Playing Caldara in a bisphere deck. In the Ring Goes Suth with 2 more friends. We just past to 3b and the Watcher combats. We only had for attack: Radagast, Gandalf and Haldir beating up to 4. The total attack was 9. So we only deal 4 damage to Watcher, when we need 6 damage to get Frodo free and commit and win the next round before Watcher kill us. We thought a lot how to increase our power... Oh wait, i had a West-rider (the ally that changes of controller paying an spirit resource), and i had 2 resources on Eowyn. Ok nice, and all the allies were just ready by Strength Arms... but, not enough, we would need only one more.... wait! Let me check my discard pile.... yeah! Another West-rider!!! I use Caldara to bring to me, and i pay to pass him to the player attacker... cool, we deal 6 damage to Watcher.

Next round we made a 'run you fools' commit a lot and yes, we won. Epic Caldara in bisphere deck!!! 156 score in 3 players. A very good score... epic score ^^

It was not an epic moment, it was more like a biggest plot twist in the history of my LOTR LCG playing.

I was trying out my new two cooperative decks (Eowyn, Glorfindel, Sam and Haldir, Beregond) on Road to Rivendell. Everyrthing went ok although there was one sleeping sentry in very bad moment, but I did it to the stage 3. Staging area was clear and I had questing power of 15 (many allies died for sleeping sentry and other nasty treacheries). I ned 7 points for the quest card+ active location. I also had 1 secret paths in my hand. I did not send Arwen for quest cos she had 1 damage.
1st card: sleeping sentry. Ok, good that I did not send her. But 1 ally died and everyone is exhausted. Luckily I am gonna win the game this round so I wont need them...
2nd card: Orc Ambush.



There were no orc enemies in the staging area so I had to return all orcs in discard pile. I RETURNED 16 ORC ENEMIES TO THE STAGING AREA!!! I was laughing like I was crazy when returning orcs 1 by 1 to the staging area.
3rd card (cos of surge) was some location. Both decks raised threat by 20 or something.

They crushed me in the same round. 14 attacks went undefended.

Oh man that sucks!

It is an epic fail ^^

Ouch…

Not so much an epic moment, as what felt like an epic set of games... I recently acquired the second half of the dwarrodelf Nightmare cycle, and the Heirs of Numenor Nightmare decks. I'd previously been struggling to get passed the Watcher in the Water Nightmare, mainly due to having very few cards in my deck that can pass The Doors of Durin.

So yesterday evening, I made a few tweaks to the deck I've been using (Gandalf, Elrond and Glorfindel), and tried again...

I beat Watcher in the water after a lucky hit on doors of durin, then beat the long dark Nightmare twice, and Foundations of Stone Nightmare. Then I went for Shadow and Flame Nightmare, lost the first but beat it on the second and third attempts. Then I followed up with a victory over Nightmare Peril in Pelargir.

Didn't have time to go for the remaining heirs quests, but beating five new nightmare quests in a row in one evening felt pretty epic.

Epic evening ^^

Not so much an epic moment, as what felt like an epic set of games... I recently acquired the second half of the dwarrodelf Nightmare cycle, and the Heirs of Numenor Nightmare decks. I'd previously been struggling to get passed the Watcher in the Water Nightmare, mainly due to having very few cards in my deck that can pass The Doors of Durin.

So yesterday evening, I made a few tweaks to the deck I've been using (Gandalf, Elrond and Glorfindel), and tried again...

I beat Watcher in the water after a lucky hit on doors of durin, then beat the long dark Nightmare twice, and Foundations of Stone Nightmare. Then I went for Shadow and Flame Nightmare, lost the first but beat it on the second and third attempts. Then I followed up with a victory over Nightmare Peril in Pelargir.

Didn't have time to go for the remaining heirs quests, but beating five new nightmare quests in a row in one evening felt pretty epic.

how in the world did you beat nightmare shadow and flame and foundations that easily..... unless you got MEGA MEGA lucky or spent a while building decks very specifically for those quests this does not sound doable at all......

Did you use Galadriel hero or Burning Brand for Shadow and Flame? If not how on earth did you beat it second and third attempt without Blazing Grip or Morgoth's Bidding crippling your characters.

