This quest is one of my most hated quests in the game. It requires a very specific build, and even then, you might stall after 3 turns as the new Prowl keyword takes away most of your resources. This quest is also one that can absolutely ruin players by dealing a lot of Archery damage across the board. The quest can feel like a slog to me, and I occasionally lose heroes sooner than anticipated to untimely shadow effects. With that out of the way, there are certain things about this quest that do feel nice. The setting is very unique, as are the enemies. The final stage will even have you try to resort to diplomacy in order to persuade the Woses to let you go. But even with all of that, there are some really punishing moments to be had when exploring:

The Drúadan Forest

Found in Against the Shadow cycle, Adventure Pack 2
Official Difficulty: 6
Community Difficulty: 5.7
Encounter Sets: Drúadan Forest, Brooding Forest
Quest cards: 3
Play if: You want to feel like a pin cushion while playing the game, you have some good willpower deck that can also heal direct damage, you want to play a quest that requires a specific build.
What is different about this quest?: Prowl keyword, Archery focus, Siege questing, Boss enemy, Wose enemies, attacking with willpower.
Solo or Multiplayer?: The quest does scale a little when playing with more players, but I would advise bringing someone else with you along for the ride. The quest cards will require a bunch of progress, so getting more people to chip in will help. I would suggest running this quest in 2-3 players. Adding more than 2 players will put you at risk of getting more Archery/Prowl during your games, so be prepared for that.
Can I run side-quests for this scenario?: While I can appreciate the boons that side-quests can give players, I would advise against bringing side-quests to this quest. The main quest will take a lot of willpower to clear, especially in solo or with 2 players. Side-quests will only slow you down and allow the Woses to get more shots off of you. If you do want to explore one of these side-quests, do so in the early game on stage 1. Rally the West might be a good option, as willpower will be important in this quest.
What to look out for: Archery, loss of resources, exhausting characters, attacking with willpower, Siege questing, removing heroes from the quest

The Quest

Setup

The quest starts off easy enough with the players searching the encounter deck for Drú-Buri-Drú and setting him aside, out of play. This boss enemy will come into play once the players advance to stage 3. Besides this, there is no other setup text. Players can immediately advance to the other side of this stage.

Quest card 1: The Pursuit – 11 quest points

This quest starts off with the standard opening of a quest. Each player reveals one card per player and adds it to the staging area. At this point in time, Prowl cannot take effect, as the heroes have no resources on them yet. If players are playing in Easy mode or are running Leadership Denethor, they will have to take Prowl into account at this point. Some great cards to reveal at this point in the quest are Lost Companion (no questing characters), Leaves on Tree (surges, but discards no attachments), Stars in Sky (no questing heroes), and Glade of Cleansing if no Woses are revealed. This can get rid of some nasty effects that won’t show up until the encounter discard pile gets shuffled back into the encounter deck. Revealing any enemies with the Prowl keyword will also be good, as they won’t steal any resources when you reveal them at this stage.

On the other hand, there are some cards that can make your game start off a lot rougher than normal. Men in the Dark will damage each of your heroes, making it even more vital to get healing out early. Ancestral Clearing is probably the worst card to reveal at the start of the game, as it will make every player card cost 1 additional resource. This means that players will have to survive 2 turns on mostly their heroes before they can start spending resources on player cards. Also, note that any 0 cost cards will be increased to cost 1. Getting a Drúadan Drummer out early aside some more enemies can quickly increase the threat in the staging area, making it hard to get any progress on the quest in the early game.

At the end of this When Revealed effect, players will likely face around 1.5 threat in the staging area per player in the game. This does not count any possible surging effects. The players now enter the resource phase and can start planning. During each planning phase, the players will have to make a decision on whether or not play cards. Playing cards like allies and attachments can strengthen your board state but also leaves your heroes without any resources. In this quest, the players will have to spend their resources in order to travel, avoid damage, keep enemies engaged, and some other effects. Keeping resources on heroes, thereby not spending anything, can also make some encounter cards less punishing. However, if players keep all of their resources, they might lose these precious resources due to the new Prowl mechanic. This keyword will force players to collectively discard resources off of heroes they control equal to the Prowl value just revealed off the top of the encounter deck. These resources don’t go anywhere but are simply discarded. This can make it hard to pay for more expensive cards. In a multisphere deck, this can be even harder, as you will have to make a decision on what resources to (hopefully) keep, and what to discard.

