QOTW - Journey to the Cross-roads - Mildly Thematic

A Fellowship to tackle the quest Journey to the Cross-roads 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.

This quest sees Faramir and his rangers ambushing the forces of Harad on their way to the Black Gate. Along with Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee, Faramir is joined by rangers Anborn, Damrod and Mablung.

The heroes continue from the last quest. Damrod switches over to the Bond of Friendship deck so he can get access to some traps, alongside Sam, Eleanor and Thorin. On the other side, Argalad teams up with Gandalf and Glorfindel.

For this quest I elected to use the Mountain of Fire version of Frodo Baggins, as there are no major punishments for exhausting the One Ring and the extra resource is welcome, especially for the quad-sphere deck.

The quest gives a choice at the very beginning: add a resource to each of your heroes or shuffle a Brace of Coneys into your deck. The extra resources are a really great option, especially for the Bond of Friendship deck. However, I wanted to take the long term benefit if I could, so opted to go with two copies of the Boon.

This quest can be quite a handful with enemies appearing everywhere or else threatening to disappear to the Black Gate, inching you closer to the loss condition. Luckily, as a one-stage quest there is plenty of opportunity for side questing, and I was able to complete four before the end, Gather Information, The Storm Comes, Double Back and Keep Watch. The last in particular is a great help when facing so many non-unique enemies.

I got off to a slow start, but so did the encounter deck. Some locations hindered early progress, but it meant I was able to deal with the slow-ish stream of enemies that came my way. An early copy of Quickbeam was a big help here. Plenty of card draw and resource acceleration meant I was able to build the board with both allies and attachments to outrace the encounter deck, with cancelation to ensure no unwanted extra reveals slowed me down. Frodo was a big help with his extra resources, plus big questing boosts from Frodo's Intuition and Fellowship of the Ring.

In the end, I let two of the Oliphaunts through to the Black Gate, which I was partially expecting to happen. There might have been an opportuniy to stop another early on, but a Captain of Harad made that too risky for me. My strong board and available cancelation made the rest of the enemies quite manageable however.

Even with the side-questing I was able to place enough progress on the main quest at the perfect time to travel to the Cross-roads and continue to victory next turn.

The end of the quest adds the chosen copies of Brace of Conies to the Campaign Pool, and also requires the recording of each enemy under the Black Gate. So in future, I will need to deal with the two copies of Oliphaunt that I allowed to escape during the quest.

Results:

Boons/Burdens earned: 2x Brace of Conies

Score: 149

9 full turns (90)
36 + 39 threat (75)
0 damage on heroes (0)
16 Victory Points (-16)

Campaign Log:

Heroes - Argalad, Gandalf, Glorfindel, Damrod, Eleanor, Sam Gamgee, Thorin Stonehelm

Boons - Old Bogey-stories, Ho! Tom Bombadil!, Noble Hero (Glorfindel), Tireless Ranger (Sam Gamgee), Andúril, Glamdring, Sting, Mithril Shirt, Leaf-wrapped Lembas, Three Golden Hairs, Beyond All Hope (Gandalf), Palantír of Orthanc, 2x Brace of Conies

Burdens - The Ring Draws Them, Panicked, Overcome by Grief, Ill Fate, 1x The Searching Eye

+1 starting threat penalty (+2 additional penalty for one deck)

Enemies under the Black Gate: 2x Oliphaunt