QotW: Journey Up the Anduin Results

It is the beginning of the Ered Mithrin campaign for many, as we will cover all nine quest in the coming nine weeks. We began this week by revisiting Journey Up the Anduin, which is a spiritual successor to the Journey Along the Anduin quest from the Core Set. This version features many of the old enemy cards, but also introduces new foes and a lengthy battle at the end where you try to hold the Old Ford against the enemy. Let’s see how people enjoyed this quest this week!

Journey Up the Anduin Stats

• Groups registered: 23
• Total attempts: 60
• Most attempts: 7
• Average attempts per entry: 2.6

• Total number of wins: 23
• Win-rate: 38.3%

• Average opinion on the quest: 3.48 /5

Campaign Mode

We are adding an additional section here for everyone that played campaign mode. There are quite a few things to keep track of for this quest based on your decisions and how well you did during the game.

• Number of people that played campaign mode: 8/22 (36.4%)
• Added Turayn to their deck: 50/50
• Enemies added to the campaign pool: Hill Troll (3 times), Goblin Sniper (2 times)

Achievements

The following two achievements were obtainable for this quest. They were meant to primarily make the beginning of the quest a bit harder, but they shouldn’t have been impossible to beat. Note that the Ered Mithrin campaign also has achievements that you can earn throughout the cycle! Because of this, and the added challenge that a campaign mode brings, we can expect fewer people to complete the challenges, but it is a nice distraction for people who don’t own the campaign box!

Deja Vu

Setup: Search the Evil Creatures Deck for 1 Hill Troll (2 in a 3 or 4 player game), and add it to the staging area. Shuffle the Evil Creatures deck.

We Don’t Know the Way

Setup: Search the encounter deck and discard for a copy of Hills of Wilderland and add it to the staging area. Shuffle the encounter deck. The Hills of Wilderland location that was added to the staging area during setup gains “Cannot leave play.”

Encounter card Opinions

There were two encounter cards that really stood out as positives for this quest. The first one with 5 votes is the Stray Goblin. It’s a pretty weak enemy, but is annoying because of its abilities. However, if you manage to trap it or keep it engaged, it’s a wonderful bit of fuel for a Dunedain deck. The big winner was again the Banks of the Anduin. The ability to know what is on top of the encounter deck is really useful, even if it ends up being a free shadow card in the next combat phase.

Between the Evil Creatures deck and the regular encounter deck, there were a lot of cards that got nominated for worst encounter card. But the winner with 7 votes was easily the Hills of Wilderland. This X/X location needs to be considered when deckbuilding for this quest, as you are otherwise faced with a location that really doesn’t like you having any characters on the board.

Cool moments that happened during the games

Side quests are good tech, so I played with them and as many related cards as I could. Managed clear 6 in the game and take down a Pack of Wargs with Dour Handed!

Silvans did Silvan things: Legolas readied twice and killed three enemies, adding enough progress to stage 3 to set us up for an all-out-brawl at The Ford.

During 2B, Haldan got attached to a goblin sniper, and I have no way to force engagements in my deck. That same round, the goblin sniper I was engaged with (different Goblin Sniper) got the shadow card that returns it to the staging area, so now there are 2 up there, unengageable (my threat was at 38), one with the needed objective to advance the quest. Plus, I was engaged with wargs that didn’t get a shadow, so they were sent back to staging! I took to the discord for advice, and the updates played out on there. I had to play the quest intermittently when the kids took naps, but I just played it out, made it through lots of extra rounds, and even intentionally failed a quest phase by a fair amount so I could up my threat to as close to 48 as possible. Once that happened and I freed Haldan and revealed the final quest card, I thought it would be impossible to win. Again, discord came to the rescue, and Alonewolf87 immediately reminded me that Galadriel could lower myself. Was able to pull out a win, and gain a treasure. Maybe the most exciting game I’ve ever played.

I just wanted to submit this because I forgot to mention in the form I just submitted (the one that goes on about Haldan getting attached to a Goblin Sniper) that The Cave Troll got added to the campaign pool from the evil creatures deck. This is not a new quest submission.

Both decks managed to one-shot Hill Trolls – Dunhere with double Dagger of Westernesse and double Unseen Strike, and Grimbeorn with his ability, Strength and Courage, and +5 ATK from attachments

In one loss: I was at 49 threat on what would have easily been the final turn, but lost due to the shadow effect “raise your threat by the number of enemies engaged with you”. On the winning game, I turtled for 12 rounds, building up a Hero Thalion while digging out of location lock, then sped through stages 2 and 3.

My six losses were one-handed and then crushed it two handed. May try again with Rohan three hunters if I toss in a side quest or two. Also, I did take sick pleasure in chumping Thalion when an untimely Goblin troop arrived. Sorry, Caleb!

2x Goblin Snipers came out in the same round, and at that point I realized I had no direct damage/staging area attacks in all 4 decks. Ended up getting both copies of frenzied creature in the victory display with out of the wild.

