The Passing of the Grey Company - Specialist Deck Series 1.0

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• 1.0

In this edition the Specialist Deck Series tackles The Passing of the Grey Company.

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 deck used to beat the previous quest, Shelob's Lair, look here: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/21462

If I could sum up this quest in a simple phrase, it would be "Threat, threat, threat!" Seemingly every card in the deck is trying to threat us out one way or another, or otherwise punish us for having high threat. We even have a special Burden card, Overcome by Fear, to make things extra tricky.

Two notes before I start talking about the deck. 1) It seems that playing solo really takes the sting out of this quest. Overcome by Fear can be a big problem if you can't get rid of it easily, but this is trivial in solo. 2) Compounding with the first point, a strong threat reduction plan makes this a relatively easy quest.

So, I definitely succeeded in my objective to build a specialist deck tailored to the quest, but for the first time in the series, I'm worried I was a bit too successful. To be honest I would not recommend trying this quest in solo - much more fun with 2 players.

So to the deck. As alluded to above, we are going quite hard on a threat control strategy. I like trying out new things as well, so I decided that I'd like to use the Council of the Wise contract for the first time. Ever since it was spoiled I liked the idea of this contract, and it has built in threat reduction so fits the plan perfectly.

The first hero choice is Frodo Baggins. A reminder that since this is not campaign mode we can use him in the Aragorn quests. Frodo has built in threat reduction and readying, so he's a really great hero for his 7 threat.

Next we have Legolas. We continue the theme of action advantage and we also have a strong attacker, who alongside Aragorn can tackle most of the enemies. The other driver for including him is that he allows us to get good value out of Elven-light. Even with our contract we could easily find ourselves short of cards so another source of repeatable card draw is welcome.

The last choice is Bifur. His low starting threat is a big factor and with all of our easy readying he makes a passable defender as well. We can also use his ability alongside the ability of the contract to manage our resources well. Our combination of heroes also allows us to play Unlikely Friendship and get value from We Are Not Idle, which are both excellent with the contract.

At this point it's probably worth mentioning Aragorn, who's new for this expansion. We really want to get an artifact attached to him for even more action advantage. It's quite easy with this deck to quest with all 4 of our heroes and still have them ready for the combat phase, which is a great situation to be in.

So how should we approach the quest? As said above, in solo it is not too tough to manage. A lot of the effects are mitigated if we can attach Overcome by Fear to our threat dial, and as a solo player this is a very small price to pay as it is easy to remove. The enemies are not particularly threatening either. By careful management of our threat we reduce the time it takes to reach the final stage and we can even avoid having to fight the boss.

I won all 3 of my attempts comfortably and even managed to end with threat under 30.

This time I'm going to tackle the in-depth deck description a little differently. Nobody wants to read my rambling on 50 unique cards - I think what would be more useful is to break the deck into categories of similar cards, which incidentally is a handy way to approach building a singleton deck.

Obviously the deck was heavily built around maximising the contract - what that means is a large number of cheap or free events which then generate additional value. Ideally we will trigger the contract at least once every turn. Getting all 3 triggers will probably be a rarity, but 2 would be a great turn for us. The choice to make for each trigger is heavily dependant on the board state, but our goal is threat reduction so expect to choose that one a lot.

Questing allies - these allies may have other uses too, but they will be questing basically every turn:

Angbor the Fearless, Arwen Undómiel, Erestor, Firyal, Glorfindel, Quickbeam, Sam Gamgee

Utility allies - these allies have uses other than for questing. Hopefully their uses are fairly self-explanatory. Many of the abilities on these allies are duplicated in attachments or events for redundancy. I would make a "combat allies"category, but it would only have Treebeard, so he's in here.

Elfhelm, Errand-rider, Galadhrim Minstrel, Gandalf, Henamarth Riversong, Treebeard, Wild Stallion

Card draw or similar

Dúnedain Pipe, King Under the Mountain, Daeron's Runes, Drinking Song, Dwarven Tomb, Elven-light, Heed the Dream, Unlikely Friendship, We Are Not Idle, Gather Information.

Resource generation or similar

Elf-stone, Steward of Gondor, A Good Harvest, Captain's Wisdom, Gaining Strength, Man the Walls, Tighten Our Belts

Threat reduction

Ever My Heart Rises, Elrond's Counsel, Free to Choose, The Galadhrim's Greeting, Well Warned

Action advantage - including the artifacts for Aragorn

Banner of Elendil, Light of Valinor, Sword that was Broken, Unexpected Courage, Common Cause, Ever Vigilant, Swift and Silent, The Free Peoples, The Three Hunters

The rest

Entangling Nets - I'm a big fan of this card and it makes combat even easier

Mirkwood Long-knife - Don't often get a chance to use this card and it's great value with all of our action advantage

Secret Paths - It can take us some time to build up , so a nice cheap event to give us a boost in questing is great

The White Council - This card's cheap cost and flexibility makes it an excellent inclusion with the contract

Will of the West - We might run through our deck pretty quickly and this will allow us to re-use our events for additional value. The fact that it triggers the contract by itself is gravy.