Journey to the Cross-roads - Specialist Deck Series 1.0

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This entry in the Specialist Deck Series brings us to Journey to the Cross-roads, where our brave heroes face off against the men of Harad.

For an explanation of the series and to see the deck for the first quest, look here: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/18970

For the decks used to beat the previous quest, The Passage of the Marshes, look here: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/11225

Journey to the Cross-roads is a challenging quest, and notoriously so in solo. The unique loss condition, which occurs when too many enemies are placed under the Black Gate, can be very hard to avoid with only 1 optional engagement allowed per turn. There are several ways to mitigate this, but that will often mean having to deal with multiple enemies per turn and most in this quest are pretty strong so it's a tough proposition.

Still, it was a challenge I thought suitable to highlight for the Series and so we arrive at this deck. I will say that this quest has been the most challenging to build for so far. I tried 2 other distinct deck types which were utter failures before arriving at this lineup. A couple of cards from those decks made it into the final version and I'll touch on that later.

What we do have is a Bond of Friendship deck. I only just picked up the corresponding AP and this is so far the only deck I have built with the contract. All I have to say is that it was amazing how strong the deck felt straight away. In some ways the contract feels designed for tough situations like this.

The primary benefit of the contract for us is that we have an extra hero action to use from turn one. Specifically for this deck, we get to have a dedicated hero defender while still having plenty of . Being able to engage and defend an enemy from turn 1 is huge in minimising the chances of losing.

Beregond is that dedicated defender. He has everything we want in a defender: he can take a hit from turn one relatively safely. He can carry both an Armored Destrier and a Gondorian Shield at full effect. As a bonus, he even lets us control our threat to an extent (more on that later).

Next up is Faramir. Because we will be engaging enemies regularly, we will get good use of his ability. It feels like he was specifically designed for use in this quest once you take a look at an Oliphaunt. As a bonus, Faramir can also be equipped with the same gear as Beregond, in case we need an emergency defender. In fact, his versatile stats mean we can use him in any phase of the game depending on our need. This verstility does come at a high threat cost so we will try to be a bit more conservative with our remaining heroes.

For we have Éowyn. I surprised myself a little when I found out I'd made it this far in the series without including her yet. Quite simply one of the best heroes in the game. We need her , especially since our hero won't be questing. She has a very nice effective threat cost of 6 and her ability can be invaluable since we will be engaging enemies at nearly all opportunities and an emergency kill button will keep us in the fight.

Finally for we will take Pippin once again. He's as good in his low threat role as ever and we should be triggering his ability at least once per turn. This deck, more than many, needs good regular card draw and Pippin's particular brand is extremely reliable.

Now seems as good a time as any to speak about our hero. As with any quest in which the Nazgul are absent, I will recommend Mountain of Fire Frodo Baggins. He's even more crucial to our deck than usual since having the right resources available is no easy task in a quad-sphere deck. Since this Frodo has no ability requiring resources, we can be pretty liberal about using him to pay for our neutral cards where possible.

A brief talk on strategy - we will need to be able to engage enemies from turn one. This quest can present situations where we have no choice but to let an enemy be placed under the Black Gate objective, so when we do have a choice we need to prevent this at all costs. Any turn there are two enemies in the staging area is a potential disaster.

In order to keep engaging enemies, we need to be able to kill them as well so we aren't overrun. Eowyn will cover us for a single turn early on (excepting those damnable Oliphaunts!), but to give us a more long term solution we'll once again be enlisting some Ents to help us out. Ents are a natural fit with Faramir since he can allow them to act in the combat phase on the turn they are played. The Ents will also help us keep our cost curve low - we have relatively few things that will cost us more than 2, allowing us to keep playing cards despite our tricky resource situation.

Our threat is also important when considering how we will engage enemies. With a high enough threat, we won't need to worry about having only one optional engagement per turn. The magic number for our deck is 38. Once we are at 38 threat, we will be able to engage any enemy from the encounter deck plus one from the extra Cross-roads deck of enemies each turn. However, once we reach 40, we'll lose some ability to control engagements when we'd rather avoid it. What we can do, is let our threat rise to 38-39 (Eowyn can help with this) and then let Beregond keep our threat in this narrow window for the rest of the game. Amazingly, there are no threat raising cards in the whole encounter deck, so this strategy remains viable throughout the quest.

We can generate a fair amount of , but towards the end of the quest the staging area can be very tricky to beat. For this reason, we'll aim to put as much progress on the quest early on as we can. Then in the last couple of turns, it doesn't matter as much if we can make much progress, so long as we are able to travel to the Cross-roads at the appropriate time.

Finally, we have a few tricks which will let us deal with enemies without them attacking us. One of the original deck ideas I had was based on this strategy to a more extreme level, but it wasn't reliable enough to get to the end. In this deck, these types of cards help to act as an emergency button, but aren't key to the deck's success.

This deck came away with a clean 3 out of 3 wins, without a single card changed after the deck's conception. This was incredible to me, since I lost more than 10 times in a row with 2 other deck ideas and on those attempts the quest felt hopeless. I won't say the wins were easy and there are definitely a lot of important decisions to make with this deck, but I was able to execute the same rough game plan in all 3 attempts. When so much of our key pieces begin the game in play, it is that much easier to have a consistent plan. Certainly it helped to be generating 6 resources per turn. It really demonstrated the power of this contract.

Since we are not playing Campaign mode, it doesn't matter which enemies make it to the Black Gate. That said, it's very easy to lose to this condition and so we will be trying to minimise this happening in any case. The best I managed was 1 enemy escaping, but as long as we don't reach 4 it doesn't matter what else happens.

