The Siege of Gondor

Lord of the Rings Saga

“There at Pelargir lay the main fleet of Umbar, fifty great ships and smaller vessels beyond count. Many of those that we pursued had reached the havens before us, and brought their fear with them; and some of the ships had put off, seeking to escape down the River…; and many of the smaller craft were ablaze. But the Haradrim… turned at bay, and they were fierce in despair; and they laughed when they looked on us, for they were a great army still.“

– The Return of the King, The Last Debate

Dear Reader, I have a confession to make about this scenario. When our esteemed host and patron Durin’s Father asked me to write about this scenario, I had forgotten its very existence. It had, at this point, been many a year since I had played this scenario, but even then, I realized that I barely remembered anything about it. No enemy or mechanic was standing out. I remembered it involved the Corsairs of Umbar. I remembered it was a race against the clock. But beyond that, I was drawing a blank. This made me fearful that I had erased this scenario from my mind because it was a bland experience. I am pleased to say that this is not the case. The Siege of Gondor is probably at a disadvantage because it is between two quests that are so unique (Passing of the Grey Company) and epic (the Battle of Pelennor Fields) that it doesn’t look like it brings much to the table. But as a certain Hobbit told us, not all gold glitters.

Another disadvantage of this quest is that it covers a series of events that happen off-screen in the book. We only realize that Aragorn took down the Corsair fleet during the Battle of Pelennor Fields when we think all is lost due to the arrival of the Fleet. The events are, to my knowledge, not even described until the great debate when the battle is over. There, it is revealed that the army of the Dead caused the Corsairs to flee in terror and abandon the ships that were then taken over by the allies of Aragorn. The designers did not have a lot to work with here, and I think they did an admirable job. What we get is a scenario that challenges you to build a deck that can hit the ground running, be ready to fight, and maintain a steady questing pace at the same time. I found some cards I don’t usually play much to be MVPs and am now of the firm opinion that this quest is actually under-appreciated. I hope this endorsement can entice you… To the Sea! Or is it River?

The Siege of Gondor

  • Found in The Flame of the West Saga Expansion, Scenario 2
  • Official Difficulty: –
  • Community Difficulty: 6.6
  • Encounter sets: The Siege of Gondor
  • Quest cards: 1(!)
  • Play if: You like the Corsairs. You like scenarios that challenge you to play fast. You like scenarios where you have to fight many enemies. You like ships. You like quests with a high damage output.
  • What is different about this quest?: A single quest card is all we get. The encounter deck loops constantly and spits out Corsairs. The scenario doesn’t have a true boss enemy! You get a dilemma that gets progressively harder to manage – damage or encounter card? Pick your poison every round.
  • Solo or Multiplayer?: Both have advantages. In solo, there is only one player who needs to decide between damage or an extra encounter card, whereas high player counts can get out of hand with extra encounter cards during the later rounds of the game. But solo is also intense because so many locations come with a free enemy attached, and you have to be ready to deal with those – and some of these enemies are beefy!
  • Can I bring Side Quests for this scenario?: Yes, this quest is ideal for side quests. You need to clear a steady flow of locations, but the scenario only requires 20 progress on the main quest to clear. You cannot clear this until you have dealt with the Corsair’s Flagship, and once that is done, you can often power-quest through in a round or two. Side quests are, therefore, perfect for absorbing excessive progress, and a specific side scenario can actually be a very important piece in the puzzle to beat this quest!

The Quest

Setup

We begin by adding The Corsair Fleet to the staging area. This card is double-sided, and if you have trouble finding it, it may hide with your Battle of Pelennor Fields scenario, as the other side has that scenario icon. The Corsair Fleet is an objective that puts a timer on the scenario: at the beginning of the staging step (so before cards are revealed from the encounter deck, but after characters are committed to the quest), you place 1 resource on this objective. Then, each player must choose to either reveal an encounter card or assign X damage among characters that the player controls, where X is the number of resources on the Fleet. You don’t have to be Seastan to realize that this will get out of hand pretty quickly and should motivate you to move fast. But wait! There is more. Next, you add The Great Corsair Ship to the staging area. This ship has X threat, where X is the number of resources on the Corsair Fleet. So, with each turn, the threat in the staging area will go up and up and up… Combined with the potential for additional encounter cards, this can lead to a lot of threat accumulating if you don’t move fast.

