Challenge Deck: Higher, Higher! 1.0

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• 1.0

@Sydtrack posted a challenge in the COTR discord chat that he wanted to see people play a 40 threat starting deck, which you can only do with these three heroes.

The lure of Valour is strong. But also entirely off sphere.

So here's what I went with as a test, though I think it could use more draw for early setup. Ents are good, of course, and each Wellinghall Preserver is 3 willpower and 2 healing a round for Treebeard.

Tricks include three Erebor Hammersmith to recycle Favor of the Valar and the usual Elrond defensive nonsense.

Quest 1: The Ring Goes South

Challenged by @GandalfDK on the discord chat to do this one specifically, so let's give it a shot.

First attempt is pretty unremarkable. I mulligan because I don't have any threat reduction, and don't get any more. Forced to deal with a warg that damages the active location every round and an active location that raises threat when it's explored... boom.

Second attempt goes a lot better. I start with threat reduction in hand, and begin to pile on the attachments. Wizard Pipe to swap Elrond's Counsel to the top of the staging area for some extra willpower and threat reduction comes in handy a couple of times.

The location that discards cards randomly hits my Erebor Hammersmith, but missed the extra Favor of the Valar, so that's a plus.

And once we engage all the wargs, things bog way down, but the Wellinghall Preservers start ticking in at that point, and their willpower plus Treebeard's attack boost helps to clear that out with only a few undefended attacks or Frodo threat boosts. The staging area entirely clears before moving on to stage 4.

Last stage. Watcher in the Water attacks. I misread the victory conditions for the quest and defend with Treebeard, since he heals the best. No damage to the Watcher means no Frodo rescue.

And next round's staging is either raise your threat by 1 for all six allies in play, or discard them all. Goodbye willpower, healing, and combat potential.

The following round I threat out the normal way, thanks to a new high threat location in the staging area.

Notes:

High threat decks are fun, if you want to fight all day. Having to quest and defend and fight makes it pretty tough solo, and this deck is a little slow to build up, since it has to spend resources on threat reduction pretty much right away.

I think I could have beaten The Ring Goes South if I'd remembered the Watcher gimmick correctly. Or if the encounter deck had revealed anything other than Bitter Cold, which I did see three times this quest (though with the others I could absorb the threat).

But there are enough huge threat swings that I wouldn't want to bet on it regularly. Or play a deck like this against any quest with a heavy enemy deck.