A man sits hunched over his desk in the dark, the candlelight playing across the twisted grimace on his face. He shuffles little pieces of cardboard across the desk's surface, organizing and reorganizing them, trying desperately to find some meaning in the shapes before him. He inhales sharply, as if expecting a blow as he quickly flips one of the cards over. The silence hangs for a moment before his head lolls forward and his held breath escapes all at once. "Not again," he mutters, "Not again! When will this Nightmare end?"

I'd like to share with you the project I've been working on for the past couple of months.

I call it Darkling Door - a phrase taken from the song sung by Aragorn about the adventures of Beren and Luthien - and it has been my passion project for a little while now.

About the blog

There has been a lot of interest in the LotR community in Nightmare quests lately. There's currently an active thread about it, PsychoRocka is doing Nightmare reviews in his excellent new blog, and the insightful Warden of Arnor is considering covering Nightmare quests soon as well. Nightmare mode isn't just for Glaurung anymore!

We've also seen a lot of insightful discussion on the dichotomy between "Power" decks and "Thematic" decks. The Grey Company did an illuminating podcast on it recently, which JR of Peace and Thought responded to, not to mention the innumerable posts on the subject here on the FFG forums. I have always fallen more on the "Thematic" side of things myself, finding the greatest enjoyment out of building and playing decks with a cohesive narrative.

Conventional wisdom, however, says that Thematic decks typically aren't going to be good enough to beat most Nightmare quests. In fact, it's pretty common for Thematic decks and Easy mode to share the same breath.

I would like to challenge that conventional wisdom. The focus of my blog will be using Thematic decks to beat Nightmare quests.

If you have a few minutes, please check it out!
https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/

The first actual nightmare quest article will be up tomorrow, but for now I have a post on what I actually mean when I say "Thematic deck".

Sounds great! Enjoyed reading the article about thematic play and breaking down exactly what thematic means in this game. Can't wait for the first nightmare quest article!

I have now posted a short article on goals as well as the first actual Thematic Nightmare post, Passage Through Mirkwood!

Sounds great! Enjoyed reading the article about thematic play and breaking down exactly what thematic means in this game. Can't wait for the first nightmare quest article!

Thanks! I've been enjoying reading through your blog as well, especially the Nightmare Reviews. It's nice to have some fresh LotR content in my RSS reader.

Wow! It seems it's being a time of Nightmare abundancy!

Thanks for your initiative. Read your posts on your blog. Really entertaining and insightful!

It might prove to be a good challenge depending on the Nightmare quest (and the theme around it).

Thanks for the support and comments! I'm having a blast working through this challenge, and really enjoying sharing it with you all.

My next post on Journey Along the Anduin is now live. Check it out!

I had to break Escape from Dol Guldur into two posts, it was getting a little out of hand. Part 1 is up now!

Part 2 of Escape from Dol Guldur is up now! Phew, that was a lot of work.

From here on out, I'm going to post in this thread much less frequently, so check my blog directly for updates or use the RSS feed to get notified as soon as I put something up.

Thanks for reading!

Wow man, I admire your persistence.

I remember playing 70+ consecutive games of Escape from Dol Guldur straight solo in standard mode, using a 50-card deck built exclusively from Core set cards. I think my win ratio was around 5%.

Don't know that I could stomach doing that again in Nightmare mode, with the added self-imposed restriction of thematic deck building.

I am curious as to what your win ratio would be if you tackled NM Dol Guldur without your thematic restrictions... but I understand that you may not care to find out.

Still, nice to know that it is achievable, despite the long odds against. I also wonder what the designers' success ratio is...

Wow man, I admire your persistence.

I remember playing 70+ consecutive games of Escape from Dol Guldur straight solo in standard mode, using a 50-card deck built exclusively from Core set cards. I think my win ratio was around 5%.

Don't know that I could stomach doing that again in Nightmare mode, with the added self-imposed restriction of thematic deck building.

I am curious as to what your win ratio would be if you tackled NM Dol Guldur without your thematic restrictions... but I understand that you may not care to find out.

Still, nice to know that it is achievable, despite the long odds against. I also wonder what the designers' success ratio is...

Thanks! For some reason, Dol Guldur has been my nemesis for a long time. More than a year ago I made it my goal to find a way to beat it in normal mode (although not with just Core set cards, that's for sure!)

I really don't know how different my solution would be without also trying to build a thematic deck. I probably still would have gone for a similar solution, but perhaps I would have thrown some Ethir Swordsmen and Pelargir Shipwrights in. My intuition tells me that a little more willpower would go a long way to make the deck more consistent. I might also go for the good ol' Good Harvest + Steward of Gondor combo just to help with the resource problem of a missing hero.

Something tells me the designers didn't play this quest solo, or at least not very many times. It's not really designed for less than two players, I think.

Shadows of Mirkwood is now complete, and I just posted the first quest of Khazad-Dûm today! The weird storyline of this cycle was making me grumpy, so I've decided to reimagine it as I go through the Nightmare versions of the quests.

If that sounds interesting to you, check it out!

Intro to Khazad-Dûm

Nightmare Into the Pit

Fantastic explanation of theme! Moria is my favorite setting in Middle-Earth so all those discrepancies you laid out bothered me from the first. Great work, I love reading about the Nightmare quests I'll never play!

Nice write-up and I like the theme re-arrangement you've got going on. Thanks for sharing!

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Love the idea here, mainly because I have been crazy enough to collect a whole bunch of the nightmare quests (think I own them all...up to the ringmaker cycle at least...including sagas) and I want to play them once I have finished playing all the quests on normal mode.

Will make sure to follow your posts!