Dol Guldur revisited 2.0

• Versions
• 2.0

After the latest expansion, I had this idea for a deck, that should work pretty well against the dreaded Escape from Dol Guldur scenario (solo play).

The deck is meant to work regardless of which hero gets captured and to be able to consistently beat it. Oh, yeah, and it is not a mono-sphere deck.

Key players are the heroes, naturally, which are Arwen, Glorfindel, and Beravor (the first approach had Grima instead of Beravor, but I noticed that I did not need him that much, so I switched to the amazing card draw ranger).

The low starting Threat should tide me over during the crucial first turns, so I can get the powerful allies in play (only one can be played each turn, therefore I am trying to get the most use out of those). Because the deck has a ton of Threat reduction (between Arwen and Glorfindel it is guaranteed, that I can play Elrond's Counsel early on to keep the Threat low, reusing them with Dwarven Tomb as much as possible; and I always have a target for Asfaloth and the Light of Valinor, even though having them on Glorfindel is obviously better, they are still good enough with Arwen), I have chosen The Hobbit version of Gandalf here, who is simply amazing when he is in play (and between him and Glorfindel, the smaller enemies should die pretty quickly, while together and with a little help from others like Quickbeam or Treebeard they can also kill the bigger nasties that the scenario has to offer without too much trouble). Three copies, so I get him as early as possible.

Another element is the deliberate lack of Spirit cancel cards (I do have the Burning Brand, of course), which means I will get hit by those Necromancer's Reach treacheries among other stuff. I simply do not want to rely on those. I have chosen my allies accordingly, so the ones going on a quest won't die immediately when it comes up (i.e. no 1 health questers) and later on I can hopefully predict it with Henamarth Riversong.

A decent amount of card draw should get me the important cards, and if I really need a certain card, there is Gather Information or the Word of Command. Also, Ranger Spikes are really fun with Henamarth Riversong.

For the Hummerhorns, if I cannot catch them with the Ranger Spikes, my plan is to simply never engage them by keeping my Threat from growing too high. If they are drawn during setup, though, there is one Ent Draught to survive their initial hit during engagement, which is a necessity then. Or, if all things fail, a hero has to die, which still allows to win the scenario, especially since it shouldn't happen too early in the game, anyways.

The first version of the deck, which was quite a bit different in detail (i.e. including Grima and the Keys of Orthanc), did pretty well already, winning the first and third game, but I did notice some flaws, which I corrected before testing and refining the deck a bit more.

So far, I have only lost few games with this deck, winning far more often than I lose (way above 50%, probably around 75% or so; I havn't really counted). Pretty much only a really nasty start (which can happen, of course), like getting both King Spiders during setup, or something equally unfriendly, causes severe problems. Stuff like that will always be next to impossible to win against.

I would prefer to get the deck down to 50 cards for added consistency, but (as usual) I have no idea what to remove. And since it works really well as it is, I have just kept it this way for now.