No Allies Deck and Adventure Walkthrough

A guide for achieving progess in the No Allies achievements ('Loner', 'Solitary', 'Recluse' & 'Misanthrope') Based on the Early Access version of the game.

Introduction

Hey all, just wanted to post the deck and strategy that I am using to get the 'No Allies' Achievements, namely;

• Loner: Complete 10 Quests without playing an Ally.

(For obvious reasons I haven’t yet achieved 'Solitary', 'Recluse' & 'Misanthrope' (50, 100 & 500 quests respectively)

It seems to me that the best Quest to grind this achievement on is Quest 1: 'Attercop, Attercop' of The Shadow's Reach campaign. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this quest felt like it was almost designed for minimal ally placements, as evident of Gloin, Grimbeorn and Wilelk's involvement during the quest plus many of the Threat events effecting allies rather than heroes.

It's worth mention here and now that, as of the time of writing this guide, I don't yet know if Gloin, Grimbeorn or Wilelk effect the achievement in any way, so I've written this guide under the assumption that you cannot use them. Therefore the method found within this strategy is truly Ally-free. I will further test but honestly don't know if any of the Fate/Quest allies will make that much of a difference. I also chose this Quest because it's one of the only quests that doesn't force you to use an ally (looking at you Bilbo and Smeagol).

UPDATE: After doing some further testing, it appears that ANY ally that hits the field will absolutely nullify progress towards the achievements. Testing was done on both Quest 1's fate/objective allies as well as forced allies in other quests. Therefore, as of the Early Access period, Quest 1 & Quest 4 are the ONLY quests that progress on the 'no ally' achievements can be achieved. Quest 1 is the better option as it's easier than Quest 4.


A note on difficulty: the achievement can be gained by playing on any difficulty (easy mode included). This deck wins very consistently on easy mode and can certainly handle Normal diffuculty as well. Though I highly suggest doing these runs on Easy so you don't risk wasting time on failed runs.

The Deck

Main Deck

Hero (3)
Arwen (Core Set)
Éowyn (Spirit Eowyn Pack)
Gimli (Core Set)

Attachment (16)
2x Dwarven Axe (Core Set)
1x Forest Snare (Valor Cards)
2x Raiment of War (Valor Cards)
1x Ranger Spear (Lore Faramir Pack)
2x Round Shield (Core Set)
2x Self-Preservation (Core Set)
2x Star Brooch (Valor Cards)
2x Unexpected Courage (Valor Cards)
2x Warrior Sword (Core Set)

Event (14)
2x A Watchful Peace (Core Set)
2x Beorn's Hospitality (Core Set)
2x Feint (Core Set)
1x Houses of Healing (Spirit Eowyn Pack)
2x Lembas (Valor Cards)
2x Mithrandir's Advice (Core Set)
1x Spear Wall (Core Set)
2x Will of Steel (Leadership Dwalin Pack)

The Quest! And a Brief Summary

For those not wanting a full play-by-play strategy, here's the basic idea of how this deck functions with the Attercop, Attercop quest. Everything important to achieving a successful clearing of the quest revolves around the initial set-up during the first Scenario. It's during 'A Journey Begins' that all the hectic and scary stuff happens and because you can't play allies, it's important to spend a few rounds building up both Gimli and Éowyn to be absolute powerhouses, so be prepared to take ALOT of damage here as you load up your heroes with attachments.

You're looking for the cards Dwarven Axe and Star Brooch in your opening hand, also helpful are Round Shield and Warrior Sword.

Hold off of travelling to the second Scenario until you hit Threat Level 33 and spawn the three Forest Spiders. This is the only threat event to worry about, but with clever use of the Fate meter, even this is trivial. Once you clear 'A Journey Begins', and assuming you built up your heroes with a handful of good attachments, the rest of the quest should mostly be a cakewalk.

For those wanting a more detailed look at the entire Quest, and a play-by-play guideline, please enjoy the rest of this guide.

Scenario One: 'A Journey Begins'

Ideally your opening hand should look something like this:

• As I stated before, this is where you'll spend most of your time building up your heroes. Aim to get Dwarven Axe, Star Brooch and one of the armor cards on Gimli (preferably Raiment of War). This should bring his average attack strength to 4-6.
  
  
• Éowyn gets the second Star Brooch, or if unavailable, Unexpected Courage. Eowyn also gets Sting once you obtain it. Up until you get Sting, feel free to chuck Warrior Sword onto Éowyn if you have one available. Any leftover Armor cards go onto her as well.
  
