QOTW Saga Campaign - A Shadow of the Past - Mildly Thematic

A Fellowship to tackle the quest A Shadow of the Past for the Cardboard of the Rings Quest of the Week.

Since QOTW is covering the Lord of the Rings Saga, I'm taking it as an opportunity to make another run at the Saga Campaign. For this campaign I will be observing all of the official campaign rules and to make it interesting I will be playing what I have dubbed "Mildly Thematic" - the only condition is that the key characters need to be present. That's it. I'll be playing on Normal mode, as the thought of playing Nightmare mode with both Campaign and Thematic restrictions is not appealing.

So for this quest, I need to make sure Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, and Pippin are all present (as heroes or in the decks, or otherwise), as these are the characters who make the journey from Bag End to Bucklebury Ferry. The other supporting characters I have opted to use are Merry and Fatty Bolger, Gaffer Gamgee, Farmer Maggot and his dogs, and Gildor Inglorion is in the encounter deck thanks to Campaign mode.

In all other aspects I have full flexibility to build decks suitable for the quest and to account for the campaign features however I choose. This does create a bit of a challenge for characters who only have hero versions (e.g. Theoden), but I expect there to be enough freedom to beat the whole campaign. For these decks, Aragorn and Glorfindel are included as they will be needed to fulfil the thematic requirements for later quests. Éowyn and Círdan the Shipwright are chosen solely for mechanics.

I will be playing all 21 quests (including The Old Forest, Fog on the Barrow-downs and ALeP's Scouring of the Shire) 2-handed. This Fellowship has beaten the first quest and due to the campaign rules I expect to be taking these same heroes through the first five quests, though likely with plenty of changes in the decks themselves. Four of these heroes have at least two versions, allowing for a greater variety of decks to be built. Also, the campaign rules allow the heroes to be split between the two decks in any combination, so some mixing may take place to optimise for beating the quests.

For this playthrough I elected to use the Black Riders version of Frodo Baggins - the ability is a nice safeguard against unfortunate encounter reveals, although I didn't end up using it even once.

The quest went very smoothly overall. Despite a reduced starting hand size, 3 of my 10 starting cards were side quests, including Gather Information and Keep Watch, which was ideal. This allowed a good deal of stalling on Stage 1, minimising the time required on Stage 2 with its more difficult Hide tests. Unfortunately I saw both The Ring Draws Them and Hunting for the Ring in the first Staging step, meaning I had to use Mr. Underhill right away and then didn't have many characters left to attack back.

However, over the following seven rounds I completed one side quest per turn, starting with Keep Watch, so I didn't have much to fear from the Black Riders anymore. I also revealed and explored each of the unique locations in the encounter deck (in order), completing the QOTW World Travelers achievement. The high of my heroes, boosted by Frodo's Intuition and Fellowship of the Ring helped to make sure I passed all the Hide tests.

The thematic highlight of the game was having Farmer Maggot, assisted by Grip, Fang, and Wolf, see off the last Black Rider in play just before I explored Bucklebury Ferry.

The quest resolution gives a choice of one each of two Boons and two Burdens.

I chose Mr. Underhill as my Boon, as it's a very reliable and relevant effect and will give us some assurance in the early stages of the coming quests. By contrast Gildor offers only stats and on an unreliable basis. We might also wish to include one of the player card versions in future.

For the Burdens I chose The Ring Draws Them. Previously I have selected Gandalf's Delay on the basis that it's better the devil you know. The Ring Draws Them certainly has the potential to be worse than losing a single card. However, I'd like to try something different and it could also go the other way - The Ring Draws Them could have no impact at all, espcially as it has no shadow effect.

As a note, I have the old printing of Gandalf's Delay, so chose to use that version's effect for this game - a relavant distinction with Círdan in play.

Results:

0 Fallen heroes.

Boons/Burdens earned: Mr. Underhill, The Ring Draws Them

Score: 155

10 full turns (100)
31 + 31 threat (62)
4 damage on heroes (4)
11 Victory Points (-11)

Campaign Log:

Heroes - Aragorn, Éowyn, Glorfindel, Círdan the Shipwright, Fatty Bolger, Sam Gamgee.

Boons - Mr. Underhill

Burdens - The Ring Draws Them