With The Road Darkens on the horizon, I have been trying to play the 'perfect' (2-player) game of Flight to the Ford, adding no burdens to the campaign pool after winning. The only way I can see to do this is to use Out of the Wild to pull them out of the encounter deck and into the victory display. This is 'out of play,' per the FAQ, and so won't be added to the campaign pool at the end of the quest.

The only time that you *must* reveal a burden card is when you travel to The Last Bridge. Other burdens can be avoided pretty easily if you're using the right decks.

Once the burden gets revealed and resolved, it goes into the encounter discard pile. You can then use Shadow of the Past to move it back to the encounter deck, and Out of the Wild to snag it. The problem is, all of the burdens have Surge. If the next card is a treachery, it's going to end up on top of the burden card before you can play Shadow of the Past.

Has anyone managed to win Flight to the Ford without adding any burdens to their campaign pool?

Is there a way to do it other than what I suggested above? We tried a couple of times, but Frodo keeps ending up very near death by the time we have the combo ready and resources to pay for it, and then there is a pretty good chance of getting a treachery when we do finally do travel to The Last Bridge. We could add Risk Some Light to fix the odds a bit, but then it becomes a 3-card combo and much more expensive.

Whew! Sorry for the wall of text, but thanks for reading and for any additional ideas.

You can cancel the burden when it is revealed with the ring and then with a little luck/probing, you can out-of-the-wild it without needing shadow of the past. Bad luck if you redraw it.

Use one of:

• Henamarth Riversong
• Denethor
• Palantir
• Rumour from the Earth (and pay a resource to keep it in your hand for the next turn)
• Ravens of the Mountain

to look at the top encounter card during the action window at the end of the quest phase and make sure it's not a treachery.

Similar to what alogos said, but use Frodo + The One Ring to cancel a treachery if it appears. It gets shuffled back into the encounter deck and you cross your fingers!

That's a good point about the One Ring, I forgot that it shuffles the canceled card back into the encounter deck (and I probably played wrong the last couple of times I used it, too!). That at least gives you one more shot, just double bad luck if you end up with two treacheries I guess.

We've got the decks split into one handling 90% of the questing (Aragorn/Pippin/Sam) and one handling 90% of the combat (Glorfindel/Merry/Fatty). It's campaign mode, so changing heroes is not an option (not worth it to me to go back to the beginning). I like alogos's suggestion too -- just cancel the burden itself, then replace Shadow of the Past with a repeatable scry and hope you snag it before the quest ends, or before it gets revealed again. Hmmm...

I pulled this off tonight without changing my deck.

First attempt, I got creamed in round 2. A Fell Rider literally attacked 5 or 6 times in a row due to an evil succession of shadow effects. Then for good measure he retreated to the staging area after his last attack.

Second attempt, I forfeit on round 3 or 4 after I goofed in the combat phase. Miscounted attack power and killed a Fell Rider that shouldn't have died, drew 3 cards with Foe-hammer and got a Foe-hammer, drew 3 more, realized my goof and couldn't figure out how to rewind properly (short term memory, I had forgotten which cards I had just drawn). I just quit and started over.

Third time was the charm. I was dismayed when The Last Bridge caused a burden card reveal of Weight of the Ring -- this is a condition, and would not go into the encounter deck again. I didn't have any condition removing cards in either deck. Frodo canceled the card with the One Ring, it went into the encounter deck. Came out again later and forced me to cancel it again. I was hoping it would pass as a shadow effect, but that did not pan out. Just before the final questing push on stage 2, I used Out of the Wild blindly. There were about 12 cards left in the deck, but Weight of the Ring was the 3rd one down. I pulled it out and quested to victory. Yay!