QotW: Journey Along the Anduin Results

Journey along the Anduin, Quest of the Week, Shadows of Mirkwood

After the success of this project with Passage through Mirkwood, we led our campaigns to the river, where the difficulty increases and more challenging obstacles need to be overcome. Still, I believe this is the most played quest during the entire game’s life, since the difficulty is average and players often use this quest to test their decks against. With two brand-new achievements and a couple of Hill-trolls to slay, the players took another 7 days to beat this quest. Here are their results and opinions on the quest.

Journey along the Anduin Stats

  • Groups registered: 37
  • Total attempts: 114
  • Most attempts: 30ish
  • Average attempts per entry: 3.08
  • Total number of wins: 62
  • Win-rate: 54.39%

For this quest, you could earn a burden if you happened to lose a character to a Hill-Troll. All players also earned a copy of Valor, which was awarded when a Hill-Troll is defeated. Since this is a requirement for the first stage, we assume that everyone who attempted this quest in campaign mode, earned that Boon. The Burden, however, could be avoided if you didn’t chump.

  • Average opinion on the quest: 3.81

Achievements

Where Passage through Mirkwood’s achievements were a bit easier, this week’s achievements make for either a tougher start of the game or a bigger struggle towards the end of the game. Do both achievements in the same quest, and you’d have to face off against 4 Hill-trolls during the entire game!

But What About Second Hill Troll?

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

Quite the Ambush

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

Good to see that 21 out of 37 responses attempted at least one of the two achievements, and with a pretty high win-rate on both of them. Remember that these achievements will get more difficult as time goes on, but for now offer a different way to play the game during setup or implement new rules for certain cards.

Encounter card Opinions

For favorite encounter cards, there were 8 votes for the Banks of the Anduin location, which won’t add a lot of threat and ensures a blank shadow card after it has been explored. But the iconic Hill Troll took the top spot this time, with 12 votes. The fight against him teaches new players the importance of a low starting threat, and he is the first boss that you have to kill without being properly set up yet. The fact that there are two of them in the deck also gives the quest some more teeth against more experienced players.

As for most annoying/least favorite encounter cards, a lot of NM cards were mentioned, but for the Normal version of the quest, there were two outliers. The Wargs enemy was considered to be quite annoying due to the fact that it can bounce back to the staging area when it gets a blank shadow effect. This makes the final stage take forever if you don’t have a way around his effect. The Despair treachery followed close behind, though many people mentioned that it was the shadow effect on it in particular that they hated. And that is totally understandable. Not counting your defence against a quest with Trolls and Chieftain Ufthak is quite dangerous, and you can definitely lose characters that way.

Cool moments that happened during the games

Double Necromancer’s Reach killed Bill the Pony, which then killed off hero Pippin and a whole host of hobbits… still won, but RIP!

Grimbold showed up at just the right time to stop a hill troll attack and prevent me from earning the Scarred burden.

Bilbo chipping away the Troll until I could take it on. Loading him and ally Gandalf with lots of their toys. Ending the quest on 49 threat with just enough attack power to finish off the enemies.

Bummer moment: Sting becoming guarded by a Brown Water Rats 😭

Eomer 2 shotting the troll was pretty amazing. Really sold me on the deck and using DragnCards to try out new decks ❤

Leadership Dain with Armor of Erebor and Ringmail did some heavy work defending. I just wish I could have gotten Thorongil out to further pump him up with spirit Dain.

Ents thrive on Necromancer’s Reach. One was revealed at just the right time to enrage two Booming Ents. The Hills Trolls were blocked by a Derndingle Warrior (with Gandalf’s help via Narya) and then Treebeard and the Booming Ents tore the trolls limb from limb.

OK, the answer to this one was low starting threat, plus all round power. Ta-Eowyn for the high questing and her ability which enabled me to take out one troll without needing Gandalf, Halbarad as an all rounder and his special ability is handy, and Spirifindel plus Light of Valinor. Then cards such as Feint to delay troll attacks, lots of low cost allies, plus multiplier cards such as ally Faramir to boost questing and For Gondor to boost attacks. I was a little bit lucky with the encounter card draw (a couple of Gladden Marshlands coming out early will ruin anyone’s day) but it was a reasonably straightforward win.

Troll Attack forced an undefended Hill Troll attack against 2nd player. Apparently, Shadow cancellation is mandatory in this nightmare quest.

Firefoot disposing of both Hill trolls in the same attack!

Aragorn taking four consecutive hits from the Hill Troll and surviving to tell the tale. Increased defense with Dunedain Warning and Protector of Lorien, and healing with Dunedain Remedy.

I was super lucky the first three rounds to get treachery cards with almost no impact. Eowyn was killing the trolls with Herugim and a silver circlet and help from one ally.

The turn which I OS the two trolls was very cool 🙂 (turn 2)

Had to replay to get both achievements in the same game. Fun to pull it off, even with a triple enemy surge train on the flip to 3B.

Stage 3 of the quest had two copies of Gladden Marshlands in staging, blocked from the active location by East Bight! Very tense final turn mathing out who to quest with and who to keep back for combat to wipe all the enemies before threating out.

Honestly I never believed I could survive the ambush but I managed to kill 2 trolls, 1 Marsh Adder, 1 Chieftan Uruk and Dol Guldur Beastmaster in just 2 round without losing any hero! 3 Feint and 3 Gandalf (2 with sneak attack) saved the day.

