Me neither, haven't tried it that many times but four player Osgiliath seems close to impossible. I had though the same about it solo when it first came out but with the current line-up, Beravor (even after the shaft), Elrond and Glorfindel (Spirit) I can finally say I am confident of beating it much more often than losing it.

I think the Lake Town challenge might be very different, surely something new and it may take time to realize a good strategy against it. When Osgiliath was first previewed, people were also screaming though.

Shockeffect said:

Yup. "Two teams have already beaten it" was part of what he said. And he (or was it the other guy?) also said that it would come as pod VERY soon. So according to FFG timeline that's, what, 2 month from now

mr.thomasschmidt said:

Just checked my order history: I ordered Massing on September 21st and I believe I ordered it the day it was announced. Dunno if it'll be faster this time, but we might have a month or so to wait.

I hope we DO have to wait for it! We need something to fill the 4 month gap between the two Hobbit expansions!

Sprenger said:

I have played the quest 3 times… it is extremely difficult… the toughest by far. I have beaten the Witchking at the Massing numerous times… but I haven't even made it to the third stage yet.

And for those wondering about the quest… you have a burn keyword that inflict damage on Laketown. Locations will have Burn X on them and treacheries/ Smaug will trigger the Burn to deal damage to Laketown… also there is a Smaug deck and every round a new card is revealed from the Smaug deck.

Very unique quest… very nicely done. This is might be my favorite quest to date.

lpknight21 said:

Thanks so much for the spoilers. Please let me know anything else you think of. (Seriously, just in case that sounded like sarcasm.)

As Bullroarer said, I am also very keen to learn anything I can about this quest and the mechanics behind it!

Anything anyone can remember would be great for those of us in far away lands from America!

Drengi said:

!!!!!!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!!!!

Well if you insist… The quest is very unique in that the encounter deck consists of a ton of locations and no enemies… in fact you only have 1 enemy and that is Smaug and at the beginning of the game you create a separate "Smaug deck" which has 3 copies of each version of Smaug (I believe it is 3 copies). You also have Lake Town Objective card in the staging area. If Lake Town receives 50 damage the players lose. Every round at the beginning of the Quest phase the first player has a decision to either let Smaug go to the staging area or face him directly. Once that is decided a new version of Smaug is revealed from the "Smaug deck" and the other Smaug (if there was one) is discarded. You also have the burn mechanic where the town will burn through treacheries and each location has a "Burn X" where that is how much damage Lake Town will receive if you are told to resolve all Burn damage. You do have ways of healing Lake Town in the 2nd stage and Smaug can only take so much damage throughout the quest (max of 6 damage in stage 1 and 12 damage in stage 2, so you can't just kill him at the beginning). Also you have the Old Thrush Objective card that can help reduce Smaug's defense. You will also use the location's victory points to heal Lake Town as well. So that is as much as I want to give away… like I said the quest is very unique and extremely sweet! Also the end of the quest you will need to defeat Smaug and heal Lake Town to win.

Thank You!!

Really can't wait to get this on PoD!!

lpknight21 said:

Thanks for the great details. Can't wait to play this.

Sounds great, thanks.