First of all, this quest is also rated a “5” like the last one, but I really want to see the deck that thinks these quests are the same.

This thing is evil. It’s an undead quest - and I know some of you like that - but I’ve never been that fond of it and am getting a little tired of it after Angmar, but I can see why they had to go that way.

Again, this thing is evil. I can’t recall a quest that combos off against the player as much as this thing. Even if you are playing solo one handed it can combo off. It’s crazy. As an example, you might engage Servant of the Deceiver, “Look at the top card of your deck. If its printed cost is 2 or less, put it on the bottom of your deck...”

No big deal right? Oh! I left out the next bit… “and Servant of the Deceiver gets +2 AT until the end of the round.” Oooh Kay… I can handle that… But almost all of the shadow cards require you to discard the bottom card of your deck and if the printed cost is 2 or less BAD THING HAPPEN.” Like an additional +2 attack, or the enemy gets an additional attack (at +2).

I’m not getting close to defeating this two handed.

This quest also makes use of the dual sided locations that we saw alluded to in one of the previews. In this case you don’t lay them out in a grid, you get a separate “Lost Island” deck. You start with two in the staging area (threat 2 each) and every time you travel to one, you replace it with another Lost Island. Or every time the encounter deck feels like it. So you essentially have an (almost) inexhaustible threat source in the staging area. And most of the time when you travel to the locations…”bad things happen”.

Did I mention the Treachery that deals 1 damage to every ally cost 2 or less? Or the one that has you discard the bottom card of your deck and then discard every card with a printed cost higher than that card? It combos nicely with Souless Cadaver which has you discard every card cost 2 or less. My first play through I ended up with 0 cards in one hand on the second turn! If you can afford the card, play it now. You may not get another chance!

Sometimes there is a “code” to crack to solve the quests, but I haven’t figured out easy mode on this one yet.

Galdor of Havens.

Call me a masochist, but this quest sounds fun, wish I had a box myself

Maybe it's because I like undead quests or because, if the quest is hard enough I can tell myself it's not my fault I lost, just the encounter deck being unfair!

Looks like many (unique) expansive allies could be a good idea (what would most likely require monosphere or duo with additional ressource icons) and a burning brand to stop shadow card combos/effects. Hero Gandalf could help to control the top card of your deck.

Have you tried an outlands deck against the quest? As soon as your oulands have 3 hit points they should be pretty save against the 1 damage to all 2 cost allies card and because you play more or less all your allies as you draw them (combined with hopefully strong card-draw) the discard effects shouldn't matter to much.

Doesn't the objective ally help controlling your deck's bottom card? Didn't sound like he was much of a help for you.

Finally it seems this quest is a little bit like siege of cair andros, in the regards of random hate for a specific type of deck (in this case low cost cards), which has to be build around.

Outlands doesn't sounds like a good idea to me. That's a lot of 1-2 costed guys, which the quest thrives against.

Outlands doesn't sounds like a good idea to me. That's a lot of 1-2 costed guys, which the quest thrives against.

Yeah it sounds crazy, but from what I have seen from the Encounter Cards, they mostly punish you if you have these allies in your hand or at the top/bottom of your deck. So if you put everything into play as soon as you draw it, the encounter deck actually shouldn't have many threats upon his sleeves.

It is obiously a risky idea as you can get completly destroyed in the first two or three turns, as you won't have enough ressources most of the time to pay for everything during that stage of the game, but if you manage to get lucky (or have a test of will) and have your outlands in play the synergy should carry you to victory.

If you play Gandalf in your outlands deck, you can actually see the first card of your deck and maybe switch it if necessary, as can the objective ally with the bottom card. At least you know if you are in danger.

I played this earlier in the week and me and the other player steamrolled through it. He was playing Silvan / Rossiel and I was playing mono tactics (one of Seastan's decks). While the treacheries that did 1 to all 2 cost enemies hurt the silvan player (and my poor Defender of Ramnas), my high cost allies were doing great and we were never in much danger. The victory display got filled with the two enemies who would keep coming back (the surge guys), but aside from that, there's like 5 more enemies in the deck.

