40+ Tokens on The Black Gate (In True Solo) 1.0

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• 1.0

Here is a deck which I successfully used to get 46 tokens on the Black Gate in solo. It's possible to get a few more with some luck, as this was just my first and only attempt.

I believe this is the current record for a solo deck, but it is possible to get a lot more in multiplayer.

Turn 1: Bide Your Time

1. Mulligan hard for Peace, and Thought.
2. Dig as deep as you can into your deck with various draw effects. Don't forget Beravor and Bilbo's abilities.
3. Quest with everyone who can, but still fail the quest, probably.
4. In the refresh phase, play Peace, and Thought, then hopefully find another one (using Drinking Song liberally) and play that one as well (thanks to Aragorn providing a 4th body).

Turn 2: Draw Your Deck

1. Play Ioreth, then Scroll of Isildur, then Bartering, then Sword-thain to get another lore hero for 1 resource.
2. Draw up the rest of your deck using Mithrandir's Advice (which now draws 4), Scroll of Isildur (which is now free), and Drinking Song (which gets Mithrandir's Advice back out from under your deck.
3. Even though your deck is 60+ cards, I think this is pretty consistent. I was able to achieve it on my first attempt. It might even be possible to cut Deep Knowledge from the deck.
4. Play the Songs on Bifur, using Aragorn's resources.
5. Play Song of Healing on Bifur.
6. Play Hobbit Pipe on Bilbo and the Spare Pipes on Bifur.
7. Play Legacy of Númenor (gaining 5 resources) as needed, but be careful to not be too aggressive, as each copy you play is 4 fewer tokens you can get on the Black Gate.
8. Play down 3x Galadhrim Minstrel and 3x Galadhrim Weaver

Empty-deck Algorithms

There are various algorithms you can perform now that your deck is empty. The main requirement for all of these algorithms is to have a copy of Host of Galadhrim on the top of your discard. This can be achieved through Song of Healing, Daeron's Runes, or simply having just completed an algorithm (all algorithms end with a Host of Galadhrim being placed in your discard after being resolved).

Algorithm 1: Gain a Resource

1. Have all 3 Galadhrim Minstrel and all 3 Galadhrim Weaver in play.
2. Play Smoke and Think, reducing the cost of the next card you play by 4.
3. Play Host of Galadhrim (placing it on the table, not your discard yet).
4. Play Gaining Strength to give Bifur a resource.
5. Return all Silvan allies to your hand
6. Play the 3 Weavers, putting Gaining Strength, Smoke and Think, and the Host of Galadhrim that was already in your discard back into your deck.
7. Play the 3 Minstrels, drawing those 3 cards back to your hand
8. Place the resolved Host of Galadhrim into your discard.

Perform this algorithm to get unlimited resources on Bifur.

Algorithm 2: Recur Any Event

1. Same as Algorithm 1, but with another event instead of Gaining Strength. This algorithm will cost resources, but with unlimited resources on Bifur it is not a concern.

Algorithm 3: Return Your Discard Pile to Your Hand

1. Use Algorithm 1, but with no Gaining Strength. You will end up shuffling Smoke and Think, Host of Galadhrim, and the next card (X) in your discard pile back into your deck. If X is an event, then your Galadhrim Minstrel will bring it back to hand. If X is not an event, do Algorithm 2 with Mithrandir's Advice to draw it into your hand.

Getting 40+ Tokens

Starting in round 2, every round is the same. The early rounds are easy to survive, so for sake of making things simpler I will walk through a round where I reveal every card in the encounter deck, and discuss how the deck is able to return the game to the same board state afterward. Then it should be clear how it survives all the earlier rounds.

It might be helpful to have the encounter cards open to reference.

Game state at the beginning of the round:

In addition to The Black Gate and The Mouth of Sauron, the staging area likely has the following cards leftover in it from the previous round: 1 Nazgûl of Mordor with a Hell-hawk attached, 2 Towers of the Teeth, and 2 Slopes of Cirith Gorgor. The reason why these cards are the only cards in the staging area will be clear in a minute.

Planning Phase

1. Recur Durin's Song 100 times using Algorithm 2, targeting Bifur, who is now sporting 200+ // until the end of the round.
2. Recur The Evening Star using Algorithm 2 to clear out all locations from the staging area except Towers of the Teeth (immune) and Slopes of Cirith Gorgor (would put an enemy engaged with you).
3. Recur Host of Galadhrim once using Algorithm 2 so that Galadriel's Handmaiden reduces your threat by 1. This reduction cancels out the effect from The Black Gate, insuring your net threat gain each round is just 1.
4. Play Dwarven Sellsword, Born Aloft, and The End Comes to shuffle the encounter discard back into the encounter deck.

