Solo Thematic Campaign: The Road to Isengard 1.0

• Versions
• 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

This is largely the same deck that I used for Helm's Deep. I can't change heroes without a penalty at this point or I would use Gandalf and Treebeard Heroes for this quest.

Overall combat is much less of a challenge in this quest so I swapped out some of the combat allies and armor attachments for some condition removal in Power in the Earth, some mounts, and 8 Ent allies.

Merry and Pippin scavanging the wreckage of Isengard inspired me to add Ancient Mathom to the deck as well. This game tends to be pretty short and needs lots of willpower so I relied on my Ents to take the couple attacks from Saruman near the end of the game.

Direct damage is a challenge in this quest, but the Ents are able to take a lot of punishment. Grima can make an entire attack go undefended so Hasty Stroke is a good option but in my plays I tried to keep Aragorn free of damage so I could put that undefended attack on him if necessary (and that happened!).

The Experience

I think the hardest part of this quest is the first couple turns. As a solo game, it can be a real challenge to have enough willpower to overcome Saruman, Orthanc and the minimum of two additional cards that will be revealed before the first time you resolve a quest phase. And then if you quest successfully, you'll be facing at least 1 if not 2 enemies. It seems like you need to quest for at least 8-10 on the first turn! This is technically one of the easier quests in the campaign but it still took me 3-4 attempts.

I consistently earned 1 Ent in 1 turn in every game I played and that seemed to be enough. I revealed an enemy after the entmoot which is dangerous because if you quest successfully and clear the Gates of Isengard, you're going to have to reveal another card for questing successfully, then fetch an enemy for the Forced effect on the gate! That could be 3 enemies on your first turn which is too much for this deck. I managed to quest for the exact right number so I didn't place any progress but didn't raise my threat on the first quest phase. This let me take card of the "setup enemy" and then get another turn of setup before clearing the gates. I used the Ent of Fanghorn to clear a couple locations to get through the quest faster than the otherwise unavoidable 6 turns to clear the 5 non-unique locations.

Grima came up as a shadow card once but luckily it was on a tiny orc rather than on Saruman or a Lieutenant of Isengard. I used a Derdingle Warrior to defend against Saruman when I moved to stage 3 and I ended the game on turn 7. It was a brief and relatively uneventful game. Getting some strong willpower down right away is really essential for this quest.

Moving Forward

I ended the game with 4 cards in my hand so I earned the Palantir boon which should come in handy either at the Black Gate or Pelannor Fields. I cancelled Voice of Saruman when it came up so I was able to move forward without it in my campaign pool.

This is the end of the first half of the campaign! Next we move to The Land of Shadow box which isn't as "inspiring" as these latest quests. Deckbuilding will be a bit more of a challenge to make truly thematic but I'll try my best!

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