttC allows a solo player to ignore a maximum of 3 enemies. With this Outlands deck, you should have no plans to engage the first. You won't be ready. The second should only be engaged if the starting hand was particularly good and you are able to kill it quickly.

After the second enemy has passed by, you should be on turn 3, and you should now have a board state that is capable of taking on anything, even an Oliphaunt. You goal should be to engage every single enemy from here on out. This leaves you a buffer of 1 more enemy that you're allowed to put under the Black Gate in case of an emergency.

General play tips

• Play with Black Riders Frodo Baggins. Use his ability whenever the encounter deck throws an extra enemy at you during the staging step.
• Mulligan for Legacy of Númenor or The Seeing-stone so that you can get a lot of resources in order to play down your huge opening hand.
• You really want to open with Legacy of Numenor. So if you still can't find it after your mulligan, use Drinking Song for massive 10 card mulligan.
• Don't be afraid of the doomed. Play multiple Legacy of Numenors on turn 1 if you can. The enemies in this quest all have high engagement costs, and you will be able to avoid threating out later with Woodmen's Clearing.
• In fact, high threat is very helpful in this quest, because if your threat is in the low 30s and you turn up an enemy during staging, you will not be able to engage both enemies in the staging area. You will be forced to let one pass under the Black Gate, even if you could've handled both. So instead keep your threat in the low 40s if possible.
• Steward of Gondor goes on Hirluin the Fair of course.
• Hirluin's resources are the most sought for, as he can pay for any Outlands ally. Once he's got Steward, you can use Envoy of Pelargir to move resources from Frodo or Beregond to Hirluin.
• Don't trigger Hunter of Lamedon's response or use Daeron's Runes if you are running low on resources, as you risk drawing into an Outlands ally that you can't afford.
• Sometimes you will have to make a choice for which Outlands ally you will play and which you will end up discarding. Top priority is Ethir Swordsman followed by Knights of the Swan. The Anfalas Herdsman and Warrior of Lossarnach are about tied, so whichever you have less of should be priority. Then the Hunter of Lamedon is lowest priority.
• Beregond gets the first Gondorian Shield and the first Armored Destrier. Hirluin gets the second shield and the second Destrier.

Oliphaunts

These guys are the tricky part. But they're actually not that bad. On average, you'll probably let one pass under the black gate, kill the second one, and then still be defending the third when you close out the game.

When you engage an Oliphaunt, you need to exhaust every ally you control. This is where timing is important. You will know before committing characters to the quest that you will be dealing with an Oliphaunt engagement this round. So take the opportunity to quest all your allies and leave all your heroes ready (maybe leave 1 chump blocker ready as well, like an Envoy of Pelargir, in case an enemy makes an immediate attack during the staging step).

On the round you engage the Oliphaunt, you will only be able to attack with your heroes. Luckily, you only need to muster up 5 , because the Oliphaunt has 2 and can only take 3 damage per round. With Erestor's 2, Frodo's 1, and Hirluin's 1, you only need 2 more. This could come from a Armored Destrier on Beregond allowing him to attack back, some Knights of the Swan boosting Hirluin the Fair, a Hills of Ithilien in the active spot, or some combination of the above.

On subsequent turns, you will be able so simply defend the Oliphaunt with Beregond and attack back with your allies, so no problem there (unless you engage another Oliphaunt, in which case I hope you've got a Destrier on Beregond or have built up Hirluin the Fair into a defender with Gondorian Shield and some Warriors of Lossarnach).

Closing Remarks

I've beaten the quest 5 times in a row now, but I really feel like I could go another 50 without a loss. This deck is more than capable of crushing JttC over and over again. If you are not able to get a win with this deck, I'm convinced you're doing something wrong, and I suggest you upload a video of your loss so that I can give more pointed instructions. Best of luck!