Nightmare The Wastes of Eriador

With winter creeping closer day by day, it is time to revisit one of the best quests from this cycle: The Wastes of Eriador. This quest is notorious for being quite difficult in its regular version, thanks to the Day/Night mechanic that limits your progress and brings out more enemies each other turn. But the quest really conveyed its theme of fighting off wargs in the middle of winter well. In Nightmare mode, these mechanics are expanded upon, adding in a new enemy and several new side-quests that will try to hinder you while the wargs pick apart your fellowship one by one. Better bring a warm coat for this one!

Nightmare The Wastes of Eriador

Found in: The Wastes of Eriador Nightmare pack
Size: 19 encounter cards, one rules card
Increase in Difficulty: Well, yes and no. Yes, obviously, this quest isn’t made any easier with these new and harsher encounter cards, but it doesn’t hit a lot harder than the base version. This is a hard quest in Normal (or even Easy) mode, so the new cards feel on par with that. You still have to watch out for when to fight and when to make chunks of progress on the main quest, but if a deck can beat the regular quest, it has a chance to beat this version as well.
Fixed Loopholes: There weren’t really any in the base version to fix. The Nightmare version did remove one of the treacheries that make it Night, so you should have a better chance of keeping it day for an entire round. The ability to kill enemies in the staging area is also nerfed a bit, as a new location prevents enemies from taking damage as long as it and they are in the staging area.
New Mechanics Introduced: None. The quest continues to focus on the enemy swarm with 5 new enemies and on the Day/Night cycle with some of the treacheries and side-quests. But the framework of this quest remains the same.
Play this scenario if: You want a fresh take on the regular Wastes of Eriador, with cards feeling like they belong in the deck a bit more naturally. You want to play around with the Day/Night cycle a bit more since it is a pretty interesting mechanic!
Solo or multiplayer?: I feel that this quest is pretty well-balanced for any number of players, though any additional encounter cards you might get when transitioning to Night will be easier to deal with in higher player counts. You do need to be careful with 4 players, as you can easily get overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies that all surge into each other. Have all decks ready for combat, and you should have a decent chance.
What to look out for: Increase in threat, enemy swarm, lack of progress on quest cards during the night, inability to cancel card effects at night, overwhelmed by side-quests.

New Rules

The rules card of this Nightmare mode is empty, simply stating that you are foolish (or brave) enough to try this quest on Nightmare difficulty. The game needs no new rules to make things difficult; the encounter cards will do all the heavy lifting from here.

New Setup

Setup remains unchanged. Players have to start with a copy of Shrouded Hills as the active location (bypassing its surge, yay). The first player may also take control of Amarthiul and add the Day/Night objective to the staging area. You will again start the game at Daybreak, so you will have the chance to make good progress on round one. The only thing that could be new for this mode is that the cards that each player has to reveal to begin the game could include Nightmare cards. The effects would be as follows:

Pack Hunters: No immediate effect, but you will have to deal with a lot of wargs next time it becomes Night.
Shrouded Wilderness: High starting threat, but you could travel here on turn 1 and immediately make it Night. A bold strategy, but it might work well.
Snowy Badlands: Will shut down direct damage decks, but can be a decent destination turn 1.
Cunning Wolves: No added threat, but giving the quest +3 quest points and a constant buff to enemies will be bad if it isn’t dealt with.
Torrent of Hail: Whiffs!
Make a Stand: Like Sudden Darkness, it will make it Night immediately. Will be bad if it is the first card you draw.
Forced Off Track: Surges, so that’s never good. But it also will start to hinder your progress in the early game. Better clear this before making any progress on the main quest.

After players reveal one card per player, setup concludes and the players may start their first round.

Cards removed

The following cards are removed from the encounter deck to make way for the 19 new cards. For most encounter cards, some copies will remain in the deck, making it quite a diverse encounter deck.

