by Thanee
In this thread I have asked about decks that successfully and, more importantly, consistently (> 50%) beat the Dol Guldur scenario. Since none were posted (that fulfill the requirement for consistency), I started looking for my own solutions.I tried a few different approaches, with different heroes, but eventually the following combination seemed the most promising to me.
Two thoughts were leading me to the choice of heroes. One, the new Lore Aragorn's special ability is extremely useful, because it basically gives you up to 20 or so extra Threat to go through. This allows you to ignore the questing phase a few times, especially early during the game, and thus have a chance to get rid of those pesky enemies. Two, Lore in general has the most useful cards for the early game, mainly card draw and healing abilities, which really help with the consistency (with Spirit having the most useful cards in general). To be able to reliably play Lore cards, the deck had to have two Lore heroes (because one could get captured). Aragorn was the first choice, and for the second I was mostly choosing between Denethor and Beravor, the latter winning because of the more amazing special ability and better all-round qualities. The third hero was quickly found as well with the new Spirit Glordindel; again, great stats and the low Threat, of course, with the other two heroes having a 22 cost already.
Lore and Spirit alone are not good enough to beat this scenario, however. You also need resource acceleration at the very least (the Zigil Miner is an option, of course, but somewhat unreliable and/or tricky to set up). And while questing with Spirit is certainly ok, it is quite card-intensive (blowing up the deck). Leadership has the far better (efficient) cards in this area, Steward of Gondor, Faramir, Celebrian's Stone, and Sword that was Broken. It also has Sneak Attack, which by itself is enough justification to add Leadership into the mix.
Thanks to the Song cards from the Mirkwood circle, getting Leaderhip cards played without having a Leadership hero should be no problem, too.
So, this became the skeleton for the new deck. Aragorn (Lore), Beravor, and Glordindel (Spirit), with the Song of Kings to access the Leadership sphere. I also added a Song of Travel (later increased to two copies) to have a chance to access the Spirit sphere in case Glorfindel gets captured. And between Celebrian's Stone and the Sword that was Broken there are some additional options to get more Leadership resources. The Rivendell Minstrel would also find her way into the deck, to search for the right song card when you need it, adding to the reliability factor. At first I had three of them, but later I replaced them with more actual song cards, because of the otherwise high resource cost (3 for the ally plus 1 for the song, plus whatever card you actually want to play), and because the Master of the Forge also has a decent chance finding the Song cards.
With that in mind, it was time to pick all the best cards from these spheres (esp. Lore and Spirit, though) to fill the deck and prepare for all the nasty stuff this super-hard scenario has to offer.
When choosing the cards, some key aspects had to be considered. Many of the cards have to be useful during the early phase of the game, which is by far the most difficult part of the scenario (which opens up with up to four cards in the staging area, not counting objectives, and just two heroes to oppose them). So low-cost cards had a high priority.
Also, most of the cards should be useful regardless of which two heroes you have in play. That is really the most important aspect here, in order to get the deck to perform in any consistent matter, there had to be synergies in more than just one way between the cards. As a simple example, Celebrian's Stone is awesome for Aragorn, but you can also play him on Glorfindel (who, when Light of Valinor is in play, does not even exhaust for questing). Of course, some cards are so good, that this does not necessarily have to be true for them. The aforementioned Light of Valinor and Asfaloth are two such examples. And there is still a 2/3 chance to have the correct hero in play.
I will now go through the individual card choices and explain why they have been chosen (and in that number of copies).
Allies
Henemarth Riversong was a rather late addition to the game (replacing Dark Knowledge). He will generally only be used at the end of the round (in order to avoid getting hit by The Necromancer's Reach), making the planning for the coming round easier (knowing ahead of time, which card will end up in the staging area, is huge). Of course, being able to peek at shadow cards is also very useful, but you have to make the cut somewhere, and being able to predict the reveals helps enough, while some shadow effects simply have to be cancelled.
Gleowine adds to the card drawing ability. He is useful, but not necessary (you still have Beravor after all), therefore just one copy.
Rivendell Minstrel was reduced to one copy in the end, due to two reasons. One, only one health, and only useful for questing (or chump blocking), which requires to exhaust them, so they will die eventually. Two, 3 resources are usually too much for the effect of searching the Song cards.
Gildor Inglorion has always been on the edge of getting removed from the deck because of his high cost, but I kept one copy, because of his awesome stats. And once you have Steward of Gondor in play, getting him out is less of a problem.
Warden of Healing is the best healing card around, cheap to play, and can heal all allies, too. When you really need to heal more, you can pay resources to use him again.
Master of the Forge is one of the key cards to make this deck reliable. The huge amount of attachments in the deck (many of which are very important) make him extremely valuable.
Northern Tracker, of course, is highly useful to get rid of those pesky locations that start piling up in the staging area at some point (and many of which you simply do not want to travel to). They also have great combat stats, which makes them very useful, even if you draw enemy upon enemy and only few loations.
Arwen Undomiel is a great quester with two Willpower and the defense bonus for your main defender. The latter is the reason why she is included twice (having replaced Protector of Lorien, which has a similar effect, but more costly).
Imladris Stargazer is included just once, because she is not really needed. However, when you have one in play, your card draws are improved a lot, esp. since there are three Master of the Forge to constantly shuffle your deck. Getting the best out of five new cards each round is a huge ability.
Faramir is needed later in the game to speed through the questing phases. Otherwise, he can lend a hand in combat.
