25 - The Battle of Five Armies (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 think I'm probably done building Dwarf decks (for a while at least) after completing this saga box. I tried throwing a couple of different strategies at this quest, but ultimately a trusty Dwarf deck is what I was able to beat it with. My first successful attempt was really fun and thematic, with Lure of Moria readying all of my characters at the final push, and then dropping in Beorn and a small army of Eagles in to finish off Bolg.

The Dain/Thorin deck is pretty standard fare, with Steward getting played across table to Oin. Support of the Eagles on Thalin really helped a ton with the Battle and Siege questing (and so did the Eagle allies, since the dwarves are great at getting Willpower and Attack on the table, but really struggle with the Siege quest portion).

There were a few games where I just got wrecked by the encounter deck due to some ugly combinations, but these decks fared quite well through all stages of the quest. I think this was a perfectly fitting end to The Hobbit Saga, and can't wait to dive into the Against The Shadow cycle, since I have yet to play any quest from those Adventure Packs. Also, it will be nice to not play dwarves.