The 100% Fellowship

This is a fellowship that beat every quest in the game without losing.

My playthrough experience and the general concept is outlined here. If you want a detailed run-down on the individual decks, check out their respective descriptions where I go over all heroes, player cards as well as showcasing preferable opening hands and in-depth strategy tips.

1. Preface

2. Playthrough Results

3. Concept

4. Closing Notes

1. Preface

Building One Decks has long been a part of the LOTR LCG community. The challenge is straight-forward – build a deck that beats all scenarios in their most difficult iteration in the game without swapping any heroes or player cards between quests. There exist a myriad of One Decks, some with the goal to record the fewest overall losses, others with the goal to showcase a broad variety of interactions.

However, to my knowledge, these attempts have always been constricted to solo, at least when we are talking about the entire modern quest gauntlet. I therefore wanted to build a pair of decks to go through all quests. Because of the increasement in synergies and opportunities you have in multiplayer, I wanted to see if it can be done without recording any losses, winning every quest on the first attempt. 119 playthroughs later, I can confirm that it is indeed possible :).

2. Playthrough Results

My Rules for the playthrough were as follows:

1. Play every quest in the game in its most difficult iteration.

2. Do not use a sideboard or swap out cards between scenarios.

3. The decks must be legal according to all deckbuilding and scenario rules.

4. If there is an argument for the normal version of the quest being more difficult than the Nightmare version, both versions must be played. This concerns “The Siege of Cair Andros” and “The Battle of Carn Dûm”.

All 119 quests were completed on the first attempt.

The step-by-step playthroughs can be found here.

When I set out for the challenge of not recording any losses, I was expecting this to be a really hard endeavor, even harder than building a Solo One Deck that records 5 losses over all quests (which is the current record as far as I know). I ended up being wrong, greatly underestimating the strength, control and synergy potential a second deck adds. You can also bring many more tools to ensure consistency, therefore making "the odd loss" that will almost always happen in a solo playthrough much less likely. I genuinely think building a One Fellowship recording 0 losses is wayyy easier than building a Solo One Deck recording fewer than 10 losses. Please note that this is not meant as self-aggrandizement for myself or the deck but just a general observation about how much more techable the One Deck challenge is with a Fellowship.

3. Concept

The first question I had to ask myself was which types of decks would I like to run. I wanted to settle on my contracts (if I were to run any) first, toying around with different combinations and deck styles. Ultimately though, the decision was pretty quickly made to run Bond of Friendship twice. The reasons for that are simple: It not only opens up the entire spectrum of player cards for both decks, but also gives you an unparalleled amount of stats and resources from the get-go. Moreover, it is the best way to directly counter some of the most difficult quests in the game (like "Escape from Dol Guldur", "Escape from Mount Gram" or "The Fortress of Nurn").

The next question was which archetype (if any) I wanted to run. I also experimented with different ideas here, but - as is the best way for One Decks looking to minimize their losses in my experience - I was drawn to Vilya very quickly. It is in my experience easily the most powerful and flexible deck archetype in the game, providing a level of resource output and smoothing not seen anywhere else (aside from infinite combo).

With Vilya winning you most quests almost by itself if set up, the third question now was how to do just that as consistently as possible. This question ultimately led me to run the second, maybe even more crucial theme of this fellowship, the side quest theme, with Thurindir the second hero I settled on. With an ensured Gather Information first round, your general combo and acceleration engine (consisting of Vilya, Imladris Stargazer and/or Steward of Gondor) will not only be as good as guaranteed to be in play by round 2, you also get a tutor to find your crucial scenario-specific counters (which is essential if you want to avoid losses), more cancels and (extremely significant) a way to pace your progress to your liking since you can just sidequest.

With these three major questions being answered and giving me a broad direction, it was now time to fill up my 8 hero slots and 100 player card slots with the individual cards.

To have a fellowship beat every quest, it essentially needs to be able to do two things: Be fast and aggressive enough to stand a chance against those very rough quests which hit you insanely hard early on (like "Escape from Dol Guldur" or "The Blood of Gondor") while having the controlling tools to counter all specific things quests throw your way in general, which are very varied. This balance between tempo and control was the main challenge to find for me.

Tempo

Let's start with the first thing, tempo. Bond of Friendship solves a lot of that issue, with your stat output being insane even before the first card is played. Here is what the hero lineup provides by itself round 1:

• 19 willpower, enough to complete Gather Information in most cases

• 4 good early defensive options (Beregond, Elrond, Denethor, Glorfindel)

• 2 powerful instant-kills (Éowyn), decent sustainable attack (Glorfindel)

• 11 resources (Bond of Friendship, Denethor, Arwen Undómiel)

• The ability to fetch two key cards (Thurindir/Gather Information), repeatable draw (Gildor Inglorion)

With all those tools available through your heroes and your contract, I felt very comfortable that - with further tempo-generating powerhouses like Steward of Gondor and Vilya - there was enough there to ensure I would not be overtaken by quests in terms of tempo.

Control

With tempo taken care of, control and scenario-specific answers were the next thing I looked at. Quantifying control is much harder to do than tempo because it every scenario varies a little in regards to which aspects need to be controlled to succeed. There are however several common denominators which just need to be covered:

• Cancels: A Test of Will, Halfling Bounder

• Shadow Control: Armored Destrier, Hasty Stroke, Sterner than Steel, Feint, Déorwine, Jubayr

• Threat Control: Gandalf/Sneak Attack, Double Back, Thorongil/Beregond, Favor of the Valar, Secret Vigil

• Damage Control: Elrond, The Long Defeat, Warden of Healing, Vigilant Guard, Magic Ring

• Location Control: Asfaloth, Meneldor/Sneak Attack

• Encounter Control/Scrying: Thorongil/Denethor, Scout Ahead

• Helm of Secrecy: The "Swiss Army Knife" for all of the above (even if seldom used)

Furthermore, there are two specific scenarios which I think directly require a specific counter: "Escape from Mount Gram" (for which I chiefly included Strider) and "The Fortress of Nurn" (for which I included a second Nori, who, even if he proved unnecessary during my run, I still like for an additional silver bullet against that monstrous quest).

With tempo and control taken care of, the rest of the deckbuilding process was about finding the right sphere balance, card type balance, resource balance and the correct distribution of the cards. This took quite a while since I a) wanted the decks to be as perfectly calibrated as possible and b) wanted to prepare sufficiently for the quests that separate players (like "Foundations of Stone" or "Flies and Spider"). After settling on the last few cards however (which changed a few times during testing), I started my playthrough.

4. Closing Notes

Thank you for your time, I am looking forward to your comments, questions and suggestions! As always, please be patient with my English skills which are likely reflective of me being a non-native speaker. I know that One Deck-type playthroughs only really interest a small subset of the community, however even if those types of challenges don't appeal to you, I still hope you enjoyed my fellowship and its description.

Lastly, I would like to give a huuuuge thank you to the people behind ringsdb.com and dragncards.com - I am aware of some of the great work done by Seastan, Beorn and Alsciende in that regard, but I am probably missing a few people. Without the immense timesaver that especially dragncards.com is, I would simply not have had the time for this project!

ENJOY!!!