  
• Arwen essentially gets the rest of the leftovers, whatever is available. Occasioinally I like to give her a Self-Preservation so that I can use her healing ability on the other two heavy lifters. She can also make decent use of a Warrior Sword and Unexpected Courage.
  
  
• If you score A Watchful Peace or two here, this is the best time to use them as they will buy you more time to setup should you need it.
  
  
• Delay, delay, delay. Be sure to build up your Fate meter with Arwen! Aim for the 'Attercop' Attercop' fate. You can spend a few rounds here, if fact the only time you should leave is after the 3 Forest Spiders enter, which is when you'll trigger the Attercop, Attercop fate event you exhaust two of the three (killing the third with Gimli or Eowyn) Feel free to grab the 'Bilbo's Pack' fate event too for extra healing.
  
  
• Once you've hit Threat level 33 and have have defeated the Spider(s), allow Sauron to pass his turn and travel onward to Scenario 2.

• Here's a good example of what Gimli and Eowyn should be wearing at this point:

Scenario Two: 'Mysterious Stream'

• Immediately kill the bear! And then deal with the remaining enemies/hazards.

• It is rather important that you gain the Mirkwood Water from the Fate Meter as this will be super useful in the next scenario.

• Use Will of Steel or the Ulahid Herbs Fate Event to clear the quest hazard allowing you to travel to Scenario 3 (hopefully on the first round).

Scenario Three: 'A Fresh Dilemma'

• Immediately use the Mirkwood Water to exhaust Kirous and proceed to beat him up with Gimli and Eowyn.
  
  
  
  
• Travel once you've dealt with Kirous and whatever Sauron plays (hopefully on this first round!) Remember, it's always a good idea to wait until Sauron passes first before travelling.

Scenario Four: 'A Timely Rescue'

• If you have it and the resources to play it, now is the time to use Spear Wall.

• The quest ends once you defeat all enemies, so put your three (wo)man army to good use. Don't worry about freeing the trapped spider hostage.

• It's not unusual to have a hero become disabled due to one of Sauron's event cards so it's probably best to be prepared for this by utilising Gimli early in the round or use him to block so you get the reciprocal damage on an enemy (usually dealing with the 3/5 spider).

• That's about it! This Scenario should only take 1-3 rounds to beat.

Quest Success and Conclusion

Here is my average score on a successful run.


A perfect score is highly unlikely because you won't ever need to worry about the Fate meter allies, or the final Wilelk hazard.

I've been able to successfully replicate this guide several times and feel that it's a solid strategy to tick up some of that no allies progress. Do note that with the current achievement tracking, you'll only get a notification after 5 successful no ally runs.


Feel free to ask any questions or make and suggestions on the deck or the guide.

[Captain_Guile]

Well, even now, we can't even earn all Steam achievements (and sure some are a bit crazy like finishing 5.000 quests).

We can't built a full 3 heroes team for Gondor, Dunadan and Silvan (only 2 for each of them).
Although since the update few days ago we can create a full 3 Noldor heroes and a pool of 6 Hobbits (though these are weaks, in my opinion, even if I really like their powers for some).

Also they added more cards to the game (for us and Sauron) with some quick "random" battles (though they used to be quite the same (I've seen maybe 4-5 differences ?)).
And a new campaign, if I'm correct.

The new interface is a bit tedious to get at first but after I think it's quite simple (probably more built for tablet and such).

[sudsywolf]

You'd definitely be in it for the long run. I've put in 400+ hours and currently at 70% completion, though my focus hasn't been entirely on achievement hunting and some of that time might be idle time.
The big one will be the 1k quests achievement & 500 no ally achievement. To give you an idea, the average quest takes around 15-30 minutes. On PC (not 100% sure about consoles) it is possible to progress toward both the 1k quest & 500 w/o ally achievements on a tutorial quest that takes around 2-3 minutes.

[vSully]

I'm considering starting this game on Xbox but I'm a bit of an achievement nerd so my focus will be achievement completion. Apparently the Xbox list is easier than the PC list: https://www.trueachievements.com/game/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-Adventure-Card-Game/achievements

Do you have any idea what sort of a time commitment it might be for stuff like 500 quests without an ally, travel 5k times, complete 1k quests, deal 100k dmage to enemies, spend 10k resources? Thanks.