A friend of mine and I have started regularly playing together (I knew if I held the faith for a year or two, I'd find another player who was into it!), and we're having a heckuva time with the game. Our first game together we did Passage through Mirkwood and enjoyed it. Moving on to Passage Down the Anduin, we've gotten stumped.

Every time we've tried to complete this quest, we both are defeated in the first part of the quest. Between the Hill Troll and Goblin Sniper, we always die. Am I correct in reading that the Goblin Sniper does 1 point to EVERY hero on every round for as long as its in the Staging Area? That bugger is picking us off left, right and center while the Hill Troll continues to pound the heck out of us during Combat.

We tried Hunt for Gollum, since it is the same difficulty level and found it to be much easier. They're both the same difficulty level, yet we found Hunt for Gollum to be much easier to complete. Are we missing something or doing something wrong? A bit of help or advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks and fair free!

Also, for point of context, we've run it using the Lore Starter Deck combined with the Spirit Starter Deck and the Lore Starter Deck combined with the Tactics Starter Deck.

Bandoras said:

Not sure how you're getting 1 dmg to every hero from:

"Forced: If Goblin Sniper is in the staging area at the end of the combat phase, each player deals 1 point of damage to 1 character he controls."

1 dmg to 1 char

Bandoras said:

HFG is a much more location-heavy quest, only real problems in terms of combat are Hunters if they show up with 2+ Clues in play.

By Gandalf's grey beard, you're right! I'd been doing one damage to EVERY hero in play, not just one hero for each player.

Even with that mistake, tonight I did manage to get to stage 2B of the quest, though we were overwhelmed and defeated. Still, small progress is still progress!

Bandoras said:

The card says character. That means either an ally or an hero.

So you can damage an ally instead if a hero..

If you can force goblin sniper out in the open then he's nothing to worry about. The only problem is getting hill troll out of the way. I'd suggest having one player use a ranged character or two, like Legolas (Hero, Tactics) and Horseback Archer (Ally, Tactics) while the other takes on the troll in melee combat. Typically a Dwarf deck that includes Gimli (Hero, Tactics), will have the bast chance at doing this for extended periods of time. I also can suggest Forest Snare (Attachment, Lore), Glorfindel (Hero, Lore), and Aragorn (Hero, Leadership). I reccomend Aragorn because he can take a hit from the troll, spend a recource token to ready himself, and attack back. Glorfindel is good because he can either be a great attacker with a +3 to it, or attempt to heal your blocker after they take damage from the hill troll.

Connor McGinnis said:

No.

Aragorn can only ready himself in response to commiting him to a quest.