The Great Ship requires 5 progress to clear. However, you can only travel there once there are 3 Ship locations in the victory display. Once you can do that, you need to fulfill a nasty traveling cost to go there: each player must search the encounter deck and discard pile for a Corsair enemy and add them to the staging area. Furthermore, one of these must be the Corsair Captain, if able, a nasty bloke that hits for 5 and makes an immediate attack when you engage him if the active location is a ship. It takes no genius to realize that this location is pretty central to the quest and to win, we must defeat it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Finally, each player searches the encounter deck for a Ship location, adds them to the staging area, and shuffles the encounter deck. You have two options: The Umbar War Galley, a 3 threat/3 progress location, and the Corsair Dromon, a 2 threat/2 progress location. Since the encounter deck contains 3 copies of the Dromon, I don’t see any reason to pick the War Galley unless you are in a four-player game. Both have a Forced effect once they are the active location: The Dromon gives each Corsair Archery 1, and the War Galley reduces each Corsair enemy’s engagement cost by 10. Each Ship has a similar travel cost: Shuffle the encounter discard pile into the encounter deck and discard cards from the top until a Corsair enemy is discarded. Add the discarded enemy to the staging area. As we will see, Corsairs come in many sizes, and some are definitely easier to handle than others. This can make for a very variable experience and is definitely a point of frustration for this scenario. Overall, I like that the game provides you with a Ship location from the beginning: We need three of them, and it can be pretty frustrating if you are just waiting around for them to show up. Plus, it is a thematic win that we actually have a fleet in the staging area from the beginning of the game.

As this is a Saga quest, you must find the Fellowship version of Aragorn from the Flame of the West box and put him into play under the first player’s control. If you play Saga, the first player has an additional choice to make: The first player may raise each player’s threat by 1 to search their deck for Andúril and add it to their hand. As this quest’s version of Aragorn benefits from having artifacts attached (he gains sentinel and does not exhaust to quest) this is definitely something you should do. Then, all boons and burdens related to the Frodo/Sam part of the campaign are removed (A Shadow of the Past, Flight to the Ford, The Ring Goes South, The Passage of the Marshes, Shelob’s Lair). Remember that if you added the Army of the Dead to the victory display in the Passing of the Grey Company, the First Player will begin the game with the Army of the Dead objective ally in play – a beefy ally with 4 willpower, 6 attack, 2 defense, and 8 hit points. They are immune to player card effects, and control of them passes to the first player. They make this quest much more manageable, and it is definitely worth making an effort to get in Passing of the Grey Company.

With all setup done, we flip the card to 1B and continue with the actual quest:

Quest card 1: Attack on Pelargir (20 progress)

When we flip over the quest, we see an additional rule: All Ship locations in the staging area are immune to player card effects – so that Location Control is not the solution to explore a bunch of Ships right off the bat, and you cannot use Travel tricks to bypass the travel cost. Keep in mind that Ships are fair game once you have traveled to them, so then you can add additional progress. In addition to this clause, you get the final piece of the puzzle: This stage cannot be completed while the Great Ship is in play. With these final rules in place, you are ready to begin. So, to break it down, you have three tasks you need to accomplish:

  1. At lower player counts, find and subsequently explore three ship locations and survive the enemy that each of them will spawn while you travel.
  2. Travel to the Great Corsair Ship and explore it (dealing with the enemies that this one drops, including the Corsair Captain).
  3. Place 20 progress on the quest stage.

