QotW: Passage through Mirkwood Results

Quest of the Week

Last month, Autumn proposed an idea on the COTR Discord server to host weekly playthroughs of the same quest by the community. We could then share our victories, defeats, and epic moments along the way. To have more people join in, we also included some challenges from my Field Guide for more experienced players to attempt. I joined her to support with the setup of this event and to share it with the wider community. We decided to have a survey during the week where we would ask the participants how many games they’ve played, what decks they brought, and what their thoughts on the quest are. The results of that week’s survey are then gathered by me and published in articles like this one. We are calling this event “Quest of the Week” or QotW for short.

To start things off, we decided to begin at the beginning, with Passage through Mirkwood. This is of course an easy quest to do, but it gave people a chance to get familiar with playing a quest in this format. It also opened up more space to attempt the challenges and to get creative with decks. After Passage through Mirkwood, we intend to go through the rest of the Core Set, followed by the Dark of Mirkwood expansion, so that people are incentivized to play a campaign of all the quests. This is of course not required, but can lead to some extra data that’s worth exploring. Once the Dark of Mirkwood has been completed, we will go through the 9 quests of the Ered Mithrin cycle, which should release around the same week. It will be fun seeing so many players share their thoughts on quests they may have never attempted before!

Passage through Mirkwood stats

  • Groups registered: 46
  • Total attempts: 98
  • Most attempts: 10
  • Average attempts per entry: 2.1
  • Total number of wins: 83
  • Win-rate: 84.7%

Being one of the easiest quests in the game opened up the possibility for many players to try out the Nightmare format for the game. It’s good that those NM cards get some attention since we are unlikely to get reprints of those sets.

Ungoliant’s Swarm beat Lingering Venom 10 to 4, becoming the most picked Burden obtained during the campaign mode. This was mostly determined by the path that players took during stage 3, so there was no selecting the optimal one.

  • Average opinion of the quest: 3.07

Achievements

This quest had two achievements from my Field Guide. These were added to spice the game up a little, but not make it impossible to beat. They were:

Ungoliant’s Start

Stage 1A should read “Setup: Search the encounter deck for 1 copy of Ungoliant’s Spawn” instead of Forest Spider.

Spider’s Blocking Your Way

Stage 1A should read “Setup: Search the encounter deck for X Forest Spiders, where X is the number of players in the game,” instead of one Forest Spider. Stage 2B gains: “The players cannot advance to stage 3A while there is a Spider enemy in play.”

Glad to see so many people attempt and beat these challenges. Hope to see as many responses when the achievements become more difficult!

Encounter Card Opinions

The most liked encounter card of the set was the Forest Gate. This location allows the first player to draw some cards when you travel to it. It’s obvious why this is liked so much. Other contenders for the most-liked encounter cards were: Mountains of Mirkwood (scrying your deck upon completion), Old Forest Road (ready when travelled to), and Ungoliant’s Spawn (likely because you need to clear it in order to win).

As for least favourite encounter cards, Hummerhorns were a very obvious pick for many of you. These wasps can kill a hero when you are engaging them, and especially in a limited card pool, there weren’t many ways to deal with them. Other cards that were annoying to people were: Necromancer’s Reach (classic), Ungoliant’s Swarm (only for those playing in campaign mode), and Caught in a Web (you want your heroes to actually do something).

Cool moments that happened during the games

Was lucky enough to get the correct stage 3 on my first attempt, successfully beat the quest in a single round. The tech/strategy is listed in the fellowship link.

Engaging Ungoliant’s Spawn turn 1 and taking it down turn 2 with just my starting heroes (Grimbeorn, Osbera, and Kahliel) was pretty fun. They shrugged off the big bad like it was no biggie.

One-shotted all enemies except the first 2 the round I engaged them.

Played with a deck with a total of 0 attack using some of the new song and minstrel cards from ALEP.

I was 1 attack short of being able to defeat Ungolian’s Spawn in the first combat round until I realized I could put some damage on it with Firefoot first.

I killed Ungoliant’s Spawn with direct damage and the final 3 damage was with Sting.

I tried both achievements and then decided to combine them and start with Forest Spider and Ungoliant’s Spawn at the beginning. Tactics Bilbo is great for countering that early high threat enemy. I really enjoyed equipping him with Sting and thematically chopping through spiders.

