Played this one today for the first time. Threated out as expected based on what I've read.

I will say, while the scenario is tough, I didn't see any game ending treacheries or shadows. It's the kind of challenge that feels beatable which I appreciate. Not saying I will win anytime soon though!

Bummed about the Lords of Eldar. Needs to be in your discard pile, buffs speicif, rare, trait and still costs 3.

Old comment but I 100% agree. Really underwhelmed by it right now.

Compared to a card like Lure of Moria (a 3 cost event targeting all characters of a specific trait with a generically useful effect) it seems similarly useful. But when you really dig into it it's SO much more limited!

You have to find it in your discard pile, you need 3 spirit resources (harder to find than 3 Leadership resources most of the time) and in most cases all it will do is give each character a +1 to whatever they're doing. Additional readying effects HELP, of course, but in exchange you lose the utility of setting up effects like We Are Not Idle and A Very Good Tale.

Great if you're running Erestor or Cirdan. Okay if you're running a heavy Protector of Lorien strategy or Eowyn with a bunch of Noldor. But otherwise...just doesn't seem worth it.

Hard quest

My actual decks were beaten without a real chance of success.

The main problems to resolve for this quest :

- Threat : It increase quickly (due to encounter card effect or quest fail). So massive threat decrease is needed.
- Massive Shadow card & Strong Shadow effect : Boromir with a Gondorian Shield & Arwen capacity has been killed many times with only one attack. I have seen some attacks with 5 shadow cards.
For this point, i think that we have three strong solution : Hama with Feint or Burning Brand with a strong defender or Chump Blocker with some Hasty stroke for the powerfull shadow effect which target the player board.

On my first attempt, i have rushed the active location which give battle keyword => Some result each time : Defeat.

So, i have decided to not rush the active location, clean ennemies, prepare my board, accept quest fail and use massive threat decrease in order to manage quest fail & encounter effect.

First attempt with my old Dwarf deck (Dain/Grima/Nori), win on the first try.
Nori manage the threat.
Dwarf ally + Hasty stroke used for ennemy attacks. I have never used Dain for defense too risky.
Dain give bonus for questing (battle or normal)

Second attempt with a Hama deck like DukeWellington (Gandalf/Glorfindel II/Hama but different in the deck content), win on the first try.
Massive Threat decrease (Galadhrim's Greeting, Elrond Counsel reused with Dwarven tomb). I have played Galadhrim's Greeting two times, Elrond Counsel five times and finished with threat at 38.
Hama + Feint used for enemy attacks and so no shadow effect.
Ethir swordsman, Knight of the swan, Dunedain Hunter and Ready effect for Heroes for questing.

For the two attempts, no rush on the active location.

I have always kept a Chump blocker for unexpected Thaurdir attacks during questing phase.
The battle was hard but so amazing

I summon Seastan into this thread to solve this quest for good!

I have just posted 4 videos of Carn Dum with different decks up on my channel (see signature).

You rock!

Anybody having success in multiplayer? All the reports and suggestions I see above pertain to pure solo. I play exclusively 2-player or 2-handed solo when I'm at home, and I've been breaking myself against this quest. Thaurdir, I will see you tonight!

What heroes do you use in 2-handed GrandSpleen?

Still waiting for Glaurung to weigh in on this one. It's been pre-Nightmared!

I'm only about five minutes in to the Boromir game. You had an incredible flop with both Shield and Valinor, but I've still lost with that. You forgot to surge on the first card which would have put an extra three threat in the staging area for +2 threat instead of 2 progress and then...

(Back to the video)

I'm only about five minutes in to the Boromir game. You had an incredible flop with both Shield and Valinor, but I've still lost with that. You forgot to surge on the first card which would have put an extra three threat in the staging area for +2 threat instead of 2 progress and then...

(Back to the video)

Yeah the Boromir deck was the first deck I tried against the quest and it took me a while to get used to all the effects, so there are a couple errors. Thanks for pointing out the surge.

I've tried several different decks, starting with a pair of dwarf decks that I had previously been using (Dain/Nori/Thorin and Gimli/Ori/Bombur). Mostly however my strategy has been to set up a super defender with readying, high defense, and Burning Brand. I've tried with Elrohir and Boromir but it takes too long to set up in most cases. The companion deck quests. I had chosen spirit heroes with 3 attack power to deal with battle questing, so I had mono-spirit with Theoden/Glorfindel/Idraen, who were also good because each of them has easy access to some readying effect that allows them to participate in combat as well.

To speed up access to Burning Brand, I tried converting the quest deck into an Erestor deck, just swapping Idraen for Erestor and changing the deck composition somewhat. That worked a little better, but still it seems my best efforts match the encounter deck if I'm lucky. I had several tries with Elladan/Elrohir/Boromir, letting Boromir take the early defense and abusing his ability, setting up Elrohir as the super defender and then switching to him once he's established, so I can stop raising my threat. Also tried using Lore Aragorn for threat management.

