Beneath the Sands - Solo Progression 1.0

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• 1.0

The Strategy

Get a side quest into the victory display, preferably Keep Watch, and then use Vigilant Dúnadan to defend all attacks. Leave the enemies engaged with you or trapped up in staging. While Vigilant Dúnadan is busy defending all attacks, the rest of your characters are questing. Once you have enough strength to defeat the Brood Mother, hit the final quest stage and finish the game.

Game Play

You want to mulligan for a side quest and either Entangling Nets or Ranger Spikes. If you can get either of the traps into staging then quest with everyone round one to try to complete the side quest. If you don't complete the side quest, don't travel in round one. Aragorn's ability to reset your threat means you can focus on completing the side quest without worrying about threat increase.

If you have a Warden of Healing on the board, and Keep Watch in the victory display, don't be afraid to take some attacks undefended; most enemies will only be doing a point or two of damage. Once you have a Vigilant Dúnadan on the board, Warden of Healing can be used to keep them alive while everyone else quests.

There are a lot of shadow cards that have you discard attachments. Remove the attachments on the Spider Broodlings first as Vigilant Dúnadan should be able to handle the attacks.

With a bunch of enemies engaged with you at the end, Éowyn and the Fornost Bowman should be able to one shot the Brood Mother and lead you to safety.

Deck Breakdown

Cancellation: There is not a lot in the deck. Scout Ahead can be used to remove a problem card from the encounter deck. Firyal can discard a bad encounter card. The deck has a copy of A Burning Brand, but it is included mostly as a target for a shadow effect that forces you to discard an attachment.

Card Draw: Master of the Forge, Damrod, Daeron's Runes, Gildor Inglorion, and, especially late game, Sarn Ford Sentry. Gather Information should be used to grab a Vigilant Dúnadan or Keep Watch, depending on what you don't have at the moment. Erebor Hammersmith is used to pull back traps that get discarded due to shadow effects.

Combat: Vigilant Dúnadan, combined with Keep Watch, should be all you need for defence. You likely only need one attack at the end to kill the Brood Mother. Éowyn and Fornost Bowman should be able to one shot her. If possible, keep the Feints to deal with the Brood Mother. Envoy of Pelargir is an excellent choice for chump blocking.

Location Control: When Pitch Black Tunnel is the active location, Ghân-buri-Ghân can get you the you need to quest well. Progress tokens on Mirkwood Explorer can also be used to clear a poorly timed Pitch Black Tunnel. Same goes for The Evening Star. If you have Ghân-buri-Ghân and a lot of allies on the board, using Distant Stars to make Pitch Black Tunnel the active location can get you a lot of .

Questing: Well, Éowyn, but you likely knew that. Mirkwood Explorers and Sarn Ford Sentry, and Firyal all contribute decent .

Resources: Damrod reduces the cost to play traps. Use Envoy of Pelargir to move resources to Éowyn. And, while you generally don't kill enemies, a well timed attack on a Hive Guardian followed up with a Proud Hunters can get you some extra resources.

Threat Reduction: This is the reason Aragorn is here. Earlier versions of the deck tried different approaches and would often threat out.

Other: Entangling Nets, Forest Snare, and Ranger Spikes are all used to slow down or neutralize the enemy. If you can, keep Forest Snare for Hive Guardians or the Brood Mother if you can pull that off.

Possible Changes

Keep Watch really weakens the enemies. It is probably worth including 3 in the deck in order to maximize the chance of drawing one.

Typically, Éowyn has not needed the resource from Envoy of Pelargir. Swapping the Envoy out for a couple of cheap attachments that could be discarded to shadow effects might be a good idea. Song of Battle might be a good substitute. Once you have Keep Watch and Vigilant Dúnadan in play, Song of Battle is a good target for the discard attachment shadow as Éowyn can generate sufficient resources for every other card.

The same could be said of Proud Hunters as well. Since Éowyn is only going to be used for questing, she will not be getting resources from Proud Hunters.

It feels like Gildor Inglorion is a borderline include. He is expensive and it seems like the deck draws fine without him. A cheaper ally with 2 might be a good substitute.

While I always seemed to have a Fornost Bowman on the board when I needed it, having only one in the deck seems like a bad idea. Swapping out Gildor Inglorion for another Bowman is likely a good idea.

If you find some extra space, perhaps Weather-stained Cloak could be added to reduce any damage from undefended attacks.