Nightmare Deadmen’s Dike

Angmar Awakened, Nightmare

To conclude the Lost Realm box, we change our enemies from Orcs to Undead. In the regular version of this quest, you are swarmed with ghosts and reanimated corpses, and I can inform you now that the Nightmare version of this quest does not change that a lot. So, with Halloween around the corner, be sure to bring this quest to the table!

The main mechanic of this scenario is that players will automatically lose if their deck is ever out of cards. This is usually not an issue in other scenarios, as players could still play the game if they had no more cards to draw, but this is one of two scenarios where you will lose if you get decked. Luckily, the normal version of this quest had no restrictions on how many cards you could have in your deck, so you could just run a 100-card deck and not worry about the main mechanic. If you are tired of cheezing the game like that and are up for a real challenge, then play Under the Ash Mountains; go play this Nightmare version of the quest!

Nightmare Deadmen’s Dike

  • Found in: The Lost Realm Nightmare pack, scenario 3
  • Size: 19 encounter cards and 1 rules card.
  • Increase in Difficulty: Perhaps not as much as other quests, but this was always a tough one to begin with. The new Nightmare version focuses more on location lock, preventing the players from making progress whilst being swarmed by Undead enemies. If you can somehow avoid the location lock, this quest is not much harder than the regular version. Do keep in mind that more effects will discard cards from your hand, bringing you closer to defeat.
  • Fixed Loopholes: You are no longer able to bring more than 50 cards in your deck, thus bringing more fuel for the discard effects on encounter cards. You are still able to shuffle your discard pile into your main deck though, so not all loopholes were fixed.
  • New Mechanics Introduced: None, though there is more focus on the discard mechanic, and some new locations will enhance location lock, even in lower player counts.
  • Play this scenario if: You have a deck that enjoys recursion and discarding cards from the top of your deck. You are ready to face a lot of Undead all at once.
  • Solo or Multiplayer?: With the number of enemies in the deck that could be revealed all at once, I would suggest that you do not attempt this quest in true solo. That is going to be a rough battle, as you also have to overcome the threat in the staging area by yourself. Higher player counts will be tricky, but offer more deckspace to bring some location control and ways to keep enemies engaged with you. Do be careful that all players don’t run out of cards from their deck.
  • What to look out for: Swarms of enemies that will return from the encounter discard pile, location lock with a couple of massive locations that need an answer by the players. Running out of cards in your deck will eliminate you from the game.

New Rules

There is one new rule that must be taken into account when attempting this scenario in Nightmare mode. You are no longer allowed to start the game with more than 50 cards in your player deck. This takes into account any cards you would draw at setup as well, such as you would do with The One Ring, Thurindir‘s side-quest, or the Messenger of the King / Grey Wanderer contracts. You just start the game with 50 cards and your heroes, and that’s all you get for this quest.

This was obviously done in order to prevent people from bringing thicker decks to this quest and always pay the cost of the encounter cards to discard a number of cards from your deck. Now that you no longer can do that, you want to ensure that you only bring the cards you absolutely need. Curiously, you can still play cards from your discard pile and reshuffle your discard pile into your deck with Will of the West. In Under the Ash Mountains, where the same loss condition is used, this is not allowed. This makes the Nightmare version of this quest easier to work around, as you can include 3 copies of Will of the West and some copies of Dwarven Tomb or Map of Earnil to retrieve a copy of Will of the West from your discard pile. This gives you more time to get through this scenario and allows you to be more liberal with discarding cards from the top of your deck to avoid nasty encounter card effects. So, this limit on deck size is punishing to begin the game with, but it does not completely protect this quest from shenanigans.

New Setup

There is a bit of a new setup for this quest, where one copy of Cursed Dead is placed into the discard pile at the start of the game. This means that if another copy is revealed during staging, all copies are added to the staging area. This is almost guaranteed to happen since there is a total of 7 copies of this card in the encounter deck. This setup also adds some early danger to Dead Lord and Seal the Tomb since you start with enemies in the discard pile. There isn’t much you can do about this (aside from playing The End Comes), so you’ll have to just accept this. In higher player counts, keep a cancellation effect ready for the next Cursed Dead that is revealed from the encounter deck, lest you add all enemies to the staging area.

