In my opinion Wylador should only get 1dmg per round if you are playing solo. With 2dmg per round, if you dont ahve at least 2 flowers in the top 9 cards of the deck you cant win. Seems unfair.

this is a common house rule people run with this quest for solo. There are other variants, like no wounds at the start of the game for example.

dh098017 said:

there are other ways to heal- lore of imladris as one-------i once won without drawing any athelas - it was an extremely short game, and i got a great starting draw

but you are correct- this quest is extremely luck dependant

richsabre said:

Radagast is the only other way outside of the Athelas. There are no other ally direct heals available that are not attachments.

If you draw 3x Lore of Imladris and are able to commit enough Will Power that you can advance to the next quests quickly, it would be quite easy to get through this. However drawing being such a luck factor on both decks is a huge deal.

Bomb said:

Glorfindel would like to have a word with you.

But both Glorfindel and Radagast are tough to use because as soon as you heal Wilyador with those cards, they get removed from play, right? So Glorfindel would heal one damage and be unusable for the duration of the game. I suppose it could make the difference between winning and losing at the end of the game, but it's not something you can rely on. Same goes for Rdagast, but at least he can save up resources and heal a whole bunch at once . . . at least I think he can. Or does he have to heal one dmg at a time? If that's the case, he, also, can only heal 1 dmg before being removed from the game. That's why I rely on Lore of Imladris and Beorn's Hospitality -- they're event cards so you would discard after use anyway.

Budgernaut said:

I admit I overlooked Glorfindel, but his ability doesn't seem worth having available for Wilyador compared to other Lore heroes in this quest. If his removal from the game doesn't count against your final score, then I think it might have some merit here

Beorn's Hospitality can't be used on Wilyador because he isn't a hero.

Bomb said:

Good point. I've never actually played Beorn's Hospitality in the 3 months I've been playing this game, which is why I messed that up.

Budgernaut said:

And you've actually been playing longer than I have. :-) I am still learning a **** load about this game.

I brought it up because I have had games where I won because of the 1 point Glorfindel can heal the eagle. As you state, this healing comes with a huge cost, but its worth remembering that he can toss out a point in an emergency.

Bohemond said:

But does Glorfindel count as being dead for the scoring penalty? If not, then I think using him in that context is really good. Otherwise you probably have a really high score in the end, right?

Bomb said:

richsabre said:

dh098017 said:

In my opinion Wylador should only get 1dmg per round if you are playing solo. With 2dmg per round, if you dont ahve at least 2 flowers in the top 9 cards of the deck you cant win. Seems unfair.

there are other ways to heal- lore of imladris as one-------i once won without drawing any athelas - it was an extremely short game, and i got a great starting draw

but you are correct- this quest is extremely luck dependant

Radagast is the only other way outside of the Athelas. There are no other ally direct heals available that are not attachments.

If you draw 3x Lore of Imladris and are able to commit enough Will Power that you can advance to the next quests quickly, it would be quite easy to get through this. However drawing being such a luck factor on both decks is a huge deal.

i dont understand why you dismiss lore of imladris- i think it is a key card to have in this quest and have won several time because of it- fast deck + big card draw + lore = win- there is of course a balancing act so that you dont waste any of those healing points too soon, but with a good card card draw.....in fact i would not hold radagast/ glorfindel and good way to go unless as a last resort

Bomb said:

and ive been playing longer than the 2 of you put together........and still playing things wrong /head+hard surface+knocking

richsabre said:

You completely misunderstood my statement and I can see how it was not entirely clear. You said there were other ways to heal Wilyador and I was trying to say that there aren't many other ways to do that. Not in a million years would I dismiss Lore of Imladris.

Basically there are 3 ways to heal him outside of Athelas.

Radagast for 1 - 5 HP(which takes a long time to accumulate and could be awhile before you will be able to play him).
Lore of Imladris for 5 HP when Rhosgobal is out of the staging area.
Glorfindel for 1 HP and you'll lose him for the game.

At least with Radagast, it's possible to play him again after he is taken out of the game the first time, but it would take awhile before he has resources to use to heal Wilyador once.

