Woah! So I have played a few games of journey to Rhosgobel by myself and lost pretty pathetically. I reset my deck today and my two hobbit warriors joined me with new decks---and we won in the first game as a team against this scenario and only needed two Athelas plants because of lore of imladris and radaghast healing damage beforehand. I think we finished in 30-45 minutes! I guess you can lose big and win big! Now, off to emyn muil!

The only times I have won Rhosgobel (3 times total) were when we sprinted. Race to finish the quest before the eagle takes too many wounds. Heal the eagle with Lore of Imladris once, use one Athelas, and it's game over. 3 turns maximum.

This did seem pretty quick, not as quick as you, but pretty quick! Maybe that has to be it, quick sprint to save a life and you need more than one person playing solo.

There are a few other quests that can be completed very quickly or drag on for ages depending on how things appear from the encounter deck. The 'Dead Marshes' is a perfect example. My first try finished after only 3 turns - 2 groups of heroes with mixed spheres - but my second attempt had Gollum returned to the deck. This meant one return to part 1b and a wait to see when he returned. A couple of times I journeyed to the 12 progress but only 1 threat locations just to keep me from going back to 1b repeatedly. Luckily Gollum came out just as I only had a bit of progress to go. Had the timeing been out, he would have gained too many tokens and probably escaped again. This quest really is about timeing. Cheers!