Solo Thematic Campaign: Passing of the Grey Company 1.0

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• 1.0

The Campaign

I’ve been part of 2, 3, and 4 player campaigns but I’ve never sat down and run my own solo campaign. I won’t be recording or blogging this campaign as others have recently done that (I’m in the middle of a YouTube thematic campaign with Mr Underhill right now) and I want to play rather quickly through the entire set of quests but I will play in “strict” campaign mode and trying to build as thematically as I can.

I can’t promise the decks I publish in this series will be totally optimized or super teched against each quest for a 90% win ratio, but I hope they will be decent thematic decks that could provide a good experience for people looking to play the campaign in a thematic manner.

The Deck

I like building for this quest. This deck kind of built itself. Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Halbarad, Elladan and Elrohir are literally all the named characters mentioned as making this journey in the book. Hero Halbarad isn't particularly helpful here and Beravor is massively helpful since you are forced to discard the remainder of your hand after the first planning phase. Arwen is always here as inspiration for Aragorn. The rest of the allies are utility allies.

The attachments are the fun part of this deck. They can build up these Three Hunters to pretty powerful heroes with plenty of actions. Aragorn with Banner of Elendil, Sword that was Broken, Celebrían's Stone and Anduril is pretty impressive. I didn't include a lot of armor for Gimli this time since the combat portion of this quest is fairly minimal. Even so, Gimli is pretty powerful with Steward of Gondor, Hauberk of Mail, Glamdring (boon version) and Ever My Heart Rises can regularly quest for 5 , reduce your threat when you travel (which is very ironic since Gimli was the most intimidated of them all in this chapter!), defend for 4 (with Arwen's boost), or attack for 4 with Glamdring at need.

The events are basic good cards. This version of Legolas opens up Well Warned which is nice cheap threat reduction. There's a 3 chump enemy you'll likely see during the game and you can use more than one copy per engagement so no reason not save them for that enemy unless you're starting to hit the high 40's.

I wanted to work Roheryn into the deck since Aragorn's mount is featured in the chapter, but the way I have Aragorn built here doesn't make Roheryn very useful.

The Experience

This quest is a good bit easier solo that it is with more players. If you can get control early, it's not a hard quest. I do like the decision about raising your threat or skipping the planning phase every turn.

The B side of the first quest cards lets you gain an extra resource on all your heroes at the cost of 3 extra threat and I always take that effect if I have anything good in my hand. At the end of that planning phase you have to discard your entire hand so you want to get something out if you can! This deck can be a little awkward in that first planning phase since a lot of the good cards in the deck cost 3. Banner of Elendil and Sword that was Broken would be great cards to play during that first turn but it's pretty hard to accomplish that. You can get the Banner into play if you play a Errand-rider and move a 3rd resource to Aragorn. All of the events in the deck are basically useful on that first turn as well since you can't reduce your threat and the rest of them are Quest or Refresh actions. It's nice to see a Elven-light in that first hand so you have it in your discard for the rest of the game.

My heroes add up to 30 threat, plus my +3 penalties, plus the 3 for the extra resources meant I started the game at 36 threat! I hit 39 at the end of the first turn!

I had a decent opening although I didn't start putting progress on the quest card until turn 2. On turn 3 I used the Palantir of Orthanc boon (Aragorn uses it before starting his journey through the Paths of the Dead in the book) to get control of the board and put a good 15 progress down in one turn. I find Beravor invaluable in this quest so you can quickly rebuild your hand and find key pieces to get the deck going. I used her ability in the Resource Phase on nearly every single turn just so I had more options. Her 2 willpower is fairly easy to replace. Starting with no cards in my hand at the end of first planning phase, I had 12 cards in hand at the end of the game (turn 8) and only 13 left in my deck. She's an amazing hero.

I was able to kit out all 3 primary heroes just as I intended but I didn't draw any of my 7 threat reduction cards until at least turn 5. My threat got up to around 45 before I was able to get it back down again right after I hit stage 3. At that point I had complete control of the board and I knocked out the Army of the Dead, quested for a lot, then traveled to the Stone of Erech and completed the quest.

I don't think I ever re-attached Overcome by Fear to my threat dial after I removed it on turn 1.

Moving Forward

I'll move on to The Siege of Gondor with the Army of the Dead boon and the goal will be to get through the quest in the least possible turns so Aragorn can show up quickly at Pelannor Fields.

You can see final board states to my successful games on my Twitter account.

Campaign Decks so Far

1. Shadow of the Past
2. The Old Forest
3. Fog on the Barrow Downs
4. Knife in the Dark
5. Flight to the Ford
6. The Ring Goes South
7. Journey in the Dark
8. Breaking of the Fellowship
9. The Uruk-Hai
10. Helm's Deep
11. The Road to Isengard
12. The Passage of the Marshes
13. Journey to the Crossroads
14. Shelob's Lair
15. Passing of the Grey Company
16. The Siege of Gondor
17. The Battle of the Pelannor Fields
18. The Tower of Cirith Ungol
19. The Black Gate Opens
20. Mount Doom