Additionally, you need to deal with the continued pressure from the damage/extra cards from the Corsair Fleet. This is death by a thousand cuts, and how long you can endure the damage depends on your hero setup, your deck, and your luck with the encounter deck. I’d say it is realistic to weather it for damage for 4-5 rounds unless you sink significant resources into healing. From there on, you should expect additional encounter cards. If you play Saga, you need a strategy to accomplish this fast – at the end of the scenario, you note down how many resources are on the fleet in your campaign log, and this will have an effect in the Battle of Pelennor Fields. Just something to keep in mind in case you scrape a victory after 20+ rounds…

If you play 3- or 4-players, you will already have the necessary ships in the staging area that you need to win. At lower player counts, you are at the mercy of the deck. In 2-player, you will have 4 ships in the encounter deck, and it can be incredibly frustrating to see them go as shadow cards or to draw repeated enemies. The quest does have a few mechanics to keep itself moving and provide you with the ships you need. Discard pile re-shuffles are fairly common due to the Travel costs on the ships, and the quite benevolent Black Sails treachery will fetch you a ship if none are present. I think this is an elegant solution to give you a fighting chance. For 3- and 4-player, the risk of location lock is very present – many of the locations will be immune to location control, and it is not a given that you can travel to a Ship every round, as you usually need to be ready to fight whenever you go there. While somewhat nerfed, Location control can still be utilized for non-Ships.

To maintain momentum, you must balance steady questing (to clear ships and gain the necessary progress) and be ready to fight to deal with the stream of corsairs appearing. As mentioned above, each ship will spawn an enemy when you travel there, and there are few ways to bypass this effect, as Ships are immune to player card effects. The encounter deck can be incredibly swingy here, and you have no way of knowing whether the travel will fetch you one of the smaller enemies, like Haradrim Pirate or Corsair of Umbar, or whether it will spawn you a mini-boss like Umbar Pirate Crew or even the Corsair Captain. Both swing for 5+ and have nasty engagement effects – and when you travel, you have no real way of avoiding the captain, as he gets -30 engagement cost while on a ship… And even if you get one of them and manage to deal with it, you may pull the exact same enemy next time you travel to a ship. This is one of the more frustrating aspects of this quest, but there is one trick you can do to stack the deck in your favor: Send enemies to the victory display. Out of the Wild lets you straight up send a non-objective card in top-5 to the victory display, None Return lets you send an enemy there after defeating them, and Scout Ahead lets you search depending on player count and send a card to the victory display. It can make the world of a difference to send the enemies away, and if you get both captains there, then you might not even have to fight one once you board the Great ship! If you end up with the Umbar Pirate Crew, you might be able to leave them in the staging area for some time – here, you can utilize the normal tricks like Great Hunt to discard them. While the Pirate Crew cannot be Forest Snared, the Corsair Captain absolutely can, and with a little cunning, you can lock one or more of them down, removing them from the encounter deck. Traps, in general, can help you neuter some of the Corsair enemies, as you know they are going to appear at specific times. Use this to your advantage!

As you often need to be prepared to fight, it can be beneficial to know what is coming from the encounter deck so you can know whether the encounter deck is going to toss you an enemy or whether you can safely travel this round and be ready for combat. Far-sighted is a great card to plan a round or two ahead, and it can warn you if the encounter deck is about to throw you a Pirate Crew or Corsair Captain. You might even decide to travel to a Ship location based on this knowledge. Rumour from the Earth is another favorite of mine in true solo, and it allows you to know what is coming.

One way to bypass the Ship travel cost is through The Hidden Way. You need to be a little lucky to find a ship, but if you pull it off (potentially enabled by scrying), you potentially get to avoid the travel cost and even bypass an encounter card in the deal. It is a powerful silver bullet for this quest.