Regular setup isn’t changed. Thaurdir is set aside, out of play, and players will start with the remaining copy of Fornost Square in the staging area. The first player will also take control of Iarion, who can get some higher stats than in the regular version of the quest, thanks to the inclusion of an additional side-quest in the encounter deck. Flipping over the quest card will inform players to also grab one copy of Baleful Shade per player and put it into play engaged with them. Then, reveal one encounter card per player. This guaranteed 1+2 cards per player for setup is a brutal start to the game, though some treacheries can whiff at this point. But add the round 1 staging card per player to the mix, and you can see how outpaced you are! Get hit with side-quests or another Cursed Dead, though, and you might want to quickly reset. You have to come out of the gate swinging against this quest, especially in Nightmare mode, though it gets a bit easier once the initial cards have been cleared.

Cards removed

The following cards were removed from the standard encounter deck to make room for the new Nightmare cards and give them a better chance at appearing.

  • 2x Fornost Square (Difficult to keep track of, plus more effective location lock is introduced. 1 copy remains for setup.)
  • 3x Broken Battlements (Too easy, players usually go here immediately)
  • 2x Norbury Tombs (Beneficial location!)
  • 2x Restless Evil (Not sure why this was removed, as it improves the swarm a lot, maybe because it didn’t improve the discard mechanic in any way.)

The Quest

As mentioned before, the start of this quest is brutal. You are overwhelmed by the 1 card per player in the staging area, plus a pretty tough enemy engaged with you at the start. On top of that, you have a pretty high chance that the cards you revealed for setup included a copy of Cursed Dead, which will return 1 copy of Cursed Dead per player to the staging area since we had to add one to the discard pile at the start. Add to this the card for the first staging step, and you’ll see that the staging area is overflowing with cards before you get a chance to do anything about it. This is actually the point where a lot of attempts end. Players got caught in a surge-train or revealed too many enemies to handle early on. This is where you will probably have to use some one-time effects to get ahead of the game and get a foothold. Those first 2 turns are crucial.

After the initial setup, it is all down to luck. If you have good scrying, you can prepare for what is coming, though you may not be able to do much about it. You are at the mercy of the side-quests, so I hope a lot of them end up being discarded as shadow effects. This first stage is when you will want to get through any side-quests that end up being revealed, as stage 2 is more difficult, and you will need all the help you can get. While this does mean reduced stats for Iarion, it saves you from losing the game just when you get through the setup.

During this time, keep an eye out for the various discard mechanics in the quest. You will have plenty of cards left, so you could use it for some of the encounter card effects to make enemies easier to handle in the early game. Just remember that you do not want to keep doing this, as you will eventually run out of cards in your deck and lose. Only use this occasionally early on, preserving the cards in your deck for later. Even if you are running three copies of Will of the West, you could end up discarding those for encounter card effects, so keep an eye on them. There are various encounter card effects that will discard cards, but don’t forget the quest cards that will also drain your deck. The main quest and the Shadow World both will trigger towards the end of the round, discarding cards from your deck. This gives you a limited time to clear both quests. Ideally, you want to advance to stage 2 after you have cleaned up the board a little, but this quest tries to outpace you so fast that you might not get the chance. Just advance and don’t stall if you don’t have to.

Advancing to stage 2 means adding Thaurdir to the staging area. This wraith acts as the final boss of this quest, and the players must deal damage equal to Thaurdir’s hitpoints in order to win. Aside from adding Thaurdir to the staging area, players will also reveal 1 encounter card per player when transitioning. This usually isn’t a big deal if you have cleaned up the boardstate, but if you are being outpaced, then transitioning will put you even further behind.