The best ways to avoid the Prowl keyword and minimize its effects is to run a mono-sphere deck. This cycle has focussed this kind of archetype so you might be able to play some different cards. Mono-Leadership is the obvious choice here, as it can produce a lot of resources via player card effects when Garden of Poisons is not in play. To avoid having to waste resources to Prowl effects, try to spend as many resources during the planning phase. Investing money in Squires of the Citadel will be a great way to avoid having to waste resources on Prowl. You can always recover the resources by chumping with the Squire. Also be sure to avoid triggering resource generating cards before staging, unless you can spend the money. If you enter the planning phase without resources, you should be able to avoid having to discard any to Prowl.

But wait, I hear you asking, what if I reveal an encounter card that does something horrible unless I pay resources? That is where the second part of the strategy comes in: Play your resource generation outside the Planning phase. You have the option to trigger cards like Steward of Gondor before such an effect takes place. This provides you with some resources that can be spent to shield you from losing attachments or dealing damage to heroes. Triggering these effects is only possible if there is no Garden of Poisons in play, but if you prioritise clearing that location, there should be no problem. With the leftover resources from these effects, you will be able to pay for events or bring in allies with Hirgon and/or Tactics Imrahil outside of the planning phase. You can also save the resources to deal with any potential shadow effects during combat.

The 11 quest points at this stage can usually be cleared in a few turns unless players keep revealing high threat locations. Try to travel as often as you can and work your way to the 11 progress tokens on the quest card. After the final progress token has been placed here, players can advance to the next stage. If players want to stall for a while and build their board state up, I would suggest that they do it at this first stage, perhaps clearing some side-quests along the way. The second and third stages are less suited for this type of play style.

Quest card 2: An Untimely End – 17 quest points

Transitioning from stage 1 to stage 2 brings nothing new to the table, save that any Archery damage must first be placed on allies before players may pick their heroes as a target. As long as there is an ally in the game, heroes cannot be targetted by Archery at this stage. This will require players to shift their healing away from their heroes and focus on healing their allies. Bringing some allies with large hitpoint pools like Ents or Dwarves can act as good targets to take Archery. Waters of Nimrodel, Warden of Healing, and Ioreth can all target allies as well, thereby healing them and making them able to take more Archery during the next round. Keeping your allies alive will be important, as the final stage will involve a lot of combat in a non-standard way. At the time the players would like to proceed to the next phase, a player should get one of his heroes ready to tank the Boss of this scenario. Since allies won’t be able to defend against him, a defending hero will be required to defend the 5 attack from Drú-Buri-Drú at the first combat phase after transitioning to stage 3.

To progress to stage 3, players will have to obtain 17 quest points. In a solo game, this can take quite a while, as enemies and locations will also require ready characters. In a multiplayer game, having a dedicated questing deck can focus on making progress, while the other decks keep the group alive and kill enemies. If players want to progress, I would advise keeping as much willpower in reserve, as that will be required to “convince” enemies in the next stage. This can potentially save you a round of questing.

Quest card 3: The Passage Out – 14 quest points, Siege

When the players progress to this final stage, they must first add Drú-Buri-Drú to the staging area. His 1 threat engagement cost will cause him to come down to players in the next engagement phase, making him an enemy that has to be dealt with immediately.

This part of the quest throws the regular style questing and combat out of the window and makes players quest with their defence strength. This is nothing new, as we have encountered the Siege keyword a couple of times before. In order to quest successfully, get some Winged Guardians or Defenders of Rammas out to do your questing. The real change in this part of the quest is that players will use their willpower instead of their attack strength to deal progress instead of damage to enemies in play. Whenever an enemy has as many progress tokens on him as he has hitpoints, the enemy is added to the Victory Display and the progress tokens are placed on the quest card. This means that players will be able to clear the stage if they “convince” enough Woses at this stage.

Players will also have to “convince” the Chief of the Woses to let you go. The quest is not completed while Drú-Buri-Drú is in play. He needs to be in the victory display in order to win the scenario. Having Drú in the victory display will boost all of your characters, making it more likely to win the scenario. He should be your top priority during the first combat phase at this stage. Once he is in the victory display, it will be smooth sailing from there. It should be noted that Drú-Buri-Drú (and the other Woses) can still take damage from regular direct damage effects. They will go into the discard pile as usual when they are dealt damage equal or greater than their remaining hitpoints. If any enemy should have progress on it, it does not get added to the quest card that way. Whether or not you are able to win if you destroy Drú-Buri-Drú in this way is yet undecided, but it would be easier to just put progress on him via the special combat system of this quest.

