Three Trials Eagle Spirit (solo progression) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

A deck that is purpose built to beat The Three Trials solo, using only cards released until the Ringmaker cycle, no saga cards and one Core set.

My goal was to build a deck that beats the scenario three times in a row. This deck has only managed two times in a row, but I’m happy with the deck and can’t really see how to improve it further. Can you? At the moment, this is the best deck I can manage against this scenario, and it wins regularly.

The Three Trials is a really hard scenario solo. I tried a number of decks before settling on this one. IIRC, I had a Rohan Spirit-Tactics deck, a Dwarf deck and an Elladan-Elrohir deck that all beat the scenario once, but never twice in a row.

My breakthrough came with a mono-Tactics deck that played Thicket of Spears to deal with three of the the six Guardian attacks on the turn that you travel to Hallowed Circle. Thicket really takes the pressure off that turn, which can otherwise devastate your board. It's the only card in the progression card pool that prevents all enemy attacks in the combat phase, so there's no real substitute.

The mono-Tactics deck had a problem with threat though. The deck could defeat the Guardians and generate enough WP to keep going, but threat hit 50 too often. Stone Barrow would kill the deck if it remained in play for a couple of turns. So this Eagle Spirit deck was an attempt to take the bones of the mono-Tactics deck and lower the threat profile. Glorfindel and Elrond's Counsel are perfect for that.

Thicket of Spears is the key card in the deck. It requires to be payed from each hero, so to be able to play it in a non-mono deck, A Good Harvest has to be in hand at the same time. It's not that big a thing to ask for, often you would want to run Harvest anyway for resource smoothing. Often you grind for quite a while on stage 1, so drawing both isn't too much to ask for either. There's extra card draw in Ancient Mathom and Gandalf as well. Gandalf is most often used for cards in this build, threat is rarely a problem and you can defeat everything you need to without his direct damage. Getting Thicket online is much more important than his other potential effects.

I recommend taking the trials in the order Intuition-Perseverance-Strength. Intuition lets you grind while you build up your board. Perseverance and Strength can then often be completed in one or two turns each. Having Strength last also guarantees you one turn to prepare for the three Guardians to attack. Then comes the big turn when you travel to Hallowed Circle and suffer six Guardian attacks, and then you (hopefully) quest out in one turn.

Remember that Thicket can't protect you from the travel effect attacks of Hallowed Circle, as there's no action window there to play it (neither can Feint). This is what Beregond, UC, Behind Strong Walls, Gondorian Discipline and Hasty Stroke is for. Try to save them for this, but often you have to use them earlier. The Eagle allies are also good defenders and chump blockers.

Beregond is a life-saver, as usual. Worst case is the 5 Attack Guardian from turn 1, and there aren't a lot of heroes able to take that head on. Mulligan for Arwen to be able to boost him to 5. After he gets his shield, he can take even the late game attacks that often get +3 from the shadow effect. Glorfindel brings his usual overpowered stats. Mablung's ability is also great in this scenario, where every quest card is an auto-engage.

Glorfindel and Mablung will quest most turns. Remember that Tangled Woods requires a hero to exhaust to travel to it. Once you have Light of Valinor Glorfindel can do it, but before that you may have to keep one of them back. The encounter deck can add a maximum of 4 threat per turn (3 under some conditions). Questing with just enough is mostly the right play. If you can keep 6 attack back from questing you can kill Spirit of the Wild on the turn that they appear.

The Guardians can get extra attacks from both encounter and shadow effects, so watch out for that. Always keep a defender in reserve, or rely on Behind Strong Walls or Hasty Stroke. Also beware that the encounter deck can deal one damage to all non-unique allies when deciding on the best time to play the smaller Eagles. Don't just play them because you have them.

Have you made another progression style deck that regularly beats this scenario? Please let us know in the comments!