THE LAST ELVEN HOST - TWO HANDED SAGA CAMPAIGN
*(Legolas is used instead of Aragorn (T) in quests that feature fellowship Aragorn or in quests you cannot use Aragorn)
Old Scoring System used (Number of Rounds does not affect score)
QUEST 5 - Journey in the Dark
Score: 82
*By exploring Seat of Seeing I was able to remove Overcome by Grief from the campaign pool.
*Elladan and Galdor are taken captive for the purposes of the next quest
*Beat it starting on stage 2A so avoided Poisoned Counsels
QUEST 9 - Road to Isengard
Score: 87
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons: Palantir of Orthanc (attached to Fellowship Aragorn during setup)
Burdens: -
* Narrowly avoided earning Voice of Saruman as both decks had 4 cards in hand at the end!
QUEST 10 - The Passage of the Marshes
Score: 83
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons: -
Burdens: +2 starting threat for each deck for the rest of the campaign
*Decided to take the +2 starting threat for each deck rather than take the copies of The Searching Eye. Still have Three Golden Hairs to offset this as well as drawing 3 cards for each deck in an especially nasty quest.
*Copies of StwB replaced with Fellowship Card "Fellowship of the Ring" to achieve a less potent but similar willpower boost. Roheryn simply removed from the deck as the deck is 51 cards to begin with (not including boons of course).
QUEST 11 - Journey to the Cross-Roads
Score: 64
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons: -
Burdens: -
Enemies placed under The Black Gate: x1 Man of Harad
*No copies of Brace of Conies earned as I took the +1 resource to all heroes instead.
*Managed to avoid all but one enemy being placed under the black gate by constantly optionally engaging enemies and using direct damage effects, location engagement effects and always choosing the option on treacheries that does not place an enemy under the black gate.
QUES T 12 - Shelob's Lair
Score: 67
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons: -
Burdens: A Heavy Burden earned. Unavoidable. (attached to Ring Bearer during setup)
QUES T 13 - The Passing of the Grey Company
Score: 92
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons: The Army of the Dead (Put under the first players control during setup.)
Burdens:
-
*Avoided earning any copies of Overcome by Fear by having none attached at the end of the game.
QUES T 14 - The Siege of Gondor
Score: 87
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons: -
Burdens: -
Number of resources on The Corsair Fleet: 7
*The Army of the Dead removed from the campaign pool
QUES T 15 - The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
Score: 59
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons: -
Burdens: 2x Wraith On Wings (added to staging area during setup). Unavoidable.
*Used Phial of Galadriel during a critical round to reduce the attack of 4 enemies allowing me to avoid damage as well as take undefended attacks of 0 attack strength. Would have lost without using it at that point.
QUES T 16 - ???
Score:
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons:
Burdens:
Losses:
QUES T 17 - ???
Score:
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons:
Burdens:
Losses:
QUES T 18 - ???
Score:
Campaign Pool Choices:
Boons:
Burdens:
Losses:
Campaign Pool:
Overall Notes and Thoughts:
Most quests have taken at least a few attempts and some have taken several but overall the decks are performing extremely well. Helms Deep as always was epic and I managed to beat it without reaching stage 4 and without as much trouble as it usually takes to beat. Similarly Journey into the Dark was beaten without the Balrog arriving on the third attempt. This was fairly expected however as I have done it several times in the past now and always use up Tom Bombadil to assist me in doing so. The Uruk Hai and the Passage of the Marshes were some of the quests that actually proved harder than expected this time round. Uruk Hai is always some what tough for my decks though as they rely on each other and each and every hero combined to really destroy a quest and without two key heroes the decks really struggle. This time round was a nightmare though and this quest took far more attempts than Journey in the Dark. Passage was just a pain and I had very unlucky games with many nasty mire effects triggering without me being able to do much about it, this resulted in me conceding once and threating out twice.
Quests I had the most fun playing were definitely Helm's Deep, A Knife in the Dark, Breaking of the Fellowship and Battle of Pelennor Fields. Helm's Deep is just such an epic quest that it is always fun even when it is stressful and frustrating as well. Just seeing that final quest stage appear is such a relief and such an awesome moment. You get to rain absolute hell on the enemies unlucky enough to still be in play now that you don't have to exhaust ANYONE to quest and keep them back anymore. The fact I managed such a great win on only my second attempt made the victory that much sweeter and I also managed to hang onto both Phial of Galadriel and Three Golden Hairs. Normally I use at least one of the two to get my eventual win on Helm's Deep.