If the players manage to survive the negotiations with the Drúadan by having at least 14 progress tokens on the quest and Drú-Buri-Drú is in the Victory Display, the players have won the game. This means that players are now free to continue a much easier quest, Encounter at Amon Dîn.

The Encounter deck

Global

This smaller encounter deck has 36 cards to reveal in normal mode, 25 in Easy
Shadow effects are very common on cards, 75% of Normal mode cards have a shadow effect, this jumps to 84% in Easy mode.
Average threat on cards revealed is around 1.5 for both modes. This does not calculate the surge you might encounter. Check below for some rulings on variable threat values.
8 cards in the encounter deck can surge. This can either be a static keyword or if a treachery does not achieve its full potential.
The Doomed keyword is not present on cards in the encounter deck, nor are there many other cards that raise your threat. Bringing Doomed decks can solve a resource crisis.
Archery is on 7 enemies. Their values can get boosted by the Glade of Cleansing. The most Archery a single enemy can have is 15 (3 Glades of Cleansing in play, plus a single Drúadan Hunter in a 4 player game where no heroes have resources).
Prowl is on a staggering 13 cards in the encounter deck, making the chances of you revealing a card with this keyword 36% in Normal mode, and 44% in Easy mode.
Immunity
- Secluded Glade is immune to player card effects
- Drú-Buri-Drú cannot be defended by allies

The statistics above do not include Drú-Buri-Drú, as he is not in the encounter deck. The Drúadan Drummer is considered to have 2 threat when she is added to the staging area, as she will at least boost herself. The Glade of Cleansing is considered to have 0 threat in the calculations, as the Archery value is too inconsistent to have a good estimation. It can be 0 or it can be 15.

Enemies

The enemies in this encounter deck are all Woses. This brand new enemy type doesn’t have stellar stats, but they often have a low engagement cost and keywords to make your life miserable. Killing these enemies will help your board state immensely. Since all enemies share the same trait, Rossiel can do some great defending once you put one of these enemies in the Victory Display. Also a quick shout-out the amazing art of the Wose enemies, courtesy of Jason Ward, they look really good.

Drû-Buri-Drû: The Chief of this band of Woses and perhaps an ancestor of Ghan-Buri-Ghan. This Wose enemy is one of the prerequisites that players have to kill in order to complete the quest. By killing I do mean the “convincing” strategy that stage 3 informs you off (attacking with willpower). If Drû-Buri-Drû is in the victory display, all of your characters get a boost to their defence (for Siege questing) and their willpower (to convince other Woses). So getting him in the victory display will be a priority once he enters play. The tough part about Drû-Buri-Drû is that his 5 attack (not counting shadow effects) cannot be defended by allies. If you are not bringing tough heroes to this quest, you might be losing one to his attack. I would advise someone in the party brings a solid Sentinel Hero who defends the attack and hopefully survives. Note that Drû-Buri-Drû needs to be in the victory display in order to win the quest. If you destroy him with direct damage effects, you will have broken the game and will likely have to mail Caleb about what to do next.
Drúadan Drummer: Drums are never a good sign in this game, and the Drúadan Drummer confirms that. When this enemy is added to the staging area, all Wose enemies in play get a static +2 to their threat. If you have quite a lot of enemies in the staging area at this point, you might want to use some card effects to deal with this Drummer. Since there are 3 copies of this enemy, each Wose enemy can get a total of +6 to their threat when all 3 Drummers are in play. This will certainly cause you to lose the questing phase and result in a large increase in threat. The way to take out these Drummers is with Direct Damage. Hands Upon the Bow or Argalad+Thalin make short work of these enemies and will clear a lot of threat out of the staging area. If you want to play around with Traps, Poisoned Stakes will be a sure way to get rid of these enemies. You can also drag down the Drummer and kill it in combat. It isn’t very tough in combat and will die easily. Note that the static effect of the Drummer is still active while the Drummer is engaged with a player.
Drúadan Elite: This is actually not the worst enemy in the encounter deck like his name would suggest. In solo, the Drúadan Elite is actually quite tame with only a Prowl value of 1. His stats are a bit mediocre, so any deck should be able to kill him without much trouble if this is the only enemy you are engaging this round. If you decide to leave the Elite in the staging area, his Archery value of 2 will become a problem over time, so try to draw this one down if there is no Drummer or Hunter in the staging area. A base defence of 2 opens up a couple of interesting options with which you should all be aware by now.
Drúadan Hunter: The biggest threat from this enemy is his potential to have some insane Archery values in a multiplayer game. He will require all heroes to have resources in their pools or else he will contribute to the Archery total. This can really destroy some allies, so killing this enemy is probably your best bet. His low engagement cost of 25 makes him come down easy. His defensive stats will require some work, but a dedicated deck should be able to tank and spank the Hunter. This will allow players to then again spend some resources without running the risk of increasing the Archery value for that round. If you are really struggling with the Archery value on this guy, try using Revealed in Wrath to blank his text box for this turn. That will help by saving you dealing some damage to your characters.
Drúadan Thief: This Wose enemy reminds me most of the weak Goblin enemies we encountered in Moria. They are very weak, but can still clog up the staging area for one turn. When combined with the Drúadan Drummer, this enemy becomes a pretty big 4 threat enemy. This enemy will also Prowl 1 resource away from your heroes when it enters play. The good thing about this enemy is that it will not stay in the staging area for very long. With only an engagement cost of 5, the Thief will engage someone during the engagement phase. The best way to deal with this enemy will be direct damage. Even if the players are on the final stage, it will be easier to kill this enemy with things like Grimbeorn, Thalin, and a Spear of the Citadel. At only 2 hitpoints, the Thief will die very quickly, allowing your more offensive heroes to focus their attack against the stronger enemies. This enemy is more of a nuisance than a real threat, but he can surge into something terrible. Once he has entered play though, there is nothing really to worry about.

