Solo Thematic Campaign: Mount Doom 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

Mount Doom! Panic! I've never beat this quest before and I'm kind of terrified of it! I played it a few times when it came out and never beat and didn't enjoy it enough to play it very much just for fun so this is really first time I've tried to build a solo deck to beat it. My Multiplayer campaigns have always been playing out with Mount Doom and Black Gate played at the same time and I'm always at the Black Gate!

This quest pretty much demands high willpower on few characters and lots of readying on those characters. That's the gimmick. There's some combat which is annoying but most of it is quest hard, and pass the Fortitude tests while avoiding raising your threat by too much.

Ally swarms are pretty much out so focusing on a couple is certainly the best option. Sam is certainly my centerpiece for thematic and mechanical reasons. Unfortunatley, his ability doesn't do a lot of good in this quest since he needs to be ready for Fortitude tests. Most of the time I would commit him, then immeditaely ready him with a Fast Hitch or Unexpected Courage so he was ready which made his natural readying Glorfindel is here for his threat/willpower/attack/action efficiency. Galadriel is close to thematic as well and she's great tech in this quest as well since you can add her willpower to Sam and then use it for questing and potential Fortitude Tests during the quest phase. She can also participate in Fortitude tests in the first couple turns if you don't draw Nenya right away. Her threat stabilization and card draw are extremely helpful as well.

Fireside Song is the other centerpiece of this deck. With Noble Hero, Galadriel's buff's and all the songs that can be attached to Sam, the plan is to boost Sam up to 12-18 willpower so he alone can pass any and all Fortitude tests by the end of the game. The second copy of Fireside Song can go on Frodo if you have the cash. Probably should put a 3rd copy in the deck for consistency but it's hard to fit everything in!

The main challenge is getting all those pieces on the table fast enough. Master of the Forge is the usual suspect. Any ally you bring really has to pull his weight in this quest but in this case, he still does plenty to be worth playing. Expert Treasure-hunter is the other method I used for getting those attachments into hand quickly. Unfortunatly, both of those key cards are out of sphere so I'm really relying on Nenya or Song of Wisdom to come out quickly or I'll have a slow start. With 35 attachments in the deck, Expert Treasure-hunter should hit 3/4 of the time and that's enough to help!

The problem with piling a million attachments on Sam is the Heavy and Tired treachery is a hard counter to that strategy. You can try to set up for it by attaching both Boon attachments on Glorfindel so he's the target of that treachery in the early game, and then hope you draw Power of Orthanc before it hits a set up Sam. If Sam loses his ability to take Fortitude tests, you've probably lost the game. Raising threat to discard that attachment doesn't feel good in this quest, but all the other condition attachments require more setup or just don't work well with this deck.

The other allies that made the cut are Rosie and Gandalf. Gandalf is still great for card draw and direct damage as this deck isn't particularly adept at killing these tough orcs. Rosie Cotton and Galadriel can be cleverly leveraged to multiply Galadriel's willpower. Once you get a Fast Hitch on Rosie, you can use Nenya to give Rosie her willpower, then commit Rosie to the quest for 6 , the ready her and add her 6 to Sam, basically using Galadriel's willpower twice for questing power and boosting same by an incredible amount for Fortitude tests. With Sam's readying, that 4-5 willpower from Galadriel can easily be used 3 times during one quest phase.

Sam stole some location management tech from the dwarves while Gimli was still in the Fellowship. Thror's map can negate the travel cost on the Old Water-Course and the Plain of Gorgaroth while Thrór's Key can blank an entire text box which is marvelous on all the rest of these locations.

Lembas is a thematic choice that's very helpful for clearing that starting damage from the Break of Thorns and getting early double duty out of Galadriel or even Glorfindel if you have to take an undefended attack.

Defense and Attack power are weak points but I'm really trying to avoid combat as much as possible. Sting is still the best option for me and Glorfindel's 3 attack is nice. Gandalf's direct damage is always a helpful option as well. Orc Disguise is thematic and effective here as well although you lose out on the opportunity of damaging the enemy with defense if you have Sting out.