The treachery that asks you to remove X willpower where X is the number of lost islands (aimless wandering) felt kind of toothless. The fog treachery too.

I just went through all the cards...I guess having expensive allies and 2+ willpower allies was how we did it.

So I guess the real secret is just having expensive allies.

We thought the the first quest was MUCH harder and much more interesting. Man, those ships are super fun and lead to interesting decisions. Using that same mono tactics deck, everything I had sat at 1 HP remaining at the end of the game and that one treachery that AOEd for 1 damage if you're off course was the scariest thing I could imagine.

Switched back to solo and beat this quest with my threat at 48 and four Lost Islands in the staging area. I always seem to get the two surging undead back to back.

I agree that a high cost deck - especially allies - would be a very good way to go. I still think it's harder than the sailing quest, but I guess that speaks to the difference in decks.

We played this one once this weekend with a mono-tactics and a new Gandalf deck I built (Gandalf, Arwen and LorAgorn). I can see where this could get out of hand and we did luck out at the end and managed to pick the right location on the first try to finding our way out. My Gandalf deck is just an enabler - using the doomed cards to give everyone resources and draw then using Parting Gift to give the tactics player more resources. He had all his guys decked out in full gear by turn 3 so combat wasn't an issue and with Unexpected Courage on Hama and Light of Val on Bard (w/Elf-Friend) even the tactics player was committing to the quest!

I really enjoyed this quest and the lost island locations. Some of them are down right terrifying though. Good luck everyone!

I ended this one with 8 Lost Islands in the staging area... My secrecy swarm is mostly expensive cards, so the low cost abilities didn't trigger much. But I did see Ruins of Ages Past many times.

Luckily, I only needed to clear out one of them permanently to find the Shrine. Though the quest would have kept getting easier if I hadn't, since after that, they were all in the victory display or the staging area already.

I really enjoyed this quest. We had about 6-8 Lost Islands in the staging area when we completed the quest. I'll admit the Undead can be a little treacherous in this quest but we were able to get by. The key is to make sure your two cost allies, if they are on the field, have at least 2 hit points. My errand-riders, for instance, were able to soak up some of the damage here and there where other allies like the Silvan might have easily fallen.

Not sure what the "code" might be but a useful tip would be to build a deck with higher cost allies with few low cost cards and some resource acceleration to make up for the build. Or you can have a deck that is capable of a lot of card draw to mitigate all the lost cards. We were hit really badly by the "discard all cards with an equal or higher cost" and some extra card drawing pulled us out of that hole.

Good luck! It's a really fun quest.

Had to swap in Beregond for Galdor in my Cirdan/Arwen/Galdor deck from the first quest. Needed a defender and access to some attack in the form of the new tactics ally.

Won on the second try with 8 locations in the staging area and threat at 42. Luckily I found the shrine on the second try.

The enemy combos triggered putting all three of my cards at the bottom of my deck forcing me to fail several shadow card tests. Beregond, shield and UC doesnt care.

Lords of the Eldar was the mvp again getting me over the staging area mess. The quest mechanics help recycle Lords by putting the bottom card of the draw pile in the discard pile. At the end I managed to pay for Lords twice in the same round.

Was surprised how easy it was to manage the top of the discard pile to make sure the new ally abilities were in effect. With Elven Light the Sailors were always questing for 2. Sacrificing an ally at the right time made sure Mithlond Sea-watcher had her boost.

Between a Leadership deck using Anborn ally and sneak attack with descendant of thorondor and a third player with a Haldir/Beregond non-engagement deck, most of the enemies died without attacking. We got lucky in stage 2 and managed to find the temple on our third guess. Not bad out of seven or eight Lost Islands.

I definitely enjoy the Uncharted mechanic, and it should be fun to play with it some more in future adventures packs.