In addition to clearing locations and dealing with enemies, you need to consider whether you will bring healing. In addition to the damage from the Corsair Fleet, this quest likes handing out Archery damage. Haradrim Pirate will deal a few points of damage when you engage them, and when you travel to the Corsair Dromon, each Corsair enemy gets Archery 1. This can easily lead to a position where all your heroes are a few points away from death, and each point of archery damage really starts to matter. Waters of Nimrodel is, of course, the ultimate healing reset and can allow you to bypass an encounter card from the Corsair Fleet in a tight spot. Several other healing cards are available to help your characters stay alive. Keep in mind the Port of Pelargir puts a limit to your healing (1 point per character/round) EVEN when in the staging area, so especially at higher player counts, you may be unable to play Waters of Nimrodel for full effect. Another option is to play archetypes that bounce characters in and out of play, like Silvan or Rohan. Rohan allies are especially useful, as they tend to have a few more HP than Silvans. Absorb some damage, discard them for their abilities, and return them to your hand with Gamling or Gúthwinë.

This scenario has a lot of things you need to focus on and balance. Location lock is a very real threat, as always; in addition to Ships and other locations piling up until you have the board state to travel there and the potential for extra encounter cards at the beginning of the staging step from the Corsair Fleet, the Great Ship adds one more threat each round, every time a resource is added to the Fleet. The best counter to this is to keep the staging area as clear as possible, which may be easier said than done, especially at higher player counts. Keep a steady pace and travel to Ships when you can handle the enemies – if the encounter deck throws you one or more enemies on its own, consider if you can hold off going to a Ship that turns and clear a standard location instead. Enemies will show up due to extra encounter cards, especially at later turns. Be ready to fight them.

So you’ve got the three ships you need, and you’ve added them to the victory display. If you are set up for the final big fight, you can now go ahead and travel to the Great Corsair Ship. I usually don’t try to put the 20 progress on the quest down until after I have cleared the Great Ship. If I have made it this far, my board state is in a good place – I could manage to quest and clear locations with an 8+ threat location in the staging area (if the game goes on long enough), so it should be manageable to do a big push and put down the 20 progress once this location is gone from the staging area. If you get this far, you will probably make it unless you are at risk of threating out. First, you must survive the final battle, where each player has to fetch an enemy from the encounter deck or discard pile, and one of these must be the Corsair Captain. I always pull them from the encounter deck, as the encounter deck probably won’t reshuffle once you have made it to the Great Ship. Go for either of the two small corsairs (Haradrim Pirate or Corsair of Umbar), depending on how much archery damage you can sustain (the Corsair will hit slightly harder because you are on a boat but not deal damage on engagement). Be ready for the Corsair Captain – though you might have met them a few times already at this point. If you have either Forest Snared them or sent them to the victory display, then you will have an easier time. Have a dedicated defender in the group that can ready (potentially with Sentinel) to take the double hit from the Corsair Captain. or have two chump blockers you don’t mind losing. Clear the enemies, and quest like hell. Once the ship is in the victory display and you have placed the 20th progress, you are ready to proceed to the Battle of Pelennor Fields. If you play Saga, note the number of resources on the Fleet in your campaign log. You also remove Army of the Dead from the Campaign pool, so there is no reenactment of the movie version of Pelennor Fields, where the ghosts go crazy…

The Encounter Deck

Global

  • The encounter card consists of 30 cards on standard and 24 cards on Easy mode.
  • 15 cards have shadow effects on Normal, meaning that the risk of Shadow effects is only 50 %. This is different in reality, as one or more Ship locations will start in play, dependent on player count. On easy, this is 12 cards, which is also 50 %.
  • Average threat is 1.7 on Normal and 1.625 on Easy.
  • Surge is not present on any cards in this quest!
  • Doomed is present on Black Sails (3 copies, regardless of difficulty).
  • Peril is present on Driven to the Brink (2 copies on normal, 1 on easy) and Fell Folk of Umbar (2 copies).
  • Immunity:
    • All Ship locations in the Staging Area are immune to player card effects.
    • The Corsair Captain cannot be optionally engaged.
    • The Umbar Pirate Crew cannot have attachments.