Just wanted to play a pure Core Set deck

I used Haldir and Dori to combine to defend the Hill Troll each round and made sure I started over 30 threat so I would be forced to deal with it right away. I figure why use one good defending hero when you can use two great defending heroes to do the same job?

Using Lay of Nimrodel + Fair and Perilous + Unexpected Courage to have Mirlonde one-shot two Hill Trolls in a single phase was quite fun :).

went full no damage, only could discarding ennemies

The “Quite the Ambush” achievement ended up being helpful, because I used the Great Hunt to get rid of the trolls anyway.

I always thought of Stand and Fight as a meh card, but playing with one Lore hero and two Spirit heroes, Stand and Fight allows the playing of great Leadership and Tactics ally cards, providing enough defense and attack to take on any enemy in the encounter deck.

A low threat deck is perfect for the quest, and four trolls were taken down without getting a single attack off thanks to the Gaffer.

My game crashed after 1,200 rounds. I think I broke DragnCards?

For one of my two challenges this week, I built a 1200+ card deck that got every single ally and attachment in the game’s history into play at the same time. For the other, I built a 2-card deck that could theoretically beat the quest using nothing except Thalin and Tactics Bilbo. I think these are probably the two most-different decks I have ever built back to back. (Also, I may have accidentally discovered Nate French’s mythical Thalin deck that was so overpowered it could beat quests without a deck?)

Nah, just fun running a tacrahil deck.

Overall minstrels seem to be pretty good tech for this one all-around. You can easily keep threat below the trolls, you get to the point where nobody exhausts to quest (and everybody quests) which negates several treacheries, and Bombadil’s hit point pool is big enough to take the immediate bite out of Gladden Marshland’s 10 threat (using every hero’s available hit point, you can feasibly get it down to 0 threat for that staging, just make sure you can travel to it right away!)

Meme-decks made

While the quest isn’t as easy as Passage through Mirkwood was, there are still plenty of opportunities to beat this quest with a meme-deck. Here are some of the latest decklists designed to beat this quest in a creative way.

Decklists used

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/49980/passagethroughmirkwood-nightmare-2players-2024-06-05

Gandalf Grey Wanderer & A Hobbit Bond of Friendship Deck

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19739/thefullmusteroftheriddermark-qotwcoredarks

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/48507/elladanelrohirtacklethequestoftheweek-3.0

Grey Wanderer Tactics Bilbo. http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/295355

Lore and Larceny: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19550

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/32191/conoftherings2022-stagingattack-1.0 This was the first time I had played the staging area attack Rohan/Three Hunters Contract and used DragnCards! I had a wonderful time being able to play a deck that I didn’t have the space to set up on my normal table. I will be using DragnCards more!

Two Old Forests join up for a song. Goldberry, Bombadil, and Treebeard heroes.

Loragorn+Arwen+Gandalf, HaradGimli/Legolas+Boromir 3 Hunters

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/49999/journeyalongtheanduin-nightmare-2players-2024-06-06

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/14502/wanderinginsearchoftheentwives-1.0

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/50027/journeyalongtheanduin-2players-2024-06-08

A far from perfect fellowship I’m working on: https://www.ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19478/qotwjourneyalongtheanduin-minstreleomer It focuses around the idea of having minstrel Eomer attacking the staging area while remaining ready.

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/48535/qotwthematiccampaignaragornhaldirmotkhaleth-2.0

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/507506

A Valour of the North deck ! 😀 With Hàma for my losses and Eowyn for the win 🙂 https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/48571/qotwvalourofthenorthagainsttrolls-1.0

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19739

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/50067/journeyalongtheanduin-nightmare-2players-2024-06-09

A 2H fellowship with core set cards only https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19735

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/393164

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/48623/qotwjata-anodetofishbaughandthechap-1.0

Autumn’s Mutual Accord: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/12388/mutualaccordthesagaofgondorandrohansfriendship

Grey Wanderer Mirlonde (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/48661/qotwmirlondesmerrybandofmisfitsandminstrels-1.0)

Gandalf deck https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/523763

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/48676/qotwjatawithnodamage-1.0

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/520477 This is my first woodmen deck

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/522036

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/48690/qotw-journeyalongtheanduin-thewanderingking-1.0

Three Minstrel-Hobbit Deck

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19781/qotwtravelingariverwiththekitchensink

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/523158

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/521532

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/524140

Rohan mono spirit and Rohan Mounts

Next week’s quest will be the dreaded Escape from Dol Guldur. While this quest is quite difficult in solo, I hope that next week’s attempts at this quest will help to relive a Core Set classic. Top tip: Bring a friend or try the quest two-handed: https://forms.gle/EziZwHS4QrhipWBc8

Achievements for Dol Guldur will be:

Well Guarded

Setup: If there is at least one objective in the staging area that is free of encounters, discard cards from the top of the encounter deck until an enemy or location is discarded. Add that card to the staging area and attach an unclaimed objective to it as a guarded objective. Then, shuffle the encounter discard pile back into the encounter deck.

Servants of the One

Chieftain Ufthak, Nazgul of Dol Guldur, and Ungoliant’s Spawn each gain: “Immune to player card effects.”

Best of luck!

Published

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