EDIT: I guess you could have removed the shadow card from Durin's Bane every turn with Gandalfs Staff..... AND he can be the recipient of Burning Brand as well..... yet another reason the Gandalf hero is way overpowered.... if you play solo and get his staff out he just shuts down Durins Bane COMPLETELY. At least even Galadriel cannot guarantee safety as many doomed cards can raise your threat and stop her from keeping you on 0 threat and Burning Brand can only be put on Lore heroes so you would need to load them up with defense boosters big time or have LOTS of available healing for them to be able to defend against Durin's Bane each turn or alternatively would need to get a Song of Wisdom AND THEN burning brand on your non-lore defensive hero. All of this requires a minimum of two cards and potentially more whereas with Gandalf you just need his staff and his stellar base stats...

DOUBLE EDIT: Oh wait thats right the staff can't remove shadow cards from a unique enemy which Durin's Bane is.... my bad....

yeah still no idea how you did this second attempt and then beat it on the third attempt AS WELL.

I've beaten pretty much all the other nightmare quests (other than foundations and the new HoN ones which I don't have yet) and have found this one to easily be the hardest to date (again excluding HoN as I haven't tried it) and have gotten stomped by it like ten times or something so I'm just shocked at how easily and quickly you were able to beat it, not implying anything at all it just seems wrong.... or some insanely good luck.

writing in a hurry before I leave for work, so this may not be too coherent:

No Galadriel or Burning Brand, this was still the Gandalf, Elrond and Glorfindel deck. It's similar to the one that’s been discussed at length in the strategy section (though not identical).

There was a fairly large army of Eagles involved, along with Arwen, Northern Trackers, and a few other allies.

I used some early threat reduction to give myself a couple of turns of breathing room before having to deal with Durin's Bane, and quested through the first stage as quickly as possible. Gandalfs ability and Vilya were key to pumping out allies very quickly, and sacrificing lots of eagles to build up a beefy eagle of the misty mountains, who eventually had enough defence to deal with the attacks unscathed. Desendant of Thorondor was a good sacrifice here, as he deals the balrog 2 when you play him, sacrifices himself as a defender (but has more then 1 hit point so nasty shadow effects don't kill him and leave the attack undefended), and then deals another two when he leaves play, and then makes the misty mountain eagle stronger.

Gandalf, Glorfindel and the allies made a pretty strong fighting force for attacking, and Flame of Arnor helped, sometimes using wizard pipe to put an expensive card on top of my deck.

Blazing Grip didn't hurt too much, as I defended with allies with more than one hit point (most of the time), and never with my heroes with their necessary attachments.

Morgoth's bidding is more annoying, but I didn't see it too often, and had sufficient allies to defend multiple times.

Getting through the quest stages as quickly as possible was fairly key, to minimize the number of times durin's bane could actually attack.

Edit: to fix some typos.

Hmmmmm well you've done two things! Impress me and also further my opinion that the Gandalf hero is far too powerful

Your use of Eagles of the Misty Mountains is pretty clever (no attachments to remove, more than one health and after sacrificing several other eagles they can actually block most damage from Durin's Bane altogether, especially buffed with Arwen). Thorondor is also a good pick!

So good work on your strategy and win! It does look like Gandalf was quite largely responsible however as without him you wouldn't have been able to play allies so fast. I also still don't think a nightmare deck like that should be so easily beatable.

So far I beat Nightmare Shadow and Flame with a Dwarf deck. Nori keeping my threat at 0 felt kind of cheese, but it got the job done. I do want to see if I can rack up a victory without one of the power decks.

So far I beat Nightmare Shadow and Flame with a Dwarf deck. Nori keeping my threat at 0 felt kind of cheese, but it got the job done. I do want to see if I can rack up a victory without one of the power decks.

Yeah like I'm tempted to use Galadriel but I don't want to have to use her just to beat it I want to do it with my normal decks =\

I've come so **** close several times... thought I had it once for sure and then got decimated. I've also lost a few times during the first turn and once on staging as well though =P

• Refresh Phase, Untap Boromir 4 times, +4 Threat, +4 tokens on quest card

Can´t be bothered to look for it right now but IIRC, abandoned tools was changed so it can only be used once per turn.

I think it was in a nigthmare quest.

Hmm might be.

Guess I´ll go home and have a look at the NM cards.

And there is nothing in the FAQ that says you can't exhaust Boromir 4 times. But

You are correct about the Nightmare Quest FFM. Then you can't exhaust 4 times.

Seems like indisputable scientific evidence about the tools.

