3x T7 with hoard 200 + 50% - failure;
Additional T7 lead to success (with a team of four Judges).
Tomorrow I’ll try potionless, but it feels like certain pain in certain bodily region waiting to strike.
Skull reduction - none. Stat gain - none. Backup summon - none. Board control - errm…I’d also settle on a verdict of - none (too unpredictable and unreliable to be considered otherwise).
Done it with 3 × Judge of the Dead and Charonas. Hoard level 133 with Maugrim Woods at 14. Bought tier 7 around 8 times. I failed 5 or 6 times before I done it you really just need to pray to avoid skulls.
First go with potions, 155 Hoard, (actually that’s wrong, I had a go with 111 hoard first) 5 x 7 (as the first room I could try faction was Bulettes and Goblins, so did another with normal team).
3 Judges and a Lemure, but still had to beat the Goblins.
As for trying potionless, I think we are going to need 200+ hoard and no exploders, lame, brittle troops designed to be skybashed…Restricts your choices, anything that explodes or changes the board = a win for the designers (note how they are all veering towards this).
Oh and those new doomskulls = potionless PF needs to be done before they arrive… imho ofc 
I’d agree with you. With those new doomskullls, the days of clearing moat, if not all, PF runs with hoard 100 are going to be pretty much effectively over.
If the increased damage isn’t enough, the mana fills off the larger explosions for the AI side will be the nails in the coffin on those runs.
Hell Gate was a painful delve.
10 purchases of Tier 7, hoard 111, 50% faction bonus. Judge, Fury, Judge, Charonas. 3x nysha medals.
I don’t see many teams with Fury, but I prefer her over a third Judge. Gaining mana is slow, so I didn’t find having a third one helpful. If I couldn’t match for Judge or cast him, Id fill or cast Fury and hopefully death mark works. Also match all skulls. If souls are maxed, don’t bother casting Charonas unless there is no other move, his explosion doesn’t help much and can backfire with skulls.
Legendary room was brutal. If it’s Glaycion, focus Fury on him and take him down asap. Submerge room… may as well restart.
6x Potions of Power, Hoard 180, 50% Faction bonus.
I used 3x Nysha and a full team of Judges. Took me many tries, but eventually got it. Judges are great for the damage, I feel like the other troops are risky, but can of course help if the RNG gods seem it appropriate.
Glad to have this one done with potions.
i finished mine with 9 t7 pots… very luck based… im glad i reached the boss with 3 troops and the enemies didnt get skull cascade
Tried different setups:
1x charonas 3x judge
1x chaornas 1x fury 2x judge
wasn’t able to brake it in 5 tries on 6xT7/7xT7
Ended up beating it with:
2x fury 2x judge
As for hoard → i always push my hoard to quality 10 and it pushes hoard level above 100. This time ended up with hoard 109. But, also used some deeds to make maugrim woods lvl 15, before going for it.
also 2x Nysha+ 1x Anu for boss room? (not sure)
Still working on it. Ran for a week or so at 166 hoard to see if there was any chance, but will be bumping it up to 199 soon - haven’t made it to final room with more than 2 survivors.
a guildmate completed non event, she got her hoard level to 430 tho…
I won a pure faction run at 500 in Stonesong Eyrie! Hoard level 111, kingdom 15, team was Harpy Mage, Xochi, Harpy, Xochi. Is there an existing current strat written up for this delve, or should I tell my story here? Happy to share if it’s helpful to anybody.
I did it in the event, but have had a few goes potionless. I fear it will need more hoard than we want to spend. I think what I will do with this one is leave it and restock treasures, do the next one as it looks a bit easier, then do this after.
I can’t see it being done without potions sub 200. Just had 3 goes at 199 and literally no chance with the middle rooms, skull generators and you can’t survive 2 skull hits sometimes, even at hoard 199 vs undead, who have a bonus this week.
I’d be interested in hearing it. Only just started attempting pure faction with no potions. I’ve done all seeing eye and crypt keepers so far.
I did it at 250 with basic potions. Not going any further than that I’m afraid.
I tried different team setups (with aforementioned 199 hoard + 50%):
4x Judge
Charonas/3x Judge
double Charonas/double Judge
one of each
Charonas/double Judge/Fury
Charonas/double Judge/Lemure
I bet you can guess the result.
Damn! Is that 430 base hoard or with kingdom bonus? Either way, that’s a lot of heffalumps.
Yes please : ). This is my last one and frustrating as hell. I am at 267 True hoard and not even close to victory.
