I need to vent somewhere. My fiancée, best friend and I got together last night for the first multiplayer game we've played in a few months. We settled on A Knife in the Dark, as that was the next saga quest we should take on chronologically. I ran a tri-sphere Silvan deck with Elrond/Celeborn/Glorfindel, my fiancée tri-sphere with Galadriel/Gimli/Bifur and my friend Leadership/Lore with Boromir, Imrahil and Faramir. We play quite rarely and the decks are not always well coordinated, but we cheerfully gave it a try.

Stage 1 and 2 went relatively well - Gondor increased threat to 38 to engage Ferny and then used Galadriel's ability, and usually held its own with enough resources and a few Lore of Imladris to heal heroes. I had frustratingly unlucky draws with the Silvan while Galadriel and the dwarves slowly gathered an army of ents.

Stage 3 was - I'm trying to find the English word for it - absolutely bonkers(!) Boromir was the first to fall. My elf deck had to go full-on kamikaze and take undefended nazgûl attacks just to buy time for the other two. Elrond and Arwen died at 47 threat. The ents downed the witch-king in a single hit, and then Imrahil and Faramir purposefully refrained from questing to threat out and return engaged nazgûl to the staging area for the ents to deal with. Failed questing got the Galadriel deck to 48 threat. Unwilling to defend attacks with enraged Booming Ents, my fiancée sacrificed both Bifur and Gimli to the nazgûl and then finished off the last one with Treebeard and his friends.

All-in-all, the Galadriel deck won at 48 threat and we cheered like crazy. Play time: approximately 4½ hours, from 18:30 to 23:00. We had seen the Nightmare edition at a local game store earlier in the day, but I don't think that's a good idea for us...

Anyway, we were euphoric and convinced that the minstrels of Middle-Earth will be singing of this until the breaking of the world! Do you have similar stories with the Black Riders, or is this just us needing to practice more?

Great game! If you enjoyed it as much as I didn't reading it, it was worth the time! Ok, so I don't really remember any specific details, but I remember being just so excited when I beat or should I say CRUSHED dulguldor with just core( my heroes were Aragorn, lorfindel and eowyn. Don't say those heroes suck, cause I was just going through a phase of "threat doesn't matter" the other thing about this game was that at that time, I had somehow over looked the fact the steward was unique(the day I found that out was the worst day of my life) so I got celeborns stone, 2 stewards, and self pres of aragorn. he was a boss. he could quest for 4, defend for 2 and then heal, and then swing for 3). I was so excited! the thing was, this was before I was on this websight so I felt like I didn't have anyone to share it with. it was so disapointing. to beat one of the best quests in the game and not have anyone to share it with! I almost quit the game that day. But thats kinda depressing. Great job, and I would LOVE to here the most heroic stories that everyone has on here! please share, as was said above!

I don't remember the exact specifics (Really should have recorded or taken a video of this game) but I had a game of Nightmare Journey Down the Anduin last week that was probably one of my proudest victories. Never have I scraped victory back from the jaws of defeat like that. I was actually going to concede at one point near the end but decided to keep going to see how exactly my two decks would fall. Turned out to be a victory! Thank goodness I did not concede!!!

Early game I was able to easily kill the Hill Troll as well as an Anduin Troll Spawn that came out within the first few turns. Haldir took out Hummerhorns in staging and everything was going fairly well. Right before placing the last few progress points on stage 1 pursuit on the shore appeared and so it was round 2 with the hill troll. After destroying it a second time I got to stage 2. Then things got really bad really fast. I managed to slow down stage 2 the first round I was questing there by playing a copy of Gildors Counsel and only revealing 2 cards during staging instead of 3. This allowed me to put roughly 8 or so progress tokens on stage 2. After that I went a good 3 to 4 rounds of putting no progress on the quest stage and barely clearing active locations. A copy of Gladden Marshlands appeared at the worst possible moment and I had to take 7 damage (split amongst Glorfindel, Elrond and Elladan) to reduce its threat down to 3 for the turn to avoid both decks raising threat by 5 or so and allowing me to JUST clear the active location so I could travel to the Marshlands and get its horrible 10 threat out of staging. I had a Warden of Healing working overtime the entire game to undo this damage and any damage trolls or other enemies were able to inflict.

