Solo Thematic Campaign: The Old Forest 1.0

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• 1.0

The Campaign

I’ve been part of 2, 3, and 4 player campaigns but I’ve never sat down and run my own solo campaign. I won’t be recording or blogging this campaign as others have recently done that (I’m in the middle of a YouTube thematic campaign with Mr Underhill right now) and I want to play rather quickly through the entire set of quests but I will play in “strict” campaign mode and trying to build as thematically as I can.

I can’t promise the decks I publish in this series will be totally optimized or super teched against each quest for a 90% win ratio, but I hope they will be decent thematic decks that could provide a good experience for people looking to play the campaign in a thematic manner.

The Deck

The basic deck is extremely similar to the deck I used for Shadow of the Past. I attempted to build around Spirit Merry just to be different. He would have helped me keep my threat down and given me access to Test of Will to stop some of the Hobbit-killing treacheries. But in the long run, it was too hard to knock out these tough roots without that resource match for the Daggers.

Falling Branches are a big problem for Hobbits! Sam is the only one who can take that 2 damage without dying and if you kill off an ally, you lose Fellowship of the Ring. Some healing and Honour Guards would be very helpful but I tried to stay more thematic and used Close Call and Loyal Hounds instead. Maggot got left behind but Rip and Fang followed us into the Old Forest! I threw Ring Mail in as well to help Sam Gamgee defend against Old Man Willow at the end.

Gaffer Gamgee is a little out of theme, but he's new and I couldn't bring myself to cut him!

The Experience

I used the Mountain of Fire Frodo Baggins and I used his Ring ability every turn to drop a resource wherever I needed it.

Fellowship of the Ring and Dagger of Westernesse or Fast Hitch are nice cards to see in your opening hand. The Sidequests are nice to see early so you can make use of your extra willpower since the stage 2's don't need any progress on them.

This took a couple attempts as I tuned the deck but once I added Close Call, I beat the quest on the following play. It was a great game! I found that I had to purposely slowboat the quest so I was able to take down Old Man Willow at the end. In solo it's actually pretty easy to progress to the last stage in just a few turns and then you'll get wrecked. I chose the Surging location with 0 Victory Points a couple times to keep myself from progressing too quickly. This forced me to face more treacheries which could be nasty for Hobbits, but it worked out. Once I hit stage 3, I found it difficult to outquest Old Man Willow and the Withywindle and defend and put damage on Old Man Willow. I actually ended up taking his attack undefended a couple times with Close Call turning that damage into threat. I had both Gildor and Tomm Bombadil come up in the last couple turns which let me finish off Old Man Willow and win before I hit 50 threat. Playing a Hobbit deck with threat in 40's was kind of insane but Close Call proved very useful and felt thematic.

Going Forward

I was able to reduce Old Man Willow to 0 hitpoints and earn Old Bogey Stories. With Drinking Song in the card pool, Old Bogey Stories doesn't feel as special but it's still nice to have an attachment at the beginning of the game to either give yourself a second mulligan or discard it to a shadow effect that could otherwise steal a crucial attachment.

Next is Fog on the Barrow Downs and I'll be slimming down the ally list but keeping the same heroes.

You can see final board states to my successful games on my Twitter account.

Campaign Decks so Far

1. Shadow of the Past
2. The Old Forest
3. Fog on the Barrow Downs
4. Knife in the Dark
5. Flight to the Ford
6. The Ring Goes South
7. Journey in the Dark
8. Breaking of the Fellowship
9. The Uruk-Hai
10. Helm's Deep
11. The Road to Isengard
12. The Passage of the Marshes
13. Journey to the Crossroads
14. Shelob's Lair
15. Passing of the Grey Company
16. The Siege of Gondor
17. The Battle of the Pelannor Fields
18. The Tower of Cirith Ungol
19. The Black Gate Opens
20. Mount Doom