Achievement unlocked: Seasick (Voyage Across Belegaer)

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Neoptolemos 35

Most often I like to build my decks to deal with as many quests as possible, preferably with the whole cycle at once, and I rarely build a deck for a specific scenario. However, I've just finished another full Dream-Chaser campaign playthrough (with this Minimum Purchase deck) and decided to try something different. In the campaign book from Dream-Chaser campaign expansion there is a list of achievements to unlock, so I've decided to try to complete it. While I've done several challenges already during my previous playthroughs (e.g. "Only You Can Prevent Ship Fires", since avoiding even single burnt ship is my general strategy when playing Raid on the Grey Havens), some of them are quite unique and stand in opposite to the standard approach. So, I've decided to start this very specific challenge with the first achievement mentioned: Seasick!

The challenge

Seasick text states: "Win Voyage Across Belegaer without commiting any character to each Sailing tests." It's COMPLETELY different task than I'm usually trying to accomplish in that scenario, since the most common way is to just never fail Sailing and therefore avoid most of the really bad effects from encounter deck. Playing the whole game off-course means a lot of problems:

  • after t1, you will be never able to travel to Rolling Seas
  • direct damage treacheries such as Sudden Storms of Winds of Wrath always punish your whole board
  • it's really hard to avoid Scouting Ships and nearly impossible to avoid Waterspouts

On the other hand, though, skipping sailing at all means that (in solo) we have 2 big additional characters (ships), potential surplus of allies (as the scenario was designed to need characters for sailing tests) and a lot of low threat blank locations (Rough Waters are basically almost the same as Calm Waters here). Therefore playing this quest this way is in general harder and probably not the best idea with a standard deck, but if you build specifically with these conditions in mind, it's quite easy.

The deck

So, I've considered two approaches:

  • either try to use the brute force and deal with all negative "wrong heading effects" using strong allies, high Willpower and a lot of healing;
  • or try more sneaky approach and avoid most of the nasty surprises from the encounter deck at all. This is the way that I've decided to follow

I decided that I want to explore one very cool (not to say broken) card that can be abused in sailing quests: The Great Hunt. Sincce at the last stage of the quest you normally have to powerquest or defeat all enemies - but being off-course means that you can never put any progress on quest card - my only option to win this challenge was to eliminate all enemies. Great Hunt is the easiest way to deal with absolutely beast of a card that is Corsair Warship; also, not engaging ships at all means no Boarding altogether. Being able to avoid combat almost entirely freed a lot of space for scrying and deck manipulation shenanigans to have full control of the game.

Basic principles of the deck are:

  • staying in Secrecy. We start the game with Scouting Ship (having lowered engagement cost) in the staging area and being forced to deal with it t1 with a deck that can't handle Corsairs is a quick way to lose. Mirlonde and Pippin ensure that we have at least 2 turns of staying under the Scouting Ship radar, but using Dawn Star as our secondary ship is even better. Woodmen's Clearing are also great to buy us some time.
  • scrying, scrying, and once more scrying with deck manipulation to keep us safe from nasty encounter cards. This deck can play The Great Hunt more than 3 times, but seeing too many ships will overwhelm it anyway. What is more, treacheries can be nasty in a wrong moment (especially Boarding Party until we build up allies army). Denethor is absolutely crucial, but he is supported with Risk Some Light, Ithilien Lookout and The Hidden Way. Leather Boots are great for Denethor to trigger him sometimes once again after staging and have another chance to hide a bad card.
  • a LOT of draw and recycling. We need to play several Great Hunts during the game (at least 2x Scouting Ship and 1x Corsair Warship are 100% certain due to quest card effects). We have to draw them, possibly replay with Scroll of Isildur, replay Scroll with Erebor Hammersmith and so on. When the board is established, it is possible to handle e.g. 1 Scouting Ship, but in general it's easier to avoid combat at all costs.
  • location control. Since enemies and treacheries are nasty and locations are quite easy to deal with here, The Evening Star and Asfaloth are a good support pack. Especially since it's very hard to deal with e.g. Rolling Seas after t1, as they can't be traveled to without getting off-course (and we WON'T be totally off-course only in first round).

This package is completed with a little bit of healing + damage cancellation (for direct damage effects) and several staples such as Quickbeam or Ghân-buri-Ghân.

Cards that didn't make the cut

At first I've tried to use Galdor of the Havens instead of Pippin, but it either 100% forces to use Dawn Star (and still doesn't give much time to prepare) or means certain encounter with Scouting Ship from the very beginning. With bad draw from the Corsair deck, it can ruin the game from the very beginning. Mirlonde probably can be swapped for Folco Boffin, but a) I don't have him and b) while triggering him can buy a lot of time, effectively ruins the possibility of playing The Great Hunt. Denethor is absolute centerpiece of the deck and also kinda fits thematically. It's probably the first deck I've ever built that has both hero and Hobbit hero and DOESN'T have Fast Hitch. There is no point, though - while this card is easily one of the best action advantage cards in the whole game, Pippin will be almost never useful for anything but questing. Theoretically he can be readied before Sudden Storms appear, but it isn't worth a card space. As I BADLY need draw, Deep Knowledge can be considered, but it shouldn't be used too soon until we will already deal with scouts and use all our secrecy shenanigans. In the late game 2 points of threat shouldn't do much, but it won't save us with inital bad draw. I've also considered Galadhrim Minstrel, Warden of Healing and Ioreth to have even more draw and healing, but due to direct damage treacheries I've cut most 1HP allies. I've kept only Henamarth Riversong and Gaffer Gamgee as a last-resort-lifesaver, but certainly both of them aren't key cards here. In the first version of the deck I had Secret Paths and Radagast's Cunning, but I had to cut something and questing power isn't that much of a problem most of the time. One card that I've cut before even trying, but I would strongly consider anyway, is Strider's Path. For location control package Thrór's Map may be used, but I'm not a huge fan of errata'd version (not to mention that I use original cards and I would need to remember the new version).

Gameplay

I've tested the deck several times and it wins "Seasick challenge" quite consistently. My only loss was when I haven't found ANY draw or deck thinners, neither Drinking Song, Daeron's Runes, nor Mithrandir's Advice. On the other side, while Scroll of Isildur was mainly put to retrieve The Great Hunt, I found myself often using it for previous draw events. One cool combo that I haven't pulled of is replaying The Evening Star star with the Scroll, which - if I understand correctly - would give 4 (!) triggers. Erebor Hammersmith retrieves most often Scroll, but I was also happy to replay Woodmen's Clearing. Once or twice Loyal Hound also saved me from untimely shadow effect turning attack into undefended (heroes here just can't survive that), but in general I engage ~0,5 Ship and maybe ~0,75 Corsairs per game. Also on an interesting note, I've triggered Mablung for different options - either pulling Scouting Ship in planning phase to plan accordingly around boarded coarsair AND gain card from Pippin or to give me one more round of avoiding engagement at all. I haven't only return any enemy to staging, but I can imagine such scenario.

Conclusion

Playing sailing quest without even trying to sail was a fun challenge and while I've a feeling that I'm exploiting some mechanisms, I'm happy that I've tried. I'm going to try with other achievements as well - next stop is Fate of Numenor in full exploration mode, completing 7 locations on stage 2 before visiting shrine of Morgoth :D

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