I played through this a couple of nights ago in 3 player (Lore/Leadership, Mono Spirit, Mono Tactics) and we beat it on the first try. It was definitely a challenge, and it had fun mechanics, but it was not as hard as something like the Battle of Lake-Town for our particular group.

I received my copy yesterday and tried it for the first time with my two-handed "Thorin's Company" dwarf decks because that's what I currently had constructed (I was doing yet another Hobbit saga run-through with them).

I didn't expect to get too far because my dwarf decks were not really the right build for that quest based off the initial looks of it (especially since I replaced Dain with Balin and the decks were just generally weaker in an effort to be more thematic.) However, I made it further in the quest than I thought I would - all the way to Midnight. But when the Lord of the Dead and several more shades came out, I was done for. I really enjoyed the quest though; it was very tense all the way through and I never felt in control of anything. I am determined to beat it, which leads me to my next thought...

I just received the Morgul Vale today and am really liking the new player cards. (The new Lore dwarf ally made me grin ear to ear when I saw him! Even though his ability seems a bit lackluster, I can't get enough of those dwarves!) Anyways, I see some extremely powerful synergies revolving around Rohan now, so I plan to construct some Rohan decks and try Stone of Erech again as well as Morgul Vale for the first time.

Picked up Stone today and have run through it twice. Nice quest with a lot going on. Really have to pay attention. I won both games, but basically on the last turn before I burned up due to threat. Not as hard as Morgul Vale, but still decently challenging.

Got in a third game and lost. A commonality in the games was that in the two wins I found an early Gandalf (Hobbit) and used him to power through the quest. In the loss he never showed up and his questing and spectral attack power was missed.

Got in a third game and lost. A commonality in the games was that in the two wins I found an early Gandalf (Hobbit) and used him to power through the quest. In the loss he never showed up and his questing and spectral attack power was missed.

so you use Aragorn lore? Or other way to remove your threat?

Got in a third game and lost. A commonality in the games was that in the two wins I found an early Gandalf (Hobbit) and used him to power through the quest. In the loss he never showed up and his questing and spectral attack power was missed.

so you use Aragorn lore? Or other way to remove your threat?

I have now received a replacement copy of the full Stone of Erech pack.

This means I have a spare deck available minus the Dusk card. I would be happy to send it free of charge to someone in the UK; internationally we would probably have to work out the costs.

It's perfectly playable without Dusk, just build up to 8 tokens on Eventide and remember to treat it as Dusk when it has 4 or more tokens. So if anyone is interested, send me a message on here.

Or they could do an alternative quest format in which Eventide turns directly into Midnight. Now that would be intense!

I played it at GenCon, and we beat it several times. Unexpected Courage on a character with 3+ WP and you shouldn't have any trouble. In the later stages, it's just a matter of stacking up the 1 WP characters for a single attack on the bigger enemies. The funny thing with it is that traditional forms of damage still work, and the Rivendale Blade lowers spectral defense, as I recall.

Two important points:

1) Quest fast. The later in the evening it is, the harder it gets.

2) Eleanor is the MVP. She's the only card that can shut down when revealed effects at set-up. The games she was a part of were locks.