Ally Faramir with Narya in play can make Willpower a breeze. With Visionary Leadership in play, the Wardens of Healing were questing for 4 Willpower each. xD

This quest was a blast to play blind with no idea what those unexplored locations would be. The first time I stumbled into the Drowned Graves, it was quite a creepy surprise!

Also, I had found the Explorer's Almanac to be really handy in the first quest, clearing out the Waterspout or other nasty locations in the staging area. Then when this quest hit the table and those Uncharted locations were immune to player card attachments, I had to tip my cap to the designers. We're not on the maps anymore so your Almanac or Thror's Map or such are no longer of any use. Fortunately, The Evening Star could still guide the way even in these Uncharted lands and it helped me avoid further underwater barrows.

Of course, I have a confession to make that is even more terrifying than the Undead. I used Outlands. It's a shame to admit, but with Elrond, Arwen, and Erestor as heroes, you can really churn them out quickly... Of course, this quest hates on cards that cost two or less, so an early Anfalas Herdsman is essential, but with 20% of your deck in hand during Round 1 (thanks to Erestor), that's not too tough.

So far, I've thoroughly enjoyed the sailing and exploring theme and love what they have done with locations in both of the first two quests. On to the third!

I played it 3 player and it was a breeze. A big part of that is because two of our decks were running victory display cards and this quest has high variance. We were able to Out of the Wild one of the Ruins of Ages Past (adds extra Lost Islands) and cancel every other copy with the Door is Closed. We also removed a few of the more annoying enemies and Forest Snared one or two more.

There are a lot of softballs in this quest. Steep Plateau is one of the tamest locations we've seen in a while (1 threat, 3 quest points, beneficial response). Two of the treacheries (Aimless Wandering and Mysterious Fog) are basically +1 threat/player for the round. So once you have thinned out the encounter deck a bit, the quest becomes a lot less dangerous.

Wow so I had an opposite experience to you TeamJimby and had a terrible time with Voyage Across Belargir but then demolished this quest on the first attempt.

The many high cost attachments and allies in one of my decks kept it relatively safe from the various 2 cost or less treachery and shadow effects in this quest and the other deck isn't a combat deck so did suffer a few nasty effects but was able to either cancel the worst with test of will or just brave the others without too much detrimental effect.

I was able to muster high willpower to combat the various copies of Lost Island you must face and by the time I was on stage 2 there was roughly 8 copies of Lost Island in the staging area! I got lucky and managed to find Shrine of Morgoth on the third attempt. What was really cool was that I faced minimal enemies throughout all of stage 1 (which is super easy by the way.... you are rewarded for exploring locations in so many ways and you can use various treacheries or harmless locations to peek at the bottom side of a copy of lost island in the staging area so I managed to avoid the Drowned Tombs location altogether, got through 2 of the nasty ones that stop characters with less than 2 willpower readying (which were not very harmful and only kept 1 or 2 allies exhausted for a few turns) and then had several copies of the one that draws you a card then lets you put it on the bottom of your deck and 1 copy of the nasty one that takes away ranged and exhausts heroes and whatnot. The turn that last one appeared there were no enemies so exhausting all ready heroes was inconsequential so I was easily able to clear it and stop it from returning to staging. Really clobbered all the late game enemies and slew quite a few undead, I just left the Throngs of Unfaithful alone and never attacked them to avoid their effect upon being destroyed as they only have 2 attack and I had UC on Elrond and sentinel set up on Elrohir so was easily able to defend all attacks (a few copies of Lembas throughout the game were extremely helpful as were 2 copies of feint which were both used on turns I was somewhat swarmed with enemies).

Overall I think I actually enjoyed this quest a lot more and I think the whole uncharted mechanic is so **** good, it actually stops location lock because they all have 2 threat (or 3 when certain treacheries show up) and the amount of locations is fairly static or will only increase by maybe 1 tops 2 due to special effects and any locations not in the uncharted deck are low threat with beneficial results if you explore them. Didn't have Asfaloth (although an early copy of Northern Tracker allowed me to peek at an extra lost island or two over the course of the game) and still managed locations and willpower just fine.

