The quests you will be doing are:

Again, the mode of play is up to you. But be sure to give a report on how the quests went in some form (i.e. here on the forums, or by editing your deck description on ringsdb, or making a blog post, etc.).

Best of luck!

Now that is convenient, I tested my deck against Fear and Wastes before posting the list, hopefully the results live up to my expectations

Not a very important Thing , but shouldn't the note be hidden too?

I'll be using something like this: http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/50595

Fortune or Fate = Proud Hunters since I want to try it out and happened to get heroes that work with it.

I will utilizing this deck: http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/50606

1 hour ago, cmabr002 said:

I'll be using something like this: http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/50595

Fortune or Fate = Proud Hunters since I want to try it out and happened to get heroes that work with it.

1 hour ago, Elu_Thingol said:

I will utilizing this deck: http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/50606

Elu_Thingol and I are playing with one another. We just crushed Wastes of Eriador. Haldir and Beregond did a lot of work.

I'll write up a fuller report later, but my first quest went much better than you seemed to think it would, given my heroes! Rossiel and Eleanor had a first hand of 2x Resourceful, 3x Faint, and None Return, and opening turn drew another None Return. Elfhelm had a first-hand Roheryn, Firefoot, Rohan Warhorse, and Steward of Gondor. Well powered-up, and ended up with 10 cards in the Victory display, but only 1 turn away from defeat.

And I just now remembered I even forgot to trigger Thalin's reaction the entire game!

On 3/25/2017 at 3:55 PM, cmabr002 said:

Elu_Thingol and I are playing with one another. We just crushed Wastes of Eriador. Haldir and Beregond did a lot of work.

Well, looks like you got a good pair of decks! Feel free to try nightmare mode, or a harder quest, if you feel my choices weren't challenging enough!

14 minutes ago, Seastan said:

Well, looks like you got a good pair of decks! Feel free to try nightmare mode, or a harder quest, if you feel my choices weren't challenging enough!

Yeah, we are thinking about it. Wastes was definitely the hardest of the three for us but we were in control for pretty much the entire time, but we almost got "cheesed" by the Steward's Fear. We got the plot that discards cards from our deck and we also got the enemy that makes you discard cards when he attacks. We managed to still win because we got the clue that lets you add 2 tokens to the quest so we were able to prevent being stalled for too long and getting decked.

Flight to the Ford was interesting because Haldir has difficulty getting to 9 damage but we were fortunate and I drew both Secret Vigils so we were able to keep our threat low enough to never get swarmed by Nazgul.

8 hours ago, cmabr002 said:

(...)Flight to the Ford was interesting because Haldir has difficulty getting to 9 damage but we were fortunate and I drew both Secret Vigils so we were able to keep our threat low enough to never get swarmed by Nazgul.

I assume you attached Secret Vigils to Nazgul as they are the only enemies in FttF scenario. But I'm afraid they are not valid targets for Vigils, because they have "Cannot have non-Morgul attachments." (and the Witch-king is immune).

You are correct and it was a mistake on my part. I guess Galadhrim's Greetings could have kept my threat low enough since Elu_Thingol never used them and had access to extra resources thanks to Resourceful, though it may have taken another turn to get Glorfindel into play. We also had Robin Smallburrow in play so I imagine we could've used his ability if necessary, though I can't say for certain if my mistake with Secret Vigil mattered significantly or not.

btw, I'm waiting to receive my Mumakil pack (which is having a delay of two months -_-), and then I'll be playing the quests

8 hours ago, cmabr002 said:

You are correct and it was a mistake on my part. I guess Galadhrim's Greetings could have kept my threat low enough since Elu_Thingol never used them and had access to extra resources thanks to Resourceful, though it may have taken another turn to get Glorfindel into play. We also had Robin Smallburrow in play so I imagine we could've used his ability if necessary, though I can't say for certain if my mistake with Secret Vigil mattered significantly or not.

