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.

Don't the fallen eagles that buff Eagles of the Misty Mountains count as attachments? I'm pretty sure Blazing Grip would take them out (although at least not undefended).

Hmmm you might be right!

Desperate Alliance runs a lot of well with dwarfs.

Each time i play the deck that i have i usually play DA 2 or 3 times. And it helps a lot, with the next combos: Thorin with Narvi's Belt and Stewards (and Zigil). Usually Thorin gets 6 resources each round (or more, for example, Hidden Caches with Zigil, or KingUnderMountain...).

The epic moment was: 2 players, plenty of orcs, 3 orcs engaged to each one (one of the enemies was a big troll), 3 orcs in staging..., a lot of new orcs were coming... we must make a 'runyoufools' or die forever.

Ok, epic moment --> Thorin reaches up to 15 resources (Zigil + Imladris get 2 Hidden Caches, the deck had 10 cards, and Caches were returned by Ered Nimrais). The other friend had Longbeard Mapmaker. You can see the great combo:

1. Desperate Aliance

2. Narvi's Belt getting lore resources

3. Add 15 wp to the quest by Longbeard Mapmaker

And we won sure. ^^ Epic Alliance!

Just beat Journey in the Dark two handed without the Balrog appearing.... I thought this was nigh impossible and only doable with Dain and co/Outlands/Gandalf Hero but just did it with my Silvan/Noldor decks!!!

So insanely happy and proud of myself right now hahahaha

Smashed through stage 1 on the third turn, would have cleared it faster except had a bunch of Mines of Mora appear so they soaked up a lot of progress. Also managed to use Power of Orthanc to get Grevious Wound out of play after it got attached to Glorfindel. Got to stage 2 and slayed three enemies right off the bat. Then on the second turn at stage 2 I had a very worrying moment where They Are Coming appeared and I got swarmed, had to feint and feigned voices two attacks defend 2 others and take one undefended. Had a hasty stroke to cancel any additional damage from the undefended attack. Managed to slay two more enemies but came up a point short. On the start of the next turn during planning I played Galadhon Archer and sneak attack Gandalf doing 5 damage to a Mordor Uruks and putting the last resource point on Stage 2 propelling me to stage 3 and reducing the counters on doom doom doom from 5 to 3. Huge push this turn and 5 progress on stage 3. Next turn travel to The Great Bridge, clear it and put another 5 progress on Stage 3, Doom doom doom now has 1 token left on it.....

Last turn I use Gildor's ability to swap a hasty stroke for a test of will and do my last big questing push, cancel a last copy of We Cannot Get Out (that would have killed many heroes and lead to a loss) and quested to victory right before the last token could be removed from doom doom doom!!!!!!!!!!!!

No Balrog to fight and only two burdens instead of 4, no fallen hero, no need for Fortune or fate!

FIRST GODDAMN ATTEMPT AS WELL WITH MY NEW SILVAN DECK/MODIFICATIONS TO DECK SINCE IM PLAYING A NEW CAMPAIGN! Literally could not have been sweeter!

The damage I had on characters in play due to SEVERAL copies of We Cannot Get Out appearing throughout the game as well as a couple of nasty attacks early on that did damage is as following:

Lore/spirit deck:

Elrond 3 damage, only 1 hitpoint remaining

Haldir 2 damage, only 1 hitpoint remaining

Glorfindel 4 damage, only 1 hitpoint remaining

Arwen 1 damage, only 1 hitpoint remaining

Frodo Baggins 1 damage, only 1 hitpoint remaining

Gildor Boon ally before I allowed him to leave play so I could play the Lore ally version, 2 damage, only 1 hitpoint remaining

Tactics/Leadership Deck

Celeborn 3 damage, only 1 hitpoint remaining

Elrohir, 4 damage, only 2 hitpoints remaining (elven mail attached)

Elladan, 2 damage, only 2 hitpoints remaining

So literally a single extra point of damage to most heroes would have resulted in a fallen hero and loss (the plan was to replay the stage till I could advance with only two burdens and no fallen heroes but I thought this would need to include fortune and fate for sure) and a single extra copy of We Cannot Get Out or even not being able to cancel that last one with the test of will I retrieved with Gildor would have also resulted in a loss. I only had ONE copy of Fool of a Took appear throughout the game and another copy would have also sealed my doom. I also had two shadow effects that affected the lore/spirit player even through Elrohir was defending with Sentinel that would have lost the game if the defending player had been the leadership/tactics deck as two defensive attachments would have been removed from Elrohir and he would have died from damage already on him and the damage done by these attacks (mines of moria shadow effect), this removed almost all attachments from the lore/spirit side however which wasn't very pleasant. I also fought both Great Cave Trolls and killed one. I also did not let a SINGLE ally leave play from being destroyed throughout the entire game so did not have Overcome By Grief attach to anyone at any point.