Locations

Seems obvious, but the locations in the Drúadan Forest all have the Forest trait. This gives Silvans a bit of a boost with cards like Woodland Courier and Cloak of Lorien. Getting one of these locations in the Victory Display will also ensure that Rossiel quests for 4 willpower most of the time. With quite a lot of locations in the encounter deck and static abilities on these locations, it may be wise to invest some card slots in ways to deal with locations in the staging area.

Glade of Cleansing: This is an annoying location to reveal, and it gets worse if you are getting multiple copies of this location in the staging area at the same time. This location will boost the Archery value of each Wose enemy by 1. This also means that enemies that did not have Archery before, now have Archery 1. This effect stacks with multiple copies of Glade of Cleansing. The second part of the location states that the Glade has a threat equal to the highest Archery value on a single enemy at that point in the game. Having a Drúadan Hunter in play can make this location very fearsome in a multiplayer game, getting to 8 threat with ease if the players have been prowled of their resources. Some good tech against this location is to get a Thror’s Key on it. This blanks its text box, making it a permanent 0 threat location in the staging area. It will be a dead card, so players don’t even have an excuse to travel to it. The only reason I can imagine is if the players want to play another copy of Thror’s Key on an Ancestral Clearing. Since the attachment is unique, this only counters 1 copy of Glade of Cleansing. There are some ways to get it out of the staging area if you don’t Key it, but since the Glade has no Travel effect, those cards are best reserved for other locations.
Garden of Poisons: Now here is a location you want to get rid off as soon as you can. If your deck runs any sort of player card that adds resources to heroes, this location prevents it from triggering. The Garden of Poisons can be very annoying to get multiple copies off, as you won’t be able to play any resource granting effect while any are in play. If you are struggling against the quest, you might want to add some location control cards that place progress on this location. Since it has 3 quest points, players will have to use multiple card effects to clear the location. I would advise using allies like Northern Tracker and Rhovanion Outrider. They can easily place progress on locations in the staging area while also committing to the quest. You must be a bit careful with using location control attachments, as Leaves on Tree will discard them if you don’t have the resources to keep them. I will also suggest players travel to this location, even though it will require them to spend a resource. Clearing this location sooner will allow players to play every resource accelerating card in their hand again. This will make the next planning phase feel like opening presents at your birthday. You will get a lot of resources that you weren’t able to gain during the time Garden of Poisons was in play. You will now be able to get out some more expensive allies out or save resources to buy off encounter card effects.
Ancestral Clearing: Though there is only one copy of this location in the encounter deck, it will be tough for players to play any cards once this location is in play. The Ancestral Clearing makes any player card cost 1 additional resource in order to play the card. While the card doesn’t specifically say that the additional resource must be matching to the sphere of the card, I think it is likely that this is the case. Getting this location out early will really punish your board state for 2 turns as you won’t be able to play cards without spending a resource. Effects that use hero actions (Tactics Imrahil, Grimbeorn) or attachments (Blood of Numenor, Gondorian Fire) don’t get their costs increased. As you are not playing a card, the effects are unaffected by the location. The best way to get rid of this location will be via location control, but this might still be hard to do in case Ancestral Clearing comes out early in the game. Instead, consider using Strider’s Path or Thror’s Key. Strider’s Path will allow you to make the location active immediately, while Thror’s Key will blank the text box. This will allow you to negate the effects on Ancestral Clearing. It will still contribute its 4 threat to the staging area, so Guarded Ceaselessly and Power in the Earth would be nice attachments on the location while you explore it. Note that having more attachments in play (including on locations) will make Leaves on Tree more expensive.

