Hello all,

My buddy and I have attempted the first scenario of Wilds of Rhovanion at least 7 times and have threat out each time. We are fairly experienced with a decent card pool (we've cleared hobbit sagas, mirkwood and ringmaker cycles together, while I also have cleared dwarrowdelf solo). We've never ran into a wall like this.

We've started with Rohan-Gondor decks, but I abandoned Gondor quickly, while he's cycled through the heroes a bit. I switched to a Dale deck with Grimbeorn, Brand (leadership), and Bard (spirit), while he is still trying Eowyn (spirit), Theoden (spirit), and Eomer (Tactics). I feel like we have strong decks, and I am even running the Lore songs going quadsphere... money doesn't seem to be an issue on that front. We are also carrying 6x treachery cancellation between the two of us. He has a bit of threat reduction, but it's weird... one round we can be sitting easy at 34-35, and then suddenly a troll with the immune to player card effects appears and a round or two later, we threat out. That or two locations flip and we're suddenly locked.

My buddy's thought is that we need more trap-like force against the encounter deck, in the realm of lore. Forest snares, ranger spikes, and the angmar awaken set that throw encounter cards into the victory display (since we are often running through the decks twice). Now, we've never been past stage 2, so I don't know if there's another element to this (we are going in blind), but I think he is right on this. My question is, which set should we alter? We are considering doing it three-handed, running dale, rohan, and then a monosphere lore focused on attacking the encounter deck itself and providing us with much needed card draw (we will frequently play out our hands).

We meet once a week to play and this is week 3 tomorrow on this one scenario (we used to be able to clear 2 scenarios a night!). We don't necessarily want to press a hard reboot on our decks unless we have to. However, if you guys think there's no way to beat this scenario with the decks we have, we are open to rebuild. I just didn't know if there are other little suggestions or tips that we need to keep in mind to push us into that final round (we just want to know what's on the third quest card!!!!)

A couple other thoughts we had:
--Side quests -- since we commit to these, we wouldn't have a chance of accidentally over questing and sending an evil creature out. Should we include these?
--Any lore cards that you think is a must for this round? I've looked a number of places and it seems Beravor as a hero is a popular option. If we try third hand, we will probably go Beravor, Denethor, and Bilbo (card draw and scrying)

Thanks all for your help. Obviously we are stuck here.

Yes! Side quests are MVP in this quest. Beravor is a good third piece for a Dale deck, so consider swapping her in for Grimbeorn. I haven't played the quest, so others will be able to give better advice.

I hear ya, this quest has been kicking my butt since the Wilds deluxe came out. I eventually beat it recently and sidequests were the key.

Hello,

I think that you may play too many tactics here. This sphere is really too fight focused and have many difficulties to do anything else. I often avoid it completely in solo and even don't play it each time in multiplayer. Having lore seem more interesting.
You should be able to beat the quest with the deck you are playing. What threat management are you playing right now? Some galadhrim greetings in one deck or the other could be really great. I'm also a huge fan of double back. I put one in any spirit deck in multiplayer, even if I don't adjust myself to the quest and sometime face a situation where it turn to be impossible to go to a side quest. Most of the time Sidequest does not disturb that much the rhythm of the scenario and 5 threat per player is so big.
Here is also my own multiplayer decklist of those 2 decks: Dale ( http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/108527) and Rohan ( http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/64934).

Just wanted to update everyone who might be googling "how to defeat journey up the anduin". We finally got it on the 9th try.

Dale/Rohan held up with the support of a third hand. Monosphere Beravor, Denethor, and Erestor. Playing with Erestor was interesting -- since it was a strictly support deck, we didn't feel bad about burning the resources and playing out as much as we could, and tossing extra cards when Protector of Lorien was in play. We ended up throwing steward on one of the lore heroes just so we could play through as much as we could. The deck had about 75 cards since we were cutting through 4 per round. Beravor was helpful, but was truly excellent when we also were able to play Gleowine. I would take two cards and my buddy would take one, usually at the end of the round, or vice versa. The lore support also provided good ent synergy, but the real kicker was the number of cards we could pull from the encounter deck into the victory display. Let me just say, when you are rolling with a dale deck, that "Weighed Down" treachery is brutal. Slow kill. Kicking it out of the encounter deck made a world of a difference. We ended up pulling out one of the pack of wargs, and a bunch of other cards that I can't seem to remember now. We also had the side quest that allows us to look at the top x cards of the encounter deck and rearrange them as we like. Boy was that a help. We could get our timing right exactly to take on trolls at appropriate times, all while building up strong armies to take plenty of hits.

