I know that I am way behind with this game (currently me and my brother are playing The Road Darkens in campaign mode) but nevertheless I had to point something out.

We just finished playing quest Journey in the Dark. It is definitely the most terrifying and nerve-wracking quest out there. At the first stage you really do not want to engage enemies, so they are pilling up around you, like they are preparing to ambush you. Then at the second stage you have to battle them to even make progress on the quest. And at all times doom is slowly but surely approaching your way. I doubt that anyone could accomplish this quest before the Balrog showed up. Our strategy was getting rid of all or most enemies before Balrog shows up.

When we first tried this quest, we were swarmed with enemies and then, in addition, Balrog showed up and killed everyone. I could almost say that I was mentally exhausted at that point. I didn't think that we could win this quest. I felt like I do not want to play this quest again.

Today, we tried it for the second time. Before advancing to the third stage we killed most enemies (one puny orc remained) and only then we advanced. Balrog showed up again. You really have to feed him some cheap allies when he is attacking. Unfortunately, the first round of Balrog in play we had to suffer three attack from him. Second round, same thing. The feeling was terrible! But somehow we made it and killed it with the effect of The Last Bridge, sacrificing Gandalf to put 14 damage on him. Then it was just a matter of a few rounds questing to get enough progress to win.

It was amazing. I really felt that we accomplished something (even though it sounds a bit silly). I was wondering how you guys felt when you were playing this quest?

I love this game and cannot wait to play it more and more. Keeping it forever.

Good work beating the quest, it is certainly a nail biter and a challenge. Nice job killing the Balrog rather than just escaping with it still in play. 50 Victory points is pretty **** sweet.

You are wrong about one thing though. I have beaten this quest three times before the Balrog showed up, took about 15 attempts the first time, around 8 the second and on the third time I did it on my second attempt. Have gotten much better at doing it as you can see.

All three times I had to use up Ho, Tom Bombadil! however so if you don't have that boon ready to cancel Fool of a Took it is far more difficult (potentially impossible for my decks) to pull off. You do need to be using decks that can quest hard, especially in the first two rounds.

It's definitely not impossible though.

-Avoid or cancel every copy of Fool of a Took that appears

-Don't engage any enemies during stage 1 and beat it within 2 turns max.

-Kill enemies on stage 2 as fast as possible and beat it within 3 turns at max so there are 5 tokens left on Doom, Doom, Doom and then 3 once you advance to Stage 3.

-Then you need to place the maximum of 5 progress on Stage 3 all three last rounds and must also clear The Great Bridge on one of those three turns.

Viola, out of Moria/Khazad-Dum with a single token left on Doom, Doom, Doom and no Balrog!

I've read "Ho, Tom Bombadil!" for the first time, wondered what card that is (couldn't remember its appearance enywhere). So I googled and found it as part of a stand alone quest named "Fog on the Barrow-Downs.

In the official anouncement (https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/1/15/fog-on-the-barrow-downs/) it is mentioned that you can use it in campaing mode. How does this work? Can you just put in other (boon) cards in your setup while playing campaing mode? I think not?!

It works in the simpliest way possible. This quest is played in between of two others of the campaign and uses literally all of the same rules.

ok. nice to know, thanks. Is it the only (stand alone) quest which can/will be placed between the quests of campaign mode?

I've read "Ho, Tom Bombadil!" for the first time, wondered what card that is (couldn't remember its appearance enywhere). So I googled and found it as part of a stand alone quest named "Fog on the Barrow-Downs.

In the official anouncement (https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/1/15/fog-on-the-barrow-downs/) it is mentioned that you can use it in campaing mode. How does this work? Can you just put in other (boon) cards in your setup while playing campaing mode? I think not?!

You earn it by beating that quest. It's one time use only also as it has to be removed from your campaign pool to use.

You can also earn Old Bogie Stories in The Old Forest which is very useful in campaign mode and essentially gives an extra mulligan (at any point in the game though which can be very useful for decks that feature lots of card draw) to one player once per game. That one does not get removed from the campaign pool so is also quite powerful.