Alas, there still aren't many threat reduction cards in the pool outside Spirit sphere. Secret Vigil is one of the best, in my opinion, but in this particular quest is, simply put, useless.

There is also one interesting, pretty new card: Well Warned. It costs 0, it works with immunes and enemies like Nazgul that cannot have attachments, and can be played by the player who has Spirit when any player engages enemy to reduce this player's threat. But it still needs Spirit to resource match and of course this Noble-Scout duo...

Scenario: Flight to the Ford Heroes: Sam Gamgee, Bilbo Baggins, Fatty Bolger Starting Threat:19 # of Attempts: 1 Final Score: 96

http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/49223

I went into this game feeling very confident. These are the heroes I have been with running through the saga campaign. So I know they have beat this quest before, with a higher starting threat. Things changed after my first draw, and a mulligan revealed no resource generating cards. Then on turn two I pulled a Black Steed, which meant I would have to deal with a Nazgul enemy before I was ready. Luckily, I had a Test of Will in hand. Also, turn two had me playing a Peace, and Thought. After that the resources and cards came rolling in. The deck worked just as I had envisioned. I used a sneak attack playing Gandalf three times, and paid for him three more. I drew through the entire deck. Test of Will was played three more times. I got a little nervous when I got to six remaining life and I was still on the first stage. Thankfully that was the turn around, as the game ended two turns later. I think the real star of this deck is Heed the Dream. In a game with Steward of Gondor, it really makes extreme combos reliable. I am looking forward to future challenges when the engagement cost of the enemies is lower, to see how my reduced threat is a factor.

We played three games of Wastes of Eriador.

In the first game, our threats went racing up, but otherwise we had no problems as we each got a solid collection of allies and plenty of defence and healing. Eventually we managed to draw some threat reduction and everything was straightforward from there.

In the second game it immediately took our hand away with Lost in the Wilderness, then turned to night, and brought out 3 wolves in the first turn. This ended more or less as you'd imagine.

The third game was much like the first except without threat gain. I think I (Lore/Leadership deck) ended up with all of my allies on the board.

We'll play the Steward's Fear next, which could be quite annoying thanks to the low engagement cost enemies including the ever-troublesome Zealous Traitor.

Senario: The Stewart's Fear Heroes: Sam Gamgee, Bilbo Baggins, Fatty Bolger Starting Threat: 19 # of Attempts: 1 Final Score: 146

This game was a good test of my greatest fear. On the very first turn I was faced with the Umbar assasin. With a total of eight hp, my heroes couldn't take more than a couple rounds of its archery 2. I also couldn't engage it to kill it, as it would deal three damage to a hero. None of my heroes have more than three hp. In the end, dwarven sellswords took the arrows while Gandalf fought the brigand from afar.

I was happy to see that my reduced starting threat did become a factor. I was able to engage one enemy at a time, thereby avoiding the penalties for non-optional engagements.

I am doutfull of my chances on the next quest. I have already had one attempt that failed spectacularly.

11 hours ago, JusticeLizard said:

Senario: The Stewart's Fear Heroes: Sam Gamgee, Bilbo Baggins, Fatty Bolger Starting Threat: 19 # of Attempts: 1 Final Score: 146

This game was a good test of my greatest fear. On the very first turn I was faced with the Umbar assasin. With a total of eight hp, my heroes couldn't take more than a couple rounds of its archery 2. I also couldn't engage it to kill it, as it would deal three damage to a hero. None of my heroes have more than three hp. In the end, dwarven sellswords took the arrows while Gandalf fought the brigand from afar.

I was happy to see that my reduced starting threat did become a factor. I was able to engage one enemy at a time, thereby avoiding the penalties for non-optional engagements.

I am doutfull of my chances on the next quest. I have already had one attempt that failed spectacularly.

Nice report! What was your plot/villain?

16 hours ago, NathanH said:

We played three games of Wastes of Eriador.

In the first game, our threats went racing up, but otherwise we had no problems as we each got a solid collection of allies and plenty of defence and healing. Eventually we managed to draw some threat reduction and everything was straightforward from there.

