Trouble in Tharbad - Progression - 2 player

These two decks beat this quest like 99% of the time. We played it maybe 15-20 times and didn't lose no matter what our draws looked like.

The quest is sort of fun, because it's easy. One downside is you draw very few cards before it's over. After the initial 7 cards, we typically only drew about 6 or 7 after that. It's fun getting your threat down to 0.

Deck 1 is the questing deck, designed to pump out as much questing allies as possible each round. Nothing kills allies in this quest except for engaged enemy attacks, so it's easy to keep a huge army of allies. There's one Treachery where you have to raise your threat by the number of allies you have, but Eleanor can cancel that, or even if you have to do it, it's usually not a big deal, since you're constantly reducing your threat anyway.

Frodo does all the defending, including taking damage from undefended attacks, and raising threat instead of taking the damage. Eleanor exists to cancel when revealed if you get something really bad. Eowyn quests. Most valuable cards are Unexpected Courage, which should always go on Legolas and Beregond. If you get all 3 UC, they still all should go on Legolas and Beregond. Light of Valinor is very valuable for Frodo. Aside from that, crank out questing allies and hope that Player 2 gets Faramir at some point. Arwen is also a very important card to give a shield and sentinel each round. The sentinel can be good for Frodo as he can defend once for Player 2, and take any damage as threat increase.

You don't have to mulligan for any one card, but if you want to, mulligan to try to get Arwen, Light of Valinor, and/or Unexpected Courage.

Deck 2 does most of the fighting and enemy engagement. Best cards are Rivendell Blade for Legolas and Gondorian Shield for Beregond. Also great are the cards that give +1 attack. If you get good attachments, plus Unexpected Courage, Legolas becomes a killing machine, and he's great at adding that bonus progress on the quest or active location. Beregond can also become almost unkillable with the right attachments.

By the time we got to the second quest card, our threat limit was sometimes 40, and never less than 30. And by that point, we had so many questing chars, that we finished the second quest card in 2-3 rounds max. It's useful to plan when to finish Quest 1 to minimize having too many enemies or locations when you reach Quest 2.