At this stage, Thaurdir will be your main concern. He remains unchanged from his original form, but with the addition of 5 new Sorcery cards in the deck, he will likely be triggering his Forced effect more often. This is dangerous, as the additional attacks are pretty rough and will likely cost you a few characters. This ties into the quest card itself, which has a Forced effect that triggers whenever Thaurdir kills a character in an attack. The controller must either discard 3 cards from their deck or return Thaurdir to the staging area. Usually, returning him is not a big deal; the worst thing is that you have to deal with his threat in the next quest phase. But if you were banking on dealing a lot of damage to him, then discarding 3 cards from the top of your deck could be worth it. Just make sure you aren’t chumping every attack made by him, as that will cost you the game.

The rest of this stage plays a lot like the first stage. The deck still tries to outpace you, but you are no longer required to discard a card from your deck at the end of the refresh phase. This does not mean you can take it easy, but you are able to prioritize some of the side-quests before attempting to make the 13 progress required for the main quest. During this time, Thaurdir will be engaging you, thanks to his engagement cost of 1. You can start to deal damage to him, as this version does not heal when a Sorcery treachery is revealed. Do keep an extra defender around during the quest phase, as you could get attacked multiple times per round.

Again, players are eliminated when they have no more cards in their deck. At this stage, you will be running low thanks to encounter card effects and your drawing cards at the beginning of each round. Try to recycle your discard pile whenever you can to give yourself more fuel for encounter card effects. The players win by making 13 progress on the main quest and having damage on Thaurdir equal to his hitpoints. It can happen that players will end up making 13 progress on the quest and then pouring everything they have into attacking Thaurdir. You can mostly ignore the other enemies as long as Thaurdir is defeated. Once he is down and you have the 13 progress, you win the game and get to advance into the Angmar Awakened cycle. If you thought that this was hard, wait until you get to Wastes of Eriador and the many new Wargs.

The Encounter Deck

Global

  • The deck has grown significantly with the inclusion of the Nightmare cards to 56 cards. That’s a lot for an encounter deck made after the Dwarrowdelf cycle.
  •  Shadow chances are relatively high at 60%. Most effects discard cards from your deck or interact with Undead enemies.
  • Average threat on cards revealed varies a lot. There are plenty of 1 threat cards (assuming they aren’t being buffed), but you can also get a 9 threat location from the deck. The average threat is 1.7 threat/card, but it won’t feel like that during the game.
  •  Surge is, unfortunately, very common in this deck. 11 cards will surge outright; this includes all side-quests. If Haunted Keep is in the active location slot, the first Undead enemy will also surge. Remember that there are other ways that cards can be added to the staging area, so you have to be able to handle a lot of cards!
  •  Doomed 2 appears on 4 cards, and Doomed 1 on 2 cards. Aside from this, there are a host of other effects from the Ruins of Arnor set that will raise your threat throughout the game.
  • Immunity
    • Undead Horde cannot have attachments.
    • While Decrepit City is the active location, players cannot cancel When Revealed effects.
    • Thaurdir is indestructible and cannot have attachments.
    • While The Power of Angmar side-quest is in play, cards in the players’ discard pile cannot leave it by player card effects.

This analysis was based on the start of the game in true solo. Players have 1 copy of Baleful Shade engaged, 1 copy of Fornost Square in the staging area, and 1 copy of Cursed Dead in the encounter discard pile. In higher player counts, the number of enemies in the encounter deck is decreased as more Cursed Dead are in the discard pile and more Baleful Shades start engaged with players.

Enemies

You’ll be fighting off hordes and hordes of undead in this quest, so be ready for plenty of enemies during this quest. There aren’t that many new enemies added, but this quest punishes you more with overwhelming numbers than high stats.