In the second game it immediately took our hand away with Lost in the Wilderness, then turned to night, and brought out 3 wolves in the first turn. This ended more or less as you'd imagine.

The third game was much like the first except without threat gain. I think I (Lore/Leadership deck) ended up with all of my allies on the board.

We'll play the Steward's Fear next, which could be quite annoying thanks to the low engagement cost enemies including the ever-troublesome Zealous Traitor.

Wastes can have pretty brutal setups. But at least you don't have to invest a whole lot of time in your loses in that case.

Senario: The Wastes of Eriador Heroes: Sam Gamgee, Bilbo Baggins, Fatty Bolger Starting Threat: 19 # of Attempts: 2 Final Score: 169

I am going to admit up front that my win felt like it had a bit of luck. Nothing disastrous jumped out of the encounter deck the first few bonus draws for switching to night. The scariest moment was when the treachery that deals damage equal to the number of questers came up the second time. It would have killed Fatty and Bilbo if I didn't have Bill the Pony there to give them an extra hit point each. Once again the fear of the deck was my low hit points, and the strength was my extra reduced threat. This time, instead of it letting me deal with one enemy at a time, it let me worry less about the extra threat I was gaining at the first stage. I took my time and built Sam in to a resource generating, multi defending monster. By the time I advanced to the second stage I was playing a Gandalf a turn to bring my threat back down.

11 hours ago, Seastan said:

What was your plot/villain?

My plot was Poisoned Counsels, and my villain was The Hand of Castamir. I felt this was a good combo for me because the plots extra threat and the villian being the one with the highest engagement cost worked to my strength of low threat. Sam may have been the MVP of the series, but in his victory speech he would credit Fatty for giving me four extra threat points to work with.

I just want to say this was a fun experience, and I hope I can get my wife to join in if there is another auction. (She will )

I put up a blog post earlier talking about how I approached the bidding and deckbuilding:

https://wardenofarnor.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/deckbuilding-challenge-the-middle-earth-hero-auction/

As mentioned at the end of the post, I'll be streaming my attempts at the quests 8pm (BST) this Sunday, on www.twitch.tv/pocketwraith.

We only had time for one play of Steward's Fear this week. We got lots of Sewers at the beginning which meant a big explosion of brigands at one point. As I expected the Zealous Traitors were the main threat. At one point they killed the only Warden of Healing that I drew, but Glorfindel gets enough resources with the Steward to use his healing every turn. This is actually a better ability than I'd thought. Our plot was the one that increases threat, which was no danger to us, and the enemy was Hand of Castamir, who was annoying but didn't last long.

I finally got my Mûmakil pack some days ago, so I built my deck and tested it against that same quest:

Deck (19 initial threat): Erkenbrand (6) + Dúnhere (5) + Bifur (8)

1st attempt

ughhhh... who said this quest was easy? lol. Probably it took me by surprise, since I had no strategy planned for dealing with the Mûmak. Anyways: With no threat reduction, my deck has at most 2 turns of secrecy, and it quickly reduced to only the 1st turn since I got a doomed-1 card during questing. That hurt. At least I was able to play Resourceful, a secrecy ally and Timely Aid -> Gléowine before, and later I decided to travel asap to the Mûmak Trail location during Travel phase.

I didn't want to explore Mûmak Trail fast, because I didn't want the Mûmak to come so early into the staging area (and definitely didn't want the Mûmak to get lost wandering in the encounter deck), and I decided to turtle a little and get several allies into play. After 2~3 turns I explored Mûmak Trail, and then the Mûmak came in and killed a bunch of chump blockers.

Now, here is where things started to go wrong: While I was still in the 1st part of the quest, I got a bunch of locations revealed during questing, and I decided not to travel (and explore) any of them because I didn't want to add more Mûmaks to the encounter deck. I guess I over-panicked with the idea of revealing more Mumaks. Thing is, at some point I revealed the "Guardians of the Jungle" side quest, which at first glance seemed like a very innocent card, but man, it hurted a lot; even for a 1-player game. I mean, I constantly had between 3~6 locations in the staging area, and that side quest was increasing threat like crazy. I was barely being able to add progress.