Still in shock over somehow managing to do this! SO MANY things could have gone wrong or not worked out and my hope was razor thin but several well timed cancellations, tricks and combos got me there!

Epic addition to my personal saga campaign. Horrible Horrible score considering I have no victory point boost from defeating the Balrog, had a million damage on heroes and a final threat of 43 for each player (had to lower it for both players a few times...) but don't care at all considering I managed this and only get two burdens, no fallen hero and no insanely hard to pull off Fortune or Fate combo again.

Very nice, I too thought it nigh impossible to get through Journey in the Dark without the Balrog showing up in a multiplayer game. Glad to hear that it's possible, and with an unexpected deck archetype!

3 players in Road to Rivendel Nmare mode. When we advance to 2b and a lot of enemies engaged with us:

One player had Erkbrand and he played lighting beacons. Only he defended all 8 orcs (with the nasty shadows of this scenario, canceling by his ability -of Erk-).

Next round same. ^^ Very good.

In Old Forest 3 players. A lot of good moments:

1. One player played 3 copies of Campfire Tales, in 2nd round. One next to one..., it's true.

2. One player played 3 copies of Elrond Counsil, one next to one, lol. Just when another player asked if he wanted to decrease his threat by grettings, or each player -2.

3. Last round: one players played 3 copies of Strengh of Arms, with Faramir boosting... raising the wp up to 130 points!!! Insane.

...i past to that player (to increase the Faramir's Boost): Rider (paying one spirit resource), Took (managing threat) and 2 heroes by 2 copies of Desperate Aliance. He also played Ever Vigilant on Faramir, and Atanator Book to return to play... lol 130 wp, true.

Also good moments like: Erkenbrand + GilGalad + Fate and Destiny; Defender of the West on Erestor; Taking Initiative killing an enemy with 2 hitpoints left..., well epic game, sure. 157 hcore finally.

I just drew four Blocking Wargs in a row followed by Southron Support. (And this is with the errata!). Just wrecked my board and led to a loss a few turns later.

Last saturday night, playing on OCTGN with Jban and Mndela...

Quest is Antlered Crown, which is renown for the draw-punishing mechanics, as some other quests in that cycle.

We have one questing deck (Galadriel, Grima, Balin), one doomed support deck (Aragorn (Lore), Frodo, Sam; both Jban's decks) and my Haldir fighting deck (Haldir, Beravor, Pippin).

Both the doomed support and the Haldir decks rely heavily on card draw so we were a little bit scared since the game before we got both quest attachments during first staging; however this time we get none first round and are able to build up our forces quickly: doomed makes us draw and gain resources, while questing starts churning out allies like never and Haldir kills all the few enemies that pop up. However staging is full of locations so we need to make a swift move and clear them, or we're gonna get overwhelmed by Time effects!

Good for us that both quest and support decks have trackers, but we really need to get them out quickly if we are to have a chance.

Round 2, staging: we get both attachments that damage for draw but we are able to quest pass stage I so they get immediately discarded. We have one tracker in play, but after passing quest locations in staging have +2 quest points. Bad.

End of round 2: we really need to speed up pace, Mndela in refresh is about to draw 5 by P&T when the impossible happens: Jban asks him to draw. Mndela at first doesn't understand so Jban shows us his Message from Elrond. For those of you who don't know Mndela, he really really really loves drawing cards (but I suspect we all do ), however, with a remarkably selfess act he agrees to giving the P&T away! Jban is then able to trigger Doomed combo, drawing his whole deck, giving us additional +2 resources, +4 cards AND resets our threat!

Next round we get 2 Trackers in play: Jban has another one in hand but no resources to pay for it but we absolutely need the third tracker to clear most of the locations in staging. Guess what? Message of Elrond again! He passes his Tracker to Mndela who plays it immediately (Tracker at the end of the round will be reshuffled in a 3-cards deck, so pretty good chances of drawing him again ).so we are able to clear a bunch of locations in the staging, which is now pretty empty sinc e enemies had no chance against Haldir and his forest of attachments.

