Hello gentlemen. First thing I should say is that even though this is my first post, I have been playing since Return of the King came out. I only stopped because my playgroup spontaneously died out. I just recently found you guys, and I love it.
I apologize in advance about the length of this post, but I have been puzzling over this all day, and I wanted to share my solutions. For this scenario, I assume a standard 15 minion Moria swarm consisting of:
4x
goblin runner4x
goblin backstabber, all bearing a
goblin scimitar4x
goblin scavengers3x
goblin wallcrawlerfor a total of 104 strength, 121 including the Balrog.
My first thought was
footman's armor. However, this turned out to be way too easy (he can survive all of the minions by himself with 4 copies of every fortification in play). I decided to make this harder. A lot harder.
1) Maximum of 5 companions.
2) No defender +1 companions.
3) No
footman's armor.
4) No companions are killed.
5) Try to avoid overly cheesy things like 4x
Stern Words on the ring bearer.
I assume the shadow player has perfect knowledge and that they do not simply try to kill some other companion. My strategy then became to force the shadow player to make unassigned minions not fight the ring-bearer, creating pseudo defender +1 companions.
Fellowship:
Isildur, BoH –
The One Ring, RoR-Coat of Mail,
Narsil, BotF (+6 from artifacts),
Bow of Minas Tirith,
Flaming Brand.
Arwen, Lady Undomiel-Hadafang,
Arwen's Bow,
Arwen's Dagger,
Asfaloth, Elven Steed, 3x elven allies with home site 3,
Glimpse of Fate.
Duinhir, TMoBV-Gondorian Blade,
Bow of Minas Tirith.
Merry, FOtB with
hobbit sword.
Smeagol, Always Helps-2x
Poor Wretch, 4x There is Another Way.
In hand: 2x
PAtHS,
Don't Follow the Lights,
Unheeded.
Assign the Balrog to Smeagol, add two threats to exhaust, kill him with
unheeded, lose initiative, and make a str 8 minion -4 with GoF. Now assign the strength 4 minion to Arwen, and strength 8 minions to everyone else.
Here's the biggie: the shadow player cannot let Arwen win, because then
Hadafang would discard the Snows, and we could play
PAtHS to easily survive. However, she is now skirmishing a str 1 minion, and the minion needs +11 to win. This cannot come from 2 minions, so three more must be assigned to Arwen: one more str 8, a backstabber, and a runner. Likewise, Smeagol and
Duinhir cannot win, as their abilities would discard minions killing the ring-bearer. So a runner must be assigned to each skirmish. This leaves 42 strength on Isildur, which is not enough to overwhelm him! The killing wounds can be prevented with
Sapling of the White Tree,
Hosts of the Last Alliance, or even left over salves. Note that if one of those backstabbers did not have a scimitar, the
flaming brand would not be necessary, as the minions have exactly enough to kill Isildur without the brand.
You can also replace Isildur with
Sam, BoGN and the Merry with Rosie Cotton, BM. However, you would then need a couple of confronting the eyes to draw more minions from Sam (as well as
SaWtC, O Elbereth,
Little Golden Flower, and some more equipment for
Duinhir).
Also, sorry that this deck is not actually Austrian. I just had to post it.
TL;DR: I love puzzles.
