QotW: The Oath Results

Additional Quests, Quest of the Week, Shadows of Mirkwood

We are getting close to the Ered Mithrin cycle, but wanted to give players some more time to receive their campaign box. So we continue with the campaign from the Core Set into the Dark of Mirkwood scenario expansion. These two quests aren’t the hardest of them all, but can still leave some space for fun deckbuilding challenges. Let’s see how the community tackled this week’s quest!

The Oath Stats

  • Groups registered: 22
  • Total attempts: 60
  • Most attempts: 16
  • Average attempts per entry: 2.7
  • Total number of wins: 45
  • Win-rate: 75%

There was a burden to be earned for this quest if the players took longer than 5 turns to beat the quest. In order to track this, players had to keep count of the number of rounds that they took to clear this quest. To further incentivize short games, one of the achievements I made also focused on beating the quest in as few rounds as possible. The fastest that players managed to clear this quest, was in 3 rounds. 5 out of 13 respondents also cleared the quest before they would earn the burden. Most people who went above 6 decided not to keep count of the number of rounds they took to beat this quest, so the results aren’t conclusive. Beating the quest in 5 round was the most picked choice though, so it is not impossible to avoid this burden!

  • Average opinion on the quest: 3.19

Achievements

There were again two achievements to try and collect for this quest. The first coincides with the Burden in the campaign mode, where you have to clear the quest in less than 6 turns. The other greatly increased the difficulty at the beginning of the game, where each player discards cards until they hit an enemy, and add that to the staging area. Let’s see how people did!

Seems like a lot of people did go for the renewed setup with Raiding Party, and likely still managed to beat the quest in order to clear the second achievement. Very well done!

Encounter card Opinions

For favorite locations in the game, the Forest Gate took the top spot. It is easy to see why that is. The location allows the first player to draw two cards when you travel here, making it a very tempting destination. Another location that scored high was the Abandoned Camp for its random effect and Goblin Trail for its ability to place progress on the quest card.

For least favorite encounter cards, it is mostly the enemies that aren’t well-liked. Goblin Runners are annoying thanks to their low engagement cost and surge. Stalking Goblin (the Burden shuffled in at the beginning of the quest if you are playing campaign mode) also scored really high. The most votes went to the pair of Goblin Snipers that can deal a lot of direct damage over the course of the game. They can also prevent anyone from engaging them if both copies are in the staging area. You will need a way to attack into the staging area or deal direct damage to them.

Cool moments that happened during the games

Sadly, the limit on Elven Spear meant that Círdan needed help from allies to finish off the Goblin Troop, but it was fun that Ancestral Armor meant he could defend them without trouble.

Cool moment: In stage 3, Frodo sentinel defended the Goblin Troop with no damage – Frodo had Sting, Friend of Friends, and Arwen ally boost (5 defense). Tough little hobbit! Then Halbarad and Aragorn killed the Goblin Troop in one attack. Sad moment: Ioreth got eaten by a Spider of Mirkwood. Its shadow effect exhausted a character and dealt 2 damage because the attack was undefended.

Shuffling a Ranger of Cardolan only to immediately draw another allowing my to complete the quest of turn 6. Immediately forest snaring the Goblin Sniper, and having it stay engaged for the rest of the fight.

Playing Citadel Custodian for 0 and then using a very good tale to pump out 2 more allies!

I really like this old quest. It’s simple and yet gives plenty of work solo when trying to reach the Swift Trackers achievement.

I pulled off the Lothiriel + Eomund combo on 3 of 5 turns in a 4P Rohan fellowship which is some crazy action advantage.

I really tried to get a round 2 win (without any infinite loops) and I wanted to achieve it with good old Core Legolas. It is doable but it requires much luck both from the player deck and from the encounter deck. The Raiding Party achievement actually helped 😀

First game: I achieved Swift Trackers Second and Third game: I only achieved Raiding Party. I did not get both in any single game. My second game I lost valya, and all my vital attachments were in the last 20 cards of the deck. Game took 12 turns.

