Escape from Dul Guldor, solo deck, Core + Shadows of Mirkwoo 1.0

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• 1.0

So this is the deck I managed to squeak through a solo 1-deck victory against the core set escape from Dol Guldur. The self-imposed constraints that I have been working/deckbuilding against are; only playing with cards from the core set (3x copies) and all of the six first Shadows of Mirkwood expansion boosters.

It was quite a process to get to this deck design, and I have no shame in admitting that I was playing the scenario per the official “easy” difficulty level. But given the constraint of only core + first 6 Shadows of Mirkwood expansions, and the FFG admitted absurd design of the scenario I felt quite thrilled at pulling out a win.

Deck Design Process

I went through nearly every deck archetype I could think of trying to figure out how to beat this scenario. First I tried to start with ‘low threat’ heroes (Frodo, Eleanor, etc) but quickly realized that while I could keep threat low enough to avoid the 30+ threat enemies there’s no avoiding the low-threat undead/spiders. And those low-threat heroes just don’t have the stats to push through even the low threat enemies. The other challenge is that designing a deck to work for any 2 out of the 3 heroes you need heroes that can perform double duty. This led me to the other end of the spectrum of trying out a couple decks that stacked all the biggest/toughest heroes, Aragorn, Boromir, and Glorefindel (Lore), remember Core + Shadows of Mirkwood only.

What I found with this crew however is that I was almost always getting location-locked fairly consistently (always if I kept Boromir) and that I had too much “fight” in the deck. This led me to think about what heroes I could design to play well enough with Eowyn. Eowyn certainly doesn’t perform double duty in any way. I will say as an aside Eowyn really almost feels like cheating as far as it comes to ‘winning’ the questing part of the game, not to mention for a multi-color deck always providing a use/value for dead cards for whatever reason. For my final deck even if Eowyn was the prisoner between Imrahil and Aragon both having readying abilities and 6x cards for a source of Spirit I felt the deck had a shot. Spirit + Leadership felt like probably the most ‘power’ color-mix because although needing to include color fixing cards necessarily creates dead-draws later on, you get the excellent value of Celebrian’s Stone. Beorn might look like an odd include given no tactics to play him, but with both Sneak Attack and Stand and Fight it’s nice to have some ‘big power’ cards to draw into later when you aren’t resource poor beyond just Gandalf.

What do people think about this deck? Suggestions? Other ways to play a non-leadership complement to Spirit/Eowyn? Glaring holes?

I know Escape from Dul Guldor solo is a quest anyone who doesn’t for some-reason enjoy losing should just skip, but I found the challenge rewarding, and maybe others will too? :)