Refreshing Ents that came into play with Defiant Challenge

Dale stomped it, as expected

I beat it using a deck that only had Thalin and no other characters, the Nate French special. I think it was fun that I used, and needed, a couple of really niche cards that don’t see play very often. Bilbo’s Plan, Trained for War, Taking Initiative and In Service of the Steward all saw the table in really helpful ways during some of my wins against the quest (though to be fair, it was mostly Steward of Gondor, Strength and Courage, and Gondorian Fire doing the heavy lifting, and those are broken)

I flipped Smeagol and discarded my other two heroes so I didn’t have any heroes left in play. Then I repeatedly engaged the Hummerhorns and sent it back to staging with Radagast’s Staff so I could engage it all over again.

I wanted to try something outside my comfort zone so I played a Perilous Voyage deck, it was fun dancing with death with an high threat deck.

Using Horn of Gondor and Valiant Sacrifice to draw two cards when a chump is destroyed. Gandalf and Sneak Attack, but that is a classic. Using Henamarth as a backup after Denethor. I enjoy this quest, as it is where the journey through this game begins.

Haldir with the Red Arrow – Bow of Galadrihm – Hands upon the Bow

After killing the Spawn and immediately advancing to Beorn’s Path (Spiders Blocking your Way active), I played Muster the Rohirrim on the next turn and made one big questing push, sending a total 42 WP and clearing the final stage. Deeeeeath!

3 West Road Travellers over the first 3 turns if one game meant I could ignore the problematic travel effects and exploit the good ones. Forth Eorlingas! meant I didn’t need to engage Ungoliant’s Spawn during the Ungoliant’s Start challenge.

Riversong-ally with Wingfoot is a good combo

I definitely leaned into Gimli and let him take damage. That let me take out Ungoliant’s Spawn twice within 3 rounds at the end of the game. It really turned the tide for my heroes. It has always been simple quest, but still can still dish out damage too.

One of my decks was almost completely wiped by the one yet punch of Forest Flies (1 damage to each exhausted character) followed by an undefended attack with Hummerhorns as the Shadow effect (2 damage to each character). That, plus the undefended damage, killed two heroes, all my allies, and left my final hero with one remaining life.

I enjoyed the challenge of working out how to deal with Ungoliant’s spawn in the set up. I won all three; one was through mulliganising my starting deck and getting Gandalf, 1 was Gimli doing his stuff, and the 3rd was through controlling threat and building up a board state so that I could defeat it. The quest itself is pretty easy even on Nightmare level and all three of my decks are powerful so in the end the wins were clear. Passage thru Mirkwood was of course FFG’s first quest and has never really been appreciated, but I often think that its a great one to break out when all you want is a nice unfiddly game that won’t destroy you! All three games were great, so thanks Autumn! All the best, Jon50.

Herugrim on Spirit Eowyn is fun if not the most ideal!

At one point I have an Eagle of the North surge into a Ranger of the North which then surged into a Wind from the Sea. It was a random set up which lead to discarding enemies, clearing the active location, and readying all my questing heroes. So basically the staging step was all good things. Super fun!

I played the quest with my current Mirkwood Fellowship – two decks that I use to play the Mirkwood cycle with my daugther Jill (12). Aragon/Eowyn/Dunhere & Argalad/Gimli/Beregond. In round six I quested hard and had Sneak Attack/Faramir to secure the win if necessary. I drew Eyes of the Forest (? Again: My Translation; lost a total of 8 event cards including Sneak Attack) and missed the direct win by 2 points. Next turn Questing: Dol Guldur Beastmaster and Ungolianth’s Spawn :-O Was still an easy win 🙂

Love when I can Hands Upon the Bow some Hummerhorns

It just feels good when a booming ent smushes spiders in its fury.

Meme-decks made

Because this quest is so easy, some more experienced players took it upon themselves to create some funny decks that could still beat this scenario. The biggest meme is beating this three-stage quest in a single turn, and quite some decks were created that could semi-reliably achieve that goal. They all took a different approach, explained in their deck descriptions.

Other meme decks that were created during this week were:

Decklists used

The following decklists were used in playthroughs. Try some of them out yourself!:

I hope everyone had fun revisiting this easy quest. The new QotW will be Journey Along the Anduin. The link to the form can be found here: https://forms.gle/nn9ZP9vtaVQHrB1Z6

The challenges for this week are:

But What About Second Hill Troll?

Stage 1B should read “When Revealed: Search the encounter deck and discard pile for both copies of Hill Troll, and add them to the staging area, if able. Shuffle the encounter deck.”

Quite the Ambush

Forced: When Stage 3B is revealed, the first player adds all enemies in the victory display to the staging area instead of revealing 2 encounter cards (each other player still reveals 2 encounter cards).

Good luck!

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