Treacheries

Whilst there aren’t a ton of treacheries in the encounter deck, you will likely encounter some of these in your playthrough. The new treacheries tend to focus on stripping away even more resources on heroes you control. Please also note that Lost Companion makes its comeback from Into Ithilien, so players should always commit at least 2 characters to the quest, 3 to be even more save against drawing Lost Companion back-to-back.

Stars in Sky: This treachery really saps away at your resources. Not only does the effect Prowl 2 resources off of heroes in the game, but each hero currently committed to the quest must either pay a resource or be removed from the quest. This is a tough treachery in the early stages of the game, as you will be mostly using your heroes to quest and make progress.Now, there are a couple of ways to avoid this effect, besides cancelling it. First of all, players can go crazy with their resources so that they can all spend a resource to keep specific heroes committed to the quest. Players can also use Hobbit heroes with their Ponies to have certain Hobbit Heroes commit to the quest after this treachery has resolved. Boosting willpower by means of Galadriel+Nenya or Ally Faramir will also make up for some lost willpower thanks to this treachery. Another good counter would be Windfola. For Eowyn specifically, this mount is a great fit and was designed to counter these kinds of effects. But perhaps the best way to avoid having to spend resources this way is to have a good questing army of allies. These allies will not be affected by the treachery and can keep questing. All in all, this treachery isn’t a big deal in the later stages of the game but can be problematic in the earlier stages.
Leaves on Tree: Now here is a card I despise, and it is one of the reasons I usually doubt playing this quest. Leaves on Tree is one of the worst treacheries in the game up to this point and will be a great target for any cancellation effect you have. This one really bites during the late game. Leaves on Tree gives players the option to either pay 1 resource for each attachment they control or they must discard all attachments they control. There is no middle ground here, it is all or nothing. In the early game, players don’t tend to have played many attachments yet, and might still have some resources left to keep them in play. But if you are a few rounds in and have gotten one of your heroes build up to a super defender (Aragorn, Beregond) you will be thrown back to 0 attachments in the blink of an eye. It is unlikely that you will have enough resources left over to pay for your attachments. This treachery is also terrible for any Dale deck that centres around having attachments in play, including on allies. Cancel this treachery at all costs or limit the number of attachments you play. There is little use in playing another copy of Expert Treasure Hunter on your heroes if you don’t plan on questing with them. Oh, and the treachery surges as well as if it wasn’t bad enough.
Men in the Dark: This treachery can lay waste to your heroes fast if you don’t get your healing out early. With 3 copies of this treachery in the game, it can definitely do some damage if you don’t have the resources to cancel the effect. The treachery will do 1 damage to each hero you control (even if they are ready or haven’t committed to the quest) unless the players pay a resource from that hero’s resource pool. If all heroes pay a resource to cancel the damage, then Men in the Dark gains surge. Note that this treachery will also gain surge if any damage dealt to a hero is cancelled by means of an Honour Guard for example. The damage must first be dealt to the hero in order to circumvent the surge on this card. While this treachery may spell doom for a deck with weak heroes, it is often not worth cancelling the treachery if there are worse encounter cards still in the encounter deck.

