Navigating the Brandywine Pursuit with the Blue Wizards 1.0

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• 1.0

The Blue Wizards have returned from the East to help poor Drogo Baggins safely complete his float down the Brandywine!

This deck was built specifically to tackle the unique challenges of the ALeP scenario, The Brandywine Pursuit. In this scenario, you are punished for having too many characters and items, making it a perfect case for using the Alatar and Pallando with At the End of All Things. From the start, including Rods of the Five, you get 5 actions per turn from your starting heroes for only 4 slots on your Raft. The high starting threat isn't an issue, because threating out is generally not the primary concern on this fast-paced quest. Rather, you want to focus on an aggressive tempo to meet the fast and furious pace of the river current and the brigands who are constantly assaulting poor Drogo.

This scenario moves fast and furiously. If you're not prepared, you will drown in enemies or get crushed in the rapids and it will not be fun. But with a tailored deck like this one, it's a thrilling white-water rafting trip, so enjoy!

Play notes on specific challenges in this scenario:

• The Creatures in the deck can be devastating. The main defense against the rats and the beaver is Keep Watch, which is a silver bullet on this quest. Since they aren't dealt shadow cards and have only 1 , once you've got Keep Watch in the victory display, you no longer have to worry about these pesky varmints. Dig out the side quest with Blue Staff or Word of Command. In the meantime, Outmatched and Reckless Attack will help defend from the rats, which can be a nasty source of pseudo-archery if you get them in the first couple of turns.

• The encounter set features some nasty direct damage effects from several sources. East-helper is critical for healing off your heroes, with Self Preservation as backup, but you can also absorb some damage on an enemy you've converted with Word of Persuasion (best target is the Agile Assailant). If the wrong combination of encounter cards come out (see the brigand that can have an Archery value of 5+), you're still likely dead though.

• The biggest danger is getting overwhelmed by small/medium sized enemies. While none of them are that big -- they max at 5 -- even in a single player game you can easily find yourself engaged with 3-4 enemies at a time. Again, this is where Keep Watch shines, and also Unexpected Courage, Outmatched, Entangling Nets, Feint, and Pallando's response (in combo with You Cannot Pass! and Flame of Anor, in particular).

• Don't explore the starting location right away. Most games, you want to leave the starting location for 2-3 turns while you look for Keep Watch (and/or Rally the West) and get closer to being able to flip your contract. Just quest with Drogo and use Blue Staff to counter the threat increase. You should be able to eat an extra brigand from not clearing the active location, if needed.

• Once you clear the starting location, try to clear a location every turn. Again, this is a tempo scenario, so once you get moving down the river, DON'T STOP! Once you've got Unexpected Courages, Rally the West, and Thalion in play, it should be pretty easy to quest through and still handle 2-3 enemies a round.

• Don't worry about , but keep an eye on it. Generally, you're not in much danger of threating out. But if you creep over 45, Double Back will give you breathing room plus The Galadhrim's Greeting if needed. Both can be found quickly with Word of Command (which has the Spell type per ALeP rules, so can be fetched with Blue Staff).

• Grab Thalion plus Unexpected Courage with the contract flip. These are almost always the two cards you'll want. Thalion should quickly become a second hero, and at the very least be able to quest and participate in combat every round. Once he's a hero, he can take a second Legacy Blade to help clean up in the final battle on stage 3.

• Be prepared for the final battle. In the final battle, you'll face three random brigands. If you've got a few resources ready and a hand full of Feint, You Cannot Pass!, and Flame of Anor, it should be a breeze. If you want to make it really epic, add Justice Shall Be Done to your deck and enjoy an epic last stand!

• Never use Drogo's ability. Seriously, it's not worth it. You can handle every location in the deck head-on. What you generally can't waste is a character action to save Drogo (you also have no way to heal him).

• Save your A Test of Wills for Submerged Rocks. They're not devastating, but they can disrupt your tempo and add in uncertainty that you don't need.

• Save your Hasty Strokes for Strong Current's shadow effect. It gives an enemy +X , where X is the active location's . That's generally going to add 3-5, which if you haven't got You Cannot Pass! in hand will kill Pallando.