Escape from Moria (Saga Campaign - The Road Darkens) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

I decided to keep the same hero lineup for the Road Darkens as I've never played this box in campaign mode before. When I replay it in future I'm definitely using a Gandalf deck.

• The Ring Goes South

1 attempt, 1 win. For this quest I used the same list that I ran for the Black Riders. I really like this quest but it was very easy. I took Sting as my starting boon and drew the Mithril Shirt in my opening hand. I decided to raise my threat by 5 rather than shuffle Lust for the Ring into the encounter deck. Starting with Sting on Sam Gamgee made defending the wargs very fun. 8 rounds and the game was over.

• Journey in the Dark

3 attempts: 2 losses, 1 win. This quest is awesome! For the first run, I decided to play blind and see what happened. The Balrog showed up and I could not maintain enough questing power to push past him once he started chopping up 2 allies per turn. I then changed the deck to the list you see here to focus on questing to avoid the Balrog. I also added Elrond as a way of dealing with the condition attachments.

The second attempt went well but I miscounted the damage on Doom, Doom, Doom, so I went for a third run.

This was a very tense game. I had Henamarth Riversong on setup, allowing me to plan questing and combat perfectly. Turn 1 he helped spot an upcoming Uruk from Mordor, so I used Halfling Determination to defend it with Sam (4 defence with Tireless Ranger), preventing the Grievous Wound burden from attaching to him.

Next turn I drew Fellowship of the Ring, allowing the heroes to quest for a further 4 and place a lot of progress. I opted not to engage anything until I was at Stage 2, by which point I had two Uruks in the staging area. Adding the Orc Chieftain then gave me plenty of enemies to kill and reach Stage 3 quickly. With the clock ticking down, there was a pivotal moment where I revealed Fool of a Took!, which would've meant that I would need to face the Balrog for at least one round. I decided to use Oh! Tom Bombadil! to cancel the treachery and buy an extra turn. The fellowship then escaped from Moria on turn 9 with 30 threat and no fallen heroes, avoiding the Balrog by a mere smidgen. I took Overcome by Grief and Pursued by the Enemy as the earned burdens.

• The Breaking of the Fellowship

It turns out that this quest is really tough on hobbits. I had to change the deck repeatedly to find something that worked, finally settling on this: http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/6489/breaking-of-the-fellowship-saga-campaign-the-road-darkens-1.0