The other day I tried doing an ally swarm deck for the quest deck, with Sword that was Broken, Faramir, and Visionary Leadership all in the deck. That is what I currently have built. But I haven't been able to get established quickly enough, or end up needing to chump block with those all-important allies. It uses Lore Aragorn, Imrahil, and Thorin (mostly chosen for stats rather than abilites). Had Sam in there, but kept failing the early battle quests and swapped him for Imrahil. The other deck currently has Boromir/Galadriel/Bard. Bard's ability is underutilized because the other deck doesn't like to engage enemies, and it's harder to get sentinel on Boromir (I use Arwen but Galadriel and Arwen don't get along).

I was wondering recently if Eleanor would prevent Thaurdirs effect from sorcery cards, since she discards the card. If so she could be useful in multiplayer when you are getting a sorcery every round.

I need to make this clear to any who might be new to the forums: Seastan is a great player and an even better deck builder. This quest has a lot of intricate interactions that are easy to miss. Now...

I have been playing that if a Treachery card was revealed - even if I cancel the when revealed effect with A Test of Will - Thaudir gets a Shadow card. You played it differently. Also, it looked almost like you were playing core Gandalf as a sort of Hobbit/core Gandalf hybrid. I was a few cups in, but I swear you committed him to the quest without exhausting a few times.

Still, I love your decks. Gondorian Fire and Blood of Numenor need the ban hammer.

Edit: Galadriel. Forgot about that ability.

Eleanor discards the treachery, but the only thing she cancels are the 'when revealed' effects. Thaurdir gets plenty of sorcery.

Boy, that Quick Ears ruling has really got us all scratching our heads, hasn't it? I say we play 'The Door is Closed' on that ruling and roll back the meta-game.

Boy, that Quick Ears ruling has really got us all scratching our heads, hasn't it? I say we play 'The Door is Closed' on that ruling and roll back the meta-game.

Unfortunately we'd have to have a copy of it in the victory display first, and I'm not convinced that we do...

I need to make this clear to any who might be new to the forums: Seastan is a great player and an even better deck builder. This quest has a lot of intricate interactions that are easy to miss. Now...

I have been playing that if a Treachery card was revealed - even if I cancel the when revealed effect with A Test of Will - Thaudir gets a Shadow card. You played it differently. Also, it looked almost like you were playing core Gandalf as a sort of Hobbit/core Gandalf hybrid. I was a few cups in, but I swear you committed him to the quest without exhausting a few times.

Still, I love your decks. Gondorian Fire and Blood of Numenor need the ban hammer.

Edit: Galadriel. Forgot about that ability.

Thanks for the compliment. I do play it the same as you do, triggering Thaurdir with Test of Will. I just misplayed it at the 23 min mark in the Boromir video. Of course, at that point an extra attack from Thaurdir would have been no big deal, but a mistake is a mistake.

I am testing out a version of the Boromir deck with Silver Harp and Brand. Maybe I will give the quest another shot and try to beat it mistake-free.

I think the day I play a game of this without making a mistake with the encounter deck is a long way off. Actually recording playthroughs is very brave!

So I have played through it a few times now. I still don't quite have the hang of it, but I just wanted to share my thoughts.

I love the quest. I think the designers have done a very good job on this one. It's very tough, and it was obviously the intention of the designers to release a difficult quest, so this should not count against it. Even more impressive is that it does not feel unfair, in the sense that nightmare Dol Guldur, Return to Mirkwood, and Amon Din are hard because they are unfair. Possibly because in other quests you can be hit by an unlucky shadow card out of the blue and feel cheated from victory, but here in Carn Dum that is the regular, and you are expected to be ready for it, but also because there are no truly devastating cards, just a very high average card difficulty.

This quest certainly inspires deckbuilding, but at the same time doesn't present an easy solution, apart from maybe Hama-Feint, although that strategy is weaker in multiplayer. It seems as if this quest was rigorously playtested, and when someone came up with an idea to beat the quest, they added in some card or effect to hurt it. There have been a few times where I thought I had sealed victory going into the second stage only to remember the Champion's -10 engagement effect too late and I die in a swarm of enemies.

I have found Loragorn-Frodo-Spirfindel to work pretty well, and doesn't feel as cheesy to me as Hama or Love of Tales. There is also a mono-spirit deck I'm working on that uses West Road Traveller to get rid of the battle and Shadows Give Way to stop shadows, but it still needs work. I look forward to getting in some 2-attempts as well soon.

Whew! I finally had a 2-handed win against this quest tonight. I had Boromir (Tactics), Legolas, Gandalf,and on the other side Aragorn (Lore), Thorin, and Imrahil.

