36 - To Catch An Orc (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!

Much like my fellowship for The Fords of Isen, this is probably not the 100% optimal way to beat this quest, however I wanted to try out all of the new Doomed cards from the deluxe box, and built these decks around making use of that idea. Not having your entire deck available isn't too much of an issue for either deck, with Hama able to snag some of the more important events for one deck, and Dwarven Tomb to do the same in the other. An ideal opening hand for both decks would include some of the more potent doomed cards like Legacy of Númenor and Deep Knowledge in order to get a head start at questing. Beregond, chump blockers, and Feint seemed to do a decent job of handling the orcs in the early game, so having a high threat didn't really cause any issues. There isn't a lot of questing power available, so leaving enemies in the staging area isn't the ideal way to go anyways.

Asfaloth and West Road Traveller can help clear out some locations with nasty travel effects, while The The Galadhrim's Greeting should be played across table, since Aragorn can help reset the threat of his deck. Hama should be the target for defending Mugash after he is captured, so the defense deck has a few ways to make sure that they can be the ones to engage Mugash and take him down. A well timed Sneak Attack + Gandalf should be plenty do take out Mugash in just one turn with Imrahil and Hama attacking, so barring any incredibly unpleasant complications it shouldn't be too difficult to quest through Stage 3 once the Doomed deck has a number of it's spirit allies on the table.

I did have a few issues if Mugash came out incredibly early, or if the treachery that forces you to put locations into the staging area hits at a really terrible time with no A Test of Will, but these decks performed fairly well and allowed me to mess around a little bit with the Doomed keyword, which was a fun and very different way to play. I feel like it works very well with quests like this that have time counters that force you to move quickly, trading threat for a way to advance your board state.