QOTW - Journey in the Dark - Mildly Thematic

A Fellowship to tackle the quest Journey in the Dark 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 the whole Fellowship are present: Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli, and Boromir (as heroes or in the decks, or otherwise), as these are the characters making their way through the long dark of Moria.

For the most part, hero choices carry over from the previous quest. This time I have taken Aragorn alongside Gandalf and Glorfindel - these powerful heroes should be eliminating enemies left, right, and centre.

On the other side I have Pippin and Sam Gamgee, with a new Messenger of the King in the form of Firyal. This quest does not pull any punches, especially in Campaign Mode with all the extra Burdens added to begin, and Firyal is my answer to that. Also she will hopefully help to keep the Doom, Doom, Doom counters depleting too quickly.

No Nazgûl or other major Ring punishments to worry about so I brought along Mountain of Fire Frodo Baggins for this quest.

The quest started pretty shakily as I was forced to assign 12 damage among my characters on the first turn, putting several heroes on death's door. Luckily I had a Wellinghall Preserver who was soon followed by a Warden of Healing so it all worked out in the long term. It did result in a Grievous Wound for Glorfindel, but Elrond healed that right up.

My aim was to avoid removing the Doom counters at all costs, so no enemies were engaged on Stage 1 and I made it to Stage 2 on turn 3. I built the deck to help speed up the enemy destruction requirement of this stage, with Guarded (Enemy) attachments and Dúnedain Hunters to find more enemies. Unfortunately both of my Hunters ended up whiffing on their abilities, which was shocking, but thanks to Gandalf I didn't feel the card loss at all. I still got through in 3 turns which is about as fast as could be hoped given the circumstances.

In the end I needed to suffer through 2 turns of Balrog attacks, because he entered play engaged with the wrong deck for me to be able to one-shot him. Luckily I only needed to chump block two of his attacks before defeating him.

And so as the final act of the quest, Gandalf cast the Balrog from The Great Bridge into the abyss, allowing the rest of the Fellowship to escape. Unfortunately this means I will have a +1 threat penalty for the remainder of the campaign, but I have hope that it will not be the last we've seen of the old wizard. It's also the last time in the campaign I'll be accepting the penalty for a fallen hero.

This quest also results in the players earning either two or four burdens, depending on how the Balrog is handled. Taking four was never an option - the two that I chose are the ones I think everyone chooses: Overcome by Grief and Pursued by the Enemy. The others are just so bad to have to face for the rest of the campaign.

Results:

1 Fallen hero: Gandalf

Boons/Burdens earned: Overcome by Grief, Pursued by the Enemy

Score: 103

8 full turns (80)
35 + 34 threat (69)
1 Fallen hero (14)
0 damage on heroes (0)
60 Victory Points (-60)

Campaign Log:

Heroes - Aragorn, Pippin, Sam Gamgee, Gandalf, Glorfindel.

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

Burdens - The Ring Draws Them, Panicked, Overcome by Grief, Pursued by the Enemy

+1 starting threat penalty