41 - The Ring Goes South (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!

Diving back into the Saga content. I'm not playing this in campaign mode, so I don't have to worry about Boons, Burdens or whether or not this hero lineup will work well in subsequent quests. Without any of those restrictions in place, I think this was the easiest quest of the saga up to this point, so I'm excited to see how I fare playing it when I eventually do my full campaign play through.

These decks more or less built themselves. I knew I wanted to use Gandalf since I have never played with him before, and since this quest punishes you for engaging enemies I figured I'd try to keep threat fairly low and use a bunch of traps and Haldir of Lórien to keep the wolves from ever leaving the staging area. I played using Frodo Baggins from The Black Riders, as his cancellation effect is much more useful with these decks than his Road Darkens counterpart.

The Haldir deck is fairly straightforward, combo of a trap deck and Haldir deck. With a Dagger of Westernesse (or two) he should have no issues picking off the Wargs as they arrive into staging, and the variety of traps available should handle all of the rest without much issue. Unseen Strike and Black Arrow can usually help take out the Watcher and the Warg Chieftan right as they arrive. The smattering of allies can be used to chump in Stages 3 and 4 if needed (which is rare), for the most part you don't want too many on the board so that you can take a few of those threat raising treacheries without issue.

The Gandalf deck provides all of the Willpower and location control needed to push through this quest (since the other deck will usually only be sending Mirlonde). Gandalf with Arwen Undómiel and some Lembas should be more than enough to handle the attacks from the Watcher, and Flame of Anor can help get the 6 damage on it if somehow Haldir and Legolas aren't enough. With Expert Treasure-hunter never missing, this deck should have more than enough card draw to use Gandalf's Staff to help the trap deck.