Hunt for Gollum - 1st plays SPOILERS

By ClydeCloggie, in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

Don't know how, but I received my Hunt for Gollum pack last week. Unfortunately I had to go away so wasn't able to play some games until this morning.

SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE

Started off by putting Bilbo into my tri-sphere Lore/Spirit/Leadership deck and played a few Mirkwood games to see if he was better or worse than Beravor. Although I beefed him up with Favour and Celebrian's Stone, his lack of hit points made it a big gamble to actually use him for questing with Necromancer's Reach and Dol Guldur Orcs in the encounter deck, so I swapped him for Beravor again before moving on to the Hunt for Gollum quest. I hope there will be Hobbit-boosting resources in the future, he's too risky right now I'd say

The first surprise was the encounter sets used in this quest. I was expecting Wilderlands, but instead it's Journey Down the Anduin and Sauron's Reach. That means no big enemies: no Troll, Adder, Spawn, Beastmaster, Ufthak, Dol Guldur Orcs or King Spiders. The encounter deck does not have big enemies other than 5 (!) copies of the Hunters from Mordor, who become brutal once there are Clues in play. (This encounter deck obviously means that the main Bilbo killers as listed above are not in it)

In my deck, I included Strider's Path, Westfold Horse-breaker, Dunedain Mark, Song of Kings, Rivendell Minstrell from the new set.

Of those, Strider's Path is the killer card. It basically allows you to travel to a location during the quest phase, swapping with the active location if necessary. It means threat and location control during questing in one go. The synergy with the Northern Tracker can be huge, and in one game it got me out of a big roadblock in 3 turns. Song of Kings helped me out in playing Leadership cards a couple of times, and the Horse-breaker settled into a 'quest and discard' routine which was very handy too at times. The Minstrel with its 2 Willpower was a welcome addition to the quest. Dunedain Mark had the luck of the draw against it and has not seen action so far.

The scenario is location-heavy, and most locations have pretty nasty effects, including increased costs for allies, attachments and events which can really screw your strategy. And the Gladden Fields are there as well.

Timing when to claim Clues, and how many, is key to this quest. Without Clues, you can't go to stage 3B, because you will effectively just rest the quest to the start of 2B. Too many Clues and the Hunters from Mordor become horrible (with 4 Clues in play, they are 10 Threat and 10 Attack), Then there are Shadow effects which either punish you for having Clues or punish you for being Clueless.

In my second game, I was making very fast Questing progress but had to hold back finishing 2B because I did not control a Clue card. I had one which got discarded, the 2nd one was a Shadow card...and then the 3rd and 4th showed up together with 2 Hunters from Mordor, making them 6 Threat and 6 Attack each. Together with 4 locations in the SA, that was game over really quickly from a position of relative strength.

So no success as yet, but this is again a Quest which plays completely differently from the previous three. Well done FFG!

"rest the quest" should read "reset the quest".

Thanks for the review. I can't wait for the pack!

Is it safe to assume then that playing this Quest with multiple players would make it quite a bit easier, because you're milling through the encounter deck faster to find clues?

There are 60 cards in each Adventure Pack, yes?

In Hunt for Gollum, how many are individual titles are there (I assume they get to 60 by doubling/tripling up on cards?)?

Is there an actual Gollum card in the set?

Thanks for the low-down! :)

conykchameleon said:

Is it safe to assume then that playing this Quest with multiple players would make it quite a bit easier, because you're milling through the encounter deck faster to find clues?

I only play solo, but I would guess this quest doesn't actually favour multiplayer as the three from the core set. The Hunters from Mordor become ridiculous with 2 Clues in play (6 threat, 6 attack) so it's not about getting as many Clues into play as fast as you can. The only time you really need to have Clues is while chasing victory in stage 3B. If you don't have any then, you're reset to the start of 2B.

Dain Ironfoot said:

There are 60 cards in each Adventure Pack, yes?

In Hunt for Gollum, how many are individual titles are there (I assume they get to 60 by doubling/tripling up on cards?)?

Is there an actual Gollum card in the set?

Thanks for the low-down! :)

60 cards, yes.

1 Hero, 9 player cards * 3 copies each, 3 quest cards, and then 29 encounter cards with different quantities of each. Most encounter cards have 2 copies, but there are 5 copies of Hunters from Mordor, for instance.

No Gollum, he won't appear until Emyn Muil I believe.

ClydeCloggie said:

Dain Ironfoot said:

There are 60 cards in each Adventure Pack, yes?

In Hunt for Gollum, how many are individual titles are there (I assume they get to 60 by doubling/tripling up on cards?)?

Is there an actual Gollum card in the set?

Thanks for the low-down! :)

60 cards, yes.

1 Hero, 9 player cards * 3 copies each, 3 quest cards, and then 29 encounter cards with different quantities of each. Most encounter cards have 2 copies, but there are 5 copies of Hunters from Mordor, for instance.

No Gollum, he won't appear until Emyn Muil I believe.

Why you think so?? As i understand Gollum will appear only in Death Marshes.....

Bumping the thread to say that I beat the Hunt for Gollum solo on the 3rd attempt. After realising low threat is not that important in this quest, I swapped Gloin for Aragorn, so the winning party was Spirit/Lore/Leadership tri-sphere with Dunhere/Beravor/Aragorn. The game played out well with all 5 Hunters from Mordor arriving relatively early. Beating them took a lot of time, and after 14 turns I was still on 0 progress on stage 1B.

However, by that time the Hunters were all in the discard pile, meaning I could fairly safely collect the clues and race towards the finish from there. Stage 2 took me 2 turns, stage 3 one turn with 2 Northern Trackers, Faramir and Henamarth helping out the heroes Aragorn was built up with Stone, Steward, and Favour, Beravor had Unexpected Courage and Dunhere a Dunedain Mark. All very handy cards suited to those particular heroes.

I don't think I've had a win as comfortable as this against Anduin yet, so for me this quest is slightly easier, at least solo. What helped me enormously was being able to fully explore the active location in one turn, which meant all the nasty location effects had hardly any impact. And obviously not having to overcome a huge hurdle early game (like in Anduin or Dol Guldur) makes it easier to build up slowly towards a sprint finish. Seeing off the Hunters and then gunning it through the stages of the quest seems to be a good strategy for this particular scenario.

Word on the street is: this scenario get harder as you add people...

You're really missing out if you're only playing solo!

Narsil, I thought that post should be stickied, and not just for 'Gollum', but for the whole of the game. Yes, this game can be played solo. But it is a much better experience multi-player.