For those stuck on this quest, I highly recommend taking a similar approach -- getting good card draw to get the cards you need, get a health mix of lore for healing and scrying, booting out into the victory display as much as you possibly can. Tactics are still pretty necessary -- you've got some awful beasts to slay. And as much as weighed down kills you, the attachments are still necessary if you are rolling with a Dale deck. With my buddy wanting to use firefoot and others on Eomer, snowmaine and golden shield on theoden, plus all the unexpected courages all over the place.... he was in about the same place I was.

It was the longest (time-wise) quest we have ever untaken. Luckily, Lost in Mirkwood went off without a hitch. Hope to clear #3 tomorrow. What a beastly scenario!

Hmm, this makes me think I should avoid The Wilds of Rhovanion as I'm just starting out and play solo...

Glad you cracked it! I tried sticking to theme - a Dale deck (Brand,Bard,Lanwyn), backed up with a Silvan deck (Legolas, Argalad, Mirlonde). Got 4 wins in 16 games, (including, rarely, my first attempt) which is maybe a bit low for a difficulty 5 scenario. I'd hope for 50%. ("Hope").

No doubt we'll be meeting Weighed Down again - I found it was annoying but not crippling, as I was using some Dunedain attachments (and disposables like Cram), so could usually pick a hero with mobile attachments, and move those aside to ditch Weighed Down within 1 or 2 rounds. The Dale attachment theme worked reasonably well, and with the rest of the cycle to come, may get a fair bit stronger.

On 10/21/2018 at 1:50 AM, Stewart777 said:

Hmm, this makes me think I should avoid The Wilds of Rhovanion as I'm just starting out and play solo...

It can be done solo. That’s how I did it. But I own 2 core sets. I used the 2 heroes that come in the box and Dunhere as a second spirit hero and to take shots at creatures in staging area.

i have been playing this a lot solo and do not feel that i have ever come close to beating it - its got everything stacked up with multiple ways of adding enemies, nasty treachery and one or two really bad locations too, where is the respite. most quests i do end up beating it eventually but this one is for me proving to be tougher than most others i have recently tried

It has a couple of tricks to it. (Spoilers for anyone trying to figure it out themself).

One of them is to avoid placing progress on the quest so you don't have to take an extra Enemy each round. Some ways you can accomplish that are by scrying the encounter deck (Henamarth Riversong) so you can do the exact math before you commit to the quest or with cards that add willpower to the quest after-the-fact (Protector of Lorien, Eowyn).

The other problem is the double-Goblin-Sniper combo, which can be handled with cards that damage the Staging Area (Dunhere) or that force engagement (Son of Arnor).

It's definitely a tricksy quest!

On 10/1/2018 at 1:30 PM, player3351457 said:

A couple other thoughts we had:
--Side quests -- since we commit to these, we wouldn't have a chance of accidentally over questing and sending an evil creature out. Should we include these?

Extra progress from side quests does not spill over to the main quest. have lot's of side quests and then you can quest like crazy without worrying about the resource. That's why side quests are MVP for this scenario. (Very useful for Lost in Mirkwood too!)

16 hours ago, Authraw said:

It has a couple of tricks to it. (Spoilers for anyone trying to figure it out themself).

One of them is to avoid placing progress on the quest so you don't have to take an extra Enemy each round. Some ways you can accomplish that are by scrying the encounter deck (Henamarth Riversong) so you can do the exact math before you commit to the quest or with cards that add willpower to the quest after-the-fact (Protector of Lorien, Eowyn).

The other problem is the double-Goblin-Sniper combo, which can be handled with cards that damage the Staging Area (Dunhere) or that force engagement (Son of Arnor).

It's definitely a tricksy quest!

These have all been great suggestions, and to crusaderlord, I will say this was a new level of quest for us, too.

One more thing to add is to focus on attacking the encounter deck with Lore. If you can get especially deadly cards for your deck (for us it was weighed down) kicked to the victory display, you are going find it a bit easier. Throwing traps in to deal with enemies are good too-- because they carefully worded it that you can't move those to the victory display by any means. But you can trap them and have them sit there the rest of the game.

Dunhere makes short work of goblin snipers