after many failed attempts at the journey down the anduin, i decided to have a quick go before bed, couldnt hurt,

first part of the quest setup- place 1 hill troll in play - ok

second part draw one extra encounter card- 1 more hill troll, needless to say i went to bed

richsabre said:

lol

If it makes you feel better, today I drew Evil Storm twice in two turns during the quest stage on the Anduin's second scenario. Lost 6 allies and 2 heroes. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten out of bed. Lol.

That's rough! I was playing Passage Through Mirkwood, and managed to get to Beorn's Path. My forces were unable to deal with the horde of enemies that the encounter deck had spewed out, and I was chump blocking some big nasties like Chieftain Ufthak. But that's okay, I was two tokens away from winning, so I went in for the kill...

...flipping over Ungoliant's Spawn. The attack damage in the combat phase killed all three of my heroes rather handily.

Reminds me of when I was messing around about a week ago trying to play a deck that happened to have a very high starting threat, something like Aragorn and Glorfindel with maybe Eowyn for a starting total of above 32. I decided to go ahead and see how it fared in the very first scenario, and got absolutely obliterated.

1st game: Ungoliant's Spawn revealed on 3rd round during staging, ended up slowly getting overwhelmed.

2nd game: Ungoliant's Spawn revealed on the very 1st round during staging, I got quickly torn to pieces.

3rd game: Ungoliant's Spawn revealed on 1st round during staging AGAIN, I gave up but learned a valuable lesson about starting threat!

I played four Anduin Journey games yesterday, one with each of the four starter decks. None made it past the 1B stage of the Quest due to the enemies revealed by the encounter deck. In two of the games, I had to face two Hill Trolls, two games had the Marsh Adder out (one of those being a 2 Troll game), Chieftan Ufthak appeared twice, and then all four decks had to face a Dol Guldur Beastmaster, in addition to some lower level enemies. Poor Glorfindel succumbed as the last hero standing while facing: 2 Hill Trolls, the Marsh Adder, a Beastmaster, and a King Spider. He needs bigger Forest Snares, ones that scoop up enemies by the dozen like those commercial fishing boats.

Meanwhile, locations and treachery cards that could have made the journey so much easier were happily revealed for no effect as Shadow cards. I'm telling you, Banks of the Anduin is a player card disguised as an encounter card. I will happily travel along the Banks every other turn if it keeps those critters away.

The King Spider shouldn't be in the Anduin scenario. You're just piling it on poor Glorfindel now. I hope you are not using the wrong encounter deck on that one. The first time I beat Anduin I also had to face two Hill Trolls, the Adder, one Beastmaster and Ufthak, who went down as the last enemy on the last quest. Fortunately, with low threat you can pick and choose and clear some out before more show up. And Forest Snare, of course.

Got up to 14 progress tokens and having complete control of the game and then drew the Evil Storm which killed all of my characters in one go...

Will try again tonight

Geoff

I played 2-player for the first time yesterday. In one game against Anduin, during the quest where you don't add cards to the staging area, we pulled Wolf Rider as a shadow card. He stayed on top of the deck being the shadow card for EVERY attack for like 3-4 rounds until I drew a Hasty Stroke. That was rough. I considered that very unlucky to be that specific situation and pull a card that bounced to the top of the encounter deck.

Titan said:

You're right. <checks notes> No, definitely was a King Spider. It got lost and wandered up to the river, I assume. Rest of the deck checks out fine.

Mestrahd said:

That happened to me once as well. Remember, though, you deal all shadow cards out at once, so he's only the shadow card for one attacker per round for 3-4 rounds.

And to OP: That can't happen. The first part of the quest setup is drawing the random encounter card. The second part is searching for the Hill Troll, if one is not already in play. So drawing a Hill Troll from the deck in setup is the best possible result, as you won't end up starting with anything else. Now, if you draw a Hill Troll during your first turn's quest phase, then you are SOL.

I think a lot of the problems people are having are the result of missing rules or card text.

Cidervampire said:

I ignored one of the orc guards that appear every turn of the third quest stage and the Shadow Card was: Hummerhorns!

It was particularly annoying since I was _sooo_ close to winning!

CAlexander said:

I think you're right on missing that one. We were dealing shadow cards per attack. So, you're supposed to deal to all engaged (to both players) at the same time?

Yes, every engaged enemy gets it's own shadow card at the same time. Even if they cannot attack, they still get one, it just isn't revealed. Wolf Rider can be annoying. I usually kill it, just out of spite.Lol