Hi

I'm struggling to get passed the opening gambit on this quest. The rolling seas and scouting ship are killing me early. If I try and ignore them to stay on course locations flood the staging area and prevent quest progress. If I travel to rolling seas then I go off course and the scouting ship engages. the corsair's are brutal on turn one or two.

I tried building a rohan spirit deck and didn't travel to rolling seas on turn one. By turn two a war ship appeared and I had to travel to rolling seas and lost two hero's in the fighting.

OK so who's beat this and how?

Use Northern Tracker, Asfaloth, or The Evening Star to eliminate locations without travelling.

I've got two Northern Trackers in (only got one core) and lots of location control. I don't yet have Asfaloth which is Lore anyway. I may have to try 2handed solo and put either tactics and or Lore as the other player. I thought I might try one handed first.

I'm playing Eowyn, Theoden and Dunhere. I've got good questing and location cards in there and running a Gamling and eomund combo to ready rohan characters. Theoden stacks with Narelenea to get characters out for 1 or free as I believe this quest needs lots of characters out early to sail, quest and chump. I figured Dunhere can plug away at low defence ships while in the staging area.

I don't usually have an issue with this quest when I play 2 handed, so that might be a good way to go.

with only 1 deck I can see how it might cause some problems. I'm not sure the Eomund/Gamling combo is worth it for you. Who do you feel you need to ready? Theoden is by far the best, but he can be readied from the quest with Snowmane. It seems to me like this is probably ultimately a resource sink for you, since most Spirit rohan characters don't benefit too much from being readied.

I've had a lot of sucess with tactics Merry as 3rd hero rather than Dunhere, although full disclosure I play 2 handed. Still, tactics merry opens up many good cards for you like Legolas, all the tactics events, Westfold Outrider, Deorwine, and he has a built-in Readying effect when he attacks.

Thror's Map

I've got three Thror's maps in lol

It's just getting one early.

I thought readying all rohan characters would allow everyone to quest/sail and then be readied for combat when either archery kills Eomund or I chump block with him. Gamling puts him back in my hand and he plays back on the table for 1 resource. I've got snowmane in there too as an extra ready for defence and fight.

I'll post my deck so you can all see what I'm running

Hero's

Dunhere

Theoden

Eowyn

Ally

Gamling x3

Eomund x2

Hama x1

Elfhelm x1

Escort From Edoras x3

West Road Traveller x2

The Riddermark's Finest x3

Pelagir Shipwright x3

Lorien Guide x3

Northern Tracker x2

Attachments

Snowmane x1

Herugrim x1

Thror's Key x3

Miruvor x3

Ancient Mathom x2

Unexpected Courage x1

The favour of the Lady x1

Events

Mustering The Rohirrim x1

Astonishing Speed x1

Dwarven Tomb x1

Hasty stroke x2

A Test Of Will x2

Strength Of Will x2

The Galadhrim's Greeting x2

Ride to Ruin x3

We Do Not sleep x3

I have one core set.

I have everything except:

Heirs of Numenor deluxe

The druadan Forrest

The morgal vale

Foundations of stone

Watcher in the water

The voice of isengard deluxe

The three trials

The dunland trap

Trouble in tharbad

The lost realm deluxe (on order)

I have a lot of adventure packs without actually having the associated deluxe set. This is due to my local store not getting them in.

I get a lot of my LOTR LCG products on eBay -- for example, multiple copies of HoN are on sale right now for $29-31 with free shipping. Discount Games used to sell on eBay at lower prices, but they seem to have pulled out.

Added a tactics/Leadership deck and played 2-handed solo. Played two more times and... Nope! This quest ain't going well for me at all. I'm going back to the drawing board.

How are people beating this... Which hero teams are you playing with?

My wife and I have used this fellowship throughout the whole cycle so far:

http://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/776

Thanks mate I'll give it a go and let know how I fare.

I've bought a lot of this game in a relatively short amount of time so I'm at the bottom of the learning curve still when it comes to deck building.

What is the sideboard part of your deck listing for? Is that to adapt the deck for different quests within the cycle?

What is the sideboard part of your deck listing for? Is that to adapt the deck for different quests within the cycle?

Check out the individual descriptions of the decks themselves, too--they go a little more in-depth on how we play them. Let me know how it goes, we'd love to hear what you think of them!

Thanks again. I'm hopefully going to set sail across the Belegaer tonight. I have almost all of the cards in your listings but I only have one core so I might proxy or use alternatives i.e. Cram in place of the extra Unexpected Courages.

I don't have Watcher In The Water so no Elronds Council either.

I'll post here my substitutions and how things went. Really looking forward to cracking this quest.

Bloody Pirates!

Well played again tonight and was thoroughly sunk by turn four. I'm giving this scenario a difficulty of eight. It's not so much the decks being bad or anything, although your dual deck felt much better, rather the encounter deck and set-up is brutal. Stray off course and scout ship and a nasty corsair pirate engage on turn one, commit to sailing and you'll struggle to quest, commit every one to quest thinking there'll be no combat as threat is low and you get a Treachery that forces engagement. You want to travel to rolling seas, you can't if you don't want to engage the scouting ship and pirate it boards. It's almost like a horrible catch-22 dilemma right off the bat.

Thats not to say I'm not enjoying getting beaten. So I think I played carefully and used the best cards at the best times but I ended up engaged with (all at the same time) 2 scouting ships, 2 light cruisers, 3 cunning Pirates, 2 vicious marauders and an umbar captain, and in the staging area was a corsair warship (from turn 1 questing) waterspout and starlit sea and I'd travelled to rolling seas earlier when my 3 card draw sailing attempt failed. I'd had a turn 2 boarding party Treachery card which I couldn't cancel which hampered my deploying as I had to try and deal with them. I ended the game there as both my ships were about to be destroyed even though none of the engaged enemies would get a shadow card this round due to the encounter deck being empty after questing. I'd managed to get only six progress on 1b. So down to Davy Jones locker for me.

I'll try again tomorrow

Played again tonight and beat it using the same deck. I was still a struggle and it was very touch and go on stage 3. After questing I was left with a decision to either go off course or damage every exhausted character.if I went off course I'd lose one of my ships to the war cruiser in the staging area so I had to stay on course and win by questing only thing is the damage I'd take would kill over half of my questers. I took the damage route and managed to quest for 23 (9 threat in staging, calm waters 4 quest point's as active location and 10 on the quest for being on course).

The cards that really gave me victory were:

Revealed in wrath to neuter the warships so I could engage them with out activating their boarding 3 keyword. I could engage them in isolation. I pulled this off twice.

The Galadhrim jewelers, getting them out early without having to pay resources by discarding two cards each meant I had really good attempts at sailing checks. This kept me on course and meant I was able to not use the dream chaser for sailing checks. The other ship was the -3 threat and +1 attack on each hero which I have to the tactics deck.

The corsair that removed an attachment hit me hard three times removing my weapons and armour and slowed down the tactics defence and attack considerably

Great night for me. I'm ready to try the next quest now... The fate of Numenor

Awesome! I'm glad you were finally able to best that monster. Makes me want to go back and play it again myself.