37 - Into Fangorn (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 tried to build a few different fellowships for this quest, and as long as there was a fair amount of Willpower on the table pretty much all of them were able to get the job done. So, like the previous quests I tried to explore using a bunch of cards that I haven't used before in this series (although that meant I ended up using a lot of familiar heroes). Ultimately, this final set of decks I settled on can usually beat Into Fangorn on turn 4, sometimes even managing to do so on turn 3 (which I believe is as fast as it can possibly be done).

I was a bit tired of using Dwarves after completing The Hobbit boxes, but the addition of Hidden Cache and Well-Equipped allowed me to change them up a little bit and try for a mining style deck. The general idea is still the same, getting a bunch of allies out to make use of Dain's willpower boost, but getting them on the table is a bit more fun than in the traditional dwarf deck. I played around with using Imladris Stargazer to make the discarding a bit more deterministic, but ultimately I was cruising through this quest so quickly that it didn't make sense wasting the two resources to play her and only get one use from her ability. King Under the Mountain, Expert Treasure-hunter, A Very Good Tale, Well-Equipped and Zigil Miner all mill through the deck trying to generate resources with Hidden Cache and guessing correctly with the miners, and then the deck should have plenty enough card draw to get allies on the table to power through the quest.

The Secrecy deck isn't super great, but can provide some interesting fun and let me use a lot of events I hadn't played before. There is a little bit of encounter deck manipulation along with some ways to boost Willpower. If this deck can get a few allies out early, it can easily help keep the threat in the staging area very low for the final push on Stage 3 with Gildor's Counsel, Risk Some Light and A Watchful Peace. A Watchful Peace is particularly good in this quest because the Hurons don't get shadow cards, guaranteeing that you will see that location again in staging on the next round. Saruman can also be incredibly useful in the final push, removing some threat from staging and providing some extra willpower. Because the goal is completing this quest so quickly, there really isn't any need for much threat reduction to stay in secrecy for long, though the dwarf deck does have Song of Eärendil to keep this deck in secrecy.