Enemies

  • The Corsair Captain is a 3 threat, 5 attack, 3 defense, and 6 hp enemy with an engagement cost of 49. They cannot be optionally engaged, but if the active location is a Ship, they gain -30 engagement cost, which more or less guarantees they will come down, except for the sneakiest Hobbit– and grey wanderer decks. If the active location is a ship, they also gain “Forced: When Corsair Captain engages you, it makes an immediate attack.” Two attacks at strength 5 is tough to handle for most decks unless someone at the tables dedicates a hero to defending or sacrifices two chumps. As you may have realized by now, you will be on ship locations most of the time in this quest, so you can more or less guarantee that they will come down and punch you. If you pull one straight from the encounter deck, you may have the option to forego traveling to a ship location and clear another location from the staging area instead and save your strength for the next round if you are then able to deal with the attacks and provide sufficient attack power to kill them. However, stalling can be dangerous in this quest, and you never know what the encounter deck throws at you next, so it’s better to try to rush so you are set to deal with the captain from early in the game. If you get this one from traveling during one of the first rounds, it can easily turn into an early scoop. You want to see this card as a shadow card (no effect) or when you are searching for cards to send to the victory display. The encounter deck has two copies – which is remarkable for something that essentially is the mini-boss of the scenario. On easy mode, this is reduced to a single copy.
  • The Corsair of Umbar is the guy you hope to see when you pay the travel cost of the ship locations. 2 threat and 2 attack means he won’t mess up your questing too badly, and he can often be blocked by 2 defense heroes like Aragorn, and 1 defense+3 hit points means that he can be killed by dedicated attack heroes with weapons, or even a beefy ally like Treebeard or Gandalf. Engagement cost of 29 means that he will usually not linger around in the staging area. However, most of the time he will get a bonus that makes him a little harder to deal with: If the active location is a Ship, the Corsair gets +2 attack and +2 defense. Usually, this is not the end of the world – an attack of four means that you often have to block it with a dedicated defender or lose a chump, but a total of six attack should be something a well-running deck has to spare (or even the army of the dead in a saga game). I am less happy to see him from the encounter deck, as he will take resources to manage that I could spend fighting the corsairs that come out from traveling to the ships. But when I am traveling to the ships, I am happy to see this one. As a shadow card, it can be surprisingly rough – it grants +1 attack and +2 if the active location is a ship. Because of the high number of archery- and indirect damage being thrown around, a few unexpected points of damage can be very bad and potentially cost you a hero. The encounter deck contains 3 copies, regardless of difficulty level.
  • I am torn whether the Corsair Captain or the Umbar Pirate Crew is the worst enemy in the deck. 3 threat, 6 attack, 2 defense and 8 hit points means that this enemy hits like a freight train, and takes a lot of resources to take down. This is the kind of enemy you use Eowyn’s special ability on. It cannot have attachments, so no Forest Snare or trap shenanigans on this one. An engagement cost of 39 means that you can often avoid it for a few rounds if you wish to quest over it. The engagement effect is bad but usually not catastrophic: The engaged player must exhaust a character. This is a good reason to keep a few chumps around and not just quest with everything but one character. When you get this enemy from traveling to the ships, this can often mean a scoop. Hence, it is worth spending resources to remove this enemy from the encounter deck. Reshuffling means that whenever you deal with it, it has a nasty habit of coming back. As a shadow card, it returns the attacking enemy to the staging area after the attack if the active location is a Ship. This can be really bad, as most of the enemies will have engagement effects, and the added threat will slow you down. The encounter deck has two copies on Standard and one on Easy mode.
  • The Haradrim Pirate is the other enemy I hope to see when I travel to a ship. 2 threat, 3 attack, 2 defense and 4 hit points means that he doesn’t clog up the staging area, mid-range defenders can usually block his attack, and he is fairly easy to take down. An engagement cost of 34 means that he can often be avoided early in the game if you need time to get set up. The only potential issue is the engagement effect: deal one point of damage to a character you control or two points if the active location is a ship. This is not an issue until it suddenly is a very big issue and it costs you a key ally or even a hero. Otherwise, this is the enemy I want to see when I travel to the ships. As a shadow card, it can be brutal and worth canceling if you run the dedicated defender strategy: Defending character gets -1 defense for each point of damage on it. This is a good reason to keep your defender as free from damage as possible. The encounter deck has three copies for both difficulties.