Victory came because I drew into my 'defensive suite' in my opening hand (Gondorian Shield, Arwen, Song of Wisdom, Burning Brand). An early Herald of Anorien from the Aragorn deck got Arwen into play early, and by turn 2 Boromir was set up (5 defense, sentinel). Later got a Warden of Healing to let him keep defending even though Thaurdir was chipping away.

The other deck took awhile to heat up, but eventually got Faramir and Sword that was Broken on the table, and a nice little swarm of allies so it could quest for 20+ (a little over 30 on the final round). It never drew Steward, but it got King Under the Mountain pretty early, which was necessary because it helped me set up A Good Harvest + Desperate Alliance to allow the Boromir deck to continue functioning.

Gandalf was helpful for accelerating the draw of the tactics deck (by letting me play the top card of the deck), but otherwise none of his toys came out. On the final round, I quested through stage 2 in one go, took 2 hits from Thaurdir and one from a Werewolf, and then Boromir, Legolas with a Rivendell Blade, Gandalf, and a Vassal of the Windlord got 10 damage onto Thaurdir for the win.

Happy to be done with that epic string of losses... definitely was more challenged by this quest than any before, but it was never frustrating like Nin in Eilph or some of the other wonky ones. It's a cool quest, but doubt I'll be revisiting it anytime soon!

I was thinking along the same lines with both players built around setting up Boromir. I think it's easier to get the brand onto him that way. Trying to cram all those cards into one deck is really tough.

Getting the Shield and the Brand on Boromir is still no guarantee though. Your threat can spiral quickly. The quest attacks you from a lot of different angles.

Played this a few times now and it angers me. I love the theme and the location of Carn Dum, but I'm not a fan of the quest sadly. I've already come to expect to see really hard quests but this is insanely frustrating to me. Sure, there's no brutal instant scoop when revealeds or shadow effects (I kinda disagree with that though), but when you start with 5 in the staging area and an active location that gives battle to the current quest, yeah, there's like 2 deck that can deal with that. (Talking about solo of course). I just built a mono-Leadership w/Tactics Dunedain deck with lots of Dunedain allies and insane action advantage (core Aragorn, Halbarad, Strength of Arms, Descendants of Kings, etc) and obviously got crushed. Way to encourage the new archetypes of the cycle. At least in Into Ithilien the southrons didn't take 8 to kill and you had objectives allies, and it's still difficult. This one requires one or two very specific decks to beat, and that is no fun to me.

On hand I agree with you Gizlivadi. I am not a great fan of super hard quests because then you are often forced to one of few decks to beat it, and many decent decks are overrun without much of a chance.

But I also think you have been a bit stubborn with your deck–building, judging by our previous discussion. The mono Gondor deck you showed wasn't going to win much, I thought. I wasn't going to argue about it on and on but I this is now the second quest in a row where you post your frustration. Maybe it is time to give cards like Reinforcements a chance to shine, haha. (On a more serious note, I doubt the card itself can change much here but it is still playing wonders for me).

yeah.. so far I've been getting smashed too. I really hate the "battle" keyword and I had hoped we were done with it. Apparently not. It makes willpower characters (like Eowyn, many allies) pointless. I don't know what the logic was behind so heavily emphasizing the attack stat. It would be like if all of a sudden you had to both quest and fight at the same time with Willpower, but we haven't seen that, yet Battle is quite common.

One of my main problems with this quest so far is just making it through the first active location. I'm no slouch for attack power on heroes, but you pop out a 4 threat location and even treachery cards are adding threat to the staging area... it's not pretty.

Beyond that, same problems as everyone else. Blocking with an ally means your ally is almost certainly dead, and if you hit the shadow card that discards them if there is a copy of them in your discard pile then you lose a hero as well. Blocking with a strong defender hero usually works... right up until it doesn't. After your hero gets one-shotted by double shadow +1 for every ally you control or something like that, you're done.

It would be like if all of a sudden you had to both quest and fight at the same time with Willpower, but we haven't seen that,

One of my main problems with this quest so far is just making it through the first active location.

I think Battle is rare, it's common in the cycle that it was introduced in, but there are only a small handful of quests that use it outside of Heirs of Numenor/Against the Shadow. We have actually seen fighting with willpower a couple of times, actually-- once in the Druadan Forest and once in The Stone of Erech.. maybe more, but I can't recall any.

There are some cards that work wonders in this quest. Steed of Imladris is one of the best. Any then any others that can progress to the active location, such as Arod, Gondolin Blade, and Legolas work well too. For awhile I tried to forego "beating" the willpower of the encounter deck, and just sought to "match" it, using Legolas and Gondolin Blades to actually progress in the scenario. This was not so practical... but it did clear a lot of active locations