FotR Saga: Shadow of the Past Questing & Hiding 1.0

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• 1.0

I am a relatively new fan of the game. So far in my short time adventuring, I did not think I enjoyed theory-crafting for the quests requiring a very narrow deck focus to win. However, starting with my first attempt via mashing all the hobbit-trait cards into a deck, and ending with this deck, that I was able to finally beat the opening quest of the Fellowship of the Ring saga with, I had a more gratifying experience than I had been originally expecting.

It starts with a decently low threat of 20, typical of hobbit heroes, and it gives plenty of time to avoid Black Riders and then tackle them 1-by-1 once you have a board state to do so.

The deck has two main objectives:

1. Build a engine that can simultaneously quest through the 4 of one or more Black Riders in the staging area and resolve Hide 2 tests as Treachery cards are revealed during staging. The most important cards for this are Fellowship of the Ring, Celebrían's Stone, and Unexpected Courage. One or more of these in your starting hand greatly increases your chances of surviving Hide tests in the opening turns. Samwise Gamgee will carry the majority of the groups equipment as they travel (how thematic!). This means putting Unexpected Courage and Celebrían's Stone on Samwise so that he can commit to the quest for 5 and then immediately ready to be used again for 5 against a potential Hide test. There are also allies like Galadriel's Handmaiden and Wellinghall Preserver to further boost your . All of the allies have 1 or more to try to offset the extra added by them in stage 2, but you should still be mindful about how many you have in play at once.

2. Build up just enough to banish a Black Rider back to the Shadow from whence it came, once per turn. With the Black RIder's 4 and 6 , I was doing this with a combination of Ranger of Cardolan and Wellinghall Preserver alongside Gandalf. The Hobbit heroes and some of the other allies can also add 1 in a pinch. To defend against the Black Rider's attack, you can either use Frodo Baggins ability to negate the damage or chump block with Bill the Pony or Guard of the Citadel. Note that if you choose to chump block, you will lose Fellowship of the Ring so hopefully you have another copy or Second Breakfast handy.

There is also some resource generation and card draw staples to help smooth things out. Steward of Gondor + Parting Gifts is perfect to allow Sam to generate resources to pay for Ranger of Cardolan and Gandalf or distribute them out to the other more resource-needy Hobbits. Daeron's Runes, Gléowine, Frodo's Intuition, and Pippin's ability will help you get to the important cards faster and A Test of Will can cancel some of the nastier Treacheries or even the Black Rider's Hide 2 tests if you get caught without much left.

There are several elephants in the room that I feel I must address: Hobbit saga Gandalf, Second Breakfast, and Parting Gifts. These cards are the only ones that cannot be found in the revised reprints, and I just happen to have them from when I dabbled in this game as a young lad back in 2014.

I have added alternatives to these in the side-board. Erebor Hammersmith and Errand-rider can replace Second Breakfast and Parting Gifts respectively. I chose these Event cards instead of their Ally counterparts because of the Stage 2 Quest text that boosts for allies in play.

Hobbit saga Gandalf is harder to replace unfortunately. He is very much integral for delaying the Black Rider's pursuit of Frodo, and being able to keep him in by taking on 2 extra threat works perfectly with the low-threat Hobbits. He is simply a more consistent Wraith-Bane than Core Set Gandalf, but if you don't have the Hobbit saga and don't want to proxy, I think 3x Core Set Gandalf + 3x Sneak Attack could still make this list work. You might remove some Secret Paths, Daeron's Runes, or Errand-riders to fit in the 3x Sneak Attacks.