Enemies were fairly tame and very manageable for my decks. Their effects were either avoided due to the nature of my decks or did minimal damage. The Throngs were left in play and not attacked, allies almost never defend in these decks so the Drowned Dead ability never triggered and the biggest foe (forget its name) was almost always pumped to 5 attack but only 1 ever inflicted damage! The final enemy that makes you put cards in your hand under 2 cost on the bottom of your deck was only encountered a few times and did nothing on one occasion (the tactics/leadership deck had all high cost cards and had already used the low cost cards!) and on the other only discard a single copy of Asfaloth as the spirit/lore deck had used up almost all the cards in its hand already.

Great quest! On to the third quest of the box!

Decks Used: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/203930-the-grey-company-and-the-line-of-the-half-elven/

Whoops I meant bullroarer not teamjimby! My bad, sorry guys!

Played a 2-handed game with Beorn/Aragorn(T)/Damrod and Cirdan/Arwen/Galdor. It was a long game because of the fiddly nature of the Noldor deck. It can really feel like a Gandalf deck with all of the advance planning (mostly this was the fault of the Gildor+Cirdan combination).

Gildor was in play on turn 1 thanks to To the Sea!, and then Galdor filled my hand up again. Actually I played half the game in error: I had a Soulless Cadaver caught in a Forest Snare on the Noldor deck from turn 2 or 3, which prevents you from searching your deck, but I used Gildor pretty consistently for most of the game until I realized the error. I doubt that it would have mattered much since this was a strong win.

When I got to stage 2, there were 7 Uncharted locations in the staging area (1 being the Shrine of Morgoth). I immediately ruled out 4 of them. I had just explored a Steep Plateau, so after quest stage advancement I used it to look at an Uncharted location. Then I played The Evening Star, with 2 copies already in discard. This put 4 progress on another Uncharted, so I peeked at it, and 2 progress on another. I ignored that second Uncharted, then traveled to a different one and flipped it (now I've looked at 3). It wasn't what I wanted, so I used Thror's Map to switch it with yet another Uncharted. Still wasn't what I wanted, but now I'd looked at 4 of 7, and one of the remaining 3 had 2 progress on it. I used Asfaloth to put 1 more progress on it (Asfaloth was on Galdor, so only 1 progress). After staging on the next round I used Asfaloth again, it now had 4 progress on it so I peeked. Still not what I wanted. I traveled to one of the remaining 2 locations and it was the Shrine. Quested to victory on the next turn.

Combat wasn't too bad. Traps handle the undead pretty well. Beorn had 9 damage on him by the end, mostly due to some early game combat before I had Honour Guards or many traps available, but I never had to use my Landroval (thanks, Horn's Cry!). Cirdan with Narya combos very well with the Bear Trap deck, allowing for double Anborn trap recycling, extra uses of Legolas, or extra uses of Honour Guards. And Arwen can feed Aragorn resources, since resource generation is missing in that deck.

I found it pretty easy with 2 players. For me, Legolas was mvp for this one (actually he's pretty good for all the quests in this box). If you have him with Rohan Warhorse, Arod and/or Blade of Gondolin, and there's stuff to kill, he can usually clear the active location before the next refresh phase (and quest phase). So stuff like cursed temple and flooded ruins aren't a problem. Plus, the scenario has throngs of unfaithful that keeps coming back for this progress token machine to work.

Just played this for the first time and won with the sons of Elrond. Oh boy, it was a long one. I was lucky in that I got 2 copies of Steward in my starting hand (one of which I discarded to play the other), but I didn't see Elven-light until like round 10, and that is even more of a linchpin for the deck. Still, overall it was pretty fun, especially the uncharted mechanic (gotta try it with Asfaloth to see one of them only for them to be shuffled). I was getting a bit worried because due to the first quest's text the number of locations kept piling up and I was close to getting location locked and threating out (thank God I had Gandalf), and by the time I got to the second stage, I had 4 Lost Islands, to which 2 plus the temple were added to the staging area. I was afraid, bu thankfully the very second location I travelled to was the temple, and then it was just a matter of questing and Faramir to win.