Locations

  • The Umbar War Galley is the first of the two ship objectives you are chasing in this scenario and the more difficult of the two. 3 threat and 3 progress means that it can be quested over, and once you go there it is somewhat easy to clear. It has the hallmark ship traveling cost: Shuffle the encounter discard pile into the encounter deck, discard cards from the encounter deck until a Corsair enemy is discarded, and add it to the staging area. While Umbar War Galley is the active location, each Corsair enemy gets -10 engagement cost. This may be a problem early game with the Haradrim Pirate, but most of the time, the problem here will be the Pirate Crew – they will suddenly come down at 29 threat and can mess you up. This is incredibly dangerous and should be considered as a real possibility when you go there. In the staging area, it will be immune to player card effects. The encounter deck has three copies, and it has no shadow effect. Victory 3 means that it will go to the victory display.
  • The Corsair Dromon is our second flavor of ship location, and my favorite to see of the two. 2 threat and 2 progress means it is easy to quest over and easy to clear. To travel there, you do like the War Galley and shuffle the discard pile into the encounter deck and discard cards until a Corsair enemy is discarded. This enemy is then added to the staging area. While Corsair Dromon is the active location, each Corsair enemy gains Archery 1, which can get dicey if you have taken a lot of pings in the early game. But usually, you will be set up to handle damage, so the only reason you want to stay away is to avoid the archery damage or if you don’t want other enemies+treacheries to gain the “active ship location” bonus. The encounter deck contains 3 copies regardless of difficulty and has no shadow effect, but Victory 2.
  • The Port of Pelargir is not a Ship location but a City, with 2 threat and 4 progress to clear. While Port of Pelargir is in the staging area, no more than 1 damage can be healed from each character each round, so this is a way to nerf Waters of Nimrodel and keep you on your toes for archery damage. 2 threat means it is not too difficult to quest over, especially late game. I usually go there if I feel like I can’t handle another ship (or I am waiting for one), or if healing becomes critical. But it is a card I am happy to see most of the time. The encounter deck contains 3 copies on both difficulty levels. As a shadow card, it prevents readying; if the attack causes damage, the damaged character cannot be ready until the end of the round. Annoying but rarely critical.
  • Pelargir Quays has 3 threat and 4 progress to clear. This location is a time bomb that contributes additional indirect damage around. At the end of the round, place a damage token here. Then, if there are 4 damage tokens, discard the card and assign 4 damage among characters in play. Keep in mind that it does not have to be characters you control in a multiplayer game! This can be annoying, but I am not too sad to see it. Usually, you will have some time to spare to clear it, unless things are going south anyways. This could be the target of some location control. The card has no shadow effect and comes in two copies on standard but is absent on Easy mode.

