These quests are really tough. Deadman's Dike starts so strong, and then it more-or-less resets in the second quest card to be even harder. The real difficulty I've found with this quest is that since it attacks your deck before you ever draw cards, running singles of important cards to fetch is very risky. I've been playing around with a Mablung, Halbarad, Aragorn deck that really hums once Aragorn has StWB, but if it gets discarded there's not much I can do without spirit to fetch it back. That quest makes me think quite differently about designing the deck itself.

Second Breakfast might be a good sideboard card for this quest.

Ah, yes, good thought. I'd forgotten about the card since it's been so long since I last played it. Would help a lot I think. To be honest the quest usually stomps me when the enemy comes out who fetches his buddies from the discard pile: it always comes out when the other 4 are in the discard, and then that's 5x3 strength attacks (plus shadows). Brutal. I *nearly* won a game that killed me with that combo. Sigh.

As to forest snare, it's a good way to get the bonuses, but it's hard to rely on. High cost and only potentially 3 in a 50 card deck - if it doesn't come out and it's integral, that's a problem.