2x Northern Warg Did not do much after his initial reveal, it now has a lower chance to stack!
1x White Warg Treacheries will do a lot of direct damage already
1x Sudden Darkness We now have a new side-quest that can make it permanently Night
1x North Downs Generic location
2x Eriador Wastes Was a bit of a low blow to hinder progress when we can’t make any half the time
1x Cold from Angmar We have additional condition attachments in this quest, so we can drop one copy of this.
3x Biting Wind Replaced by Torrent of Hail
1x Freezing Blast One copy remains, quite a brutal treachery at the wrong time
1x Shrouded Hills Hits harder in this quest thanks to 2 new side-quests, but isn’t what comes to mind when you think “Nightmare quest”
3x Rugged Country Generic location
2x Pressing Needs It didn’t matter too much during Night to pick a different side-quest, there were plenty of options

The Quest

In essence, the quest doesn’t change much from the Normal version. I would suggest you warm up a bit to this quest by attempting Normal mode first, as it can tell you whether or not your decks are ready for the Nightmare version. The difficulty increase isn’t as big as in other quests, so it should give you a good approximation of whether or not you’ll make it to the end of this version.

The start of the game will be focused on getting a strong enough boardstate during the Day to survive the Night. Making progress on stage 1B is made a little easier with the willpower boost given to heroes, but don’t stare blindly on the main quest this early on. You might want to make sure that you explore some side-quests before they become a nuisance. This is especially true with Make Camp and Forced Off Track, which will hurt a lot more in the late game than early on. During the Day, you should also try to minimize the number of surviving enemies before moving to Night. Killing enemies during the Day can be done by dealing damage to them directly or via staging area attacks, as long as Snowy Badlands is out of the staging area. You can also optionally engage most enemies during the Day (limit 1 per player as usual, 2 when playing Halbarad) as long as Cunning Wolves is not in play. The Nightmare cards can hinder your ability to kill enemies during the Day, so make use of the time you have before those cards come out. The fewer enemies make it to the Night, the better.

During the Night, your main focus will be to clear the active location (if it is not Shrouded Wilderness) and to deal with the more powerful Warg enemies that are engaging you. Preparing during the day with playing allies, attachments, and Traps can set you up for a slightly easier time, but the swarming nature of these enemies can make it so that you have to make some tough calls. Hopefully, you don’t hit Sudden Darkness or Make a Stand early on, as having to deal with two rounds of Night in a row will be rough.

Once you make it to stage 2, it is time to sprint to the finish. You should be decently set up by now and can hopefully ignore the side-quests until the end of the game. This depends a bit on the timing. The reason why you should rush through stage 2B is that you need to avoid discarding allies from play whenever it becomes Night. These are valuable meat shields in your fight against the pack, so discarding them this way seems a shame. Make sure to replenish your board with new allies whenever you can and try to make the most out of their abilities before discarding them.

Rushing into stage 3 will force you to face the Pack Leader, who remains unchanged from the base version, unlike other boss enemies. Players will have to face the Pack Leader and some extra enemies during the Night, making this the final breaking point until the end of the game. If you can survive this round, chances are that you will make it to the end. The inability to keep progress on this stage during the day will mean that you have to select the main quest at all times if you hope to kill the Pack Leader. This can be made extra difficult by Forced Off Track, which will steal progress from the main quest at the end of the round. Make sure you either overquest by a wide margin or that you first tackle the side-quest before going for the main quest. Once there is 5 progress on the main quest, you can kill the Pack Leader. Doing so scatters the pack and leaves you victorious!

The Encounter Deck

Global

The encounter deck is made up of 45 cards, one more than in the Normal version.
Shadow chances are pretty average, at 55%. Note that not all effects will trigger during the day, making it safer to do combat.
Average threat on cards revealed is 1.82 threat/card during the day. This is boosted a little thanks to North Downs getting +2 threat during the Night. The range goes all the way up to 6 threat on a single card, which can slow down progress.
Two side-quests and the 3 copies of Wolf of Angmar will surge. There will be several other effects that reveal more encounter cards, so if you bring ways to cancel surge or reduce the number of cards revealed in the quest phase, you’ll have an easier time.
Doomed 2 only appears on the one copy of Freezing Blast that remains in the deck. There are some other threat-raising effects, though they are more conditional.
Immunity
- During Nightfall, progress cannot be placed on quest cards, and encounter card effects cannot be canceled.
- During Daybreak, enemies do not make engagement checks.
- Pack Leader cannot have attachments or be optionally engaged. It also cannot take damage until there is at least 5 progress on the main quest.
- Shrouded Wilderness cannot have progress placed on it during the Night.
- Warg’s Den is immune to player card effects
- Enemies in the staging area cannot take damage, while Snowy Badlands is in the staging area.
- Hunting Pack cannot have attachments.
- While Cunning Wolves is in play, enemies cannot be optionally engaged.