  • Undead Horde: This is the regular, tough Nightmare enemy that you’ve come to expect from these sorts of quests. With 4 threat and an engagement cost of 34, it won’t be long before players will want to engage this enemy. It’s tricky, though, since this enemy has Troll-level stats and is also immune to attachments that could lower its stats or prevent it from attacking. Instead, players will have to endure the 6 attack, which can be chumped if you want to. This does come at the cost of discarding cards from the top of your deck equal to the amount of excess damage dealt. It’ll be better to have this enemy be defended by a dedicated defender who can survive such a high attack. Killing the Undead Horde might not be as easy as you’d expect from an Undead enemy. It has 3 defence and a staggering 8 hitpoints, which will take several attackers to properly kill. It’s a difficult enemy to have in the discard pile, though, since there are various ways that enemies can be brought back from the discard pile. Either make sure that the discard pile gets reshuffled soon or kill other, smaller enemies after the Undead Horde so that they are on top of the discard pile in case a Dead Lord engages a player. The order in which you kill enemies really matters for this quest, especially with this enemy. You can also choose to keep it engaged, though you might need attack cancellation like Feint or Andrath Guardsman. Effects like Beorn’s Rage can also help to keep this enemy engaged a little longer by lowering its stats.
  • Cursed Dead: It is weird to see additional copies of a Normal-mode card introduced in a Nightmare deck; I believe this is the only time this is done. But I understand why this is. The Cursed Dead in the regular format is the best example of these Undead enemies refusing to stay in the discard pile, and adding in 2 more copies will make any of the other copies worse to reveal. There are now 7 copies in the encounter deck, which will make it difficult to keep them all engaged with players unless you are playing a 4 player game with at least one Dunedain deck. This was one of the strategies for dealing with these enemies, but that might have to be reconsidered. The Cursed Dead themselves remain unchanged, having relatively low stats but returning any copy from the discard pile when they are revealed. As per the new setup for Nightmare mode, one copy of this card per player starts in the discard pile, making it possible to trigger this When Revealed effect on turn one (or even during setup!). While engaged, the Cursed Dead isn’t horrible, especially now that the Restless Evil treachery has been removed from the quest, which would boost their stats. If you can lock a few copies down with traps or invest in defenders that do not exhaust to defend, you can keep these enemies engaged with you. In higher player counts, it can be worth getting all 7 copies out of the deck, perhaps killing one at a time until the encounter discard pile is shuffled back into the encounter deck. That’s then the perfect time to kill these enemies since you can ensure that the When Revealed effect does not trigger.

Locations

The ruined city of Fornost makes for a nice backdrop for this quest and conveniently houses a lot of corpses waiting to be reanimated. These new locations add to the location lock, and revealing even just one of these is going to hinder your progress greatly.

  • Palace Ruins: I really like the art on this one. I don’t know what it is, but the eerie silence that this art portrays just speaks to me somehow. That’s also about the only positive thing I can say for this location, as it boasts 9 (!) threat, 9 quest points, and there are more than one copy in the encounter deck. In true solo, just revealing a single copy can ruin your plans for making progress. 9 isn’t even the most threat that this location can have since players can also run into Fornost Street, which will further increase the threat of this location. The action on this card does allow players to get around the high threat. A player may discard X cards from their deck to lower the threat of this location by X for the phase. Any player may do this, but it is only limited to once per phase. This means that in a 4-player game, you cannot have all four players discard 2 cards to drop the threat by 8. One player must discard a number of cards, taking a serious bite out of their deck. This is often not worth it unless you can clear an active location if you just made 1 or 2 extra points of progress. A better solution to this card is to have Secret Paths and ignore the threat for a round. This helps during the round you reveal it, after which I strongly recommend you to travel to the Palace Ruins. While active, it does nothing bad for you except for blocking you from progressing until you’ve made 9 progress on it. You can circumvent this by using Woodmen’s Path as long as no progress was placed on the location beforehand. Another reason to travel here is that Ghan-buri-Ghan will now be 9 willpower, which will greatly help you during the next turn to make enough progress or compensate for the second copy of this location. You just really need to pack some location control for this quest, this just being one of the reasons.
  • Fornost Street: At 1 threat and 6 quest points, you might not care too much about this location when it gets revealed. But that’s just what the designers want you to think. This location will buff all other Fornost locations with +1 threat while it is in the staging area. It doesn’t boost itself, though. But I would suggest going here quickly or trying to find a way to clear the 6 quest points while the street is in the staging area. If you get lucky, no other big locations appear after revealing this location, which would allow you to travel here if you’d like. This does come at a cost, as you will have to return the topmost enemy in the encounter discard pile to the staging area. This might matter a lot, depending on what is on top of the deck and how you are doing with enemies up to that point. If it is a Cursed Dead up there, just travel. Undead Hordes are best left in the discard pile; better travel somewhere else. With 4 copies of this location in the deck, it is going to be difficult to keep a lid on the amount of threat that hits the staging area. Your best bet is to blank one of the locations with Thror’s Key and then find a way to clear the locations in the staging area or sneak them into the active slot if there are better locations to swap out. Northern Trackers go a long way here in Fornost!
  • Decrepit City: While Palace Ruins’ 9 threat might seem daunting, it is not the only high-threat location in the deck. Decrepit City boasts 5 threat, which is already more than most other locations in the regular game. Add to this the threat increase from Fornost Street, and you’ll have reason enough to get this out of the staging area as soon as possible. Traveling to the Decrepit City is free and can usually free up more threat from the staging area than going to a Fornost Street. But be warned, while Decrepit City is the active location, players cannot cancel any “When Revealed” effects. This is probably mostly to block players from canceling the effect on Cursed Dead, though some treacheries might also be punishing to players at the wrong time. Know that if you are going to this location, you don’t get to use your Eleanor or Test of Wills until the location is cleared. This is a risk you have to take, but if you didn’t bring any cancellation with you to begin with, then this passive effect does nothing. Otherwise, try to clear this in the combat phase with cards that place progress on the active location. That way, you can be ready to cancel cards during the next quest phase!