Tips and Tricks

Bring healing! This quest is very heavy on the Archery damage and can force players to keep discarding characters to this effect. Bringing cards like Warden of Healing, Elrond, and Waters of Nimrodel will allow you to heal most damage off quickly. At stage 2, the Archery damage will have to be assigned to allies, so make sure that you have your healers out before that time.
Beefy allies are also a big help in this quest, as they can absorb a lot of Archery before they are discarded. Ents are a natural archetype that fits well with this. Dwarves and Gondorians can also get some strong allies out but avoid Rohan and Silvan characters. If you are playing Dwarves, Hardy Leadership should be an obvious include in your deck.
When deciding on which allies to put Archery, consider having characters take it that would leave play at the end of the round anyway. Gandalf is the obvious example, but Beorn and Elrond can take some damage too.
This quest will require big chunks of willpower in order to get through the forest quickly. It also helps to dispatch of the Wose enemies during the final stage. Try to prioritize getting willpower out above all things, but do not neglect attack and defence. Since the last stage is a Siege quest, you are going to need some characters to burst through that stage as well. Global willpower buffs like Lords of the Eldar, Visionary Leadership, Kahliel’s Headdress and Dain Ironfoot will be very useful in this regard. Ally Faramir will now also be a useful character to bring and ready as often as possible. This can allow you to get a lot more willpower to handle combat on stage 3.
Bring treachery cancellation. While there may not be many treacheries in the encounter deck, Leaves on Tree can absolutely smash players in the late game. Losing all your attachments sends you back to the state where you were on turn 1. Cancelling Stars in Sky and Men in the Dark will allow you to save some resources if you aren’t revealing a lot of Prowl.
Since a lot of treacheries tend to focus on questing heroes, it may be a good idea to bring Hobbits and Hobbit Ponies. You will be able to commit heroes to the quest after the encounter cards have been revealed, saving them from Stars in Sky. If you want to explore this mechanic but find Hobbits to squishy, try Late Adventurer.
While the Prowl keyword discards resources from heroes, Treebeard and Radagast can keep their resources for themselves. This can allow you to save some resources to spend on Ent or Creature cards. Another good way to optimise your resources is to use Sword Thain on a unique ally. This will allow you to generate an additional resource each round, so perhaps the Woses will allow you to keep some of your resources at the end of the turn.
With Overgrown Trail contributing a lot of threat to the staging area, it might be best to bring some Ranger characters to the quest. This can allow you to clear the location without having to resort to other location control effects. Guardian of Ithilien is a cheap Ranger character that can serve as a good way to get rid of this location.
As I mentioned in the quest overview, it will be important to time your resource acceleration cards well. Be sure to bring lots of it, as you will find that the game gets easier if you have enough resources to cancel shadow effects or treachery cards. Steward of Gondor, Horn of Gondor, Arwen Undomiel, and lots of other cards can have you make tons of resources.
There is a bit of a balancing game to be had with Leaves of Tree. You will want to limit the number of attachments you control by the number of resources you can reliably spend in order to keep those attachments. I would suggest playing lots of allies over lots of attachments, as allies will be safer against treacheries in this quest. They will also absorb any Archery for your heroes.
Doomed cards can actually help you to save resources to spend somewhere else. The cards in the encounter deck don’t tend to raise your threat so much so you can have Legacy of Numenor to grant resources to every hero. This can save you a ton of Archery from the Drúadan Hunter. Grima and Keys of Orthanc can also accelerate your deck without relying on resources too much.
A lot of effects will require each hero to pay resources from its own resource pool. To smooth resources between heroes, consider using some Errand-Riders, Pelargir Ship Captain or Bifur. This can allow certain heroes to pay off the effect from Men in the Dark, and Stars in Sky. It also lowers the total Archery value of the Drúadan Hunter. Spread the wealth and you will benefit from it.
Forget your Blood of Numenor/ Gondorian Fire combinations, you don’t have the money to support those effects in this quest. You will be better off spending those resources on allies or saving up for some encounter cards. Don’t bother with allies like Linhir Sea-Captain or Knight of the White Tower as well. These allies require a lot of resources to be on 1 hero. This is usually not the case, making these allies obsolete.

And so ends the review on this rather unique quest. It can be punishing from time to time and is probably not the easiest quest to bring any deck against. But when looking at the bigger picture, I think it is good that we have this sort of quest. It makes us appreciate how the developers aren’t scared to try any new mechanics. The end of this cycle is now drawing near, with just 2 quests to go. Next time I will discuss the Morgul Vale, and then close off the cycle with The Blood of Gondor.