First Exploration of Trisphere core Deck with lower threat 1.0

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• 1.0

This was the first successful solo deck that I built from scratch for playing the core scenarios and Dark of Mirkwood. I'd initially tried to be more exploratory with heroes, but I'd gradually iterated to wanting Éowyn for questing and appreciating the defence and encounter deck manipulation of Denethor.

Earlier on, I'd tried higher theat cost heros, but for Anduin, it really helps starting with lower threat to give you time to build up to the hill troll, especially when playing solo. So I was keen to explore this model. And Théodred provides that low cost hero with the added benefit of resource acceleration which can be strategically allocated to support card play in whichever sphere needs it.

I quite enjoyed the process of setting up an initial deck and then gradually converging on this one. For my initial deck building, I tried to keep it simple by following the rule that if I have a card in my deck, then I have 3 copies of that card; hence the 51 card deck (17 distinct cards).

In earlier quests, I failed because

• I lacked healing, so I added Lore of Imladris .
• I lacked card draw, so I added Lórien's Wealth, and also used Gléowine more for card draw.
• I also often needed really strong questing power, so adding Faramir to a pool of low cost allies was very powerful. Sometimes, I even put Unexpected Courage on him, which combined with Celebrían's Stone stone on Éowyn can give massive willpower: e.g., 6 for Eowyn + perhaps another 6 to 8 from allies or other heros, and then another 2*6 to 8 because of Faramir activating his exhaustion effect twice.

The Galadhrim's Greeting is very powerful in solo in keeping threat down, and therefore giving flexibility in enemy engagement.

Stand and Fight, and Sneak Attack permit additional uses of Gandalf. CORRECTION: You can't use stand and fight with Gandalf, because he has no sphere. Stand and Fight is also useful if resources are out of sync (e.g., playing a Lore ally when short on lore resources.

Sneak Attack is also sometimes helpful in the end just to finish off an enemy by providing a cheap chump or a +1 or 2 attack or quest.

Additional reflections:

It can't easily beat Escape from Dol Guldor. That said, when I tried it the first time (with Denethor as captive), I did make some progress, making it to the second phase.

So it is interesting to ponder whether with extreme luck in card draw, it would be possible win the scenario. My instinct is that it would be with the real question of just how much luck it would require. At the very least having Éowyn is pretty much essential, because the staging area is starting out with 4 cards My sense is that for this scenario, Aragorn might be better than Théodred, because of action advantage. Otherwise, you are essentially just rolling the dice in hope that you don't get an enemy on turn 1.