Hi! Welcome to this weekend's Zjb12 48 Hour Quest. This tournament begins at 5pm (CST/FFG time) Friday, January 27 and runs through Sunday, January 29, 5pm. (Please do not include scores from times before or after that period.)

2 Part Quest: Over the Hills and Through the Woods to Grandpa Radagast's House We Go: The Hills of Emyn Muil & A Journey to Rhosgobel (in that order)

Hero Pool: 1 of your 3 Heros must include either the warrior or dunedain trait. You can only use heros from the core set and/or the following aps: Hunt for Gollum, Conflict at the Carrock, Journey to Rhosgobel, Hills of Emyn Muil.

Deck Pool/Off limit Cards: Your deck pool may include cards from 1 Core Set, and 1 of each of the following aps: Hunt for Gollum, Conflict at the Carrock, Journey to Rhosgobel, Hills of Emyn Muil. NOTE: If you are use to playing with cards from more than 1 core set, you might want to go back and check to make sure which cards had 1, 2, or 3 copies in the core set. Or check, www.lotrlcg.com There are no off limit cards as long as they come from this pool. Again, only 1 core set.

Deck Size: 50 cards, no more, no less. No changes in your heros or deck are allowed between the two quests since they constitute a complete game. (Hero and Deck changes are allowed between game attempts.)

Encounter Decks:

The Hills of Emyn Muil Encounter Deck: Set up the Hills of Emyn Muil Encounter Deck as normal, but with this one change: Do not use Dol Guldur Orcs. Instead use Wilderlands. Shuffle and run the game as normal except for this one change.

A Journey to Rhosgobel: Set up A Journey to Rhosgobel Encoutner Deck as normal, but with this one change: Do not use Dol Guldur Orcs. Instead use Passage Through Mirkwood. Shuffle and run the game as normal except for this one change.

Play: We find our heros lost, dazed and confused from too much sun and not enough to eat. Enemies are lurking in the hills and they long for escape northward.

Start out with Hills of Emyn Muil and play, making sure to acquire the 20 VPs needed, (you will find a few old foes who might help in this regard!) and the 1 progress token on the quest card.

As soon as you meet the requirements for the Emyn Muil quest card, freeze your half of the table. Pick up the Emyn Muil encounter deck, clear out the quest card and active location; clear out the staging area and any enemies you are engaged with. Touch nothing, do nothing with your heros, allies etc., unless you have an attachment on an enemy or location, (like ancient mathom, forest snare---if so, just discard these into your discard pile).

You have made it out of the hills finally, but immediately upon leaving them, you find Wilyador damaged and needing (once again) to see his old buddy Radagast. Put in the Journey to Rhosgobel encounter deck using the ap's setup on quest card 1A. Make sure to follow the damage and healing rules!

Continue on in the phase in the round exactly where you left off with Emyn Muil as if just turning over one quest card to another. There is NO reset of any type for the player's deck, heros, etc.

Scoring: Tabulate your score per standard FFG rules and FAQ 10/31/11. I will be using the scoring idea that is noted in a post by Juicebox called Measuring Success to acquire a weighted average.

Here's an idea of scoring with 5 attempts, L=loss; 90/L/85/79/L/. Average score: (90+85+79)/3= 254/3 = 84.67

Win ratio: 5/3 = 1.67

Weighted would be 84.67 * 1.67 = 141.40 (rounded to nearest hundredth.) This seems like a heavy penalty for losses, but the less losses you have, the penalty lessens, and with no losses, your average score is your weighted score.

Everyone is to play five games so we can have a fair comparison. You can send in your scores 1 at a time or all together. I will determine your win ratio factor once I have all your scores and wins and losses.

When you post your scores please include: final threat, damage, dead heros, rounds, and victory points, and heros used, as well as final total. (When including rounds, give the number of rounds as well as the calculated points).

At the end of the 48 hours I will post the overall results and placings. Please post your results to this forum topic. As scores come in I will try to keep a posted scorecard going!

[A game attempt is considered an attempt as soon as you draw your initial hand of 6 cards. You may take 1 mulligan at the beginning of the game for your opening hand as per normal rules.]

Questions? Please ask!

This may sound easier that it actually is. I tried several variations of this: take wilyador with you from the beginning in emyn muil applying the two damage per round rule; all 3 Heros must have Dunedain or warrior; even thicker encounter decks; no protector of Lorien, galadrim's greetings or will of the west. It hey all seems just a bit too hard and I didn't want last weekends fiasco all over again. Trust me, the hill trolls in emyn muil and all the treacherous between these two scenarios, along with needing good questing and healing skills, will make this interesting!

