Hey all,

I didn't want to hijack anyone else's thread or revive old ones that might be specific quest relevant, so I'm creating this topic. I apologize if there are too many similar topics.

I just wanted to share and celebrate my final victory over two quests that had been hanging over my head.

First, I finally beat Conflict at the Carrock. I cannot take sole credit, I played it with a friend. To my friend's credit: I just introduced him to the game back in August, and since then we've played through the Core Set quests. We did not beat Escape from Dol Guldor but had a blast trying. Since then he found someone selling their limited collection and has quite a unique starting point. He built a deck using Mablung, Radagast and Elrond and wanted to try it out.

First we played Hunt for Gollum and I used a Rohan deck (Tactics Eowyn, Spirit Theoden, Dunhere) and we had a lot of fun. It wasn't extremely difficult but was by no means easy. When we set up for Conflict at the Carrock, I switched to my Gondor Rangers trap deck (Lore Faramir, Damrod, Spirit Beregond).

We beat the quest. It took careful timing and planning but we were fortunate to never encounter any copies of "Sacked!" Through careful use of Ranger Spikes and Forest snares were able to funnel and control the engagement with the Trolls while we cleared the Carrock location. In the end, not only did we beat the 4 named Trolls but we also beat the two Hill Trolls as they reared their ugly heads during the confrontation. It was an amazing feeling.

Second, the next night I was inspired and took my Elf deck (Spirit Glorfindel, Galadriel, Elrond) back to where I personally am at in quest progression: Flight From Moria. Let's save a long story and say I've been on this quest since the Summer of 2018. Usually because when I see "Blocked by Shadow" I go for it and lose that way.

In this solo attempt I finally found victory. I was very lucky to see abandoned tools come up early and snatched them up quick. I put them on Glorfindel and it made me nervous (he's kind of my key quest character with Galadriel's Nenya support) but was able to get part of my Elrond machine rocking and rolling (unexpected courage) and he filled the void. In the end, I was able to use the abandoned tools with Glorfindel to complete Escape from Darkness and win. It was intense.

These are my milestones. It feels amazing to beat two quests I've never been able to beat and I wanted to share my excitement about it with everyone. I don't play this game nearly as much as I wish I did. Moving on to quests I haven't played yet is a huge motivator. I'm excited to get it to the table more. It also helps to have a friend that I can pair up with regularly who is enthusiastic about deck building and playing.

Thank you for your time. If anyone else has milestones they want to share, I would love to hear them. That's what I've created this thread for. What are your (current or past) milestones in the game?

tl;dr - I beat Conflict at the Carrock and Flight from Moria for the first time. There was much rejoicing.

Congrats!

Congratulations! Yeah, I know that great feeling you’re talking about when you defeat six trolls.

I think my most satisfying milestone was completing Assault on Dol Guldur without Vilya.

It's funny how this game has different stages of your eyes bulging out and you having to recontextualize the whole game.

From patting yourself on the back for beating the first cycle, to triple checking you read setup right for massing at Osgiliath, to being utterly blown out my Smaug in battle for lake town.

For me finishing the hobbit boxes on nightmare has certainly been the hardest task, but the time I remember my group hooting out with glee was when we beat massing at Osgiliath, which is funny since now its probably what I'd put a combat based deck against for casual testing.

New milestone for me - I played and beat the Redhorn Gate tonight and ended the quest with 0 threat. I never dreamed I’d ever do that in any quest!

Road to Rivendell is next.

9 hours ago, TheSpitfired said:

New milestone for me - I played and beat the Redhorn Gate tonight and ended the quest with 0 threat. I never dreamed I’d ever do that in any quest!

Road to Rivendell is next.

Get your shadow cancelling effects ready.

On 10/21/2019 at 2:58 PM, programdude said:

Get your shadow cancelling effects ready.

Gooood gravy you were not kidding. Elrond and his Burning Brand were paramount to my victory against this quest. I mean there were a few other factors as well but more than anything else that was the key one. As nice as objective ally Arwen was, I really missed having her as an in-deck ally to give Elrond +1 defense and sentinel. Thankfully my heroes got healed up right before the final stage of the quest.

Did I mention Orc Ambush put 8 orcs in the staging area on me right at the start of stage 3? Yeah that was crazy. The good thing was my threat was down so low at that point that I could optionally engage one enemy and only one came right at me. Miraculously another enemy never revealed (which was great because two Goblin Archers were among the Ambush) and I was able to whittle the stack down until I could quest enough to power by it and win. Such a fun and challenging game.

I think I might share the deck that i am using in this solo venture. It has worked so well for me in questing, combat selection and just everything. I don't want to label it a perfect deck but it has to be one of the best ones I've ever made.

The Watcher in the Water is next!

EDIT: Deck available for viewing!