Somehow though, thanks to Gléowine draw power and plenty of resources with the help of 2 Resourcefuls and the Steward of Gondor, I managed to keep the pace adding chumpblockers, and OHaUH Gandalf + Firyal became the stars of the game, adding a lot of willpower plus control over the encounter deck via scrying. Very slowly, and after quite some turns, I finally defeated stage 1, which allowed me to travel to all those **** locations in the staging area. The fear of adding more Mumaks was gone, but the staging area still had plenty of locations and threat (between 16~21)...

More locations were coming out o_O, and I wasn't being able to put more than 1 or 2 progress per turn; luckily, no enemies were at sight, which allowed me to focus all my combat efforts on the Mûmak, and after some rounds it finally went down, not before killing my Erkenbrand though >_>. With the **** oliphaunt gone, all that was left was to put some more progress onto quest stage n° 2

Final part: Race between the much needed progress vs increasing threat, both in the staging area and in my threat dial. Because I had OHaUH Gandalf around for some rounds, my threat was quickly reaching 50. At some point I drew another Gandalf so I sacrificed the one in play to save myself 2 threat. Things come to a crucial point: End of the round, and my threat is at 47. Decision time: do I keep Gandalf? If I decide so, then next round is the last round.... but if I sacrifice him, then there is serious risk of threating out and/or enemies coming in to complicate things before being able to finish the game.... ughhh... ... ... .. . . . . Welp, here goes nothing: I decide to keep Gandalf around, knowing therefore that the next turn will be my last no matter what. I draw a 1 willpower ally; of course anything helps so the ally enters play. I quest with everything: My willpower is... 28. Total threat in the staging area: 18. There is an active location that needs 2 progress to be explored, and after all that, 5 more progress needed to clear quest stage 2. I trigger Firyal and I see... a Giant Centipede! that's 3 extra threat... I start to make calculations and... yesss!!! Giant Centipede will do: barely enough progress to clear the quest o_O!

Final result: Victory (barely)

Turns: +120

Threat: +49

Dead Heroes: +8

Damaged Heroes: 0

Victory Display: -4

Total Score: 173

27 minutes ago, Rajam said:

I finally got my Mûmakil pack some days ago, so I built my deck and tested it against that same quest:

Deck (19 initial threat): Erkenbrand (6) + Dúnhere (5) + Bifur (8)

1st attempt

ughhhh... who said this quest was easy? lol. Probably it took me by surprise, since I had no strategy planned for dealing with the Mûmak. Anyways: With no threat reduction, my deck has at most 2 turns of secrecy, and it quickly reduced to only the 1st turn since I got a doomed-1 card during questing. That hurt. At least I was able to play Resourceful, a secrecy ally and Timely Aid -> Gléowine before, and later I decided to travel asap to the Mûmak Trail location during Travel phase.

I didn't want to explore Mûmak Trail fast, because I didn't want the Mûmak to come so early into the staging area (and definitely didn't want the Mûmak to get lost wandering in the encounter deck), and I decided to turtle a little and get several allies into play. After 2~3 turns I explored Mûmak Trail, and then the Mûmak came in and killed a bunch of chump blockers.

Now, here is where things started to go wrong: While I was still in the 1st part of the quest, I got a bunch of locations revealed during questing, and I decided not to travel (and explore) any of them because I didn't want to add more Mûmaks to the encounter deck. I guess I over-panicked with the idea of revealing more Mumaks. Thing is, at some point I revealed the "Guardians of the Jungle" side quest, which at first glance seemed like a very innocent card, but man, it hurted a lot; even for a 1-player game. I mean, I constantly had between 3~6 locations in the staging area, and that side quest was increasing threat like crazy. I was barely being able to add progress.

