Solo Deck for Challenge of the Wainriders 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is the deck that I used to beat Challenge of the Wainriders pretty consistently. I found this quest to be a huge thematic success and I love the concept of having a chariot race. I do find this quest to have a lot of variance to it. If you get the wrong string of cards out, the Wainriders can get so far ahead of you that there is virtually no way to catch up with them. On the other hand, there are games where you can get very far ahead of the Wainriders even nearly lapping them in one of my games.

Mulligan Guide Just to be clear, The One Ring goes on Beregond. Generally speaking the most important card that you want to see in your opening hand is Unexpected Courage. You really need to play a readying effect on Beregond as soon as possible because he is your only defender. In addition, the first race test is a defense one, so you really need to use him to pass that. Mirkwood Long-knife is also an attachment you'd like to see early so that you can more reliably pass the attack race test. Your ideal starting hand would probably contain Erebor Toymaker, Unexpected Courage, Elven-light, and one of your tactics attachments like Rivendell Blade, Gondorian Shield, or Arod. You can pitch Elven-light using Arwen's ability, spend the three spirit resources on Erebor Toymaker, and then attach unexpected courage to Beregond. I generally don't put Inner Strength on Beregond

Playing the Quest Generally I found that I want to allow the Wainriders to get a slight head start. This will allow you to build up your board and takes a little pressure off Beregond as your defender. One dangerous situation you really want to avoid is advancing too quickly and needing Beregond to pass a race test and defend twice. Northern Bowmaster and Misty Mountain Journeyman are both playable anytime that you are at the same stage as the Wainriders. If you have one of those two allies in your hand it's usually not a big deal to keep an enemy around for an extra turn with Beregond so you can play it.

Rivendell Blade is important for Legolas early on so that you can one-shot an Aggresive Racer. Once you have a few more attacking allies I recommend using both of Legolas's restricted slots for a Mirkwood Long-knife so that he both is a better quester with Light of Valinor and will allow you to flip more cards when doing an attack based race test.

Ideally you'd like to have one Unexpected Courage on each of your heroes at some point in the game. I generally put the second Unexpected Courage on Legolas and the third on Arwen. Once you have Silver Circlet on Arwen you have a dedicated hero for each of the defense, attack, and willpower race tests. Often flipping at minimum 4 cards and often 5 or 7 meaning that you can really do a lot of catching up and blazing past the Wainriders. It's usually not too big of an issue to fail some of the race tests. The worst one that you really want to avoid failing if probably is the test on 2b since you will likely have many fragile allies.

The final card I want to discuss is A Test of Will. This quest doesn't have as many back-breaking treacheries as some others do, but there are a few cards that can really shift things in favor of the Wainriders if left unchecked. The most important card to hold up A Test of Will for is Easterling Horse. This attaches to an Easterling enemy and gives them an extra 2 threat along with forcing the enemy back to the staging area at the end of the round. When playing solo there will rarely be another Easterling enemy, meaning that this will attach to the Wainrider Champion, meaning that the Wainriders will advance at least one stage each turn! Another revealed effect that I often found myself cancelling was the effect on Rider of Rhun which fetched a Easterling Horse for himself.