QOTW - The Old Forest - Mildly Thematic

A Fellowship to tackle the quest The Old Forest for the Cardboard of the Rings Quest of the Week.

My "Mildly Thematic" campaign means the only thematic condition for deckbuilding is that the key characters need to be present. That's it. The Fellowship for A Shadow of the Past can be found here and has a few more details on the campaign plans. The other campaign Fellowships can be found by searching for "Mildly Thematic" once they are published.

So for this quest, I need to make sure Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Merry and Pippin are all present (as heroes or in the decks, or otherwise), as these are the characters who make the journey through the Old Forest. Otherwise Fatty Bolger is here to see the hobbits off safely, and Tom Bombadil is in the encounter deck.

The hero choices carry over from the previous quest, so 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. After the fifth quest there will be an opportunity to change heroes with no penalty.

For this playthrough I elected to use the Mountain of Fire version of Frodo Baggins - with no punishment for exhausting the Ring, his excellent ability is hard to pass up.

The quest generally did not go as planned - despite the promise of a great start, the Pipe deck never really got going how I wanted. However, the quest is not too difficult and I was fortunate that the encounter deck did not reveal many enemies early on. Between that and the second deck picking up the slack, I still made it through without too much trouble.

The quest resolution awards the Old Bogey-stories Boon if Old Man Willow has 12 or more damage on him at the end of the quest. While I won't be trying to fully exploit the campaign system to optimise my Boons and Burdens, I'm not going to pass up any reasonably achievable Boons either. With that in mind, I did try and stall this quest just a little to make sure I had enough power to damage Old Man Willow. Had I pushed, I could have arrived at Stage 3 one or two turns earlier, but that may heave meant missing out on the Boon.

Results:

0 Fallen heroes.

Boons/Burdens earned: Old Bogey-stories

Score: 139

7 full turns (70)
37 + 36 threat (73)
13 damage on heroes (13)
17 Victory Points (-17)

Campaign Log:

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

Boons - Mr. Underhill, Old Bogey-stories

Burdens - The Ring Draws Them