On 10/31/2019 at 5:21 AM, TheSpitfired said:

Gooood gravy you were not kidding. Elrond and his Burning Brand were paramount to my victory against this quest. I mean there were a few other factors as well but more than anything else that was the key one. As nice as objective ally Arwen was, I really missed having her as an in-deck ally to give Elrond +1 defense and sentinel. Thankfully my heroes got healed up right before the final stage of the quest.

Did I mention Orc Ambush put 8 orcs in the staging area on me right at the start of stage 3? Yeah that was crazy. The good thing was my threat was down so low at that point that I could optionally engage one enemy and only one came right at me. Miraculously another enemy never revealed (which was great because two Goblin Archers were among the Ambush) and I was able to whittle the stack down until I could quest enough to power by it and win. Such a fun and challenging game.

I think I might share the deck that i am using in this solo venture. It has worked so well for me in questing, combat selection and just everything. I don't want to label it a perfect deck but it has to be one of the best ones I've ever made.

The Watcher in the Water is next!

EDIT: Deck available for viewing!

Now the watcher is a superrr fun one, at least on nightmare. The game is definitely one of the funnest and packs incredible challenge, but I do question the design choices made in Road to Rivendell a bit, as I kind of forget the quest itself aside from the treacheries since they were essentially all of the difficulty. Not that I would mind a quest that either had insane treacheries and weak enemies or vice versa, but here it didnt feel like the intent per se.

15 hours ago, programdude said:

Now the watcher is a superrr fun one, at least on nightmare. The game is definitely one of the funnest and packs incredible challenge, but I do question the design choices made in Road to Rivendell a bit, as I kind of forget the quest itself aside from the treacheries since they were essentially all of the difficulty. Not that I would mind a quest that either had insane treacheries and weak enemies or vice versa, but here it didnt feel like the intent per se.

I thought road to Rivendell was pretty thematic in that it wasn’t super hard per se, rather it simulated that you were on a journey that goes longer than it should have and you did not bring enough supplies and ran into more trouble than you thought you would. The quest just slowly eats away and beats you down with the various treacheries and potential shadow effects.

I mean when you think about it, you get to Rivendell, discuss how the path was much harder to travel than normal, then realize maybe you should investigate Khazad-Dûm to see why as it seems to be the source, leading to Watcher in the Water.

It will be fun when I play it again because you just never know how those encounter cards will draw and the next session will be radically different.

Watcher in the Water was a doozie! I restarted two turns in. The second game went better but those tentacles are tough.

Gandalf saved my bacon on his one.

I have now experienced the joy of discarding cards I did not want to discard to pass a locate check. I have also experienced the horror of discarding my entire hand (when I did not want to) only to still fail a different locate check.

The Long Dark was fun and terrifying in that regard. While nice to see the cave torch back, I chose to use it as sparingly as possible.

A great cave troll flipped on the final turn. I was so relieved to clear the quest instead of facing that 7 attack behemoth!

Foundations of Stone is next!

Wow, it has been awhile since I updated. My apologies.

Partially because since the last update I have now spread my love of the game to two good friends and they have gone off and completed their collections. In December we started meeting regularly (every other week) and playing the game 3-player. So we played through the Core (although we skipped Dol Guldor) and are working our way through the Mirkwood cycle. Most times we play one quest, sometimes two.

I'd love to talk at length about that and the Dunedain combat deck I'm running (Tactics Aragorn, Halbarad, Amarthiul) but I finally got back to solo play tonight while on a break at work.

In short Foundations of Stone has been completed! *WARNING DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE SPOILERS*

You ever finish a quest you didn't expect to finish, and you just have to physically sit for 5 minutes breathing and taking everything in? I did not expect to beat this quest. You could say several things went wrong. I play quests blind so I had no clue what to expect. The only thing I knew about were the bats and I had added a ranged ally to my deck to deal with them. I never saw the ally, but also never encountered the bats.

Here is what I did encounter and what a time it was:

I drew Dreadful Gap during stage 2 and had 8 characters in play.

At one point in stage 4 there were two Nameless Things and an Elder Nameless Thing in the staging area. I got Gandalf in via Vilya and nuked the Elder. That felt good and was much needed. Gandalf defended against the next one and Glorfindel finished it off with Fair and Perilous.

During stage 5 I drew "Lost and Alone" and opted to shuffle in Galadriel. This caused my questing phase to fail, and there were now 3 Nameless Things in my staging area. This fail brought my threat to 28 so they all engaged. My deck had been manipulated a little thanks to an Imladris Stargazer so their strengths were 3, 3 and 5. They killed a few nice allies during combat that round.

The next turn I got out Henmarth Riversong, peaked at the top encounter deck card, and realized that if I quested all out I could defeat the quest without having to fight the Nameless Things again. A narrow victory, but a victory none the less.

