Intro

My sons (age 10 & 8) and I finished The Hobbit Saga and have moved on to the FotR Sagas. The 10 year old () loves min-maxing each turn and figuring out which complicated combo he can pull off next. The 8 year old () loves the narrative immersion into Tolkien's stories, jamming Eagles allies onto his board, and getting Gimli to swing for 14 damage against an enemy with 3 hit points. I'm somewhere in the middle, and try to fill in some strategic holes that their smart little brains might miss.

This is our Fellowship for the first box of the Saga campaign, which we tried to keep somewhat thematic. Staying 100% on-theme isn't reasonable, given our card pool, for 3 handed games. I think we did OK: Haldir and of course Galadriel meet the Book Fellowship in Lothlorian, and (in the book) Gloin is an important member of the Council of Elrond in Rivendell.

We are building using mostly: One core + the full SoM cycle; all Hobbit & LotR Saga expansions; VoI + the full Ringmaker cycles. The kids build their own decks. It is fun to see them digging through the binder to try to figure out combos and synergies.

Strategy

Splitting up the Hobbits is a bit of a bummer, but it was necessary to keep the kiddos happy and avoid more complicated multi-sphere builds. The 10 year old has the Leadership Deck with a focus on defense and questing, the 8 year old has the Tactics deck that smashes and (sometimes) defends, and I play Spirit / Lore with ranged support, healing, and attachments to give away.

This Fellowship works best with cross-deck teamwork to help with resources: Galadriel gets Steward of Gondor and in return Gloin gets Self Preservation (and, less importantly, Protector of Lórien). This way, Gloin can take undefended hits from weaker enemies or can tank defend against stronger ones (discarding for extra ), to earn resources every turn. The tactics deck is usually short on resources unless Horn of Gondor is found quickly. (If it was my deck, I'd drop some of the more expensive allies. But I've got to let the kid make his own mistakes.) Originally we'd planned for Parting Gifts to help redistribute wealth, but with the Steward on Galadriel, that is less useful and we'll likely drop it from the deck. We're considering proxying an additional copy or two of the Horn to make it easier to find.

Dúnedain Cache is for Gimli, which (combined with Legolas and Haldir) gives tons of attacking flexibility. This is especially important as the Leadership deck can pump out chump blockers, and Gloin + Sam want to engage enemies. As long as Haldir gets some kind of weapon from the Tactics deck early, most enemies become pretty easy to handle.

See the individual deck notes for within-deck thoughts.

Quest Log

(I'm not a big fan of the "Quest Log" feature and instead will be updating the description with our progress.)

The Black Riders & P.O.D.

Shadow of the Past (2019/06/26): We almost scooped after pulling multiple black riders early, which felt like terrible luck. But it worked out OK, as we discarded some of the nastier treacheries during hide tests. Getting Nenya on Galadriel on the first round turned out to be immensely important, as she saved a player from failing a hide test on literally every turn. We were able to establish decent boards within a few turns and got to Buckleberry Ferry in a satisfyingly close (but not too close!) finish in our first attempt. Good thing we didn't give up!

The Old Forest (2019/07/07): We all had a strong set of allies established quickly, soon able to get through multiple "2B" stages without any major challenge by questing for 20+ each turn. We ended up with a location-heavy staging area, and then disaster struck in the form of a bad draw, right as we moved to the third quest stage: The staging area at the start of the combat phase had two Long Trailers, a Grasping Root, Old Man Willow, The Withywindle, and three other locations! We could avoid engaging the Long Trailers for a turn, but couldn't handle the three round-robin attacks from Old Man Willow. It looked like we were going to lose at least one hero on only the second quest of our campaign. First to go would be Pippin...could we really stand losing a Hobbit hero this early? It seemed his fate was locked, so we discussed scooping and starting again. Then, realizing there was a slim glimmer of hope, we activated Mirror of Galadriel and fortuitously pulled (and kept, phew!) Stand and Fight, which we used to drop Elrond back into play. The Elf Lord graciously took the hit from Old Man Willow, and Pippin breathed a sigh of relief. Haldir took out the Grasping Root with a Black Arrow, and we survived to the refresh Phase with fewer allies but all our heroes still standing.

We quested heavy on the next turn, but made sure to keep back extra chumps for OMW. Winged Guardian saved the day, being revived by a tactics resource to defend over multiple turns. We took another round of attacks and OMW's forced threat raise was becoming a serious issue. (Though Gimli had stacked up 12 damage on him, so we'd earn that boon if we made it out alive.) Gandalf showed up to drop the threat for the Leadership deck, and OMW ran out of victory locations during their last attack on the 3rd turn, which kept the Tactics deck at 47 threat and safe for now. We finally got the Withywindle as the active location, and Galadriel dropped the threat of her own player yet again, ending the 3rd turn on Stage 3 with 49 threat. All-out questing on turn 4 gave us exactly the progress we needed to clear the Withywindle and the Quest stage, fleeing the Old Forest just in time.