Quest Phase

The encounter discard is empty thanks to The End Comes, so the encounter deck has 41 cards in it. In this example round, we will be revealing 37 cards, in which the Mouth of Sauron attacks 4 times (needing 4 shadow cards), this means we will be seeing all 41 cards this phase.

1. Quest with all your characters.
2. Play Hour of Wrath, targeting Bifur.
3. Play Grim Resolve, readying everyone.
4. Reveal the encounter cards. Most cards do not have a "when revealed" effect, so just add them to the staging area. Here are some exceptions:
   • 3x Easterling Bowman: Deal the 3 damage to Bifur, who has 6 hit points thanks to the pipes.
   • 3x Warrior of Rhun: Remove your Weavers from the quest
   • 1x Hell-Hawk: Attach to a Nazgul or pull out a Nazgul, doesn't really matter. We'll assume it attaches to a Nazgul.
   • 3x The Hour of Doom: Discard your Galadhrim Minstrels
   • 2x Jaws of Steel: Cancel with A Test of Will, defend Mouth of Sauron's attacks with the Hour of Wrath'd Bifur. There are no troubling shadow effects.
   • 2x Rage Filled Him: Defend the attacks with the Hour of Wrath'd Bifur. There are no troubling shadow effects.
   • 3x Onslaught of Mordor: Damage Bifur once and the Aragorn twice.
   • 2x In Darkness Bind Them: Exhaust your Weavers.
   • Gwaihir: Discard him to get rid of a Nazgul + Hell-hawk.

In rounds where you reveal more than 37 cards, there is a chance you will see some of the treacheries again. The only one that's really concerning is Jaws of Steel, for which we have a third A Test of Will. This should enable you to get past 40 tokens pretty reliably.

Post-staging

1. Play Charge into Battle
2. Destroy all enemies in the staging area with the Hour of Wrath'd Bifur apart from the remaining Nazgul + Hell-hawk (which is immune).
3. With Bifur's effectively unlimited amount of willpower from all the Durin's Song's, you will quest successfully.

Encounter Phase

1. Engage the only enemy left in the staging area (apart from the Mouth), the Nazgul with the Hell-hawk.

Combat Phase

1. Defend the Nazgul with Bifur (exhausting Bifur now that Hour of Wrath is worn off), then send it back to staging with its own effect.

Refresh Phase

1. Do nothing

Next Planning Phase

1. Heal Aragorn with Ioreth
2. Discard a few cards to Song of Healing to heal up Bifur, making a copy of Host of Galadhrim the last card you discard.
3. Draw your discard pile (Hour of Wrath, Charge into Battle, Born Aloft, Grim Resolve, etc. that you played last round) into your hand using Algorithm 3. You will have to rely on Mithrandir's Advice to draw cards instead of your Galadhrim Minstrels, as they were discarded last quest phase to The Hour of Doom treachery.
4. Play down your 3 Galadhrim Minstrels.

You are now back to the same board state as last round. You can clear our all the locations by recurring The Evening Star, shuffle them back into the deck with The End Comes, boost up Bifur with Durin's Song, and go again.

Epilogue

Eventually, thanks to the forced increment of 1 threat per round, you will eventually threat out. But you should be able to get approximately as many tokens on the Black Gate as you have threat remaining after you achieve your empty deck. On my attempt, with all the doomed cards I played and the treat raise from failing the first quest phase, I achieved an empty deck on round 2 with my threat in the low 50s, and I was able to get 46 tokens on the Black Gate before threating out at 99 threat.

Improvements

I think it's possible to improve a little on my results with some tweaking or some luck. In my attempt, I made use of all 4 "free" cards from the first stage of the Black Gate, which had me dumping a huge amount of threat in the staging area on the first round and failing the quest by a lot, driving up my threat. With better planning or luck I may have been able to get another dozen or so tokens. But to do significantly better (60+ tokens), it would require a different technique, as the reliance on doomed cards to get the combos going quickly limits how many rounds you can play for.

I think you could trim the list down a little, but I'm not sure exactly where without playing it a lot more. One possibility I considered is to run Out of the Wild instead of the Sellsword/Born Aloft/End Comes package, and just hoping to get lucky and nabbing a Jaws of Steel with it. This would mean that there would only be 1 Jaws left in the deck, and you could drop down to 2x A Test of Will and still be able to cycle through the whole deck twice without issue, meaning there'd be no need to for the reshuffle. Or instead you run a side quest and a Halfling Bounder to up your cancellation count to 4, giving you the ability to run through the encounter deck twice and cancel all 4 instances of Jaws. Ultimately I decided on the method I did because, well, how often do you get to say The End Comes is a key part of your deck?

Cheers!