Feel great to get away from Dwarves and try some new cards ! Although, if they add much more to Outlands than this pack already offers, it appears to be an archetype that is so strong that it'll get old quick. We'll just have to see, but for now it was fun trying it out !
As I mentioned, we tried out Outlands so here are a few strategies we employed to have them ultimately steamroll the encounter deck.
- Outlands is really powerful when you get a lot of them on the board, however, it is susceptible early on when you have only a few. Mulligan for the lore Outland ally to boost health early so they don't get wiped out. This encounter deck has enemies that deal 1 damage to allies and that'll ruin your plans.
- Put Steward of Gondor on Hirluin so he can fund more of the allies from other spheres.
- Draw cards as often as you can to get the Outlands out quick. Even though there is both a plot and a villain that punishes card draw, you can draw a lot early to get a strong board and then slow down on draw. Plus, once you get a strong board you should be able to finish the scenario quickly from there.
- Finishing the game quickly, however, can be a challenge with location lock and only exploring one active location a turn. Try to quest successfully and explore the active location each and every turn and when it works out, travel to a 2 progress location and use Asfaloth to clear another active location in the same round. In hindsight, it may have been nice to include Thror's Map to make an additional location active after that while still in the Travel Phase so that there is an active location ready to explore next round for faster progress on the quest phases.
- Burning Brand on Denethor and Gondorian Sheild on Beregond make excellent defenders on either side and Beregond also has sentinel. Don't be afraid to put Spear of the Citadel on Gondorian Spearman, after you have one on Beregond (or maybe even before), because he can skewers many of these enemies on his own doing 2 direct damage.
- In addition to wanting to clear active locations to get through the quest faster, make sure you keep up with locations because the encounter deck doesn't start with many enemies until the underworlds get shuffled in. Because of this location lock will happen quick if you're not on top of it !
- Use Bard and Hirluin with Great Yew Bow or use Hand Upon The Bow to manage enemies in the staging area so you can focus more on plowing through the locations.
- Once you get to the Villain it should be a piece of cake, they are kinda puny compared to a board build up over several rounds.
I had fun with this playthrough, it wasn't terribly exciting but it also wasn't a snoozefest nor did it have a mechanic that annoyed me too much. Just kinda middle ground. I also have less interest is just fighting bad men (brigands and such from Gondor). At least, if not orcs and spiders and dragons, give me some more interesting men from Harad or something. I am, however, excited to face some Druadan in the next scenario !