Wow! Either my typing on this iPad sucks, or it is the ffg software.

This one seems veeeeeeeery interesting.

I'll be playing it this weekend for sure!

Me too hopefully and I think maybe one of my hobbits!

Tried my deck to see if it´s able to beat the quests. Sadly I don´t think I´ll have the time to try this.

Played it once and it took me over an hour. Not to mention shuffling and building the quest deck. So 7 tries would likely take me 7 hours of playing.

I am not sure if I can spare that much time in just two days.

yea 7 is a lot... why not just make it 3?

I had set it at 5. It is longer, that's why I reduced it.

muemakan said:

What was your score like?

Zjb12 said:

5 is the magic number.

Zjb12 said:

I think it was 12 or 13 rounds and a threat of 0 with no wounds and 23 victory points. But it was just to test my deck and I think I won´t use it. It´s far to vulnerable with those restrictions.

Again a very interesting way of handling my former post.....thank you forum software.

muemakan said:

Heh heh heh!!!! I was going to put an evil smiley face but apparently the software has now banned me from smiley face usage!

Double quest does have a lot of treacheries. That's why I actually relaxed my restrictions. I was going to make it that all 3 Heros had to have the warrior or Dunedain trait. Mbut when I was close to winning and then in 1 encounter card lost most of my side of the board, I went to bed realizing we have to open the hero pool up to include Eleanor and or denethor if people want them.

The other interesting part was my vps---8/22 in the first half were from hill trolls. When those buggers pop out, you're not use to them in emyn muil. Then I think I had Rhosgobel plus something else in the second half, so if I would have won, I would have had like 26-30vps.

Tried a few more turns and did not even come close to winning. Already played for 3 hours now and didn´t find a deck to beat it.

I think you made it way to hard again. For Emyn Muil you have to quest like hell and use some cards to kill locations. But the Wilderlands add big nasty enemies. So you need to fight them. Then you go straight to Rhosgobel. If you didn´t have the resources or cards to reduce you threat, you will likely already have a high threat. Hopefully you have cards to heal Wilyador or else it can be over very soon.

And why so many changes? Limiting the cards is one way. Then you have to play 2 completely different quest in on go and if that´s not enough we have to deal with other cards then the quest was planed for and we could see 4 hill trolls if we are unlucky.....

So your first game didn't beat it then? Let me know. I can still reannounce tomorrow morning if I need to with something different. I have a meeting in just a few minutes.

Played 6 times to try some decks. Won 2 out of 6 games. One game I had only one Hill Troll and one Warg to beat. In the other there were only a Marsh Adder and a Wolfrider to beat. I am not sure if I would get a good ratio if I´ll try it.

Well, we´ll see....

muemakan said:

Thanks for the feedback! Sounds good! I think I will leave it for now.

Made one change to my Heros and did a run through this morning and won on the first time. This won't count, but here's my score as an example: glorfindel, Eleanor, theodred. 6 damage; 13 rounds (130); threat 21; vps 27! Total: 130.

Played 3 more games to just run through it, went 1-2, so 2-2 overall this morning. Second win was 2 damage, 37 threat, 11 rounds, (110), 28vps=121. None of these count, just testing more. Think this is all set to go. Going to leave as is. It is hard, but winnable.

I really look forward to trying out these competitions and hybrid quests.

I'm pretty demoralised though, I tried this 3 times with different decks, sadly I only made it through to the Rhosgobel stages once and then I was on 48 threat and didn't draw any threat reduction to save me, so I'm zero wins out of 3.

It could be fun if I had another 10 hours to throw at the problem, but I don't this weekend.

It will be interesting to see feedback from those that do have the time. Good Luck...... you'll need it.

Thanks, I am 3-3 for the day. But of course they don't count. It's a toughly, that's for sure.

Just won with my first try, but it was very close.

Heroes: Price Imrahil, Théodred, Glorfindel

Threat: 45

Damage: 18 (Théodred and Glorfindel died)

Rounds: 220

VP: 20

Result: 263

Théodred died early in the hills of Emyn Muil. That's why it took me 18 turns to made it through this adventure. Then I had to sacrifice Glorfindel to get Wilyador down to 5 HP so that my one Athelas could heal the eagle.

leptokurt said:

You going to give it a go then when it starts this weekend? Just a few hours away! My last score was overe 200 as well. How come you didn't have at least 24vps, (20 from emyn muil and the 4 for Rhosgobel?)

leptokurt said:

leptokurt said:

So if you use Glorifindel ability to heal Eagle then Glorifindel is removed from the game(quest card rule 2b). So you dont put him in discard pile and his threat didn count to scores in the end of the game.