Goal / Constraint:

• Build a deck to reliably beat The Wastes of Eriador using the three Dunedain heroes from the Angmar Dunedain Starter Deck using only Revised Core and cards in the Starter Deck
• Bonus points if it stays close to the Starter Deck

Technically, Amarthiúl hero isn’t meant to be in this quest, because he is also an objective ally. But I’ve been exploring this set of heroes for all the other quests in Angmar, so didn’t feel like changing here. More generally, it’s not like Amarthiúl is a good hero for this quest. His defence is helpful. But his power is almost useless, because enemies don’t stay engaged when Day comes.

General approach

The deck is broadly designed to allow you to take a bit of time in Stage 1 to build up a good army of allies (perhaps 7 to 11 rounds), before racing through Stage 2 and Stage 3.

The most valuable card to Mulligan for is Celebrían's Stone. After that probably Steward of Gondor or Sneak Attack + Gandalf.

Heroes:

• Aragorn: He generally quests each round, especially once he’s got Celebrían's Stone and +2 questing. If you can get Unexpected Courage on him, then he can be used for attack as well. Don’t get damage on him, because his power is too good to lose.
• Halbarad: He’s generally a good secondary quester and can also take damage.
• Amarthiúl: He’s a good defender. Although always think what would happen if I got the shadow card with +1 attack for each damaged character.

Cards

• Celebrían's Stone: Get it on Aragorn to give you access to spirit resources.
• Steward of Gondor: Get it on Aragorn.
• Unexpected Courage: I transitioned to 3 copies of this because (a) it’s a useful card, but (b) there is a shadow effect that takes attachments away equal to the number of quest cards, and losing Celebrían's Stone can be fatal. So having one or two of these in play acts as a buffer.
• The Galadhrim's Greeting: This is part of the threat reduction needed for staying in Stage 1 for a while.
• Favor of the Valar: This can also help with managing threat. It’s helpful because it doesn’t require Celebrían's Stone. It’s also another attachment to protect against losing Steward of Gondor and Celebrían's Stone. Finally, it can work well, if you want to abandon all questing before an all out assault on Pack Leader.
• A Test of Will is handy; Flipping to night or +4 threat is a bad one, or a lot of damage following questing with an army of allies.
• Dwarven Tomb: This provides flexibility with spirit cards. Typically, it can give an extra The Galadhrim's Greeting.
• Feint: This is just generally useful. If you can save it for Pack Leader or some other heavy hitter, it can be good. Equally, sometimes it can just help to fill the gaps so that you can actually destroy a Warg rather than just defend it’s attack.
• Grim Resolve: This is principally there for Pack Leader. It’s great when you need to quest a bit for the night phase, and then exhaust a few characters then defend, and then you can play it, and use your full remaining army to take out Pack Leader.
• Gather Information: This is good for getting Celebrían's Stone, Steward of Gondor, Faramir, Sneak Attack, and Gandalf. That said, it’s best to play when you plan to clear it given the nasty effects based on number of quest cards.
• Send for Aid: This provides just another option for card draw and can give you a high cost ally. Beorn or Faramir are obvious targets.
• Beorn: A power house; not too expensive if you get Steward of Gondor. Another trick is that if Amarthiúl has a lot of resources, play Dúnedain Hunter to get an enemy engaged, and then use Amarthiúl’s resources to pay for some or all of him.
• Derndingle Warrior: Their defence is very useful.
• Dúnedain Hunter: This zero cost ally is quite good. It allows Halbarad to quest without exhausting and gives Amarthiúl tactics resource. I think it makes most sense to play during the day with Angmar Wolf (as the surge is not triggered, nor the +2 attack) from the encounter deck and when you don’t already need to clear the staging area of enemies (or at least not more enemies than you can handle.
• Faramir: As usual Faramir is mostly used for the + 1 questing power for each questing character. And the ability to wait until after encounter cards are revealed to play adds flexibility to control the pace of questing. Faramir is particularly handy when you transition to Stage 2 and 3, when you want to quest quickly or when you need to do a big quest to clear a side quest. Don’t get damage on him, otherwise, he’ll generally be useless due to quest attachment that blocks out effects.
• Gandalf: Card draw is one of the things this deck lacks, so playing him for that mostly makes sense. If possible, it’s best to get at least one Sneak Attack Gandalf before using a straight Gandalf. Sometimes using Gandalf for threat reduction also makes sense, if things get desperate, but ideally that’s not necessary.
• Honour Guard: Damage is a constant problem in this quest. Shadow cards are strong. There are treachery that give damage. And there are shadow cards that assign +1 attack for each damaged character. So having Honour Guard to block this damage is a good idea.
• Ingold: Helpful quester who by the late game should be questing for 3. Just don’t get damage on him otherwise, before long he’ll be useless.
• Ranger of Cardolan: Helps a bit with resource smoothing.
• Snowbourn Scout: A chump
• Veteran Axehand: Cheap +2 attack Veteran of Osgiliath: Good attack and willpower once +40 threat hits, which is often a lot of the game.

