How to perfect Alep Hobbit quest (13 boons) 2.0

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Do you want to finish the Hobbit quest with 10+ boons in order to earn Master Burglar ? Weep no more, this deck is for you.

It achieves most of the time 13/13 boons, only needing to use one of them if unlucky for the final quest fight.

Setup : pick Elessar for Aragorn, add 1 on Keep It Secret to opt in, and put into play Fulfil Your Oath.

For your starting hand, look for good stuff for the long run. Ideally, Salvaged Supplies, Resourceful, Estel or Gandalf's Staff will give you resources and draw. Low-cost allies and good events may also be good. Mulligan away a hand with a lot of cards, we want to play them from the top of your deck (don't expect The Renewer, Song of Wisdom or A Good Harvest to show up, your deck is 100-sized !).

Don't play attachments and gain your first boon.

Round 1

Finish Fulfil Your Oath. Nothing in encounter deck has more than 2 , so you need to quest with 6 to guarantee it. Usually Gandalf, Aragorn, Bilbo and one little ally makes for it.

In refresh phase, if you didn't increased your threat with an encounter card, great : you may use A Perilous Voyage action. Pay attention at the top card of your deck, you may want to wait for resource or planning phase in order to maximise Gandalf's plays from the top of your deck.

Round 2

Your threat should be 37. Activate Keep It Secret 7 times. Instead of threating out, A Perilous Voyage flips, setting your threat to 26 (with a secrecy limit of 27). Fetch and play for free Sword that was Broken. With 13 only on your non-exhaustinf-to-quest heroes, you shoudl be able to place enough tokens on quest to earn your second boon.

Considering you will defend with Gandalf, you have 7(your other heroes)+4(your Oathbreker allies) , perfect to kill the trolls.

You already have a great board, so you must pick attention on the most important part of the deck : don't threat out !
– Every round, one event should be dedicated to the "reduce threat" option of Council of the Wise. If your hand don't have a spare event for the next round, maybe you should restrain yourself and don't use the draw/resources of the other options from the contract
– Start to plan the riddles : playing a lot of low-cost allies and attachments is recommended. – if you happen to play Spare Pipe, play it on Bilbo (for step 5).

Round 3 and 4

Continue to play a lot a lot of cards for the riddles. Try to remember the words, and keep an eye on the available letters to not burn your "jokers" (letters that are only on one card). Ideally, you exhaust two cards for each riddle and gain the extra boon for solving 5 without eating extra threat. One extra treath is okay, two is starting to get dangerous, as you risk too lock yourself of secrecy cards.

If you have some side quests, round 3 and 4 are the perfect moment to complete them. You don't care if you have to discard 30-40 cards from your deck when finishing the quest. You still don't need to have a board to big ; what we are looking for some allies with extra for the spiders, but you can chump some allies (or use your Man of the Mountain to cancel extra attack of an ennemy)

Start to look for the events that are gonna be usefull in Stage 6. You silver bullet will be Word of Persuasion. Fetch it with Heed the Dream, Gather Information or Word of Command if possible. Then we will need money to play it, so ideally have Resourceful, Thalion with 3 side quests, or more usually 0-cost event that give you money (+ with Council of the Wise). If you are lucky, you will also have Out of Sight.

When advancing the quest, remember that you can put one or two poison token on a 1-life character. Maybe a Squire of the Citadel isn't needed anymore ?

Step 3 (rounds 5&6)

Now the hard part begins. Notably, you will have a location that may blank your attachments, so quest could be something you have to be cautious. Assume Sword that was Broken won't boost you.

Keep Bilbo's resources for round 6, and try to never defend a spider with a character having only 1 life left, because he may be discard on a shadow effect. You can kill your big allies (a Knight of the White Tower or a Dúnedain, ideally with a Wild Stallion, that has make all your defenses with Elessar since the misty mountains), because they won't survive the next step.

If you have Estel or Imladris Stargazer, start planning for stage 6 : check which cards are more present in your deck and draw the others (ex : you have more events : pick allies and attachments !).

Remember when i say some event were core for our strategy in step 6 ?
– if you have word of persuasion in discard, you can use The White Council and a fetch card to get it back.
– if you have a location in play that may discard a random card from your hand, consider replacing it with Distant Stars is possible

Step 4 and 5

Barrel tokens are easy. Discard every non unique character, and your restricted ones. Then you may make some choices, if any. Keep King of the Dead, of course, Narya if you have it. Note that Arwen Undómiel won't quest, so you need to have Salvaged Supplies in discard or a Tale of Tinúviel if you wanna use her Response. Else she may still be able to chump (1-health characters are not recommended, as they can died on shadow cards).

Now the true hard part begins. You have to make your guesses against Smaug, and you have 11 of them to make. Usually you guess "event", but count the cards in your deck to announce what's more. A Spare Pipe on Bilbo can dodge you a doomed.

Assuming you guessed half of them, you should be above 30 . Remember, your elimination level is 36 !

Round 7 : fight the armies

Ideally, you want to kill one army on this round, play Word of Persuasion on the other in next round (be carefull, you will have to discard one hero to not threat out, so count that you will lack one resource).

Without Word of Persuasion, getting rid of the armies may be harder. It's still possible with Treebeard and Narya, so count your damage. If you have not enough, burn a boon (Guest of Eagles is probably the best choice).

The main issue will be the wargs. If you are able to cancel their attack (with Out of Sight + A Good Harvest), you are golden. But usually play Man of the Mountain for your discard for 1 threat is a better deal than 4 threat.

Man of the Mountain can also be used on Bolg during it's attack to dodge the "Forced" 13 extra damage.

Worst case scenario, you have to use No Bag Went Over Me to keep your threat in check and Guest of Eagles for extra firepower. That's still 11 boons, enough for your Master Burglar.

With good piloting, the 13 boons are totally possible (i get them 80% of the time).

Good luck and have fun :-)