The encounter deck is fairly well-balanced, but locations are less of a priority here. You will be able to clear those even during the Night, so the encounter deck instead focuses on adding more enemies in play and having more treacheries to soften you up. Notable for this quest is how many cards are immune to certain card effects or actions. Players will have to keep a close eye on whether or not they can pull off the combo they have in mind.

Enemy

That’s right; this quest only features one new enemy in Nightmare mode. This is offset by the fact that a lot of the Wargs from the original version remain in the deck, which were pretty bad to begin with. This new enemy also makes up for it with strength in numbers, adding 5 copies to the encounter deck!

Pack Hunters: At first glance, you might not think that this is a Nightmare enemy. Where are the crazy stats? What are the immunities and special rules for this enemy? Well, the sting that this enemy inflicts isn’t in a direct 1-on-1 fight, but they simply add to the swarm of enemies that are coming down. It’s in their name; after all, Pack Hunters shouldn’t fight alone. This enemy features a high engagement cost and high threat, slowing you down during the Day. At Night, that high engagement cost is cut down by 30, which means that most players will have to engage this enemy. This triggers the Forced effect on the Pack Hunters, which will force you to search the top 5 cards of the encounter deck (top 10 if it is Night) and select an enemy from that top 5/10. You also put that enemy engaged with you and shuffle the encounter deck. If that enemy has a “When Engaged” effect, you also trigger that one. This means that if you are forced to take another Pack Hunters, as there are no other options, you will have to repeat the Forced effect and get another enemy. This can quickly overwhelm you. There is a chance that this effect will whiff, for example, if all enemies are already in play or in the discard pile. You also get to pick which Wargs you want to engage from the top 5/10. You are not forced to pick the highest engagement cost or anything. Northern Warg and Wolf of Angmar are likely your best options since their surge/When Revealed effects won’t trigger. The White Warg is not ideal, but it will be a better pick than others. In combat, the Pack Hunters only attack for 2, attempting to exhaust some allies while you try to block the attack. To kill them, you only need 4 attack in total, so a solid attacking hero can one-shot these wolves without too much trouble. It’s just the Wargs that they put engaged with you that can become the problem, and with 35% of the deck being enemies, there isn’t much hope in having this effect whiff. Your best shot will be to deal direct damage to the Pack Hunters while they are in the staging area or engage them during the Day so that you can thin out the encounter deck of enemies before Night falls.

Locations

The cold lands of northern Eriador are expanded by two new locations. Each will interact with the quest mechanics in a different way, having nasty passive effects that will protect enemies and locations alike.