This quest is incredible and possibly my favorite one yet. I liked Redhorn Gate, I have a soft spot for Hunt for Gollum, but wow the way this quest develops, the twists and turns. I can't wait to play it 3 player!

Shadow and Flame is next!

Congrats on the victory, that's a great quest and it seems like you had a real nail-biter!

2 hours ago, TheSpitfired said:

So we played through the Core (although we skipped Dol Guldor) and are working our way through the Mirkwood cycle.

I would encourage you to give Escape From Dol Guldur a try. It's very beatable with three players, especially if you are using more than Core Set cards.

10 hours ago, rees263 said:

Congrats on the victory, that's a great quest and it seems like you had a real nail-biter!

I would encourage you to give Escape From Dol Guldur a try. It's very beatable with three players, especially if you are using more than Core Set cards.

Ha! You know I had that exact same thought right after I posted. Ironically this week I can't make it to our adventure and the other two guys are teaching a fourth guy the game. They mentioned they will probably do the entire core set, including Dol Guldor. I'm a little bummed to miss out on that if I am honest.

I absolutely love how the core set goes from "easy intro mission with tough elements" to "keep you from getting too overconfident" to "impossible" in three quick quests. It's a great overview of what to expect during the game. Sometimes I think if there were no other quests I could still design decks and only run them through those 3 missions for several more years before I got bored.

On 2/17/2020 at 6:24 AM, TheSpitfired said:

[ Foundation of Stone ] is incredible and possibly my favorite one yet ... I can't wait to play it 3 player!

Agree, I can't wait until we run this together in a 3-4 player session. In my first play through of this, my other group was totally floored by the big twist, which also presents such a novel play experience unlike any quest prior to it. Just a splendid design and my current favorite, though I've only played up through Into Ithilien at the moment.

Shadow and Flame has been passed. It felt more like a combat puzzle then a combat. I guess it makes sense, if you're not an Istari doing what you believe you were fated to do you shouldn't be able to beat him!

This was probably tapered to my advantage though. Having Galadriel in my party may have very well broken the quest. I was able to keep my threat at 0 while I got myself setup in what was the best way possible to fight the Balrog. Gandalf helped me jump on some quick damage and then we piled on as much as we could. After two rounds of combat the Balrog had only 6 hit points remaining. That may seem like a lot but in truth Gandalf made two appearances so 8 damage was auto assigned. The other 13 were hard fought for.

The one turn I exhausted all my resources and couldn't use A Test of Will was the turn the Balrog got a Counter-Spell attached to him. I had to be very careful with playing event cards as I did not want to discard my hand. Henmarth Riversong was an absolute God-send in this regard. @Amicus Draconis I must again thank you for the idea of throwing him in the deck I was using. I ended up using him after the Balrog would be dealt a shadow card to see if I could use Fair and Perilous to boost Glorfindel's attack, or when a treachery I really didn't want to see came up I would use Henmarth to see if I could Test of Will it successfully. It made for some tense and relieving moments depending on what would flip.

This concludes my adventures in the Dwarrowdelf cycle, at least for now in Solo play. These quests were a lot of fun and many of them were defined by tense moments and silent prayers as I flipped encounter cards. The Redhorn Gate and Foundations of Stone just stood out as fantastically thematic and could thus far be my favorite in the game.

The current plan is to retire this beloved Elf Deck, although it is saved online in case I wish to use it again and construct a new deck to start Heirs of Numenor with. The major problem is I have multiple decks on deck and can't decide what to use. Everything from Saruman/Lone Wanderer to Silvan Elves and even a very casual fun Woodman/Dale Burglary deck. Or I might wait for the 5th adventure pack because my brain felt like it exploded with ideas when I read the contract Messenger of the King.

Until next time!

3 hours ago, TheSpitfired said:

when a treachery I really didn't want to see came up I would use Henmarth to see if I could Test of Will it successfully.

Unfortunately this is not a legal play - there is no action window during staging allowing you to use Henamarth's ability. Unless you can scry multiple encounter cards beforehand, you are always going in blind with A Test of Will vs Counter-Spell.

3 hours ago, TheSpitfired said:

The current plan is to retire this beloved Elf Deck, although it is saved online in case I wish to use it again and construct a new deck to start Heirs of Numenor with.

I'd say there's a good chance you will need to change things up for HoN, or at least for Cair Andros. There are lots of features in these quests which punish the types of decks that perform well against the first two cycles.

5 hours ago, rees263 said:

Unfortunately this is not a legal play - there is no action window during staging allowing you to use Henamarth's ability. Unless you can scry multiple encounter cards beforehand, you are always going in blind with A Test of Will vs Counter-Spell.

I looked at both my player rule book and a handy reference that I printed up and both gave a window for actions after revealing an encounter card. I thought I was in that window.

