34 - The Morgul Vale (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!

So many cards in this cycle helped flesh out mono sphere decks, so I figured that since I used monosphere Spirit and Leadership decks for The Blood of Gondor that I would finish off the cycle using Lore and Tactics. This quest can be fairly punishing, I actually never managed to beat it with testing decks (including The One Deck) prior to building this fellowship.

I do really enjoy the idea of having three successive boss fights, and the quest does a good job at making you feel like you are racing against the clock. Beregond with Gondorian Shield can handle pretty much all of the defensive needs against the bosses, while the smattering of allies in the tactics deck usually can pick up the slack. The Lore deck can do a really good job at neutralizing many of the enemies, leaving them trapped either in the staging area or engaged with a player. Thalin is pretty much there just to deal with the Bats, as well as to attach a Dwarrowdelf Axe to help deal with the Nazgul.

Lore has its fair share of larger allies, so Elf-stone can be used to help cheat them into play so that Beravor can be used for her card draw instead of questing (which is fairly necessary early game since both decks lack much in the way of willpower). Between all of the traps and threat reduction in the staging area, it wasn't too difficult to keep threat manageable so that I could clear a location each round and not have too many enemy attacks to actually have to worry about. Feinting or trapping Murzag and Alcaron so that they can't attack is a big help to slowing down how many enemies/attacks you will be taking.

If you can get past the first two bosses, the Nazgul of Minas Morgul is pretty much a cake walk. It not being immune to player card effects gives so many options to work around its damage reduction. Between Ranger Bow, Hail of Stones, Beorning Beekeeper, Farmer Maggot, and Spear of the Citadel I almost never had to even take an attack from it, meaning that all these decks really need to do is be able to beat the first two bosses. There certainly are some combos in the encounter deck that can cause some problems, but I think these decks can perform very well as long as you don't get unlucky with too many copies of Morgul Vale in the staging area.

I really enjoyed Against the Shadow, and would probably say it is my favorite cycle so far. I'm excited to move onto The Ring-Maker, since I have actually played and beaten all of those quests previously (though I can't say that I'm looking forward to Nin-in-eilph).