Treacheries

Thaurdir‘s Sorcery takes the shape of two new treacheries, which will further drain the number of cards left in your deck. They also will cause additional attacks by Thaurdir during the second stage of this quest.

  • Paralyzing Fear: This first treachery will surge to begin with, giving you another encounter card to have to deal with. Aside from that, this treachery will attach to a hero and exhaust them (if they weren’t exhausted before). This treachery will then count as a Condition attachment, which will force the attached hero’s controller to discard a card from their deck each time that the hero would ready, or it doesn’t ready at all. This not only counts readying at the end of the round but also from a hero’s own ability or from attachments like Fast Hitch or Unexpected Courage. You are not obligated to discard a card if you don’t want to, but you will have to leave the hero exhausted. This is particularly useful during the end of the game when you might not have enough cards left in your deck to get that hero ready again. This card hits less hard in a multiplayer game since there are more heroes to go around. In true solo, you could get hit with all three copies of this treachery, at which point I would just give up, as you’d either need to rely completely on your allies or find a way to discard 3 cards per round extra and still win the quest. It’s certainly a dangerous card to get hit by, but the fact that this is a Condition attachment does mean that you can discard it with a few player cards. Whether or not it is bad enough to include those cards in your deck that has to stay under 50 cards thick is up to you. The fact that this is a Sorcery card also makes it more difficult, as it will cause Thaurdir to make an additional attack against the first player when this card is revealed during stage 2. I think there are worse cards to cancel, though, especially in higher player counts.
  • Curse of Angmar: The second new treachery in this Nightmare encounter deck will impact the cards in your hand. It won’t be too bad early on, but as the game progresses and your discard pile grows, you might find yourself losing a lot of cards from your hand via this treachery. To begin with, Curse of Angmar raises the threat of each player by 1. This isn’t too bad, but get too many of these small threat raises early on, and you might pass the engagement cost of some of the nastier enemies. The When Revealed is a bit worse. Each player must go through their discard pile and check if there are cards in there that match the title of a card in their hand. If there is, then they have to discard that card from their hand. This isn’t quite as bad as a Savage South, which impacts cards that have already been played but will mostly impact your ability to play events. If you were saving up for costly attachments or allies, then that is also out the window as long as another copy was already in your discard pile. There are not a lot of ways to prevent this treachery from hitting every now and then, except if you are playing with the Council of the Wise contract and have single copies of each card in your deck. This treachery does not require you to discard anything directly from your deck, but it can be annoying to have to discard copies of events you either played before or which got discarded from your deck earlier. In the early game, this treachery won’t hit nearly as many cards since your discard pile is nearly empty, but towards the late game, you can be forced to discard some valuable cards this way. Of course, if you keep a small hand size, then the risk of having to discard stuff is also reduced. The problem with this is that you will have to let this treachery surge if it didn’t discard any cards from players’ hands.
    On top of it all, this does count as a Sorcery treachery, which will force Thaurdir to make an immediate attack against the first player during stage 2.