Also:

Has someone claimed that you can´t exhaust Boromir 4 times?

Seems like indisputable scientific evidence about the tools.

Also:

Has someone claimed that you can´t exhaust Boromir 4 times?

Yes Okay, maybe not.

Last round in Rivendel Nmare, 3 players, we were going good, very good. But a Crevain is in staging. One has Test of Will but cant use. We fear the worst: an sleeping centry or Orc ambush. Omg! We can't kill it!!! No Hands upon the Bow, one Thorondor, but not enough to kill it..., no way. One friend says: i have .... (which would you think? ^^): Saruman!!! All people raising 3 points saying 'yeah! sure!'. Crevain was out of game and we could cancel treachery. Finally next cards revealed weren't nasty treachery, but anyway: Saruman was EPIC.

Yes Saruman is quite interesting card. Give you a lot if versatility in different ways. 1 card per deck very useful.

Had a pretty epic moment today with GrandSpleen. We were playing A Knife in the Dark campaign mode and I was running Galadriel/Pippin/Sam to go with his Celeborn/Haldir/Legolas. We were about to clear Midgewater and quest phase 2B and make our way onto quest phase 3 where you add all the Nazgul to the staging area.

We were in pretty good shape and our threats were low enough that we wouldn't have to engage the Witch King or a couple of the nazgul. Unfortunately there were already 2 spys in the staging area because we had to travel to Midgewater. So, we would probably have to fight 2 or 3 spys and 2 nazgul this turn. Not great, but manageable. We commit to the quest and what comes out?

And of course, since we are playing campaign mode:

He drew the unwanted attention and was only questing with Celeborn, so we had to shuffle another ringwraith into the deck. Of course, then all the Nazgul and the Witch King appeared in the staging area and immediately engaged me. All of the sudden I had 9 enemies engaged with me , 8 of which were attacking for 4+. Also, since I had two Riders from Mordor, all of my characters had -2 willpower, so I needed someone with 4 willpower to block the Witch King. Luckily, Sam got +6 to all his stats from the engagement, so he was able to block without taking any damage (1 attack blocked). Another lucky thing was that there were only 2 cards left in the deck, so I didn't have to worry about many nasty shadow effects.

Besides Sam, all I had in play at that point was a Defender of the Naith (w/ Celeborn), a Silvan Tracker (w/ Celeborn), Galadhrim Minstrel, Bill the Pony, an exhausted Galadriel's Handmaiden, and then Sam had one more action (fast hitch) at +6 attack/defense. The defender blocked the one lighter attack, taking no damage (2 blocked). I played tree people to pull back the Handmaiden, ready my defender, and put another defender in play. Now my two defenders could block two enemies with 4 attack and take one damage each (4 blocked). Then I played feigned voices to pull back a defender (5 blocked) and ready the other defender. The Silvan tracker blocked a 4 attack, taking 2 damage (6 blocked). The remaining 3 were chump blocked with my remaining defender, Bill, and minstrel. In summary, 9 enemies blocked, only 3 allies killed, no hero damage, and I even had Sam available to attack for 7 and take out a couple Nazgul with the help of Haldir, Legolas, and some archers.

Two sneak attack Gandalfs the next round let us take out a few more enemies. Another turn or two later and all the enemies were killed and we won the quest!

He had to put progress tokens on the enemies so we could remember which ones had already attacked.

That is pretty sweet. Gotta love Silvans! And Sam! Even though they don't tend to defend well, they somehow manage to kick butt anyway.

Hmmmmm well you've done two things! Impress me and also further my opinion that the Gandalf hero is far too powerful

Your use of Eagles of the Misty Mountains is pretty clever (no attachments to remove, more than one health and after sacrificing several other eagles they can actually block most damage from Durin's Bane altogether, especially buffed with Arwen). Thorondor is also a good pick!

So good work on your strategy and win! It does look like Gandalf was quite largely responsible however as without him you wouldn't have been able to play allies so fast. I also still don't think a nightmare deck like that should be so easily beatable.

Finally got around to trying Into Ithilien and Seige of Cair Andros Nightmare - Won Ithilien first try, and cair andros on the second attempt (bad starting draw game one, got overwhelmed too quickly). Gandalf was largely responsible there too, so yes I agree he is perhaps a bit too strong. I'm having fun playing him at the moment, but it might be better long term if he was toned down in some way.