A Knife in the Dark similarly is just always fun due to the showdown with the Witch King and the Nazgul at the end. It is sort of the first big boss of the campaign as well because Old Man Willow is both optional and escapable without having to actually defeat him and there is no boss in A Shadow of the Past or Fog on the Barrow Downs. Also using Tactics Aragorn to wipe that smirk right off Bill Ferny's stupid face is always good fun.
Breaking of the Fellowship is normally a quest that isn't as much as fun as others are for me. It gets tedious towards the end with the seperate staging areas. As well as that Seat of Seeing is extremely missable but I am always determined to get a win where I also explore Seat of Seeing which leads to me replaying the quest until I do. There is also plenty of threat increase and other various effects to constantly keep track of (locations moving around staging areas, separate staging areas, so much archery like almost as much as Helm's Deep etc) and it is just an all round punishing quest for someone who plays with real cards and also plays two handed. This time however I had an absolute blast with this quest. It was mainly due to the fact that I demolished it first turn and although I missed Seat of Seeing as a shadow card at first, because I had such an intensely strong board state set up with both decks by the end I was able to wait until the encounter deck shuffled itself and then it luckily appeared pretty quickly the second time around not as a shadow card but as a reveal during staging! I was able to clear it and the final quest stage in the same final turn. Tactics Aragorn was an absolute beast in this quest and with Anduril, Dagger of Westernesse and UC (with Halbarad ally boosting Dagger) he was able to take out many foes on his own including right after defending by using Anduril's ability. With 6 attack (and -1 to their defense) he was easily able to slay most Uruks even with their nasty Toughness.
Thoughts on the new Saga box:
Passing of the Grey Company is tense just like it should be. Threat is raised constantly and by constantly I mean by almost every single encounter card that appears. Everything raises your threat in one way or another or alternatively attempts to attach Overcome by Fear to your threat dial which is possibly even worse. I have only played this quest once considering I beat it first go but I did so by the skin of my teeth with both decks on 45 threat. I used many threat reducing effects while copies of Overcome by Fear were not attached to threat dials and I even had to clear a copy of Gather Information to get Greeting and Gandalf so both decks didn't threat out at one point! I took some extremely risky attacks in the last few rounds and even had to take some undefended attacks while at the Stone of Erech (luckily this resulted in damage on heroes instead of threat otherwise I would have threated out and lost! Honestly this effect at the end is probably far more of a bonus to the players than it is a detriment). I only just manged the win and it felt very thematic and fitting. I left several enemies in play and had to pretty much all out quest on the last turn to win as certain effects on encounter cards in this quest can seriously slow you down or increase threat very quickly so I knew that if I did not do this there was a very good chance I would lose on the following turn or two. I focused all my offensive effort on the Army of the Dead over the course of two turns (which wasn't very much as most characters that are usually used for combat were on questing duties instead) and managed to destroy it which was an immense boost to the following quest. Overall I enjoyed the quest though I could definitely see it being quite frustrating to beat for certain decks. I was actually surprised I was able to beat it first attempt with decks that had 33 and 31 starting threat (both increased by +2 instead of taking copies of The Searching Eye) but that was only because I managed to use plenty of threat reduction and sped through with high willpower. I'm sure next time this one will probably give me a lot of grief and will take many attempts to beat.
The Siege of Gondor is actually a pretty decent quest and was probably better than I expected it to be. That being said I was anxiously trying to beat it as fast as I could so that I could finish it with as few counters on The Corsair Fleet as possible so that Battle of Pelennor Fields would be more manageable and this led to me enjoying it slightly less than I probably should have. I was just rushing to finish this one and didn't take the time to appreciate the quest itself. It is a fairly straight forward quest but **** does it get tough when damage has really stacked up on characters and you have to start revealing extra encounter cards instead of placing damage from the effect on The Corsair Fleet. It can be hard to quickly clear three boats and then the final boat as the encounter deck throws out some nasty effects and direct damage or the staging area fills with non-boat locations with nasty effects that you want to travel to that will also slow you down..
The Battle of Pelennor Fields is easily my favorite quest of the three and I spent the most time playing this one because of how many attempts it took to beat. To me it is like a much better version of Helm's Deep as it is very similar but better designed and although it is possibly a little harder I found that most of my losses were quite late game which meant I still had a lot of fun playing and the losses were easier to ignore. There were far fewer false starts although you need insanely good starting hands to even stand a chance against this one so I did perform many mulligans and scoops until I had decent staring hands to play each game with.
