Solo Thematic Campaign: Shelob's Lair 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

These are the same 3 heroes I used in Journey to the Crossroads, but the deck is drastically different, focusing on the heroism of Sam and Frodo rather than the Gondorian Rangers.

Sam is the central character and he can take any number of attachments. Anduril and Sting boost all his stats and make him a formidable defender, then he can take Friend of Friends for more stats, then a Hobbit Cloak and two Fast Hitchs and he's questing for 8 (counting Fellowship of the Ring and Noble Hero), defending for 6-7 , jabbing with Sting on every defense, then swinging back with Anduril when useful, then attacking back when necessary.

Frodo has the distinct disadvantage of starting the game with A Heavy Burden which means he's much less useful until you get a Fast Hitch on him. He's certainly secondary to Sam, but he can ultimately quest for 4 with Friend of Friends and Fellowship of the Ring, then he can get the Dagger of Westernesse, the second Hobbit Cloak and he can help in a fight when necessary.

Damrod has lost a lot of his luster here. There really aren't many enemies in the encounter deck and the most formidable can't take attachments anyways. Ranger Spikes is still worth it here and his cost reduction for that trap and the occasional card draw are fine, but he's usually just questing and then getting poisoned when that treachery comes up.

Mablung's sole purpose is defend Shelob at stage 2. With Gondorian Shield and Staff of Lebethron, he can safely (which is a huge deal!) defender against Shelob at the beginning of the quest phase every single turn which means stage 3 is much easier when you get there as you have 0-2 resources on Shelob instead of 5-8. His extra resources are nice as you can distribute them as necessary with Errand-rider if you get him out. As you get towards 40 threat, try to keep 2 resources on him so you'll have 3 if you every have to engage a Nazgul. You can then just discard it with Fierce Defense.

Shelob's Poison is a terrible condition attachment so I had to run some removal and I chose Athelas/Warden of Healing which isn't the most straightforward method, but it worked.

My ally list is pretty small with the Master of the Forge being the most important card by far. Rosie is really helpful in some flexible questing and adding to Sam's attack on this Anduril counter-attack. Gandalf is here again because I can't seem to be able to win without him! I only got him set up once, but the Defender of Cair Andros is nice tech here. If you can get him out in the late game and use him to defend against Shelob, he can start popping off those resources with his Valor response. He can do it even faster if you put the Spear of the Citadel on him. I put the spear on Mablung a couple times before I found one of his other two attachments and it's very effective vs. Shelob.

One of the most difficult parts of this quest is going into the main body of the quest with basically no cards in hand. You have the option to discard 3 cards to discard all Nazgul in play as you go into Shelob's tunnel, and it's so difficult to kill them at that point in the game, I chose that path every time. But that means you can lose some very valuable cards in your hand, and you start stage 2 with no options. Card draw and resource acceleration are really important in those first two turns so you can get some important cards down before they get discarded but still make sure you have 3 cards in hand to use to escape the Nazgul. After I added Peace, and Thought to the deck and looking for it on stage 1, I started to have a much better chance at beating this quest.

I had to put Taste it Again! in for theme's sake and it was useful since my tooled-up Sam still doesn't have that much attack.

The Experience

I worked on this deck for a good while and had many losses. Just adding the extra card draw with Peace, and Thought and realizing that it can be helpful to spend 1 extra turn at stage 1 to set up that I actually started to get close to winning. I won my first game with this iteration of the deck, then at the very end I realized I had failed to shuffle the entire spider set of encounter cards into the deck at stage 2! But the second play was solid and I had a great game that ended in victory.

My opening draw was Call of the Ring which fetches another Nazgul, but since I was able to quest over a second Nazgul and they would all be discarded when I got to the top of Smeagol's Stairs, it was actually not a bad draw.

I took an extra turn at stage 2 to get some of those important cards like Master of the Forge and Fellowship of the Ring into play, then I had a smooth transition to stage 2. I didn't rush through stage 2 either but spent a couple extra turns using my 2 Masters of the Forge to fetch all those attachments for Sam. With Mablung blocking Shelob every turn, it wasn't a large cost to extend the game so I was ready for stage 3.

I got stuck in the Blocked Tunnel once and Frodo had to hack his way out with his Dagger. I had to engage a Nazgul and Sting helped me bring it down in 2 turns. With 5 , 4 and 9 , they are certainly formidable enemies! When I got all the key attachments in play, I quested through to stage 3 and faced Gollum and Shelob together. Sting popped that lonely resource off Shelob and I was able to take her down immediately and I was able to drive off Gollum the next turn winning the game on the 12 round at 47 threat.

I actually didn't get to play more than 1 Peace, and Thought and my Sneak Attack Gandalfs never happened the entire game!

I was fortunate not to draw We Hates Them more than once in this game as that can destroy you if you're forced to spend several extra turns dealing with Gollum who keeps gettind buffs!

I used Black Riders Frodo for this quest because there's some cards that can really end the game here and with him starting the quest phase exhausted most of the time, the Land of Shadow version didn't seem as strong.

Moving Forward

The quest resolution gives me the A Heavy Burden burden which means my threat will go up faster or I'll be losing Frodo's action. Fast Hitch is pretty much a must for this side of the campaign. The +3 starting threat is already a big enough challenge.

I don't play the Land of Shadow quests very much because they're difficult and kind of gloomy and depressing but playing them this way in campaign mode made me appreciate them a bit more. I wish Journey to the Crossroads didn't dominate the box so much. I felt like I had to build for that quest and play until I knew I could beat it, then use those heroes for the other two quests. I wish there was a different way to structure the Crossroads quests so you were trying to "survive and help" rather than be central to the action. Or maybe just allow hero swaps. I would have prefered to play more thematic decks for the Marshes and Shelob's lair, but I was limited by that once quest.

I kind of wanted to use the Phial of Galadriel in this quest for theme reasons but I made it through without needing it. Hopefully it can save me at Mount Doom!

I'm looking forward to Flame of the West! Back to Aragorn, Rohan and Gondor. Only 6 quests left in the campaign!

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