Somehow though, thanks to Gléowine draw power and plenty of resources with the help of 2 Resourcefuls and the Steward of Gondor, I managed to keep the pace adding chumpblockers, and OHaUH Gandalf + Firyal became the stars of the game, adding a lot of willpower plus control over the encounter deck via scrying. Very slowly, and after quite some turns, I finally defeated stage 1, which allowed me to travel to all those **** locations in the staging area. The fear of adding more Mumaks was gone, but the staging area still had plenty of locations and threat (between 16~21)...

More locations were coming out o_O, and I wasn't being able to put more than 1 or 2 progress per turn; luckily, no enemies were at sight, which allowed me to focus all my combat efforts on the Mûmak, and after some rounds it finally went down, not before killing my Erkenbrand though >_>. With the **** oliphaunt gone, all that was left was to put some more progress onto quest stage n° 2

Final part: Race between the much needed progress vs increasing threat, both in the staging area and in my threat dial. Because I had OHaUH Gandalf around for some rounds, my threat was quickly reaching 50. At some point I drew another Gandalf so I sacrificed the one in play to save myself 2 threat. Things come to a crucial point: End of the round, and my threat is at 47. Decision time: do I keep Gandalf? If I decide so, then next round is the last round.... but if I sacrifice him, then there is serious risk of threating out and/or enemies coming in to complicate things before being able to finish the game.... ughhh... ... ... .. . . . . Welp, here goes nothing: I decide to keep Gandalf around, knowing therefore that the next turn will be my last no matter what. I draw a 1 willpower ally; of course anything helps so the ally enters play. I quest with everything: My willpower is... 28. Total threat in the staging area: 18. There is an active location that needs 2 progress to be explored, and after all that, 5 more progress needed to clear quest stage 2. I trigger Firyal and I see... a Giant Centipede! that's 3 extra threat... I start to make calculations and... yesss!!! Giant Centipede will do: barely enough progress to clear the quest o_O!

Final result: Victory (barely)

Turns: +120

Threat: +49

Dead Heroes: +8

Damaged Heroes: 0

Victory Display: -4

Total Score: 173

2nd attempt:

Went muuuuch more smoothly. Barely any difficulties. I managed to play 2 Resourcefuls on round 1, plus a Ithilien Lookout. I quest with everything: 5 total willpower. I reveal... a giant Centipede (...memories). its 3 threat plus the 2 threat from the Mûmak Trail means I make no progress, but also that my threat doesn't increase which is all that matters because it gives me an extra round of secrecy.

Next round: I play Quickbeam, and Timely Aid -> Firyal... and that's pretty much game lol. Firyal is too awesome. During questing I reveal a simple non-harmful location. Dúnhere kills the Centipede in the staging area, and at the end of the round I play "Peace, and Thought". I draw Steward, OHaUH Gandalf, Ghân-buri-Ghân... I simply can't lose.

So as you can expect, easy victory this time. Besides the Centipede and the obligatory Mûmak, the only other enemy I got was a Python. I mostly revealed 2-threat locations and a lot of handle-able treacheries which allowed me to quest fast. Getting chumpblockers was no issue, and even with chumpblockers feeding the Wild Mûmak every round I still swarmed the table with a bunch of other allies. At some point I played Timely Aid -> Gildor for some extra over-kill hilarity.

So yeah, easy quest this time.

Final result: Victory

Turns: +80

Threat: +36

Dead Heroes: 0

Damaged Heroes: 0

Victory Display: -4

Total Score: 112

Ok, Let's go solo
gclub
Respect

17 hours ago, Rajam said:

Final result: Victory (barely)

I love hearing about very close wins. Nice work!

4 hours ago, Rahjoe42 said:

Ok, Let's go solo
gclub
Respect

My apologies, signups for the Auction are now over.

Whew! All done. I put my report up on my blog here:

https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/middle-earth-hero-auction-report/

That was fun! Thanks for running this, Seastan!

15 hours ago, Seastan said:

My apologies, signups for the Auction are now over.

I think given the link in his post, you're being spammed.