30 - A Shadow of the Past (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 still have yet to play through any of the saga campaign myself, so I have decided that for the purposes of this progression series I am not going to be playing any of these quests in campaign mode. This way I can explore all of the cards a little more easily, as well as save some of that fun for myself when I get around to playing these boxes with a full card pool. As such, these quests are played without any boons and burdens, and without any thought as to how well the heroes would fare in the later quests in the same deluxe box.

After testing this quest out a few times, I decided that a low starting threat, minimal allies (at least until stage 3) and ways to ready are far and away the most important part of this quest, so I built these two decks based entirely around that idea. The Hobbit deck is pretty standard fare, optionally engaging Black Riders on your own terms and letting Sam and Merry take care of them. Sam can be a great defender with Hobbit Cloak, Gondorian Shield and Fast Hitch, while Beregond with Unexpected Courage can easily handle the Nazgul as well. Barliman can be invaluable with some shadow cards that might otherwise force and undefended attack.

I found it best to play fairly slowly and safely, especially because the Beregond deck can handle taking hits from the Nazgul without too much issue. By the time stage 3 is reached, there should be plenty of Willpower on the table to handle questing and hide tests to get to the Ferry. Asfaloth, Northern Trackers, and Out of the Wild can all help remove locations so it is possible to complete the quest, which can otherwise really drag along with some unlucky draws. I had one game last 23 rounds because I kept drawing locations and could never actually travel to the Ferry, but that was some incredibly bad luck with not getting any Black Riders to pull out hide tests.