Horrible moment: Grimbeorn was murdered by two frenzied hill trolls, then Brand got murdered by 2 Stray Goblins and a Pack of Wargs.

The penultimate round was truly epic. With 5 enemies in the staging area (including a Hill Troll and two Goblin Archers I’d been stuck with for half the game), I traveled to The Old Ford and Grimbeorn blocked five times (thanks to Armored Destrier, Rohan Warhorse, and two copies of Unexpected Courage). His attack was enough that he killed each of the enemies after they attacked. I can just picture a whole pack of enemies crossing the Ford only to be torn apart by a giant angry bear.

Got really lucky. Drew 2 Banks of the Anduin early. So could stack the deck each round and work on side quests so didn’t have to see any evil creatures till stage 2. After that, encounter deck revenge with frenzied hill troll (of course).

Getting Dwarf-Lord’s Crown on Brand made stage 2 and 3 trivial. After ~8 rounds in stage 1 building up Dale, the rest of the scenario was butter.

I killed each different in the Evil Creatures Deck at least once only through direct damage

My deck tries to play a bunch of Beornings from discard, so Lost in the Wild was actually helpful

In my first two games, I did not quest successfully one single time and lost badly. So I built new decks specifically for this scenario, and they did much better. My new hero lineup was Haldir, Damrod, Beregond (T) and Éowyn (S), Eleanor, Sam Gamgee. All the heroes played their part and contributed to the win. In Stage 3B, I travelled to The Old Ford, defended 4 immediate attacks, and then engaged and killed those 4 enemies. So cake walk to finish up, right? Nope. My last quest phase drew Hills of Wilderland (15 threat), followed by three in a row of Stray Goblin (surge) plus a 4th enemy. Ugh! So Old Ford needed 25 progress to clear. Thankfully, I had Secret Paths to shut down the Hills of Wilderland, and I had a ton of questers to push through and make the 25 progress on Old Ford for the win.

Meme-decks made

None, but we’ve been loving the reactions in the COTR Discord channel this week. Keep it up and hopefully we get some creative ways to beat quests in the coming articles!

Decklists used

A Harad BoF deck alongside a mono-lore trap deck: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19994

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20058

Celeborn, Thranduil, Legolas and Merry, Pippin, Nob

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/49794/rcoplayerswelcometodale-12.0

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/15476/oneringfastred-3.0 https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/19204/strengthandcourageftgrimbeorn-1.0

Beorn, Cirdan, Thurindir — all the side quest goodies plus some big allies to get in with The Storm Comes, then readying with Narya

Idraen/Thurindir/Amarthiul and Rohan Three Hunters deck

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/32191/conoftherings2022-stagingattack-1.0

Deck #1- Secrecy Hobbits (Sam, Merry [T], Pippin [Lo]) Deck #2- Dunedain Sidequesting (Idraen, Thurindir, Beravor) Deck #3- Leadership Signals + Support (Balin, Aragorn [Ld], Denethor [Lo]) Deck #4- Spirit + Gandalf (Hero Gandalf, Galadrial, MotK Bilbo [Sp])

The two suggested rulebook quests: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/19641/eredmithrinstarterdecks

Grimbeorn’s Path, Three Hunters deck with Grimbeorn the Old, Arwen, and Gildor.

Perilous Voyage with Thurindir and Elrond and 75 allies.

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/529523 It’s an attempt at an eagle deck, but it doesn’t have enough willpower to avoid location lock solo.

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20095/eredmithrinpart1journeyuptheanduin The two decks are modified versions of popular decks from the past. I have a copy of Flame of the West but didn’t want to crack it open just for Tactics Eowyn, so I went with Mablung instead who helps tremendously when paying for expensive birds.

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/531102

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/471425 (won right away, I was pleasantly surprised by Leadership Eomer), https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/529915 (1 of 2), https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/450917 (1 loss)

Dale deck with only Core + Wilds of Rhovanion cards

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/49914/miningforbears-1.0

Slightly edited versions of: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/3232/dirty-deeds-done-with-steeds-2-0-2.0 https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/17160/wanderingelvenking-1.0

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20083

Spirit Beregond, Thurindir, Gildor Inglorion

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We now move to Lost in Mirkwood, a rehash of the very first quest ever released for this game. The new roads through the forest are winding, and I’m sure that the new campaign mode will add plenty of new stuff to encounter along the way. When you have finished with the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/hDywgZkbnDfkwdp36

For this week, we have three challenges, of which one is from the campaign box itself:

Unwelcome Companion

Setup: Remove Haldan from the game. Search your collection for a copy of Nalir (from either Trouble in Tharbad, 68, or The Nin-in-Eilph, 102) and put him into play under the control of the first player.

Swarm of Guano

Complete the scenario where each player lost 10 or more resources when resolving the “When Revealed” effects on Swarm of Bats.

Back to the Beginning [Ered Mithrin Campaign Guide Achievement]

Win Lost in Mirkwood using only cards from the Core Set.