Shrouded Wilderness: At 6 threat, this location is the most threat you can reveal in one card unless a Northern Warg buffs a ton of enemies in the staging area. This high threat will force players to travel here early, though this comes at a great cost. In order to travel here, the players will need to flip the Time objective from Day to Night. You cannot travel here during the Night and will face all enemies at Night during the combat phase. This happens after you have placed progress on quest cards, so at least you don’t miss out on that, but you will have to reveal an additional encounter card and face any buffs on enemies in play. The good news is that this means you will flip back to Day on the next turn, allowing you to make progress on quest cards for two rounds in a row. This can be pretty significant and makes this location a strategic tool. You will have to ensure you keep it Day during the next turn though, since no progress can be placed on Shrouded Wilderness during the Night. This is true when it is the active location, but it also blocks progress from being placed on it in the staging area. At 4 progress, this can seem a decent target for any progress-placing effects, as it will get rid of the 6 threat. But if you are doing well and have few enemies in play, it couldn’t hurt to flip the Time objective over for half a turn and get some more progress on the board for the long term.
Snowy Badlands: This is an annoying location to let sit in the staging area, as it will protect enemies in the staging area from taking damage. This can throw a wrench into your plans for killing enemies during the day in the staging area. It is why I recommend you have a Thror’s Key on standby in case this location comes out. At 3 threat, this location isn’t too high on the priority list to travel to, but I do recommend you go here as soon as possible if you are planning on killing enemies in the staging area. Even if you just want to throw down 4 damage with Gandalf, you will have to first remove this location from the staging area. To do so, you could try to make 5 progress on it while it is in the staging area, but that might be too tall an order. Instead, you could simply travel here, though this comes at the cost of dealing 1 (or 2, if it is Night) damage to an exhausted character. These characters are probably already damaged from the quest phase, but it is the only way to travel unless you can bypass the Travel action. Each player has to damage an exhausted character, so if any one player does not own an exhausted character, the group cannot travel here. Note that increasing the amount of damage on the table will also not be a good idea with the Hunting Pack in play. You are advised to heal any damage that this effect deals before you go into the encounter phase. Once active, the Snowy Badlands don’t do anything anymore except put a 5-quest point barrier between you and the (side-)quest. Use a Woodmen’s Path to reduce this value to 1 in order to make more progress on the quest card next turn.

Treacheries

This quest features new treacheries for both Wolves and Weather, which we must survive. Cancelling these cards will be difficult, but I would suggest bringing additional ways to discard Condition attachments if you want a fair fight!

Cunning Wolves: The first new treachery will affect both the main quest and all Warg enemies in play and can be quite tough to deal with in a multiplayer game. The treachery will attach to the current quest and will give it +3 quest points. This makes side-quests harder to clear and will also make the main quest take a little longer, especially past stage 1 if you are having problems during the day. On top of the additional quest points, the Condition attachment will prevent players from optionally engaging Warg enemies. This throws a wrench into your plans for the engagement phase, as the wolves will seem a lot smarter about when to attack. During the Day, you will no longer be able to engage any Wargs from the staging area since they also do not make engagement checks. This means that you cannot pick off a few enemies before it gets Night. During the Night, the enemies will also engage whoever they want, making it very difficult to have them engage the players who can deal with the enemies. In lower player counts, the forced engagements during the Night hurt a little less since the enemies were going to engage anyway. However, you still have to deal with all these enemies. It’s a matter of timing to get this treachery to hit a side-quest you were about to explore, at which point it basically becomes a free encounter card. But since this treachery can stack on one quest card, it could mean you get stuck at a stage for far longer than you’d like. While I feel this isn’t worth cancelling if it hits a side-quest, I would keep cancellation in my back pocket if it ever hits a main quest without a lot of progress on it yet. Having this in play for too long can make enemies more difficult to deal with.
Torrent of Hail: Anyone having to be outside unprotected while it is hailing can agree: being pelted by ice hurts. That’s why this thematic Weather treachery will do 1 damage to each character that is committed to the quest. This includes characters that do not exhaust to quest but spares any characters that are exhausted for other reasons. The damage is pretty bad when combined with the constant harassment by wolves and the fact that this is not the only damaging weather treachery. Healing will really save your characters in this quest! This treachery can also knock out some of your willpower, costing you precious points of progress during the day. If this treachery hits by Night, it gets a little worse since you cannot cancel this effect anymore. It also will discard 1 attachment from every questing character. This severely hurts Dale decks, but even losing an attachment on questing heroes can suck. Have some attachments prepared to be discarded that you do not mind losing, like Dunedain Remedy or Cram. It will still suck to have to discard them, but at least it is not a vital combo piece of your deck. The odd irony is that your Weather-stained Cloak will protect your character from taking damage by this treachery, but if it is Night, you will then have to likely lose the cloak.

Side-quests

While you really want to stick to the main quest for this scenario, there are two new side-quests introduced that will try to persuade you to go there instead. Since progress can only be placed on quest cards during the day, you will have to make tough decisions on whether or not it is worth going to a side-quest or making progress on your main quest.