Other thoughts:

• If you’re in early stages, clear side quests as soon as you can.
• Know that with this deck, you’re almost guaranteed to get Cold from Angmar and you’ll lose the card text of any players with damage.
• If possible try not to have too many individual players with damage
• In general, use Dunedain Hunter to pull out Angmar Wolf and other travel and treachery to pull out Northern Warg from the encounter deck (rather than the discard). That way, you’re gradually whittling down enemies in the encounter deck.
• The transition to Stage 3 requires careful thought. Feint is good. Otherwise, holding back quite a few allies can help.
• In general, it’s important to stay on top of enemies and locations throughout.

Deck building Log

So I played The Wastes of Eriador twice. I lost both times. That said, there was a lot going on rule wise, and both times I made rule mistakes, some which made it harder (not realising for 1.5 scenarios that you can still optionally engage enemies during the day) and some easier (forgetting a few times initially to draw an encounter card when it becomes night; forgetting a couple of times to discard an ally during night phase Phase 2).

Then, more generally, the first attempt was blind, and the second attempt I was still getting my bearings on the quest. In particular, a key strategic element for this quest is how to time the transition between stages. So, I wasn’t thinking optimally about those, because the quest was new and surprising.

• Stage 1 is bad because it involves more rapid threat increases.
• Stage 2 is bad because you whittles down your allies.
• The transition to Stage 3 needs to be very carefully managed, because, if you do it after a mega quest during the day, thinking you’ll be safe, you’ll then get bombed by a pile of serious enemies.
• Then Stage 3 itself is challenging.

General thoughts:

• You probably want to minimise time in Stage 2 and Stage 3.
• Ideally, you would want to complete the Stage 2 quest outside the quest phase. That would allow you to avoid the onslaught after questing. That said, my first thoughts are that of the Core Cards and the Dunedain Starter cards, only Legolas supports that.
• Another option for managing transition from Stage 2 to Stage 3 is to do big questing in the first Day round in Stage 2 and get about 12 to 14 progress on the quest. This way, on the second Day round, only light questing will be required and there will still be a full army of allies to handle the initial onslaught.
• Hour of Wrath would also be a good card for the Stage 3 onslaught, especially if all heroes were left unexhausted. Assuming all heroes then survive the attacks, that would be enough attack value (2+3 +3 = 8) to destroy every Warg (even Hunting Pack assuming Aragorn’s ability is still active).
• Feint or Snowbourn Scout would be good for stopping or chumping attacks. Ranger of Cardolan is another good option, although if you had the resources you would probably already have him in play.
• Quick Strike plus Sword of Númenor on a 3 attack hero would also be powerful in destroying Wolf of Angmar and Northern Warg. But perhaps not useful enough to take up space in a limited car draw deck.
• Descendants of Kings could also supplement other options to ready the heroes for Stage 2.
• While locations are not too bad in this quest, having Northern Tracker in the mix could still help.
• Hasty strike could be handy, especially for Freezing Blast, especially in the late game where the shadow effect of +1 attack for each damaged character (where you commonly might have 3 to 5) means that if you ever defend with your best defence heroes, you’re risking death every time. Maybe 1 copy with a Dwarven Tomb would open up options.

How to stay safely in Stage 1:

• Threat reduction will be key to staying in Stage 1 for a bit longer (with the extra threat when transitioning to night phase). Secret Vigil provides a tiny bit of help. that said, it can be tricky to play when you need it. The enemy needs to be already in play, and they are typically only 2 threat. And you really want Gandalf for card draw. So having a few copies of The Galadhrim's Greeting would help a lot.
• Strategically, it also highlights the importance of not under-questing.

Other thoughts:

• In general, Steward of Gondor is critical for building up resources to accelerate building up a good board state.

Cards that could be dropped:

• Ranger Provisions: I feel like when card draw is at a premium, this card just is not good enough.
• Ranger Summons: This does have potential, but I feel like the chances of getting the benefit is pretty low. Even if you got to the end of the deck, about 40% of cards are revealed as shadow cards given the many enemies. And then, at the end of stages, cards are shuffled back in, so you don’t actually get through the deck.
• Ranger of Cardolan: Perhaps they are overpriced given that they are a jack of all trades. I can see them being helpful in certain cases.

