4 - A Journey to Rhosgobel (Progression Series)

This is another fellowship continuing on in my goal to play through all of the quests in release order to learn how all (or most) of the cards interact with one another. The first fellowship for the quests in the core set can be found here, and it contains a slightly more detailed overview of what I'm going for with building these decks. As always, any feedback is appreciated so that I can continue to learn more!

I actually never managed to beat this quest when originally playing with my physical cards, because I never intentionally tried to build a deck to beat it (Outlands + Dwarf Swarm reaaaally struggled here). This quest is all about the nasty treachery cards that are in it, so there needed to be a way to deal with them. I added Glorfindel, Eleanor and Gloin to this fellowship in order to continue using all of the heroes available to me to test their abilities.

The Tactics and Leadership deck is fairly straightforward, with Thalin questing to soften up the occasional enemy and Legolas as the only ranged hero I have access to to be able to get things killed off in a timely manner. Born Aloft and Winged Guardians help with some blocking and keeping some of the more important allies around if I can't cancel the treacheries fast enough. Gloin is a damage sponge, especially once he gets Self-Preservation from the other deck, so I used Parting Gifts to spread some of his resources over to where they are needed (usually to Glorfindel, who also gets Steward so he can heal off some allies/heroes when needed and pay for some of the bigger Lore healing cards).

The Spirit and Lore deck is all about cancelling treacheries, healing, and card draw to find more healing and treachery cancelling. Eleanor + A Test of Will + Dwarven Tomb seems almost necessary to stay ahead of the damage, and having Glorfindel (with all of his resources) able to heal a little bit here and there was enough to keep me ahead of the curve for the most part. Denethor might actually be a slightly better choice in that role, with his scrying ability to help out even more with some of the nastier treacheries, but I've used him a few times and wanted to try out Glorfindel in a quest where his high threat cost really doesn't matter.