A Shadow of the Past: Thematic Saga Campaign Part 1

These decks are designed for A Shadow of the Past, the first quest in the Lord of the Rings Saga campaign.

Normal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6dLdFFDIvA

Nightmare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gao2RDQHEIA

Quest Overview

A Shadow of the Past portrays the hobbits' departure from The Shire and their attempts to hide from the Nazgul. The quest includes a 'Hide' mechanic that requires you to carefully manage your willpower. For this reason, both decks include a lot of willpower boosts and have lots of readying effects in order to make the Hide tests easier to manage.

Deck One: Fast Hitching Hobbits

This deck uses the classic Black Riders hobbit lineup of Sam Gamgee, Merry and Pippin. It aims to pass Hide tests through willpower buffs such as Frodo's Intuition, Protector of Lórien, Halfling Determination and Rosie Cotton. To keep things thematic, almost all of the allies are hobbits who could be expected to appear in and around The Shire. The only exception is Errand-rider, who is here because he is very helpful for resource smoothing and passing spare resources to the second deck.

Deck Two: Guided by Galadriel

This is a support deck that uses the 'hobbit leftovers' of Folco Boffin and Fatty Bolger. We wanted to make use of Tom Cotton as well, but it felt like a lot of effort to make him work in a scenario where willpower is so crucial. Ultimately we went with Galadriel as our sixth hero, partly because she has a general level of 'influence' over Middle Earth and thus could reasonably lend her willpower to the hobbits from afar. Beyond thematic reasons, she is really amazing for this scenario because Nenya allows us to perform a couple of cool tricks.

• First, you can use Nenya to boost any character by 4 during a Hide test, provided the test is during the quest phase. This gives a very large safety net in terms of committing characters to those tests. There are also cards in Nightmare mode that prevent you from using more than 2 characters for hiding, so the fewer bodies you can use to succeed, the better.

• Another thing about Nenya is that you can go higher than +4 by giving Galadriel a willpower boost before triggering Nenya. This can be done via cards like Protector of Lórien, Elrond's Counsel or Courage Awakened.

• You can also do a neat combo with Galadriel and Rosie Cotton where you 1) quest with Rosie, 2) ready her with Fast Hitch, and 3) boost Rosie's willpower with Galadriel. This allows you to get double value out of Rosie since she is committed to the quest AND can add her willpower to a hobbit hero using her own Action. This makes her great for manipulating willpower in the event that high cards are discarded during a Hide test.

In terms of ally choices, we tried to keep things thematic by using hobbits like the Curious Brandybuck and Bilbo Baggins. Many of the cards are support characters and attachments because the purpose of this deck is really to support Deck One by passing attachments across the table.

Overall Strategy

• Deck One wants to get Sam Gamgee powered up with defensive boosts and a Fast Hitch so that he can defend the Nazgul enemies. Merry gets the Daggers of Westernesse and a Fast Hitch so that he can attack twice for 7-12, depending on what buffs you have available.

• Deck Two wants to get Nenya and Unexpected Courage onto Galadriel so that she can be used for drawing cards, hiding, and boosting willpower. I've also found it helpful to play a 2 cost spirit ally on the first turn, so that the ally can quest and be ready for a hide test (thanks to Galadriel's passive ability).

• The decks run six side quests because they are very useful for stalling at Stage 1B while building up your board state. For this reason, we always mulligan if we don't get a side quest in either opening hand. The chosen side quests feel thematic since they represent things the hobbits might have been doing while hiding from the Nazgul (doubling back, scouting ahead, and gathering information). Similarly, Keep Watch is something that the hobbits would need to do, but is another thematic win by representing the presence of the Dunedain on the borders of The Shire.

• During the game, Deck One should handle all combat, and Deck Two should try to avoid engaging enemies. The deck has barely any attack power at all, so you need to cancel The Ring Draws Them if it means putting enemies engaged with Deck Two.

• The hardest part of the game for these decks is the first turn, since that's when willpower is least plentiful. Things can go south if you get a bad draw and need to make Hide tests before bodies are on the table.

• We found it helpful to put Hobbit Pony, Protector of Lórien and Friend of Friends onto Frodo Baggins. This is because many of the cards require the first player to do a Hide test, so being able to hold Frodo back (thanks to the hobbit pony) leaves a solid 3 hero available to perform those tests if needed. If not, throw him on his pony and commit him to the quest!

Possible Card Changes

Reflecting on the games, I think I would swap 1 Raise the Shire for a third copy of Staff of Lebethron, just to speed up Sam's ability to defend safely. Deck One could also run Tighten Our Belts to generate resources, but we beat the quest without it.

Thanks for reading and see you in The Old Forest!