54 - Escape from Mount Gram (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!

Escape from Mount Gram is the only quest in this cycle that I had previously played (thanks to Seastan's Daily Challenges), so I had a few ideas on what I wanted to build going into this one. This quest is on the easier end as well, which allowed me to go a little bit goofy in a few places just so that I could try out some cards that I haven't ever used before, like [Taking Initiative](/card/04002, a handful of Secrecy cards, and some of the victory display shenanigans.

Sam Gamgee and Glorfindel are the starting heroes, as they can both quest and hopefully get some readying to be able to deal with some enemies until reinforcements arrive. The Glorfindel deck is a two hero only deck, because I want to guarantee that I find Rossiel to be able to make full use out of all of victory display things. Every enemy is an orc, and pretty much all of the locations are Underground, so once she gets some readying she should be questing for 4 and defending for 4 every turn.

The Hobbit deck isn't as set on needing a specific hero, just a specific sphere. So I included Bilbo Baggins and Pippin to guarantee Lore access regardless of which hero you manage to rescue first. The first few turns are pretty important for both decks, you really need to avoid getting location locked before getting some allies onto the table, or else that deck will just be stuck spinning its wheels until the other one can hopefully join them at a travel phase and merge staging areas. A few side quests are included to help stall a little bit after both decks meet up so that the Hobbits can dig for their third hero and both decks can get their board state a little more under control prior to shuffling in the Angmar Orcs encounter set.

Gildor's Counsel is frankly just ridiculous in 2-player (and Leaf Brooch can reduce the cost since that deck will be in secrecy up until traveling to the gate). Playing Gildor's Counsel on the round you're intending to progress to the final stage is a good idea, reducing the total cards revealed from 4 to 3. Then any additional copies can be used from there on to stall out the encounter deck allowing you to take out the bigger orcs and place all the necessary progress to win the game.