So I decided to try my hand again at a solo session of Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. I used a 50-card deck in the Mirkwood scenario and lost badly.

The problem was that the deck wasn’t designed to win a war of attrition, and 50 cards thus resulted in too little regularity to show off its synergistic strengths.

So I trimmed it down, honing the Tactics (20 cards) and Spirit (10 cards) sides. Tactics would focus mostly on distracting and then defeating enemies, allowing Legolas to add progress tokens. Spirit would focus on control, killing revealed and shadow effects an lowering threat to mitigate bad draws from the encounter deck, as well as using Èowyn’s high wisdom to pile drive through threat from locations and add progress tokens.

For the basic card counts, I decided on 10 Spirit to 20 Tactics cards, with Gandalf thrown in. For card types, each had roughly a third of the deck, with attachments slightly less in number due to their more permanent nature.

The next game was won with a score of 38, quite a low (and thus, for this game, good) score.

I haven’t decided on a name for the deck. But here’s the listing:

Heroes (27 threat total)
– Èowyn, main quester
– Thalin, assistant quester who keeps cards like The Necromancer’s Reach from obliterating Èowyn
– Legolas, main fighter who adds progress tokens, a mainstay in any Tactics deck

Allies (13)
– 3x Gondorian Spearman, which has a great defensive ability
– 3x Veteran Axehand, useful for attacking
– 2x Beorn, a necessary drop to keep monsters off attackers
– 1x Gandalf, ace in the hole
– 2x Northern Tracker, good enough defense/offense for a Tactics deck who can help get rid of locations
– 2x Wandering Took, cheap; I modified the ability for solo play. ((Action: Tap Wandering Took and place a progress token on him. Lower your threat by 3. As long as the progress token is in place, he stays exhausted throughout Refresh phases. Action: remove progress token from this card, and raise your threat by 3.))

Attachments (6)
– 3x Blade of Gondolin: needed to accelerate Legolas’ progress token placement
– 2x Citadel Plate for buffing
– 1x Unexpected Courage, which incidentally helps negate the effects of Caught in a Web

Events (11)
– 3x Feint, get the drop on the enemies
– 3x Quick Strike, ditto
– 1x The Galadhrim’s Greeting, which lowers threat astronomically
– 2x Hasty Stroke, cancel shadow effects
– 2x A Test of Will, cancel Revealed effects