Round 4: we are able to advance to stage 3 and Boss comes in: I play Feint and we wait for the next round in which we can damage him.

So, fifth and final round: we clear Raven Chief's Camp, Haldir feints him again then proceeds to one-shotting him with his Black Arrow and the help of a well-armed Silvan Tracker. GG, and final score of 104 (High Score, I believe).

It was a lovely game, I can confirm.

Yesterday also was epic: Anduin nmare with Faramir hero and Brand... ^^. My wp was up to 7 no more, Jban 1!, and Eu8 13 or around. Brand ready Beravor to draw (or Faramir if we need more attacks), and Idraen (she had a trackerbow).

My traps were very good, Mischief killing 1 snipper, Advice Warning (boosting Faramir a lot), Infighting, Ithilien Lookout discarded a spwan troll when no were Hill Troll in play, etc... all was played in the best just moment. And Brand had attack up to 7 points (and Erk defended, and no healers!). Very interesting game.

So I managed to beat Journey in the Dark before the Balrog appeared again but with my new hero line up. I decided to redo the saga campaign so that I would be ready with Halbarad replacing Celeborn when Treason of Saruman comes out. I've been dreading Journey in the Dark and after several concedes thought I may just have to beat it and leave the Balrog in play and take all four burdens with me. After 5 concedes on stage 2 and 3 concedes after setup (if at any point on stage 2 I knew I did not have enough counters on doom, doom, doom to finish the quest without the Balrog appearing I would concede and start again) I managed to pull it off!!!! I had to use my copy of Ho, Tom Bombadil earned from Fog on the Barrow Downs and remove it from the campaign pool, all three copies of Gandalf were used, first turn Asfaloth was CRUCIAL (and Darkened Hallway as one of the first locations during setup and instantly exploring it with Asfaloth without another location being revealed from its effect) and two test of wills (one cancelling fool of a took and the other canceling They Are Coming! on the first turn) were all used and it was an epic and ridiculously nerve wracking game. I managed to clear stage 1 on the second turn giving me lots of time to clear stage 2 (this was the fastest I had gotten to stage 2 in all my attempts) and managed to kill the first of the six enemies required to advance immediately. Within 2 more turns I had killed the Orc Chieftain and two more enemies. I managed to do this by using a sneak attack Gandalf during planning, drawing three cards with the effect and drawing a Dunedain Hunter and immediately playing it drawing an enemy from the encounter deck. Without this and two enemies appearing during one questing phase on the last possible turn left to kill the last two enemies required I would have failed. I got extremely lucky that on the last possible turn two enemies were revealed during staging!!! I killed these two easily and advanced immediately during the combat phase to stage 3 and the amount of counters on doom, doom, doom went down to 3. I easily placed 5 progress the following turn and easily dealt with what was revealed and what the quest stage had revealed the previous turn as I had built up a large force of allies (two Warden of Healings healing every single turn was also extremely crucial, this quest pumps out so much goddamn damage from treacheries, archery etc) and still had a last gandalf to immediately kill a lesser foe and help quest. The following turn I had Fool of a Took revealed.... I was extremely angry and shocked at my luck for a good 20 to 30 seconds before I realised I had Ho, Tom Bombadil in hand and could use it in this crucial moment! The second card revealed? GILDOR! Last turn a Many Pillared Hall and We Cannot Get out were revealed and I could easily place damage across various allies and easily quested to victory with a surplus of 14 or so willpower before the final counter of doom, doom, doom could be revealed and avoided the Balrog by the absolute slimmest margin thanks to plenty of luck, patience and strategy. I had to keep a pen and note book next to me the last few nights whilst attempting this feat to plan out exactly what I needed to do to try and attempt this feat, thank goodness I did as I found it extremely helpful.

I was playing The Weather Hills with my Tactergorn (Tactics Aragorn)-Halbarad-Beregond deck. I was the first player and Amon Forn was the active location, which makes each Orc enemy revealed from the encounter deck make an additional attack against me. I was already engaged with an Angmar Marauder and my friend was engaged with a Cornered Orc. Halbarad had 3 damage on him, Beregond had 2, and my Dunedain Hunter had 2. All of my heroes were ready, as well as Ally Boromir and a Dunedain Hunter.

