QOTW - Flight to the Ford - Mildly Thematic

A Fellowship to tackle the quest Flight to the Ford 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, Pippin, Bill the Pony, Aragorn are all present (as heroes or in the decks, or otherwise), as these are the characters who make the perilous journey to Rivendell. Additionally, Glorfindel makes his sole thematic appearance, bringing the Ring-bearer some Timely Aid with his trusty steed Asfaloth.

The other hero choices carry over from the previous quest. Fatty Bolger is still with us from the Shire, and Éowyn and Círdan the Shipwright were chosen solely for mechanics. There will be an opportunity to change heroes with no penalty before the next quest, one I will definitely take advantage of.

I would like to use each version of Frodo Baggins during this campaign. I'm electing to use the Road Darkens version here, as I don't particularly rate him, so using him on one of the easier Saga quests will mean I'm not forced to use him at a less opportune time. Similarly, I like the idea of using each version of Aragorn. For most of the Campaign his regular versions are unavailable, so it was nice to rotate through them all in these first five quests.

The quest ended up going relatively well all things considered. I was able to win during the 6th round and earned the Speedy Delivery achievement by keeping the Ring-bearer's life at 8.

The secrecy deck definitely under-performed, being forced out of secrecy on the first turn. However, the Aragorn deck was firing on all cylinders and helped bring in the victory, particularly in the quest phase. Having said that, both decks performed very well in combat, with several Nazgûl, including the Witch-king, being taken down the hard way. In fact, one of the secrecy deck's greatest contributions was to Sneak Attack in Elrond twice for defense, supported by Elessar, and sharing some card draw at the same time. Sam also had a brilliant turn where, boosteed by Fell Rider engagements, he defended the Witch-king for 8 !

In the penultimate turn I was a little too conservative with questing, and ended up 1 shy of the 30 needed progress, but also 2 short of also being able to defeat the last Nazgûl. So my score ended up slightly worse than it might have, but the win was still secured as Gandalf was around to see off the Fell Rider before I needed to risk another Staging step.

I ended up with the Panicked Burden from this quest, which I think is one of the easier ones to deal with so I'll count myself lucky. It's possible to use Victory Display shenanigans to entirely avoid what would otherwise be a "mandatory" the Burden from this quest. I have done that before, but I'm not really interested in that level of gamesmanship for this Campaign. That said, I'm not about to take more Burdens than I really need to, so there was no chance I would take two or more at this stage.

Results:

0 Fallen heroes.

Boons/Burdens earned: Panicked

Score: 112

5 full turns (50)
28 + 43 threat (71)
0 damage on heroes (0)
9 Victory Points (-9)

Campaign Log:

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

Boons - Mr. Underhill, Old Bogey-stories, Ho! Tom Bombadil!, Noble Hero (Glorfindel), Tireless Ranger (Sam Gamgee)

Burdens - The Ring Draws Them, Panicked