In hindsight the Henmarth play was mostly during combat, and only once did I use it after staging for the treachery Watchful Eyes. I could have canceled it successfully but let it attach on Galadriel because I was at the point where I was ready to start fighting the Balrog and thus didn't need her action to reduce my threat. So in a way it would have been the equivalent of checking to see what kind of shadow card was going on Durin's Bane. I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't feel a need to replay the quest based on this new information, but I will keep this in mind going forward!

5 hours ago, rees263 said:

I'd say there's a good chance you will need to change things up for HoN, or at least for Cair Andros. There are lots of features in these quests which punish the types of decks that perform well against the first two cycles.

Yeah, the last time my 3-player group met to play my friend accidentally brought the Heirs of Numenor/Against the Shadow cycle instead of Mirkwood so we ended up playing Peril in Pelargir just for poops and giggles. It never ceases to amaze me how different each quest can feel. We squeaked by but it was intense, and there were a few moments where we thought we were going to bite it. Even with my combat focused Dundedain deck it was a struggle. Fun stuff!

31 minutes ago, TheSpitfired said:

I looked at both my player rule book and a handy reference that I printed up and both gave a window for actions after revealing an encounter card. I thought I was in that window.

There is an action window between staging and resolving the quest where actions may be played, including Hennamarth Riversong peeking at the deck. Unfortunately, cancelling a treachery with A Test of Will or Eleanor has to happen *during* staging, where no action window exists -- that's why they use responses. By the time the action window opens post-staging, it's too late to use a response to something during staging.

This is from the online rules reference Appendix:

You can use Henamarth in either of the stated action windows, but the entirety of staging happens in between. This includes revealing all cards from the encounter deck, resolving their effects and using responses such as a Test of Will.

The whole turn sequence is worth checking out if you haven't done before. There's also an in-depth guide to action windows in Seastan's deck/guide here: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/10407/a-guide-to-action-windows-1.0

1 hour ago, TheSpitfired said:

I will keep this in mind going forward!

Thank you again.

It's time for an update and this is one forum that I know will appreciate this. I'll give the tl/dr and then give the story afterwards in case you don't want to read it all.

TL/DR - I beat Escape from Dul Guldur for the very first time in my life .

This is a momentous occasion for me. To give some background, I got more into playing and enjoying the game last year but I have had the core set since 2013. So we are looking at 6+ years of on and off time with the game. During that time there was a healthy/funny fear of Dol Guldur. I had tried it early on and while it was always fun I could never beat it. Even last year when playing it with a friend we failed against it twice, having a blast both times. I accepted that I would probably never beat it.

Enter tonight. I had used an online deck builder to make a Silvan deck back late last year (Celeborn, Thranduil, Tactics Legolas) but never put it together. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to pair it with until I had an idea this morning. I promptly constructed it and a mono-sphere Lore deck using Haldir, Rossiel and Mirlonde. They breezed through Passage Through Mirkwood in a 2-player bout but the friend playing the Lore deck openly acknowledged they don't feel they are skilled at the game and don't know the cards at all.

So I decided to play 2-handed solo and throw the Elves against Escape from Dul Guldur. I hadn't punished myself against it in a long time and it would be fun to really put the decks to the test, right?

I beat the quest! Mirlonde was the captured Elf, everyone rushed in to save her and we escaped. I have never done that before and I still can't believe it. I still think there is a lot of luck involved but a win is a win and this is probably my biggest milestone accomplishment in the game to date. Had to share while it was fresh in my head.

-Insert an inspiring ending phrase here, along with something generic like "Don't lose hope against this quest." It can be done! Until next time friends.

Oh, the one with the trolls. Yeah, I remember that one. I really need to start keeping notes on all the different scenarios for future reference for how to approach them. Right now I'm just keeping track of what deck I'm using. If I remember right, I think the key (for me) to beating that one was making sure I only had to face one troll at a time. And paying attention on who to get out of the sacks first.

On 3/11/2020 at 4:53 PM, Vince79 said:

Oh, the one with the trolls. Yeah, I remember that one. I really need to start keeping notes on all the different scenarios for future reference for how to approach them. Right now I'm just keeping track of what deck I'm using. If I remember right, I think the key (for me) to beating that one was making sure I only had to face one troll at a time. And paying attention on who to get out of the sacks first.

You get additional respect though because if I recall right your true solo win was done progression style. Most impressive!

1 hour ago, TheSpitfired said:

You get additional respect though because if I recall right your true solo win was done progression style. Most impressive!

Thanks, I appreciate it. Yeah, I play everything progression style. You're too kind though, because the people at the time of the release had no choice but to pay progression. Also, it's probably a little bit of laziness on my part because it limits the number of cards I have to choose from. Cuts down on the decision time at least a little bit.