Since I was playing with a friend, 2 cards were revealed from the encounter deck that round. Naturally, given my luck, 2 Cornered Orcs pop out of the deck. It was at that point that I realized I would be facing 7 attacks that round, since the Orcs make immediate attacks because of Amon Forn and attack when they engage because of their printed effects. NOOOOOOOOO! I wanted to flip the table over! I really was wishing Aragorn carried a chaingun at that point, whatever thematic wrongs that would entail.

Rolling with it, Ally Boromir defends one of the immediate attacks (taking damage and readying) and my friend's sentinel defender blocks the other. The two Orcs then come down to engage me. Against their immediate attacks upon engagement, Halbarad defends one and Boromir defends the other, readying once more although crippled down to 1 HP by a shadow effect.

Finally, the time actually comes for NORMAL attacks during the combat phase. Beregond stands firm against the Angmar Marauder. My only ready characters against the following attacks from Cornered Orcs are Tactergorn and mostly-dead Boromir and Dunedain Hunter. I take the first attack undefended with a sigh. The shadow is... Weathered Hilltop! 2 damage goes on Aragorn.

But should I take the next attack undefended? The risk is high, but I decide to take it. I reluctantly reach toward the shadow card, hesitant to flip it....

ANGMAR CAPTAIN!

Salvation to mankind!

(Except Aragorn, who's a little worse for wear, but who cares about him anyway?)

Now it's my turn. Boromir relentlessly cuts down a Cornered Orc and Aragorn takes the other one, bringing the Orc from my friend's side. The Dunedain Hunter finishes him with a couple of arrows. I can almost see the expression on the Angmar Marauder's face (well, actually, I can see it, but anyway...) as he realizes that 7 attacks against fearless Rangers are no excuse for them not to clear the board. Well, except for him, but his turns are numbered.

I was playing Watcher in the Water nightmare with Xelv the other day. We are at the final stage with high-40s threat. We just trashed most of our hands last turn trying to solve the Doors of Durin and failed. We get a very nasty draw from the encounter deck resulting in a failure and +6 threat, killing Xelv, but I am safe after a Council+Greeting bring me down.

I trash a couple more cards and fail the Doors again, about to give up at this point. Next turn I use King Under the Mountain and find Gandalf , which is great because I've still got 2 sneak attacks in hand (I had been discarding extra Stewards for the Doors attempts). I drop a sneak+Gandalf to lower threat, quest, and then pick Gandalf back up. I decide to discard Gandalf and Sneak for a last Hail Mary attempt at the Doors of Durin, and turn up... a G rasping Tentacle!

At this point I've got a Boromir sitting there with two Gondorian Fire's and 14 resources in his pool. Discarding two resources puts him up to 3+25 attack, just enough to take out the Nightmare Watcher's 7+21 health. After that, it's a short quest to victory!

Although I had a lot of fun late in the game, it wouldn't have been possible without Xelv's help through the first 90%. Thanks Xelv!

Epic discard ^^. A wizard never is late

I was playing Nightmare Road to Rivendell. On the last stage, 5 progress left. I revealed Orc ambush. There were no enemies in the staging area, so it put back all enemies from the discard pile. There were 14, with combined attack of 50. Fortunately I managed to put this 5 progress tokens. I have never encountered so many enemies even in multiplayer.

I was playing Nightmare Road to Rivendell. On the last stage, 5 progress left. I revealed Orc ambush. There were no enemies in the staging area, so it put back all enemies from the discard pile. There were 14, with combined attack of 50. Fortunately I managed to put this 5 progress tokens. I have never encountered so many enemies even in multiplayer.

Yeah Orc Ambush can be so brutal, I had it trigger once and it returned I think maybe only ten or so enemies but I was not as close to the finish as you so got utterly decimated by one hell of an ambush!

So unlike most it seems I was having A LOT of difficulty beating Helms Deep in the new saga expansion Treason of Saruman but just got an absolutely amazing victory against it!

First off I am not going to stage 1B and shuffling a copy of Poisoned Counsel into each of my decks and am starting at stage 2A immediately which makes the quest far far harder. I lost 5 games in a row before my victory and got utterly slaughtered in 3 of these 5 losses.

