Voyage is the first of the adventures where you start at the Grey Havens and set out to sea. I was very skeptical that they would botch the seafaring aspect since some of the verbiage they used in the rules book indicated that they really didn’t understand sailing, but in terms of actual game play it works quite well. At the start of each quest phase the first player must dedicate a number of characters to sailing the ship and trying to get it back on course. You then discard one encounter card for each character (plus some bonuses here and there) and count up the sailing icons on the bottom left corner of the encounter cards to check for success. I was very happy to see it wasn’t tied to willpower which means that tactics isn’t penalized for sailing. Then you enter the quest phase as normal. You want to stay on course by the way as there are some pretty severe penalties if you don’t, and some nice advantages if you do.

The quest is rated a 5 and that seems about right. I played against it with a couple of Noldor decks that I don’t feel are particularly strong, but not too weak either. All in all I really enjoyed it, but it seems to be a very long quest. I beat it on my first try, but it was a near thing. As usual I did much better on my second attempt because I knew what to expect and what the real dangers were.

Take care of your ships! You have no way to heal them. Fortunately Feint works. There is no Doomed or Surge in the encounter deck, but keeping control of your threat is important as you want to engage the enemy ships on your terms. And there are a lot of them! The Middle Earth Coast Guard needs to step up its game.

Feel free to ask questions.

Somehow I thought the quest where pirates trying to destroy the ships would be first, and then after players would rescue the ships - they would sail them. Oh well.

Somehow I thought the quest where pirates trying to destroy the ships would be first, and then after players would rescue the ships - they would sail them. Oh well.

Without having the box myself, I would have guessed, that this one would be the last one, because the first AP is the stormcaller's flight and I guess you try to chase the pirates down, after they failed to destroy your ships/the havens.

I think the quest is good. Love the ship idea and think they pulled it off rather well. Unfortunately I Can't seem to beat this one. I do alright until I engage that last ship with 44 threat. What gets me is the boarding 3. To much to guard against and the captain stops you from hurting the ships. Any tips how to handle that last part. I feel rushed because I don't want anymore ships to spawn. Could you please post your list. I had a lot of luck with the posted list on the last news post.

Raven are you asking me? You don't HAVE to engage the last ship, you can "out sail" it by questing to 10. Try that first.

Next, I've played the second quest a couple of times now. Should I start a new thread or keep it here?

New thread! would love to hear more about the other two quests, thanks for doing this btw!

Also how is the ship combat?
Only your ships can attack or defend against the enemy ships right?

That's correct. But you can attack enemy ships. It is really well done.

@took no wait I thought you had to take it out. I'm away from my cards now but your saying you can just quest for ten and you get away?

I think you stopped reading.

"If there are no ship enemies in play, you have defeated your pursuers, and you win the game.

If this stage has 10 or more progress on it, you have lost your pursuers, and you win the game."

Yeah enemy ships can be attacks by any character. But enemy ships can only attack other ships. I play solo and you get to choose two ships (out of four) to use in the senario.

@took hay thanks for the info big help!

Hmm wait so any character can attack enemy ships (makes sense really) but only ships can defend against ships (also makes sense)?

Is this right?

If so it definitely seems like ships should really be mainly used for defense against enemy ships and questing as you can attack and sink the enemy ships with any characters

Hmm wait so any character can attack enemy ships (makes sense really) but only ships can defend against ships (also makes sense)?

Is this right?

If so it definitely seems like ships should really be mainly used for defense against enemy ships and questing as you can attack and sink the enemy ships with any characters

Almost. Ships should only be used for "sailing" and defense against other ships.

ah yes of course! the ships would naturally be most important for sailing

I beat this one on my first try playing 2-handed with Beorn, Aragorn (Tactics), and Pippin paired with Cirdan, Arwen, and Glorfindel (Lore).

If you make sailing tests a high priority, this one gets much easier. While you're on course, the encounter deck is pretty neutered. Ships are easy to leave in the staging area, which makes them good targets for Aragorn to avoid attacks (Boarding still triggers), and it's also great to pull them out of the deck with Dunedain Hunter (Boarding does not trigger). Pippin's card draw shines in this quest.

I had Cirdan with Light of Valinor and Narya by turn 2, which was a big deal for combat, as you can have a bunch of enemies engaged at once (some of them with attack as low as 2). I actually got to use Horn's Cry effectively one turn, although my threat wasn't high enough for the Valour action. It just let Beorn tank several attacks safely.

The difficulty was low-to-moderate for the decks I brought against this scenario. Decks with a high ally count should do well, as any characters can sail, you don't need willpower. Scry could be fairly useful in this quest for determining how many allies to commit to sailing tests. Or for discarding some cards you don't want to see. Say you scry 3 cards with Risk Some Light, then find a treachery that you'd like to miss on card 3. You also find that you only need 1 ally in order to do the sailing test and remain on course. In a 2-player game, that treachery will now hit you (commit 1 ally for sailing, discard that top card, then reveal the next 2 for regular questing). You can go ahead and over-commit characters to the sailing test to pick out that dreaded treachery, discarding it harmlessly during your sailing test.

Second try with Cirdan/Arwen/Galdor was a breeze in solo. After the soul-crushing difficulty of the last two scenarios, I was grateful for a win!

Used the Explorer's Almanac to take out the initial location and avoided an early engagement with the Scouting Ship. The Explorer's Almanac is the most overlooked card of the set and might be the most game-changing. Players have pleaded a long time for a multi-player location-lock solution and now they have it.