Treacheries

  • The first treachery in the deck is Fell Folk of Umbar. When revealed, you must either return each Corsair enemy engaged with you to the staging area or discard cards from the top of the encounter deck until a Corsair enemy is discarded and put that enemy into play engaged with you. The card has Peril, so your teammates cannot help you with the decision. The option you pick here requires an analysis of your board state and discard pile – since this treachery does not cause a reshuffle, you can choose to get an enemy if the Pirate Crew and/or the Captains are in play or in the discard pile. If you have a forest-snared Captain, this is also a very easy choice – you just send them back and are on your merry way. The problem is if you are in the process of dealing with one of the tough enemies and this sends them back, you will have to endure their threat and an additional engagement effect. If you are engaged with the captain, you either pick the enemy choice and hope for the best, or you hope you have some cancellation at hand. Keep in mind that your choice has to change the board state – so you cannot choose the first option if you are not engaged with any enemies. The card has no shadow effect and comes in two copies, regardless of difficulty.
  • Black Sails has Doomed 1 and reads: Each Ship location in the staging area gets +1 threat until the end of the phase. If there are no non-unique Ship locations in the staging area, search the encounter deck and discard pile for a Ship location, add it to the staging area, and shuffle the encounter deck. This treachery is a blessing in disguise at lower player counts. A few threats that go away easily by the end of the phase or the location that you actually need to win the scenario? Where do I sign up? The only time you don’t want to see this is if you are facing major location lock, but then things are already going south for you. The card has no shadow effect and comes in 3 copies regardless of difficulty.
  • Raiding the Coasts is another softball in my humble opinion – either you must add 3 threat to the staging area until the end of the phase, or discard the highest cost attachment you control. I will almost always go for the added threat unless I have an additional copy of the attachment in question in my hand or it has served its purpose for my strategy. But this is rarely worth canceling. As a shadow card, it punishes you for chump blocking. It grants the attacking enemy +1 attack, and if the attack kills a character, you must discard an attachment. This is less critical than the When Revealed effect as you get to choose which attachment goes, so you can save your MVP attachment. The added attack can be problematic for a dedicated defender if you have loaded a lot of archery/fleet damage on them. The encounter deck has two copies on standard and one copy on easy mode.
  • Lastly, we have another peril treachery: Driven to the Brink. Either immediately end the quest phase (without resolving the quest) or assign X damage among questing characters you control. X is the number of resources on The Corsair Fleet. This can either be an easy one or an annoying setback. If you get it early on, you take the damage without hesitation and soldier on. If it shows up late in the game, where you have 5 or more resources on the Fleet, you must just take the loss and stay back for another round. This is another treachery that rewards you from scrying – if you know this is coming, you can keep your forces back (as the quest does not resolve) and be ready to clear out enemies on the board. This can be a good breather in a quest that demands consistent questing. As a shadow card, it exhausts a character you control, which may keep you from killing the enemy. If that is the case and you have cancellation, consider using it. Momentum is key in this quest. The deck contains two copies on normal and one on easy.

Tips and Tricks

  • Ship locations are only immune to player card effects while in the staging area. When they are in the encounter deck, or even when they are active, all your usual tricks can be used, so be sure to take advantage of that to keep momentum. The Hidden Way may help you find Ship locations in a pinch.
  • This encounter deck resets each time you travel to the ships, meaning that you may see the same cards a lot of times. This fact should affect your decision-making when taking risks such as traveling (you may get several beefed-up enemies, so you may face several rough fights in a row) or when using cancellation (even though the treachery you drew is bad, would it be even worse if it showed up later? If yes, then you may want to save the cancel for now).
  • Consider taking the rough enemies out of the encounter deck if you have the means. Some of the enemies can be trapped, and all of them can potentially be sent to the victory display. You will make your life much easier if you remove a Captain or a Pirate Crew.
  • Have a defense strategy, as this scenario is combat-heavy. Either play a lot of allies so you can chump, or run a defender with 6+ defense that can ready. You will face at least one showdown with the Captain, and chances are you will have to fight them or the Pirate Crew more than once.
  • If you play Saga, set a number of rounds you are willing to accept and consider scooping if you cannot meet it. Your result will affect some of the help you will get in the Battle of Pelennor Fields. If you go for many rounds, it may make Pelennor fields even more difficult. A lot of the videos below get the job done in 5-6 rounds!
  • Have a plan for how to distribute the recurring damage from the Fleet and Archery damage. Do you plan to bring healing? If not, is your deck sufficiently fast to handle an additional encounter deck from round 4 or 5? This is not a quest that rewards turtling.
  • Sneak attack and Rohan/Silvan are good ways to take damage from the Fleet if you can subsequently bounce them back to hand.

Playthroughs

This quest requires a lot of tempo and finesse. but you know as well as I do that this was just the warm-up… The true challenge awaits, where the future of Gondor and the free folk will be decided…

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