I may have been better off adding a 3rd copy of another key card, but I put 1 copy of Burst into Song into the deck, hoping to ready both Sam and Frodo at a key moment. Let's see if one of the weakest cards in the game can help me beat one of the hardest quests in the game.

I've relied on Tighten Our Belts a lot through this whole campaign but in this quest, I found it was hard to play with so many key cards costing only 1 or 2 resources as most. Steward of Gondor is also an attachment which helps me find it faster with Expert Treasure Hunter, so I went with the pure muscle of Steward. It does come at a cost in this deck since I want to get both Rosie and Steward out early and that can be a challenge only because sometimes it's better to put Steward on Galadriel in the early game if she has both the and icons and Sam only has .

The Experience

was brutal... It took me about 4 or 5 attempts while I tuned the deck before I got a win. I'm not 100% sure it was a clean/perfect win either. With treacheries surging that already have surge on them, this can be a hard quest to not make mistakes on.

I chose to use Black Riders Frodo Baggins since I didn't want to risk exhausting the Ring in the planning phase very often and the other Frodos don't offer a lot here. The Black Riders Frodo is always comforting to have around, even if you don't use him. And even if when you do use him you get the exact same terrible card on the second draw... The one thing that I found him to be useful for is you can take a chance during stage 1 and 3 on drawing something besides a treachery. If you draw a nasty treachery that either Surges or forces you to draw another card, you're drawing at least 3 encounter cards during the encounter phase and that sucks. If you can draw a simple Plain of Gorgoroth instead, that makes a massive difference. I hate that "First treachery surges" effect!

On this first winning run I had several key pieces in my opening hand which set me up really well. Nenya, Light of Valinor and Expert Treasure Hunter set up questing and card draw from turn 1 which was massive. Letting Glorfindel quest without exhausting right away is key so you can pay the travel cost on the Old Water Course right away. Getting that threat reduction off that location is helpful. I ended up putting Steward of Gondor on Galadriel.

There was once terrible moment when I got hit with Heavy and Tired which I had to attach to Sam, then I had to make a Fortitude Test! Galadriel and Glorfindel tried, but failed. Luckily there's an action window after discarding encounter cards for the test and resolution of the test so I could use Power of Orthanc to discard that condition so Sam wouldn't lose his tower of attachments! That would have been the end.

I find the first stage of this quest the most difficult. If you can clear a couple locations and get through stage 1, stage 2 is pretty easy since that first treachery doesn't surge (There are 17 standard treacheries in this encounter deck plus 2 Burdens making that balance 19 treacheries to 25 other encounter cards, two of which start in play so there's a very near 50% chance of drawing a treachery every time you draw an encounter card. When you get to stage 3, you should be fairly well set up to make a easy Fortitude test at the beginning of every quest phase. I used the Phial of Galadriel to blind one Little Snuffler which didn't seem very glorious for such a powerful gift, but when it makes the difference between winning and losing, it's still powerful.

When I finally had the chance to travel to Mount Doom on turn 8, my threat was in the high 50's but Sam passed the final 2 Fortitude test with way more willpower than necessary and I chose to destroy the ring and defeat the power of Sauron! I won on turn 9 with a threat level of 64 and a freshly emptied player deck. I was thankful for those 10 turns the Army of Gondor provided me with! I'm pretty sure this deck can't win in 6 turns.

I wanted to make sure I legit beat this campaign so I played it a few more times and it took another 6-8 attempts before I won again. Getting card draw early is crucial. I got to use Ho! Tom Bombadil at a fun moment (on the second treachery of a phase) and used the Phial near the very end when two Big Uruks engaged me right while I was getting close to winning.

I completed the quest the second time on turn 9 as well with a threat level of 62. That was a good game. I was fortunate and got less surging treacheries on this second play and it felt "fairer."

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

I think I'll do a full blog post on my experience through the campaign as a whole on my LOTR Testing Ground blog at some point.

My Campaign Decks

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