The new allies turned out to be sailing test fodder and I didn't use their abilities at all.

Used Narelenya/Arwen to get two Northern Trackers out early and lost the pursuers with a final Lords of the Eldar.

Definitely fun using many of the new cards, but felt weird never engaging an enemy. That's life on high seas!

I don't have this yet, will buy it next week, so I don't have access to the specific rules for this one.

Quest card 1A says "Prepare the Corsair deck". What does that mean? All enemies with that trait (including ships) or just the ones that are included in the encounter set called "Corsair Pirates"?

Also, do every player chose one ship where one has to be the "Dream-chaser"?

Thanks!

Since wp doesn't matter for sailing, all you want is cheap allies that can offer value even while being exhausted.

Am I the only one who finds it amusing that Mirkwood Pioneer turns out to be a fantastic sailor?

I don't have this yet, will buy it next week, so I don't have access to the specific rules for this one.

Quest card 1A says "Prepare the Corsair deck". What does that mean? All enemies with that trait (including ships) or just the ones that are included in the encounter set called "Corsair Pirates"?

Also, do every player chose one ship where one has to be the "Dream-chaser"?

Thanks!

Dreamchaser must be one of the ships, but you would probably pick it anyway.

I succeeded this quest solo after a few attempts this week and a group of 4 of us had success this afternoon.

Like previously stated, staying on-course helps tremendously throughout the voyage. Many effects are nastier when you are off-course and each portion of the quest has a bonus or detriment to being on/off course such as "if you are off-course each non ship ally receive -2 Willpower"....no thank you.

Fog Bank is a surprisingly a great active location to keep corsair ships away and use a turn or too building your board or to quest like crazy to attempt to outrun the ships.

Finally got my hands on this deluxe box and have beaten the first quest. I actually had a fair bit of trouble with it and it took three attempts to beat. I lost one game and conceded another when things started to deteriorate badly. The game I did manage to win I did so with both Ships on one damage off destruction, enemy ships still engaged and both Heavy Warships in the victory display... it was such a hard slog and such a long game and I only beat it by the absolute slimmest margin.

**** sailing can be hard... at times I get so many symbols, an abundance in fact, and am totally sweet and then at other times just get no symbols at all on like 5 or so cards and am just screwed if particular encounter cards or shadow effects appear.

Its pretty **** fun though!
I also find the enemy ships pretty brutal considering you can only defend with ship-objectives and they can't be healed or have their defensive stats buffed... its really a battle of attrition as no matter what your ships will take some nasty damage so you have to plan your skirmishes with enemy ships extremely carefully or your ships just take heavy damage so quickly.

Its also hard because the Dream Chaser is so **** handy for sailing tests or questing but its so much safer and better to save it for defense if enemy ships are in play or even just on the horizon. At times it is almost integral for sailing tests though, especially at the start when you don't have many characters in play....

all in all a great new mechanic albeit one I need to get better at handling for sure.. I do run pretty attachment heavy and ally light decks though which doesn't help with sailing one bit..

oh some of the pirates are **** nasty too.... so much attachment destruction!!!

Will play the second quest tomorrow!

I´m playing the quest right now with Elladan/Elrohir/Arwen and Cirdan/Galdor/Glorfindel. It´s my first time trying the quest, and the enemy ships are nearly destroying me. Need do include horn´s cry next time, to lower the enemy ships attack. And those pirates.. I´ve already lost about four different weapons attached to Elladan, and Elrohirs shield. They´re destroying my offensive power!

Yeah the attachment hate is pretty gnarly. I run lots of weapons and readying attachments so always discard those over a shield or elven mail, managed to discard steward on one occasion only to play a new copy the following turn.
I'm running Elrohir, Elladan, Tactigorn and Arwen, Elrond, Glorfindel (changed my decks up yet again!) so fairly similar line up. I actually do run x2 Horn's Cry in the tactics/leadership deck and although I only used a copy against enemy ships the once it is pretty useful, the only issue is you need to be above 40 threat or you can only reduce their attack by one rather than 3. It is a nice late game card for sure and could help with the final attack from one of the Warship's for example.

God those warships are nasty, at least with a Warden of Healing out buffed by Elrond you can heal the archery damage consistently each turn if you leave it in staging. Its 8 attack is super nasty against your ships (that have 5 defense max!) and then boarding 3 can be really nasty too if you get multiple copies of the pirates that discard attachments and buff themselves or discard a card from your hand and do direct damage based on the cost of the discard card each time they attack.

Tactigorn's -1 to enemy defense was pretty helpful against both the pirates and enemy ships and he, Elrohir and powerful allies like Marksman of Lorien and Legolas were easily able to sink enemy ships quickly and effectively towards the end of the quest.

What ships are you using?

I use Dream Chaser and Narelenya. I was going to use the ship that lowers starting threat and gives +1 to all heroes and has ranged but that ship has abysmal defense and you can only destroy enemy ships once they are safely defended against by ship-objectives. Feint is amazing on the enemy ships and if you can sink them fast enough this can completely avoid the attacks of a single ship avoiding any damage on your ships.

Got my expansion just yesterday, and I just steamrolled this quest first try with my Ents deck (basically the new Seastan ent deck minus Steward and Good Harvest). I wasn't even close to losing once. Still, very enjoyable scenario. Just doing the sailing tests and trying to stay on course and stuff was really enjoyable (Narelenya is so cool!). So yeah, pretty easy with that deck, but a lot of fun. Today I'll be exploring the island.

Good ol' ents on wooden ships