With 7 tokens on Defense of Helms Deep I played the last quest phase before advancing to stage 5 and ended up with EXACTLY 7 progress on stage 4B (1 away from an instant loss) during this round before immediately advancing to stage 5.
During combat on the second last round with 7 enemies in play (6 engaged with my combat deck and one engaged with my questing deck) I not only had to risk an undefended attack from an enemy with 3 attack strength with the questing deck which resulted in no shadow effect and no hero death (a single extra point of damage would have killed Elrond/Haldir and lead to an instant conceding of the game as I need and want to win with all heroes intact) as well as having to use and remove from my campaign pool Vial of Galadriel so I could also take 2 of the attacks made against the combat deck undefended (Elrohir blocked the other four attacks). Won on 47 and 43 threat, had pretty amazing draws and starting hands yet it was still insanely insanely hard, I had MANY locations appear throughout the game which helped slow the tide of enemies at key points allowing me to use leadership resources to get allies out rather than using them to defend multiple attacks with Elrohir. Used two sneak attack Gandalfs and played him three other times for the full cost of 5 often with the help of Aragorn's resources. Could not have been a closer or more nail biting game.... was possibly harder than getting through Moria without facing the Balrog and definitely required the use of Phial of Galadriel. Bit sad I no longer have the Vial but am very happy I don't have to take any copies of Poisoned Counsel with me. Now time to try and beat the third quest without earning Voice of Saruman and earning Palantir of Orthanc at the same time!

Really cool game: with eu8l1ch and tonski in octgn...

Knife in the Dark nmare.

2 days ago eu8l1ch and me tried this scenario a lot of times, and always we lost. Very hard, always nazguls, and finally 5 nazguls in last quest card.

Today i have played the rossiel cards, the victory pile effect cards: none-returns, door is closed, leave no trade, out of wild, keen-lances. And... it was very easy! We reached to place 4 nazguls to discard pile (2 of them were ringwrights, however).

2 nazguls by none-returns, and 1 more by out-of-wild, and 1 more by scout ahead.

18 cards in discard pile finally, also nasty locations and treacheries were out by out of wild (recycled by scroll), and played some door is closed to cancel when they were going to enter to the game.

Very fun way of playing that victory discard mode! Congratulations to designers...

Final score: 129 (record guiness)

Just started playing the Heirs of Numenor quests for the first time over the last month or so, and this past week has been dedicated to overcoming Siege of Cair Andros straight solo progression style. I heard people complain about the difficulty of Into Ithilien (found it tough, but not quite as hard as anticipated), but I thought Cair Andros was way harder!

Finally beat it today, though (after MANY attempts), on the 10th round. I lost Beregond in round 9, and a Mumak was revealed by the encounter deck during round 9 staging and engaged, but my survivors quickly raced to victory in round 10... if I didn't achieve victory then and there during battle questing, it would have been game over! What a rush!

I think Cair Andros is up there with Escape from Dol Guldur in terms of difficulty for straight solo, progression style. Awesome quest, though.

And now, on to play through HoN once again, this time 2-handed (but still progression style).

Do my victory against the Morgul Vale by discarding Boromir to put the last damage to the nasgül count?

Do my victory against the Morgul Vale by discarding Boromir to put the last damage to the nasgül count?

All reasonable uses of Boromir's discard power count.

My epic moment was when I found a player card I taught lost, Gondorian Shield.

My epic moment happened a few weeks ago, two of my good friends and myself played The Ring Goes South. For friend A, this would be the 5th or 6th play session we've had together. We've tried The Ring Goes South before and failed twice. For Friend B this was only his 2nd session and he never got to finish his first due to time constraints.

We were going through the quest alright but near the end things started to get rough. A few untimely shadow cards and an unavoidable "Fallen Into Evil" left us wounded and down a Hero right around the time the Watcher came out.

We eeked out 6 damage on the watcher while the enemies and locations continued to pile up. We had one turn left, with enough enemies in the staging area that we would either die in combat or lose the quest altogether as Doors of Durin had 7 damage already on it. We quested with everything we had, keeping Faramir up as well as Eleanor in case a shadow caused our defeat. If we got through questing we would win. First card came up, no big deal, just a warg. Second card came up and it was the hound, bringing on some surge, which surged into Lust for the Ring. Thankfully we just put it on Beregond, which didn't matter too much. The last card came out and we were fine, questing for roughly 60 to the staging area's 27. We had won after about two hours of trudging our way towards the Misty Mountains.

It was one of those now or never moments. It was tense but epic.

It is not epic-moment. It mus be 'hilarious' moment:

Playind Massing Osgiliath, i keep engaged 2 snagas waiting Ranger of Ithilien as shadow card to get him. At least 1 copy of him. During some rounds, finally the other player resolves to play it:

When he and me chose enemy to discard its shadows, both shadows cards were.... agh! Ranger of Ithilien!!! Hilarious!!!