Today RNG was on my side with insta-kills, but they always summoned another Harpy NEXT turn. They did it like 6+ times. Then I rage-quitted. LOL 
Stonesong was my last faction done at the time, back in November. I did in my second try with hoard 100 and only 25% bonus from the kingdom (only realized it after I finished it, lol). The boss room took me 2 hours and 5 minutes. It was the most stressful thing I’ve done in this game.
Gratz. Persistence and patience paid off for you.
It was not an easy go. I did lvl 400 using Harpy Mage, Harpy, Bladewing, Xochi, and thought that would be the ticket for 500. But I kept running in to the problem after a few weeks of trying, especially in the boss room, of being unable to summon a new Harpy Mage when I most needed it. So instead I dumped Bladewing for a second Xochi, and I placed the second Xochi in the second slot because my entire strategy revolved around summoning a storm with Mage, and using Harpy to mana drain the opposing team’s board control. If Harpy dies, you are pretty much done, so I could not risk having her in the second slot.
First fight: As noted above, my strategy was to focus on keeping my mana topped off for my troops, and only casting Mage when one of the opponent’s Mages had full mana, or to get out of bad boards (e.g., a skull match, giving up a 4-match on the next turn, or giving up a potential board reset). I would ignore casts by their Harpy or Bladewing, and cast Harpy every time she was full, to try and build up a reserve of life for unlucky skulls.
After I cast Harpy Mage, I would use Harpy to drain the opponent’s team of mana, thereby hopefully denying their Mage the chance to fill their team’s mana. If they refilled a Mage or Bladewing after my first Harpy cast, I would cast Xochi or Mage again to try and refill my Harpy to drain them again. You need to control their Mages because ultimately you need to control Bladewing - I had a hard time getting a run started at first because Bladewing one-shot my Harpy a few times.
You need to be very tactical in the first (and boss) fight with your Xochi casts. Do not kill any of the back three enemy troops with spell damage unless you are confident you can kill off the rest of team in short order - they will resummon a Harpy and prolong the fight. It’s kind of interesting in this delve, how you have to play conservative for the most part, but when you have them down, you need to take more risks by exploding the board with Mage and Xochi to keep from giving the other team a turn (and therefore a chance to summon another Harpy). Do not hold back when you have their last troop low - it’s better to lose your Mage to skulls than give them a chance to summon a Harpy (which can quickly lead to two Harpies, etc.).
Middle rooms: I usually would take the rare room paths for most runs. You are looking for Coral Golem or Shadowblade for the higher rarity rooms - these are doable without a ton of trouble. Ice Wraith, Dire Wolf, and Morterra are doable in a pinch as well, if you get unlucky rolls on the rare room paths.
For the rare rooms, I would avoid: Bat Swarm (your team is too slow to keep up with their transformations), Spider Queen (you can’t drain Dark Priestess), Golem (Dark Monolith hits too hard), and Pirate (your team is too slow to keep their attack from scaling on you). (On my winning run, I got Flame Troll and Leprechaun.)
Otherwise, my strategy was similar to the first room - use Harpy to mana drain whenever the enemy’s board control was about to cast, to slow down the opponents’ casting, use Harpy otherwise to build up your life, sneak in Xochi casts when you can’t match greens/browns for Harpy.
Boss Room: This worked out very strangely for me. I executed my standard strategy well for some time, which really limited their Harpy’s ability to buff their team’s life, and killed Harpy Mage and did good damage to their Xochi. The problem is that it’s really hard for Harpy’s healing to keep pace with Xochi’s damage. I was in trouble after a Xochi cast I couldn’t stop got through, and killed my Mage and my Harpy at the same time.
Whenever you lose Harpy in the boss fight, there’s only one thing to do: yolo!! I needed several things to go right at this point, and they did: I got a 4-match to summon another Mage during a dust storm. This allowed me to cast a Xochi, and get mana quickly for my Mage. Before long, I had summoned two mages, and was able to fire off multiple exchanges of Xochi-Mage.
I lost my front Xochi to a Bladewing cast (not due to lethal damage, she had taken a skull hit earlier), but not before I had taken out the enemy Xochi. I I was able to summon a third Mage, and from there the loops just kept coming. I dropped the turn a few times, but did not get burned by a summoned Harpy, and did not give too many bad boards. It was nerve-racking at the end, but a Xochi cast, with a skull match after the extra turn, were enough to take down the last two troops.
It only took a couple of days with my new team to pull through, and I couldn’t honestly say if it was strategy or luck that won the day. I do know that it felt amazing to get through this RNG fiesta with a win though. Good luck, and hope this tale can be of use to you both.