All the player encounter card shenanigans and Na-asiyah charging into battle to kill 2 enemies in the staging area.

Managed to pull off a couple of cool tricks: 1) In one game, I was able to play/bounce Orophin 4 times in 4 turns! He came in/out via Sneak Attack (to help kill Spiders of Mirkwood) on T5, Lothiriel in/Tree people out on T6 (to help finish Stage 2), on T7 played normally (albeit with O Lorien discount, saved for combat vs Goblin Troop).and T8 with Host of Galadhrim (questing for the win!). Sadly only on the last bounce could he return an ally from discard pile. 2) Sneaky combat: after having a Goblin Runner surge into a Great Spider in quest phase, ended the turn with no enemies in play: defended the Great Spider with Celeborn and Runner with Feinted Voices (on Ministrel) then using Sneak Attack on a Greenwood Archer which readied Celeborn and allowed Celeborn and the Archer to kill Great Spider while Haldir polished off the Runner! 3) The only game that I finished in less than 6 turns was the one game where Elf-Friend (the “key” card) didn’t appear! Nonetheless I flew through the quest thanks to revealing Locations or low-impact Treacheries each turn. 4) In this quest, I love revealing and finishing a Goblin Trail during the 1st stage as then you can use 2nd stage set-up on Forest Gate!

The Hobbit cartoon soundtrack from the 70s was sublime

Nothing too crazy, just The Great Hunt continuing to be fun and very powerful.

Completing stage 2 by exploring 2 Goblin Trail in the same turn was very satisfying. Thanks Widfast

Meme-decks made

With the Oath being a relatively easy quest, it leaves enough space to explore fun ways to deal with this encounter deck and to beat the quest really quickly. Here are some of the meme-decks that were made for this week’s quest:

Decklists used

used a ranger deck led by Damrod, Beravor, and Arwen (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/48953/thewildingwayarangertoolboxdeck-1.0)

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/21783/swarmthebeacon-1.0 I enjoyed the Gondor Swarm deck. I managed to beat the quest in 4 rounds. A very good tale was kind to me ❤

Denethor – Erestor – Hirluin the Fair outlander deck

Aragorn, Legolas, Beregond Leadership/tactics deck.

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19902/astudyincontrasts A “Stand and Fight / Reforged” deck playing across the table from a “dump all allies and attachments into the discard” deck.

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/515260

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

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/526614

Elrond/Vilya

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/499208 and a Grey Wanderer Na’asiyah deck

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/49037/gondoreinforcements-1.0

Elves of Lothiriel: A Silvan deck using Celeborn, Haldir and Lothiriel (with Elf-Friend). So a lot of cheap bounce action! See the RingsDB link for details – https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/49085/elvesoflothiriel-1.0

https://www.ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9442/minimum-purchase-dale-deck-1.0

Woodmen deck: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/520477

Bond of Aragorn: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/524034

A woodmen plus eagles fellowship inspired by Autumn’s fellowship

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19926

https://hallofbeorn.wordpress.com/2019/07/04/alternate-art-the-greatest-adventure/

Next week’s quest is of course, the Caves of Nibin-Dum to close off the Core Set+Dark of Mirkwood campaign. This quest will be a bit trickier than the Oath, and we have a couple of great achievements to try and make progress a little more slowly. You can log your attempts using this form: https://forms.gle/ZqSSxXxy9tAUmgEL6 Best of luck!

Dwarven Quality

Cracked Pillar should read: “Cracked Pillar’s defense is 2 per player for this attack. Travel: Remove 4 per player damage from Cracked Pillar to travel here.”

Chieftain’s Bodyguard

Forced: When stage 4A is revealed, shuffle the encounter discard pile into the encounter deck and discard cards from the top until X enemies are discarded, where X is the number of players in the game. Add each enemy discarded by this effect to the staging area.

Published

Leave a comment