Both POD scenarios are amazing additions to the campaign in my opinion both lore wise as well as the mechanics and boons they feature.

Journey in the Dark is one of my all-time favorite quests. I've managed to pull off the escape without facing The Balrog a couple of times, but it is definitely very difficult. I found using Black Riders Frodo helps a lot to avoid the worst draws. I have to admit, though, that it feels like a bit of a letdown, as facing down the Big Bad is just too awesome.

Journey in the Dark is one of my all-time favorite quests. I've managed to pull off the escape without facing The Balrog a couple of times, but it is definitely very difficult. I found using Black Riders Frodo helps a lot to avoid the worst draws. I have to admit, though, that it feels like a bit of a letdown, as facing down the Big Bad is just too awesome.

worst draws = Fool of a Took

Oh also any time an effect that makes you add enemies to the staging area shows up you should choose Moria Orc to avoid it appearing during staging and revealing an additional encounter card/removing a token from doom, doom, doom (not that you would ever in a million years choose this option)

Oh also any time an effect that makes you add enemies to the staging area shows up you should choose Moria Orc to avoid it appearing during staging and revealing an additional encounter card/removing a token from doom, doom, doom (not that you would ever in a million years choose this option)

I actually always choose at least once to remove a token from Doom, Doom, Doom. My strategy was to remain on stage 2B until only one token was left on the Doom, Doom, Doom. It didn't really matter to progress early since each player has to remove one token from it when advancing to stage 3. It worked out.

Any advice for this scenario? My friend and I tried for three nights to make it through but we keep getting slaughtered during phase two.. We never even reached phase three! We really want to finish this scenario, preferably on standard mode.

I'm using a hobbit deck with pippin, Merry and Sam. I'm using the bow combo so I can attack monsters in the staging area. The deck is not really not suited to the scenario since the hero selection is all geared towards optionally engaging enemies but I really dont want to change heroes because we already changed some of them earlier..

My friend is playing mostly a questing leadership/spirit deck. He is mainly using Aragorn for defense, the questing spirit lady for questing and the guy from Rohan who can attack enemies in the staging area.

Usually spirit/leadership gets swamped with monsters pretty fast, because my threat is 21. We try to rush through step 1, kill as many monsters as we can in step 2 but the balgrog just always wipes us out.

Any advice at all? Any specific cards/decks you'd recommend (preferably without changing any more heroes).

Two things that may or may not be helpful to know: you can swap heroes within your group without incurring the threat penalty, and you can switch to a different version of the same hero without incurring the threat penalty. The could give you some freedom in deckbuilding.

I think this quest took me 7 or 8 tries to defeat, because I also couldn't change heroes (I had a thematic campaign going). I finally beat it with mono-tactics Merry/Gimli/Legolas and Aragorn(Leadership), Pippin (Lore), and Sam. Not having access to Spirit from round 1 was a problem, as there are some treacheries that you'd really like to cancel in this deck.

For mono-tactics, the strategy ended up being: put bodies on the table. There is a lot of direct damage in this quest, and I needed to keep plopping hit points on the table to stay alive. That, and the Balrog needed to chew some people up too. The deck was literally 35+ allies if I remember correctly, maybe 40+. Because of all the damage, Waters of the Nimrodel is a great card for this scenario. Some kind of healing is needed.

I don't remember what the other deck did, but I would guess Sword that was Broken was in there somewhere. Aragorn used Celebrian's Stone for access to Spirit and A Test of Will.

All of your heroes come from the Core set and from the Black Riders expansion. I am going to guess based on that that you have a relatively small card pool? That does make things more challenging, if so. If you do have a larger card pool, you have 3 different Aragorns to choose from, 2 Merries, 2 Pippins (although one is terrible), and 2 Eowyns, which are all changes you can make without a threat penalty.

Many thanks, Grandspleen! I will take your advice into account! Never realized you could switch a hero of the same name and switch heroes.

I also found some useful advice for this quest here: https://talesfromthecards.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/campaign-mode-journey-in-the-dark-part-1/

Will let you know how the quest fares next time we try!