Refelctions on first attempt at a deck

I’m mindful that I won’t always get Celebrían's Stone. There are some really nasty shadow effects. So Hasty Stroke would be helpful. That said, it’s all very much contingent. Unexpected Courage would be helpful, but there are other ways to get 3 atttack. Northern Tracker is a nice ally that would help to clear locations. But the one card with the really bad travel effect is immune to card effects. I had a look through the deck and Favor of the Valar is almost as good as The Galadhrim's Greeting and it is neutral sphere.

Honestly, I’m actually not sure if this deck is any better than what it was.

Fifth Attempt

• I ran out of threat reduction, but I was pretty unlucky in that regard. There is quite a bit in the deck (2 The Galadhrim's Greeting; Dwarven Tomb to pull it out again; 3 Gandalf and Sneak Attack combos; and Favor of the Valar. That said, given the importance of staying in Stage 1 for quite a while, perhaps even more is needed.
• It could also do with a few more neutral or leadership allies. Without Steward of Gondor or the ability to use Amarthiúl to pay for tactics it’s a bit tactics heavy. And my tweaks have only amplified this with all the spirit resources. Actually, a cool trick would be to play Dúnedain Hunter to then be able to spend Amarthiúl’s resources on tactics allies.

But if I did drop a card, what would I drop?

• Hour of Wrath: I typically quest with heroes in this quest, especially with Aragorn and Celebrían's Stone. That said, it’s good for the final stand off. And it can be paid for by Amarthiúl.
• I could go down to one A Test of Will. That said, it is useful.
• Sword of Númenor: This does provide resource acceleration, although I feel like I’m often questing and defending with my heroes and less often attacking to get the resource boost.

Version 0.9 Build

• I increased The Galadhrim's Greeting and Favor of the Valar to 3 copies each to maximise threat reduction.
• I increased Dúnedain Hunter to 3 copies. I feel like engaging the weakest enemy (surge is ignored) might be good; I’d also get double action and the chance to spend Amarthiúl resources on tactics cards. I also added Quick Strike with the aim of combining this with quick defeat of that enemy.
• I also added Ranger of Cardolan to support greater resource smoothing.

Reflections on performance:

• The increased quantity of threat reduction was needed.
• Quick Strike was fine, but in a deck that essentially struggles with card draw, it might not be good enough
• 3* Dunedain Hunter: It is easy to get into play, especially if you don't have Steward of Gondor or its early on. But enemies have some awful Shadow cards in this quest (e.g., remove 1 attachment for each quest card and there is often 2 or 3 in play; double attack; +1 attack for each damaged hero).

Particular cards,

• If you play the long game, you're going to get the card that removes hero/ally powers when they are damaged. The main powers you don't want to lose Aragorn and Faramir.
• +1 attack for each damaged hero. Don't defend with a hero or objective ally Amarthiúl if the shadow card that adds +1 per attack would destroy ally.
• Discarding attachments (1 per quest card): When hanging out in Stage 1, try to complete side quests on first opportunity. Don't put into player side quests into play unless the intention is to complete it that round.
• When you get Gandalf early, if you can, hold out for Sneak Attack.

Fundamental challenge: Is there any way to get card draw? healing? encounter deck scrying? (assuming just core cards and the cards in the starter)

• Of course, a hero could be removed, a lore hero added.
• Stand and Fight won't work to get lore allies in play, because there seems to be no card discard effects.
• Send for Aid would work, but it often won't appear at all. And if it does, you'd need a lot of card copies to reveal it.
• In general, duplicate Ingold or Faramir in hand is not as bad as at may seen, because it provides a discard option for Stage 2 (or sometimes, the card effect where you have too choose between discarding highest cost ally or getting a Warg). This is particularly true if you have a pile of resources at this point, but few cards.

Other cards that might be good:

• Citadel Plate: This might be useful on Amarthiúl.
• Grim Resolve: This would be very handy when making the transition from Stage 2 to Stage 3. You could go all out in questing, yet get all alies back in play.
• Second copy of Unexpected Courage: This would allow Amarthiúl to make two defends/attacks. If combined with Sword of Númenor this would be very powerful, and fairly low cost. The main issue is that it is reliant on Celebrían's Stone, which increases the risk.
• Fortune or Fate could be useful in the late game when I have a mountain of resources and I'm defending with Amarthiúl. That said, I would lose all resources on Amarthiúl.
• A Light in the Dark would be another options for preventing Pack Leader from engaging.

0.11

I added two more Unexpected Courage. It’s basically a way of giving cheap power while acting a defence against cards that would try to take away Celebrían's Stone.

I removed Ranger of Cardolan and Hour of Wrath.