Thanks to the deck construction requirements of the contract, there are a lot of cards to talk about. Some of the choices were made based on which spheres had slots available. Certainly with greater consideration there would be a number of alternative directions to go. I'll try not to focus too much on that as I discuss the cards, lest this turn into even more of an essay:

Angbor the Fearless - A cheap and effective quester with a nice bonus if we can use it . However, our plan is to not let our threat rise to 40. With that in mind, I might be tempted to swap out the second copy for a different ally.

Arwen Undómiel - Arwen's real value is in improving our defensive capabilities early on, especially if we haven't drawn our other equipment. Luckily she's also a good quester.

Booming Ent - A great attacking ally and we should make short work of most of the enemies with one of these in play. The large amount of archery and other direct damage effects make it very easy to max out the .

Derndingle Warrior - Beregond may find it diffcult to defend everything, so it's good to have a strong backup. He can even survive an attack from an Oliphaunt, just hope we draw some healing.

Envoy of Pelargir - A great ally for helping us manage our resources. The only sphere that we can't generate a resource for is .

Gandalf - Another neutral ally to help optimise our resources. The card draw is really valuable, but he can also help us to take out an enemy in the staging area before they escape. A great way to use Faramir's ability also.

Gléowine - We only have so many slots available for card draw. Since so many of our choices are already spent on other allies, Gléowine was chosen over cheaper events due to his repeatable action.

Legolas - Similar to Gléowine, Legolas was chosen in part because he's the best card draw option available in . His high is also great. Note this is our most expensive non-neutral card, so when in doubt we should save resources.

Quickbeam - We want cheap and powerful allies and they don't get any better than Quickbeam.

Rosie Cotton - Rosie is pretty safe inclusion with any Hobbit heroes. Mostly she will be helping out with questing, but it's nice to be able to turn her into if we need it. Thanks to Faramir, she could even do both in the same turn.

Sam Gamgee - With Frodo on the table there's no more efficient questing ally.

Treebeard - The strongest ally we can play and being neutral makes him extremely good in this type of deck. We can pay for Treebeard and any other 2 cost card on the first turn, allowing for very strong starts. He can even contribute on the first turn thanks to Faramir. He brings our resource generation up to an effective 7 per turn, so can really help with card costs, especially since and are the most expensive spheres in our deck overall. His ability is also a nice answer to Oliphaunts.

Wandering Ent - We need to be effective at both questing and combat and his cost makes him great at both.

Warden of Healing - There is a lot of archery around, so having an answer is very helpful. It's also easy for our defenders to take damage, at least early on, so we'll need to keep them healthy.

Wellinghall Preserver - An extremely efficient quester and the bonus healing is great for supporting the other Ents in combat.

Armored Destrier - One of the primary defensive tools for Beregond. This is key to defending against Oliphaunts with certainty of success. Since they will take a few turns to defeat, we will definitely get value out of both the readying and the shadow discard. We want to see this early, so 2 copies are necessary. The second can always go on Faramir.

Fellowship of the Ring - On any given turn we'll likely be questing with 3 or 4 of our heroes, so this is fantastic value. With Beregond defending we also shouldn't be losing any characters, unless we get very unlucky with archery.

Gondorian Shield - Beregond's other piece of equipment. At 6 we can even defend against Oliphaunts with confidence.

Hauberk of Mail - With the limits on cards with the contract, this can act as an extra defensive option for Beregond. If we don't have a shield yet we can play this. If we already have the shield, Derndingle Warrior is a possible alternative.

Put Off Pursuit - This is one of the cards which let us deal with an extra enemy, by replacing it with a location instead. This is not the best option, since we need to choose to play it before we know if it will be necessary. However, it is still nice to have as insurance on turns we can't afford any surprises. As a bonus, it handles Oliphaunts quite nicely.

Steed of the North - We should be able to trigger this every turn and it enables Faramir to act in both the quest phase and combat phase.

Unexpected Courage - Another card to provide a little extra redundancy. We can play this on Beregond, which we'll be very happy to do if we haven't drawn Armored Destrier yet. Even if we have, it may still be worthwhile for dealing with extra attacks.

A Test of Will - Several of the treacheries in this quest are well worth cancelling and this card might just save us having to place an extra enemy under the objective.

Feint - We need to engage enemies constantly, and Feint will allow us to do so a bit more easily. Hopefully it will buy us the time we need to handle the enemy in question.

Frodo's Intuition - We'll have 2 hobbit heroes, so this is a very welcome inclusion. In general, we need to dedicate several slots to card draw and this is a perfect way to fit it in. Later in the quest, we will be very happy with the boost also.

Hasty Stroke - Since our strategy hinges on a single hero defender, having the tools to keep him in the fight is very important. This quest doesn't have the worst shadows, but if we are unlucky things can go south very quickly.

Oath of Eorl - Since we fulfil the conditions for playing this card it seems like a perfect fit. This is an excellent way to deal with the issue of engaging so many enemies. If we haven't used Eowyn's ability, we can hold her back from questing and all but guarantee ourselves 2 easy kills.

Ride Them Down - Another card for dealing with an unwanted enemy. This one has the advantage that we will know whether we need to use it or not. Probably most effective early since we'll likely have an easier time questing, meaning this is more likely to be lethal. It's usually okay to take a turn off from placing progress on the quest since there is only the one quest stage.

Sneak Attack - Once again this card has managed to sneak (heh) into the deck. There are two indended uses - first as card draw, which could be with Gandalf or Legolas. We might also need a combat boost. Gandalf and Legolas work again, but also potentially Quickbeam or Angbor.

Prepare for Battle - This is one last inclusion to try and ensure we are drawing as many cards as we need. As with Ride Them Down, the cost in terms of questing is not too great, considering the number of turns we have available to us.