Other notes: Bill the Pony's Hobbit health boost was essential, as Merry and Pippin each absorbed the "Remove from quest and take two damage" treachery. Elrond made four appearances and cleared the sleeping condition off Hobbits three different times in this game! We also realized that we may want to add Fortune or Fate to supplement Landroval in avoiding perma-death.

Overall: It was a fantastically thematic experience, as the first 45 minutes was a (relatively) gentle walk through the forest. That was followed by several minutes of sheer panic as we realized the gravity of our situation, which flowed into a desperate hour-long struggle to get ourselves out of the mess we stumbled into.

Fog on the Barrow Downs (2019/07/16): First loss for our Fellowship! We got set up nicely early, with most of the key attachments in play by turn 2 (other than Citadel Plate on Gimli, which never came into hand, and ended being a big problem later). I knew we'd end up splitting up for this quest, so we stalled a several turns questing to make sure we were all prepared. Unfortunately, we didn't realize ahead of time that whoever ends up in a Barrow loses all their allies, so most of that stall time was for naught, and our threats were creeping up by the time we got to Stage 3 & 4. Two players needed to valiantly fight their way out of Barrows, and we were beaten up badly but in position for victory as we set up for our final quest phase, 2+ hours into the game. We had enough to win the game, but the tactics player tragically pulled another Great Barrow as the last card into the staging area! With Gimli already having too much damage to defend, we lost Merry to the wight. We hoped to revive him later with Fortune or Fate, but it was not to be. Without Merry, the tactics player lacked enough and resources to escape the barrow before the leadership player threated out. Game over.

Overall I loved the theme and design of this quest, though we're debating skipping a second attempt and moving on to A Knife In The Dark, minus the FotBD boon. (Since this is a POD quest it doesn't feel like cheating too badly.) I'm sure we'd play it more quickly the 2nd time and be at a lower risk of threat, now that we know allies are wiped when you get trapped in a barrow. Still, it is a big time commitment and knowing that bad luck alone could suck us back into the Barrows again, at the cusp of victory, feels pretty daunting.

Update #1: We decided to try a 2nd attempt. It played out the same way, though this time we stalled at the beginning not on purpose, but because we lacked the cards to move quickly. Eventually we made it to Stage 4. After escaping 3 barrows, with threat creeping up, we mustered a huge burst that would be sufficient to win. With 2 cards left to draw for staging, the encounter deck got a fresh shuffle with only 2 Great Barrows left in it and...one barrow hit the table. I was eliminated in the barrow due to a threat-boosting shadow card, and we failed the quest. So close again!

Update #2: We set out on a 3rd attempt. Eager to get past this quest, we removed the yellow-ringed encounter cards, which crucially drops the total number of Great Barrow cards from 5 to 3. Given our previous near-misses, we assumed this would make the quest laughably easy. We were wrong -- it was still quite difficult, especially because the Leadership deck got off to a slow start. Two timely Event cards allowed us to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat: A desperate Stand and Fight+Vassal of the Windlord gave us an emergency one-cost chump blocker on the next-to-last turn, preventing the loss of a hero; and A Test of Will canceled a party-killing Chill Fog on the final quest push. Finally, our heroes stumbled out of The Barrow Downs and on to the next quest!

Final thought on Fog on the Barrow Downs: I suspect this quest is not well-balanced at high player counts due to the nasty enemy & location effects, and the likelihood of drawing extra barrows increases dramatically with more players. Even for a POD it felt pretty unforgiving at the full difficulty (though we were a single card away from victory on our first attempt). We're all happy to pack this one back in the box for a long, long time. Also: The Ho! Tom Bombadil! Boon (a neutral, zero-cost, use-it-once-and-remove-from-campaign Test of Will) doesn't seem like enough of a reward for the struggle. :)

A Knife in the Dark: Bill Ferny was an early headache for us: we took his threat raise each round, so we could keep Ringwraiths out of the deck and boost our threat to engage him ASAP. Unfortunately, once we had high enough threat to engage, he (twice!) got bounced back to the staging area by a shadow card. So he ended up hanging around a lot longer than we had hoped for. Galadriel was still digging for Nenya and Unexpected Courage well into the 2nd Stage, so the other two decks hadn't benefitted from her threat drop or draw at all. Fortunately, we had most of our other essential attachments equipped early, so we were able to handle the numerous Riders from Mordor and Bree spies without much difficulty. With a clear staging area, we had the luxury of stalling for an extra turn in Midgewater to get more allies out, and then bursted onto Weathertop with only a single Ringwraith card in the deck. Thanks to The Galadhrim's Greeting, everyone was 42 or lower at that point, so we avoided exhausting The One Ring and skipped engaging the Witch-king right away while we fought off all other Nazgul. Gimli was ranged with a ready effect and huge attack buffs, so was taking down 2x enemies per round on his own. Once they were clear, we all ganged up on the Witch-king to complete the final stage pretty easily, without any real risk of losing a hero.