The Drowned Dead encounter set means almost nothing to the brothers. The enemies were never a problem at all, even when I had 4 of them engaged, but Elrohir had like 6 reosources and 7 defense, so they were pretty meaningless. Definitely though the worst one was the Soulless cadaver, which "drowned" my entire hand one time. Still, the brothers are actually pretty amazing for this quest, because thanks to Calphon and many enocunter and shadow effects I kept recycling Lords of the Eldar from the bottom of the deck, which proved invaluable (must have played that card like 6 times). Cool quest. Lengthy, but cool.

Can I see your deck Gizlivadi?
I played this a second time with decks that also feature Elrohir and Elladan and it was ridiculously trivial. Mopped the floor with the enemies and had no trouble questing at any point either.

Honestly the brothers just rule at combat, with Elrohir on 7 def able to block like 6 attacks + and Elladan with attachments and resources and help from the likes of Tactigorn's ability and Legolas (ally) and Marksman of Lorien enemies simply fall before you in the vast majority of scenarios and you sort of need to play nightmare or harder quests for a true challenge.
Arwen has definitely only strengthened their power and all three can be run together in a spectacular solo deck (which is why I'd love to see yours).

I'm just curious, are you just using Dunedain Warning attachments to get his defense up or do you use anything else?

Just posted my deck in the strategy section.

I'm just curious, are you just using Dunedain Warning attachments to get his defense up or do you use anything else?

He gets Steward and Gondorian Shield (first turn steward and shield is ideal). He then receives any copies of Dunedain Warning that appear (x3) and if you see any copies of Cloak of Lorien the first goes on Elrohir (x2 copies in the other deck) and finally there are 3 copies of Elven Mail which he also receives.

With just steward and shield he gets to 5 defense, with either a warning or cloak attached he goes up to 6 then if you get a copy of the other he gets up to 7 with the potential to be on 8 if the active location is a forest or if you get a second warning on him. With the Elven Mail he has 6 hitpoints and sentinel as well.

With these stats and with like 5 resources on him he can defend 6 attacks at 6 or 7+ defense and 6 hitpoints.

He can often attack at the end as well if he is still ready.

I'd like to see Beregond or Erkenbrand do the same WITHOUT using like a million copies of Beyond Strong Walls or UC!!

I'm writing to you as we leaving this cursed island. The search was hard and exhausting, but we managed to retreive something at the very least - some sort of a key. Not sure what it's for, though, neither is Calphon, but our lies within the Grey Havens and the knowledge they might possess regarding the matter.

The ruins of ages past have proven extremely hard to navigate, which forced us to start the search from scratch several times, being unable go futher into the island without risking to get lost. There were a lot of strange living corpses on the island - not a thing you see everyday, but our crew was strong enough to withstand their lingering malevolence.

In the end, aimless wandering bore it's fruits, and we stumbled upon that ancient shrine of the long gone ancient evil, where our mutual gondorian friend were able to mysteriously procure the key, without even being able to tell how he knew where to find it. Strange.

However, now, with groping undead and their drowned graves behind us, we are sailing at full speed towards the Grey Havens. I'll get back to you as soon as we get some information regarding the key, and, naturally, some well-deserved rest.

My friend and just beat this quest despite the only cards in our decks of higher cost than 2 being Hobbit Gandalf in my deck and Citadel Plate in his. So it's definitely possible to survive the Undead machinations without specific deck building.

I'm not sure that's possible of, say, Deadman's Dike -- are there powerful decks out there that can regularly beat that one without customizing for the particularities of the quest?

EDIT: I was somewhat mistaken: both of us also had a couple of Northern Trackers in our decks. Still.