The Blood of Gondor - Progression

When I built these decks (rather quickly) I gave a little too much emphasis to the fact that detrimental affects may ensue if allowing characters to be destroyed. As such I made these decks more attachemnt heavy and less allies. Now having played through, it worked out and we won but I would have made some changes. For example, I never tried Dawn Take You All in a deck and gave it a shot here to help get rid of shadow cards whilst not having any spirit heroes. Turns out it probably is as bad and costly as it seems. I would remove these cards for sure and probably put in another Snowbourn Scout. Maybe some Errand Riders and Squire of the Citadel.

Getting a bunch of attachments, including multiple Cram, on Beregond makes dealing with the onslaught of enemies a lot more manageable.

Getting Celebrian Stone on Aragorn was really helpful as the first quest card is traditional questing after you leave the crossroads. I suppose you could just never travel there but we favored clearing the staging area. We sent Theodred and Aragorn to quest every round and used the Theodred resource to ready Aragorn every time.

I personally don't really think the abilities of Faramir and Lord Alcaron are worth the exhuasting. I preferred to either quest or attack with them depending on the situation. We didn't ever use the abilities.

No matter what you do you seem to get a ton of hidden cards. We resolved to basically just be ok with the fact that we would get a bunch and reveal a bunch of enemies and just prepared to defend A LOT. We always revealed our hidden cards when in combat phase on quest phase 1b.

Having Elrohir is a good backup defender if Beregond runs out of actions, especially if he has been given sentinel and + defense. We put Steward of Gondor and ranged on Elldan so he could pay to keep picking off enemies.

There is not a ton of threat gain in this scenario, at least once you dispatch of the Numenorean, so use Boromir's readying effect liberally. There is enough Gondorian Shield that he can snag one and be a good defender who can also attack back if Elladan is out of resource. Also, he is a competent battle quester.

I felt like we were contantly swarmed but I also felt like we were in control most of the time. The only times that got tense were when shadow cards kept chaining and we currently did not have cancellation but seeing as Beregond is a defense powerhouse it never ended too badly.

This was no walk in the park but not as hard as I thought it might have been. Somehow I think the nightmare of this scenario will be brutal though !