Whereas Fog on the Barrow Downs seemed especially difficult with 3 players, I think this quest was made easier at the higher player count. Still, I'll give our group some credit: The teamwork was excellent, as we were all buying attachments for each other, using sentinels to keep other players' vulnerable characters alive, and joining forces on ranged attacks to one-shot most enemies. (Also, a shout-out to Elrond for keeping the condition treachery from being anything more than a mild nuisance.) It was a fun quest that gave a fair challenge without feeling like a grind, which we needed after the barrow downs. I think maybe 3-4 player games should force an additional Ringwraith into the game at Stage 3; aside from that, this quest was pretty much perfect.

Flight to the Ford: We pulled the "stop the quest immediately without resolving" treachery as the first encounter card of the first turn, which turns out to be quite helpful: Because there's so much staging threat at the start of the game, we were unlikely to make significant progress on the quest this round anyway, if we even succeeded. Our threats were still low enough that weren't going to be forced to engage any of the Nazgul, so that treachery effectively skipped two encounter cards and gave us a free extra resource+planning phase, similar to "In the House of Tom Bombadil" from Fog on the Barrow Downs. Great! By the third turn, we had the staging area under control and all our important attachments equipped: The Steward, Nenya, a couple weapons, Self Preservation, multiple readying effects, Gimli with ranged, you name it! We were ready to move to the 2nd stage and cruise to victory.

Turn 3 combat phase: The player, defending last with one ready ally, is going to chump block a Ringwraith. It is drawing two shadows because the Ring is exhausted due to a prior treachery. The enemy pulls a Piercing Cry shadow: "This enemy makes another attack after this one." No problem, Aragorn can sentinel defense for the 2nd attack. Two more shadow cards, and we get ANOTHER Piercing Cry. Uh oh...we were not prepared for this guy to attack 3X in a single phase! Gimli, loaded up with damage already so he can OHK this Ringwraith, steps in to defend. Two more shadow cards, including Lure of the Ring: +2 , Gimli is lost. Our perfect set-up is ruined on literally the worst possible string of shadow cards. We reset the game. (Of course, only after we scooped did we remember that we could cancel attacks by taking a burden, which we absolutely would have. I expect we would have easily gone on to win with only two burdens total. Oh well.)

2nd try was much rougher: No Steward, no Unexpected Courage, and Nenya didn't come out until turn 4. Oof. We only survived Stage 1 thanks to Feint and the Ettenmoors location, which skips dealing shadow cards while draining the Ring-bearer's life. After a tough multi-turn battle to fight off the initial wave of Nazgul, we finally made it to the 2nd stage. On the 2nd turn at 2B, Frodo was down to 2 life and we had the Ford as the active location. With 3 engaged Nazgul but only a couple of locations in the staging area, we decide to go for broke and all-out quest: We need to make 17 progress to clear the Ford + Stage, which wins the game. (But only if all Nazgul are engaged when we clear the Ford! Unengaged ones won't be washed away, and we can't win if any are in play.) First card (treachery): "Find a Nazgul in the encounter deck or discard pile and either put it in the staging area or engage with a player". This was, without a doubt, the best possible treachery to pull: there were only 6 cards left in the encounter deck, and it turned out that two were Nazgul. We engaged a Fell Rider with the 1st player and now knew we had to survive 2 more cards without pulling the remaining baddie. Shuffle. 2nd card: A treachery that removed some willpower and knocked out a couple allies. That will cut our quest close but there's no way we're using the ring to cancel it and redraw; the risk of staging that remaining Nazgul is too great. 3rd card coming...please don't be Nazgul, please don't be Nazgul...Pathless Country! We cleared the Ford, flooded four Nazgul down the Bruinen, and finished the quest with 3 to spare. Frodo, with only 2 life remaining, survived the Evil Wound and arrived at last in Rivendell!

To summarize: We lost our first attempt after a nearly-perfect first couple of rounds, and then scraped out a tough victory with a terrible draw streak to start the 2nd game. Which tells me this quest really isn't too hard as long as you can avoid pulling (either via luck or cancellation) some of the nastier shadow effects and treacheries at the wrong time. I don't begrudge the bad luck on attempt #1, especially because we lost after only 15 minutes or so. The quest was loads of fun and the theme was spot-on, especially on the final stage. It would be fun to play standalone, though it really shines in the context of the campaign. We took 3 burdens, including the really nasty "exhaust the ring or draw an extra encounter card" condition, which is disappointing but not terrible. In the spirit of the campaign, we're going to keep them rather than replay.

Onward to The Road Darkens!