Solo Thematic Campaign: The Passage of the Marshes 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

I find this part of the story difficult to build for since (1) there was only Sam, Frodo and Gollum in "The Fellowship" through these chapters and (2) the campaign doesn't allow you to switch heroes between this quest which is all about questing and keeping your threat low and the next quest which is all about destroying the column of Harad enemies headed to the Black Gate. I find Journey to the Crossroads one of the most challenging quests in a solo campaign so I built for it and played it until I beat it, then built a deck for this quest using the same heroes but a substantially different deck.

So it's obvious that the Rangers of Ithilien weren't with Sam and Frodo in the Dead Marshes, but I made this work. I tried to focus the deck on the Hobbits by loading them up with attachments so they could take care of the enemies while Mablung and Damrod simply quested and neutralized enemies with traps. This was a real challenge because Hobbits thrive while in a low threat range and I start at 28 with this deck (counting the +1 penalty), the quest actively raises your threat and some of the enemies have an engagement cost of 24! I cheated on my theme and included Sneak Attack Gandalf again, mostly for the threat reduction. Secret Vigil provides some solid threat control as well since there are eligible enemies with 3 in the encounter deck.

I really wanted to make Speak Your Promise! work here. I've never used the card and it seemed very appropriate. With Sting, Fellowship of the Ring and Friend of Friends, Frodo has a willpower of 5 and Rosie can boost that to 7 which can held tame Gollum of even frighten a Nazgul pretty badly! Frodo's Intuition isn't nearly so powerful when you only have 2 Hobbits, but drawing 2 and +4 willpower is still easily worth the 2 Fellowship resources.

Ranger Spikes are great tech in this quest because the Undead enemies are fairly hard to kill and they have low engagement cost. Removing one from the game for 1 Lore resource is a great deal!

I really should have included Halfling Determination in this deck but it somehow slipped through the cracks.

The Experience

This was difficult! I chose to use the Land of Shadow Frodo, partly so I could make better use of Speak Your Promise!, and because using the Ring during the planning phase with Mountain of Fire Frodo is very dangerous with the Nazgul enemies in the encounter deck.

I lost control of my threat a few times while I tried to tame Gollum! He can be a stubborn little bugger... It took me a few turns, but I finally got Frodo set up with some willpower buffs. After I triggered Gollum's defense buff, I was able to ready Frodo and reduce that down to 1 or so and finally get control of the game.

Some of the shadow effects are pretty horrific in this quest so I included Staff of Lebethron to get rid of some of them and it helps early game, but by the late game, it only works on Nazgul.

By the end of the game I had Frodo and Sam built up like tanks. With Fellowship of the Ring, Friend of Friends, Anduril on Sam (I know it's not thematic but it's so helpful and my Noble Hero boon actually helps me here!), String on Frodo (its kind of better on Sam but I wanted the Staff and Anduril on Sam), Hobbit Cloak on Sam, a Dagger on Frodo and Rosie's buff on which stat you need, they could pretty well control the board by the end. It took some work to get them there and the early game kind of sucked... but it was fun when I got there!

At the last stage, I revealed two copies of We Hates Them! in a row and Smeagol flipped back to Gollum and I drew a treachery that put an Undead enemy into play engaged with me so I had a couple more difficult turns before the end. It was an exciting game! As exciting as Dead Marshes can be...

I had to let a couple location pop off their Mire effects while I battled Gollum at the beginning but after that, I got a nice balance of locations and enemies so I didn't have to neglect the locations.

My successful run took me a full 16 turns which is insane but this deck took a while to get control of Gollum, then kill off the big Undead enemies that have built up in the meantime.

Going Forward

I'm given a choice of giving myself a permanent +2 threat increase for the rest of the campaign or adding The Searching Eye to my deck. I find this a hard choice since the threat will effect the Aragorn side of the quest (including Passing of the Grey Company) while the treachery in my deck will only effect the Frodo side of the quest. But, there are some very difficult quests coming up for Frodo, Mt Doom most important, and drawing this card will immediately destroy a game that is on the edge.

Ultimately I decided to take the +2 threat. I know it will hurt, but at least I can plan for it rather than get hit with The Searching Eye when I'm already struggling.

I'll be removing lots of the Hobbit support cards for Journey to the Crossroads and adding much more Gondorian power along with some Fierce Defense events for those Oliphants.

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