Side-quest

One new side-quest is added to the encounter deck, bringing the total up to 5 side-quests that can be in play at once. While the additional side-quest is nice for Iarion, you might want to prioritize this new one, as it brings you closer to losing the quest.

  • Gather your Courage: The new encounter side-quest for this Nightmare version of the quest will take the top eight cards of your deck and put them underneath the quest card. If this drains any player’s deck from cards, they are immediately eliminated. If you get this quest card early enough, you can try and reclaim the cards in order to get some extra fuel for the various encounter card effects. The quest card will also surge and take 8 progress to clear. With the many locations in the staging area, you might not be able to get all 8 progress in one turn, though there is no punishment for not going to this quest. You can simply ignore it for the rest of the game if you have enough player cards left in your deck. Once you feel you are running low or are missing cards that might be underneath the quest card, feel free to attempt to clear this quest. It just has relatively low priority to me, though that depends on when you reveal this card. It’s a lot worse during the late game when you are running out of cards in your deck. Sadly, there is no way to cancel this side-quest, so if this eliminates a player, there’s nothing you could have done. Keep at least 10 cards in your deck at all times, just in case this side-quest pops up.

Tips and Tricks

  • With cards being discarded from your deck constantly, you might want to bring extra copies of Hidden Cache and Ered Luin Miner if your deck has the space for them. There is nothing better than getting some additional resources and allies when the encounter deck tries to punish you. Do keep in mind that the 50-card limit will prevent you from just adding this to your standard deck; you will need to make some space for these cards.
  • As with the regular version of the quest, Noldor will do well in this quest as a lot of cards will be available in the discard pile early on. Avoid certain cards like Erestor, though, since he will drain your deck a bit too fast.
  • Strange though it may sound, I actually like The End Comes with this quest. It’s weird to justify the worst event in the game when you are limited on deckspace, but being able to shuffle the encounter discard pile into the encounter deck again will reduce the impact of several encounter cards like the Cursed Dead, Dead Lord, and potentially Seal the Tomb. I’ll leave it up to you whether or not this is worth it.
  • Make sure to bring ways to put cards back into your deck if they are discarded from your deck. Dwarven Pipes are a must, as well as Will of the West. Galadhrim Weaver can also be used to steadily increase the size of your deck and buy you more time against this quest. Bring additional copies if you want to make sure you do not discard them to encounter card effects.
  • Bring recursion effects to expand your options beyond your hand. Stand and Fight, Dwarven Tomb, Record attachments, and Reforged can help to save certain cards that got discarded earlier. This makes your deck a bit more consistent against this quest.
  • There is also an argument to be made for running the Council of the Wise contract for this quest. Since all cards in your deck are single copies, you do not run the risk of discarding anything to Dark Sorcery, Heavy Curse, and Curse of Angmar. You do have to find ways to retrieve your more important cards from the discard pile, though, as you are more vulnerable to discard effects by the encounter deck.
  • If you are not getting past the initial setup half of the time, keep trying. I know that it seems unfair, but eventually, you’ll get through those first rounds and can start cleaning up a bit. The quest wants to outpace you, so you have to be able to take on more cards than usual.
  • Consider bringing cards that reduce the number of encounter cards being revealed each turn. The Hidden Way, Wait No Longer, and Gildor’s Counsel can really help to catch up to the encounter deck.

Playthroughs

With Under the Ash Mountains working in the same spirit as this quest, there were many more playthroughs of this quest when that one was released to test the decks against. Aside from that, there aren’t a ton of videos to find on this Nightmare scenario, so you may have to just try the quest for yourself.

With the Lost Realm Deluxe box now covered, I will look into completing the rest of the Angmar Awakened cycle in Nightmare mode. This is going to be a challenge, as NM Wastes of Eriador and NM Battle of Carn Dum are not going to be quests I am looking forward to. I will take a small break before starting to tackle those scenarios and will instead do some more work on stand-alone scenarios and perhaps some other articles in the meantime.

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