A Progression Through Mirkwood

With my last Mirkwood adventure pack purchased, I decided to try my hand at making a fellowship to tackle every quest in the cycle, using only player cards from that cycle (with no sideboard). I had some fun breaking down the requirements of each quest, and this is what I came up with. Analysis of why I selected the cards I did is in the individual deck descriptions.

Full results below, but the summary is that this fellowship did everything I wanted it to do. Escape from Dol Guldur and Return to Mirkwood took 2 attempts each, but they're hard quests and I had a little bad luck. I feel confident that I could hit better than a 50% victory rate on Return to Mirkwood at least (and I had enough fun with this fellowship that I'll be going back to prove that to myself). Other than those two quests, and, with some very bad luck, Hunt for Gollum, every quest was beat first time.

Results

Passage Through Mirkwood (1 attempt required):

Drew the Ungoliant's Spawn path, no trouble.

Journey Along the Anduin (1 attempt required):

Going into this with one deck having 29 starting threat felt a little risky, but either I was right that I'd packed enough mitigation, or I was just lucky, because I drew a Sneak Attack and Gandalf in the starting hand of the / deck. With that threat reduction, I could spend a couple of rounds getting ready before bringing down the Hill Troll. Stage 2 fell in a single round thanks to Astonishing Speed. And although the staging area looked pretty full after Stage 3's setup, I didn't have any difficulty mopping up (there was another Hill Troll, but A Light in the Dark delayed him for a turn).

Escape from Dol Guldur (2 attempts required):

First time around Eleanor was the prisoner, which was far from the worst case scenario, but left me struggling to generate enough spirit resources. When Thalin got eaten by an early Ungoliant's spawn, I was left with one hero from each sphere, and spent about a dozen rounds just spinning on the spot before finally resucing Eleanor just as the / deck hit 50 threat and I surrendered to the inevitable.

Second time around was much smoother sailing. Thalin was our prisoner, but I was still just about able to produce enough resources to hold my own while the / deck rescued him. After that, it was just a case of stalling for a few rounds before I could bring down the Nazgul and quest hard to a smooth finish.

Hunt For Gollum (2 attempts required):

Well I didn't expect this to need multiple attempts. But by the end of round 1 staging, I had 3 Hunters from Mordor along with a Sign of Gollum in the staging area. I managed to defeat all the Hunters, but was wary of questing successfully while doing so, since I really couldn't handle the extra encounter cards from stage 1. End result of that approach was that I got location locked, and didn't manage to draw my Northern Tracker in time to prevent it.

Second attempt was much more how I expected things to go, and pretty smooth sailing. There was a scary moment later on when I got 3 Hunters and 2 clues in one round of staging (including the quest stage 2 bonus card) and with a third clue already in play I almost threated out. But I was well set up enough that I could take two of those Hunters out in a single round of combat and Forest Snare the other.

Conflict at the Carrock (1 attempt required):

Not much to say on this one. I used Gandalf and The Galadhrim's Greeting to lower threat all round, and then stalled for honestly longer than I needed to, just because I could. By the time my threat was creeping up again and I finally decided to quest over the line and take on the trolls, they were dispatched without any trouble.

A Journey to Rhosgobel (1 attempt required):

With Beravor to dig for Lore of Imladris, and some eagles to help Legolas fight those pesky 'ranged or eagles only' enemies, this went well. I particularly enjoyed playing Unexpected Courage on Éowyn to allow her to quest for up to 6 (and eventually 8 once she'd had 2 copies of The Favor of the Lady stacked) and then ready before ever being in danger of taking damage from Exhaustion.

Hills of Emyn Muil (1 attempt required):

A fairly typical breeze through this one. With willpower and location control from the / deck, there's nothing in this quest to worry me.

The Dead Marshes (1 attempt required):

The only tokens that landed on Gollum here were from 'A Mist of Pale Sheen'. I had a very spirit-Rohan setup within a couple of turns that allowed me to blast through stage 1 and then Astonishing Speed my way to 22 for the final escape test (vs 2 escape points from the encounter deck).

Return to Mirkwood (2 attempts required):

Attempt 1 looked shaky from the moment I drew the Attercop in setup. That can happen, and I dealt with that Attercop and the two that followed relatively shortly after, but with my attention on those nasty spiders I failed to make very quick progress on stage 1 of the quest. By the time I hit stage 2 my threat levels were in the mid-40s for both decks (curse you Gollum), and not a Gandalf or The Galadhrim's Greeting in sight. With probably a single turn to go, I threated out on stage 4.

Attempt 2 started off with almost exclusively locations, and without a Northern Tracker in my hand, I had to rely on a combo of Snowbourn Scout, The Riddermark's Finest and Strider's Path to stave off an early case of location-lock. When the Attercops did emerge, my / deck was more than ready for them. Stages 2 and 3 fell quickly, and while the Wargs slowed me a little on stage 4, I snuck in a victory with a dollop of threat to spare.