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

I had the opportunity to switch up my heroes here but wanting to keep all 9 in the Fellowship, I kept the same Aragorn, Merry and Pippin hero lineup but I changed Aragorn from Leadership to Tactics and Merry from Tactics to Spirit, essentially swapping out Leadership for Spirit. Tactics Aragorn is extremely good in this quest as he gives you an edge on the Tough Uruk Hai (his -1 effect basically negates most of the Toughness) and he can hunt those high engagement cost enemies and pull a second one down and kill it without having to defend.

I have to mention my main thematic concession here: I kept Gandalf in the deck. I got through Moria fast enough we didn't have to face the Balrog so Gandalf is still here! I'm trying to play thematically but I"m not ready to give up my Gandalf if I don't have to!

I've added some Silvans to the deck for thematic and practical reasons. The Galadhrim Healer is pretty thematic since they had just benefited from the rest and healing in Lothlorian and she's mechanically perfect for this quest with all the archery and the Forced effect on Sarn Gebir. I have a couple other Silvan allies in there because they're useful and they give me cheap and tiny allies to discard for the Uruk Hai Archer.

I've cut Frodo's Intuition to 2x since Frodo isn't even participating for a good part of this quest. I cut Fast Hitch as well since the Hobbits aren't the key combat characters. You basically just need on on Merry so he can quest and use his threat reduction ability.

Boromir is still one of the key pieces for combat. There's so many high engagement cost enemies that he's pretty reliable even without his Raiment of War. Once he has his Raiment, he's a tank but it's kind of sad because he stops getting damaged when he defends so you don't get that immediate counterattack!

You can improve your experience through the entire campaign if you can manage to find and explore The Seat of Seeing. This can be a challenge to accomplish but if you're careful, you can fairly reliably find it. To improve my chances, I put in The Hidden Way. You usually know that location is in the bottom 5-10 cards so once you get down there near the bottom at stage 3, you can use this event and pull it right out of the encounter deck! The location is Immune to Player Card Effects but that text is only active while its in play. I believe you can still target an Immune card while it's in the deck.

Test of Will is reserved for Fallen into Evil as you really don't want to progress through the campaign with another dead hero. Although if you're really trying to be thematic... It may be worth running condition removal as well in this quest as Overcome By Grief and Ill Fate can be painful as well. I had Power of Orthanc in my Sideboard. Athelas would be fine as well but I don't think it would help the hero that had Fallen into Evil since they are no longer a hero or "character" at that point but an enemy.

The Experience

This was hard again! It took me at least 5 attempts. If you don't get some allies down fast, the archery can pile up and the whole deck can collapse. The difficulty can vary a lot depending on if you draw several enemies or a harmless location and Orcs of the White Hand (which is a complete whiff most of the time on stage 1) over the first couple turns while you're going down the Anduin. By the time I went through the Sarn Gebir rapids, I had the Galadhrim Healer in hand ready to remove all that damage. When I hit stage 2, I only had 1 enemy in play which I was able to handle.

I chose The Seat of Amon Hen as my stage 3 and carefully quested while I set up my board for the end game. In some of my plays, I couldn't keep my willpower up and I floundered here if I got more than one enemy out at a time. In my successful play, I was actually being careful not to overquest so I had time to prepare some willpower for the last stage which ramps up the difficulty a lot. Without Sword that was Broken and Fellowship of the Ring, willpower is much harder to come by and that's part of the reason I kept Gandalf around. Gandalf's threat increase was nicely counterbalanced by the effect on my quest card.

When I got near the bottom of the encounter deck at stage 3, I used The Hidden Way to pull The Seat of Seeing right out of the deck and clear it and remove Shadow of Fear from my campaign pool! I managed to keep all my characters alive so I didn't have to deal with Overcome by Grief or Ill Fate.

Once I found Frodo's Choice, Frodo came back and questing became easier again with Fellowship of the Ring back in play. I think it took me two turns to quest out of the last stage. I ended the game on turn 12 with all 9 of the Fellowship in play and questing for around 20. I managed to get Narya and Glamdring on Gandalf so he was questing for 4, then defending or attacking for 7 /5 during the combat phase. I know he wasn't supposed to be there but I couldn't resist!

Going Foward

This took a couple tries but it ended just the way I wanted. Removing Shadow of Fear from my campaign will be huge. Just that shadow effect alone can kill a hero and end a quest for you as you go forward. The treachery effect is terrible as well! I chose Ill Fate as my burden going forward. It can hurt but Followed by Night seems to be reliably worse.

I forgot to mention which of Galadriel's Gifts I chose! I decided to take the Phial of Galadriel because I think that will make for the best game moment when I really need it.

This is the last quest I got to use Gildor Inglorian so going forward my campaign pool consists of:

• Gandalf's Delay
• Overcome by Grief
• Ill Fate
• Eaten Alive
• Noble Hero on Sam
• Old Bogey Stories
• Ho! Tome Bombadil
• Glamdring, Anduril, Mithril Shirt and Sting
• Phial of Galadriel

And I've avoided:

• Lust for the Ring
• Grievous Wound
• Pursued by the Enemy
• Fallen into Evil
• All the worst burdens I could have earned in Race to the Ford

And I removed:

• Shadow of Fear
• Gildor Inglorian

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