Things were looking grim, threat was raising, a copy of flooded ford with no progress sat in the staging area for almost the entire game, a copy of Brown Water Rats which was revealed during setup sat engaged with the combat deck all game and I was struggling to finish off stage 2. Enemies kept coming out every turn (out came Marshland Outlaws as well slowing down how fast I could kill smaller enemies and allowing them to stick around a few extra turns) and so did locations, even with plenty of attachments out, combat more or less under control and Asfaloth helping to clear copies of Gladden Fields and other locations I was treading water and really not getting anywhere. Galadriel ally came and went as did a few sneaky Gandalf's but nothing was quite giving me the push to get to stage 3 as I just kept getting very high threat cards during staging. Finally I managed to push through (threat on about mid 40's for both decks) and got to stage 3... staging that round however whilst advancing to stage 3 revealed the other copy of pursuit on the shore meaning it was round three with the same hill troll. I also had Brown Water Rats, Wolf Rider, Chieftain Ufthak and a Dol Guldur Beastmaster in play. The effect on stage 3 brought out.... the other hill troll, the other copy of Marshland Outlaws and a copy of Wargs. Thats right three of the four cards revealed were enemies.... and I already had 5 others in play (a few were left over from the last round, one appeared during staging alongside pursuit on the shore which brought back a hill troll from the victory display). A whopping 8 enemies, most of which quite nasty ones (the two trolls, Chieftain Ufthak, Beastmaster and Outlaws) were facing me down. I had not planned for quite this many and did not think I had the defensive means to hold them back. This fact and how high my threat was had me worried that too many undefended attacks would get through killing off a handful of heroes and preventing me from having the necessary attack power to take all the foes out and win (marshland outlaws slowing this down as well). Elrohir (with his mega defender status set up) defended against the two hill trolls and another enemy but then ran out of resources and readying. Treebeard defended another attack and used his ability to ready a Derndingle Warrior allowing it to defend 2 attacks falling to the second one (boosted his defense a second time but a nasty shadow effect boosted the attack to get through his 5 defense). On the other side of the board (other deck) a Wandering Ent valiantly died defending an attack. I took the brown water rats attack undefended and chump blocked another attack with the Warden of Healing who I deemed I no longer needed (also had he not been sacrificed a hero may have fallen to the attack if undefended). Somehow this was just enough and I managed to stop even a single hero from dying! Then over the course of about another 3 rounds or so I was able to slowly but surely clean up and kill off the various enemies one by one while defending with Elrohir and Treebeard against those who remained. The marshland outlaws made this even more tedious requiring me to take them out (taking up a whole turn although I was able to take out one or two of the weaker foes with them) before I could take other enemies out.

Threat got to about 47 or so for both decks and time was running out but I managed to kill the last few enemies and achieve victory! So many times I thought I was about to lose. I managed to cancel a copy of Smoking blood as a shadow card that was going to instantly kill Elrohir (early to mid game so without my super defender I would have lost FOR SURE) quite early on which would have otherwise cost me the game. Without the Warden of Healing out in the first few turns the constant damage that was being taken by heroes would have cost me the game as well. Also Troll Attack luckily only appeared when no trolls were in play.

Honestly it was probably not as epic or as close a call as certain other games I've had but it was the most exciting game I have had in a long while and this was mainly due to the fact that I thought for sure at two different points that I was a goner.

Treebeard was EASILY mvp of the game defending many attacks alongside Elrohir and then readying a Derndingle Warrior on two occasions allowing it to defend two attacks when necessary.

Great game! If you enjoyed it as much as I didn't reading it, it was worth the time! Ok, so I don't really remember any specific details, but I remember being just so excited when I beat or should I say CRUSHED dulguldor with just core( my heroes were Aragorn, lorfindel and eowyn. Don't say those heroes suck, cause I was just going through a phase of "threat doesn't matter" the other thing about this game was that at that time, I had somehow over looked the fact the steward was unique(the day I found that out was the worst day of my life) so I got celeborns stone, 2 stewards, and self pres of aragorn. he was a boss. he could quest for 4, defend for 2 and then heal, and then swing for 3). I was so excited! the thing was, this was before I was on this websight so I felt like I didn't have anyone to share it with. it was so disapointing. to beat one of the best quests in the game and not have anyone to share it with! I almost quit the game that day. But thats kinda depressing. Great job, and I would LOVE to here the most heroic stories that everyone has on here! please share, as was said above!

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/104011-epic-moments/?hl=%2Bepic+%2Bmoments

This thread is a good read if you haven't read or seen it before =)