Make a Stand: Enough worrying about those wolves; it is time to confront them! This side-quest slows down the Time objective a bit by keeping it Night until you resolve the side-quest. If it is Day, you immediately flip over to Night, which means that any progress that would be placed on the main quest goes to waste. Remember to resolve any effect that triggers whenever it becomes Night before continuing with the game. While the side-quest is in play, players cannot flip back to Daybreak, so they cannot make any progress on the main quest. The way you clear Make a Stand is by killing Wargs. Whenever a player defeats an enemy, place one resource token on Make a Stand. Once there are 2 resource tokens per player on the side-quest, it is cleared immediately, and the Time objective can flip back to Daybreak again. The other way you can clear this side-quest is to have no enemies in play. You do not even have to defeat enemies to trigger this, as you can also discard enemies with player card effects like The Great Hunt or completing Forced Off Track to get rid of the final enemies. The one problem here is that you need to kill an enemy before the side-quest checks if there are any left. So, in the best-case scenario, you only kill one enemy and have no others in play, so the side-quest is added to the staging area. If there are enough enemies, kill a total of 2 per player, and you get to go on with the quest again.
Forced Off Track: While the entire scenario reminds me of the movie The Grey, this art piece really sums it up. Just the constant battle against both the elements, and the wolves stalking you at the edge of your vision. Aside from having some sweet art, the side-quest will automatically surge in order to make up for the fact that it does not impact your quest phase immediately. Instead, this quest card will add an additional check at the end of each round. Players will have to remove X progress from the main quest card, where X is the number of Warg enemies in play. This counts both enemies in the staging area and engaged with the players. It is obviously meant to slow you down a lot since progress on the main quest is difficult to come by; it can only be placed during the day. But if you manage to kill a lot of Wargs by the end of each turn, you can neuter this side-quest a bit and have it remove only a handful of progress tokens every other round or so. The problem starts when it is either Night for a few rounds in a row or if you get swarmed by enemies. You will then start to see your progress evaporate on the main quest. If you clear this side-quest by placing 8 progress on it, you get to remove a non-unique Warg enemy from the staging area. Complete this side-quest during the day, and you will have a lot of options! Hunting Pack is the obvious choice here, but you can also select another Warg with an engagement effect to remove some uncertainty from the combat phase. This is not a high-priority side-quest to clear, but it can be a decent target when hit by Pressing Needs.

Tips and Tricks

Healing will be very important in this quest. This is not only because some wargs can deal direct damage but also because damaged characters get debuffed and run a higher risk of becoming dog food. Having all characters fully healed up all the time will be important here!
Remember the Time objective and the different effects it has whenever it changes. Doublecheck the main quest as well whenever you flip the objective over, as stuff usually happens that will impact your game!
Traps might be more useful than you might think. Since all enemies return to the staging area at Daybreak, you can trigger them quite often. While some enemies are immune to attachments, you can trap some of the smaller enemies in Ranger Spikes or Entangling Nets to debuff them.
Direct damage can be a valid strategy to kill a lot of enemies. You can use this to kill them in the staging area, as long as Snowy Badlands is not in the staging area. You can also use cards like Reckless Attack or Rain of Arrows to kill enemies engaged with players before they would attack.
Attacking into the staging area can also be useful to kill enemies during the day. Rohan is well-suited for this with heroes like Leadership Eomer and Dunhere. Ranged heroes like Haldir and anyone with Hands Upon the Bow can also kill off part of the pack before it becomes night and the enemies come down.
Since optional engagements are sometimes disabled, make sure you pass around Amarthiul to the player who needs him the most. A willpower-heavy deck could end up being engaged by 2-3 enemies at once, so they can definitely use the extra combat stats.

Playthroughs

As mentioned, this quest is quite difficult, so it is rare find (successful) playthroughs of it online. Here are two videos of players attempting this quest solo.

True solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZLVdHlONX0
True solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5KHAllJbYo

While I’m not gonna make it to the end of the Angmar Awakened cycle by the end of this year, I will try and get as far as possible. This means that NM Escape from Mount Gram should be released in December and that the rest of the cycle will be done once I’ve moved into my new house. From there, I’ll look to complete the rest of the NM stuff that I haven’t touched yet, and I might even make a start with the NM Sagas. How much harder can those be than quests like this, right? In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get a yearly review ready and get a few more articles in before we end the year.