This is why it's a 6 difficulty. You need to be tremendously lucky to draw enough Athelas or ways to heal Wilyador. Your biggest enemy in this quest is time.

ahhh my apologies Bomb, i am sometimes pretty teribble at getting peoples points on here

Tackling Rhosgobel is tough...the best way to go about (IMO) this is not only to think about healing, but also to make sure you can cancel the nasty damaging effects on Treachery cards in the deck. I have never tried to solo it, but in a two players coop game I ran Spirit+Tactics, and my gf ran Lore+Leadership. I used Eleanor to get rid as much as possible of the big Treachery cards, along with Tests of Will, and she made sure there was plenty of healing.

Granted though, I was lucky...I landed Rhadagast early in the game and piled up on ressources for our final push. Also had a Dwarven tomb and a Test of Will so I knew I could at least use it twice. SO yeah...needs luck, but my point is it also needs Treachery control. Best way to deal with damage is to prevent it in the first place.

This is a really tough quest, it took me quite awhile and some deck tweaking before I was able to beat it.

Here are the elements that I found to be nigh essential:

1) Healing affects, Lore of Imladris being the big one of course

2) Encounter Deck control, Denethor is good for this

3) Card Draw engine, I used Beravor

4) The ability to cancel treachery cards

5) The ability to at least hold off those flying enemies, Haldir and a Forest Snare saw me through

I'm pretty sure my heroes were Denethor, Beravor, and Eowyn.

Good luck!

Bomb said:

Or you can clear out Rhosgobel during stage 1 and combo Rada + Glor to negate the 2 dmg Wily gets each turn.

Dam said:

I follow what you're saying. Wipe out Rhosgobel with card effects and then purposely don't advance past Stage 1 until you're comfortable with Wilyador's health amount and your board position.

You could also use Lore of Imladris to blast his damage off early and then find a way to get it out of your discard pile to play it again.

Bomb said:

[Light bulb goes on] Ohhhhhhh. I thought the remove-a-card-that-heals-Wilyador-from-play rule was through the whole scenario. I didn't realize it was just 2B. It's been too long since I've played this quest. Okay, I can totally now see how Glorfindel can be a real asset.

Bomb said:

Nate has ruled that "Any hero that was used in the game, but is not in play at the end of the game, should be considered "dead" for scoring purposes. "

Finally just beat this quest after ten tries or so. I used Glorfindel, Beravor and Eleanor and concentrated and drawing my cancels as fast as possible. Final Score 104.

Kudos on your win, man :-)

richsabre said:

I've pretty much accepted at this point that, since I'm not a computer, I will make at least one mistake in every game just 'cuz of the sheer number of things I have to keep track of.

Just bought and played Rhosgobel for the first time tonight. I played as a pair, and we beat it pretty easily. We must have had tremendous luck, judging from the responses on this thread (although I realize that most of the comments here are based on solo play, and that makes a huge difference).

I make it a rule NOT to look at the quest or encounter cards before I try a quest for the first time. It makes play radically different... in this case, it made things pretty anticlimactic! The eagle had 14 points of damage of damage when we flipped over to quest card 3. We had exactly 3 Athelas under our control at that point, so we won... but it was like "that's it? we're done already?" We had such nice card draw, my partner was holding about 20 cards in her hand when we finished, and still hand 2 sneak attacks and a Gandalf unused! Wish I could transfer that luck onto Dol Guldur or Journey Down the Anduin (we have terrible luck with that one!)

dcdennis said:

The thing I enjoy about board/card gaming versus video gaming, is that with the former, I can adjust the rules if I want/need to and am not too constrained by architecture, progamming, etc (although I dig video games too). Sometimes, my gaming group employs the "Cool Rule". If it's cool (cool idea, cool concept), it can be a new rule.

Having said that, while there are times when LOTR: LCG is a tough old bastard, the mechanics are beautiful and the play sound. It's usually me fouling up, stupidly playing cards prematurely (or too late), or chance is not my friend and Gandalf(s) are hanging out at the bottom of my deck.