Gandalf is there to keep your Threat low (even between the Lore Aragorn and the Spirit events, you usually need him to keep your Threat below 50). Of course, he also deals with Hummerhorns and helps out where he is needed (questing, attacking or defending). The card drawing ability is only used rarely, because you usually need one of his other abilities.
Attachments
Forest Snare has been upped to three copies slowly, because it is simply so useful to keep the nastier enemies (esp. Ungoliant's Spawn and the Chieftain Ufthak, and maybe the Nazgul) at bay, if your heroes' defenses are not up to speed, yet.
Self Preservation is just another healing card for the main defender, who obviously gets the most damage.
A Burning Brand is also used for the main defender, which will be either Aragorn or Beravor, depending on who's around, making sure there are no nasty surprises.
Asfaloth is just too good to not include in a Lore/Spirit deck featuring Glorfindel. Since there are two Lore heroes, you can always play it when you have Glorfindel in play.
Unexpected Courage is the most important card in this deck. Without the ability to re-use the powerful heroes, it is often impossible to get past the stream of enemies coming at you. This is especially true, since the deck cannot easily kill many of the enemies you have to engage. These usually go to Aragorn and/or Beravor, rarely all three on one of them, usually it is a 2/1 split.
Light of Valinor is so very useful initially, that even though Glorfindel might get captured there are three copies of it in the deck.
Miruvor has been reduced back to one after trying three copies. It is nice, but not nearly at the same power level as Unexpected Courage. It is rarely used for anything besides the ready ability (and getting back on top of the deck, of course).
Celebrian's Stone offers a very welcome bonus to Willpower and when Glordindel gets captured you have more cards to get those Spirit resource icons into play.
Steward of Gondor is obvious enough. Best resource acceleration card in the game. It is usually played on Aragorn, but can also be played on either of the other heroes (with Glorfindel being the least likely choice, since he cannot generate Lore resources at all; but sometimes you have the hand full of Spirit cards and no Song of Travel, then he can be a viable choice, too).
Sword that was Broken is similar to Faramir, without the combat abilitiy. And even though it can only be played on Aragorn, I have decided to use two copies and only one copy of Faramir, because it can be found via Master of the Forge.
Song of Kings is important to be able to play Leadership cards. Three copies, of course. The extra copies are useful in play as well, in order to counteract the shadow effect from Cavern Guardian.
Song of Travel is mostly important, when Glorfindel gets captured, or to grant a Spirit resource icon to the hero who gets Steward of Gondor.
Events
Daeron's Runes makes every Lore deck better. It also makes use of the extra copies of uniques that eventually start to collect in your hand.
Hasty Stroke is the main defense against early shadow effects. It is also security when you want to leave an enemy undefended (which you never should do, if it is avoidable, when you don't have it).
Elrond's Counsel is useful to get that extra Willpower when the Dungeon Jailer is around and your questing plan does not work out. And the Threat reduction is more than welcome as well. If you do not know what card will get revealed, it can be a good idea to play it before the revealing, in order to avoid Eyes of the Forest.
Sneak Attack for Gandalf, obviously, but sometimes other allies make sense as well, like a well-timed Northern Tracker or Faramir, or even a Warden of Healing. But typically it is reserved for Gandalf.
You might have noticed the lack of A Test of Will. I have decided to not include it, because there are only few really nasty "when revealed" effects, and all of them can be worked around (an early Caught in the Web is annoying, but when you do not happen to have A Test of Will by then, you cannot do anything about it, anyways - and a single Unexpected Courage takes care of both of them). This is also part of making the deck more consistent, actually.
Last but not least, here is the current (not necessarily final) deck, which I have arrived at after a lot of tweaking.
I call this deck "Escaped from Dol Guldur". I am fairly certain, that it will do well against many other scenarios as well (it might be useful to include some A Test of Will, though), just because it is built to work with only two heroes doesn't mean it does not work better with three.
Anyways, here is the current deck list:
LORE/SPIRIT/LEADERSHIP
Heroes
Aragorn
Beravor
Glorfindel
Allies
2x Henemarth Riversong
1x Gleowine
1x Rivendell Minstrel
1x Gildor Inglorion
3x Warden of Healing
3x Master of the Forge
3x Northern Tracker
2x Arwen Undomiel
1x Imladris Stargazer
1x Faramir
3x Gandalf
Attachments
3x Forest Snare
1x Self Preservation
2x A Burning Brand
2x Asfaloth
3x Unexpected Courage
3x Light of Valinor
1x Miruvor
2x Celebrian's Stone
3x Steward of Gondor
2x Sword that was Broken
3x Song of Kings
2x Song of Travel
Events
3x Daeron's Runes
3x Hasty Stroke
3x Elrond's Counsel
3x Sneak Attack
Notes: This is not a restricted-card-pool kind of deck, it uses everything the game has to offer (that means three Core Sets and every expansion to date; up to and including Shadow and Flame). Since I currently have "only" two Core Sets, I am using a single The Favor of the Lady as a proxy card for the third Unexpected Courage, because there simply is no substitute for it.
The deck has 60 cards at the moment. I tried to get it down to 50, but I don't think it will be better then. The mix of cards works very well as it is now. Also, I often have drawn the whole deck by the end of the scenario, so with 60 cards I actually have more options to deal with the encounters (yeah, Will of the West could also take care of that, of course, but I prefer to have few cards in there, that are not immediately useful).
The deck still loses against a very nasty opening or streak of bad luck, but it can win against the Escape from Dol Guldur scenario regularily and consistently. The deck does not "play itself", however, there are still a lot of hard decisions to be made during the game. And revealing the wrong card at the wrong time can still cost you the game.
Bye
Thanee