QotW: Lost in Mirkwood Results

This quest brought us all the way back to the very beginning of the Core Set, where we try to traverse the forest of Mirkwood. Unlike Passage though, this quest takes you far off the beaten path and allows you to pass through the forest in your own manner, coming across different stages depending on which locations you find along the way. The new campaign mode also adds some new Boons and Burdens to earn along the way, allowing you to set up your campaign deck a little further before heading into Dragon-territory.

Lost in Mirkwood Stats

Groups registered: 17
Total attempts: 45
Most attempts: 10
Average attempts per entry: 2.6

Total number of wins: 25
Win-rate: 55.5%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.94

Campaign mode

There are a couple of boons and burdens that could be earned during this quest, so we asked what options you picked for this quest. It was interesting to see the spread for Journey Up the Anduin, but now you can earn another Boon ally, or choose to make the rest of your campaign a little easier.

Added Melanwar to their decks: 33.3%
Treasures discovered:

Cards from Spiders of Mirkwood added: Mountains of Mirkwood, Ungoliant’s Spawn, King Spider
Cards from Orcs of Dol Guldur added: Dol Guldur Orcs, Necromancer’s Reach, Dol Guldur Beastmaster
Encounter card added from A Growing Threat:

Achievements

There were three achievements to be obtained for this quest. On top of the two that I created myself, we also got one from the campaign box itself! The achievements were:

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.

Encounter card Opinions

We got a very clear winner for favorite encounter card this time around! Taking 8 out of 15 votes, the Forest Gate wins this week’s award for most beneficial encounter card. Drawing two additional cards is always nice, especially after some quest effects would throw away your entire hand. Old Forest Road came in second place, with its readying ability coming in clutch at times.

We also got a pretty clear winner for the least favorite encounter card in the quest. I could have predicted that Swarm of Bats would win this, since I even themed one of the achievements around it. It sucks to lose so many resources from your heroes, but to then also have to raise your threat is horrible. Twilight Hall came in second place, as it is a growing danger during your game if you ignore it for long enough.

Cool moments that happened during the games

Misplayed a couple things, mostly to my disadvantage, so I’m not too worried about it. Forgot to play campaign mode, so I didn’t get Melanwar as an ally, which I think balances out the fact that I didn’t do the guarded location to get a treasure. I took the treasure at the end anyway because questing willpower was never a problem, and it’s a loooooong scenario to re-do. Plus, I didn’t get to play with the treasure during the scenario, which I think also offsets the mis-play. I also accidentally shuffled in the “Dol Guldur Orcs” encounter set too early because I didn’t realize you were supposed to always advance to the next numerical quest card, so the “Necromancer’s Reach” treachery that would’ve killed Galadriel didn’t actually happen. I also didn’t realize the guarded objective cards had victory points and shouldn’t’ve been shuffled in, but again, willpower was never a problem, so I could’ve easily quested for more if I needed to. I got the Helm of Heroes boon, on top of Anvil of Gundabad from the first quest. Loving this campaign so far, and Dale is so strong!

I was forced to endure Swarm of Bats once (taking an 8(!) threat increase) thanks to Accursed Forest, but had plenty of threat reduction to fight through and win.

Playing for the first time, blind, having to fetch Ungoliant’s Spawn from the Spiders of Mirkwood encounter deck nearly gave me a heart attack. A 5 threat, 7 attack, 4 defense, 9 health nemesis that was immune to card effects made my Eagles deck worthless, but Bard came to the rescue with the Men of Dale! After successfully defending her first attack and sacrificing a Warrior of Dale in the round that she spawned, I managed to put out a whopping 15 net progress to allow me to damage her in the next round. After sacrificing a Redwater Sentry during her attack, I hit back with every character available to me (Valiant Determination is an amazing card!) for 20+ damage, squashing the spider and getting the hell out of Mirkwood once and for all!

Despite playing so much threat reduction I ended up still being at 40 when I revealed the Hummerhorns advancing to Stage 4, so Theodred sacrificed himself for the group

In my first attempt (2 player), I tried the Nalir objective-ally and threated out in stage 2. In my second game, in which I played the Haldan obj-ally, I only saw the Swarm of Bats as a shadow card, so I never lost resources that way. I got the Spiders in stage 2, Truly Lost in stage 3, and Chieftain Ufthak in stage 4. By the time I got to stage 4, I was ready to face Ufthak with no problems. My favorite moment was in stage 3D. It felt like the game was alive and battling me with intent. In stage 3C, each player put 11 cards under a staged location. Score one for the game – that’s a lot of cards! Then during the quest phase next turn, I revealed a treachery that made each player discard all events in hand. Ha-ha! I had no cards in hand, so the treachery whiffed. That made me cheer. But then, the game got me back. I made 8 progress, so I discarded 8 encounter cards to search for an objective-location. Nothing. And during combat, the very first shadow card was an objective-location. Back and forth it went. I really liked this scenario. I ended the game thinking, “That was fun, and I will definitely play this one again.”

1. Yes, we included Brok Ironfist in our deck xD 2. Beating the nemesis with three powerful dwarves (without events).

Sidequests are very powerfull here.

Definitely an asterisked win due to my first encounter with guarded (x) rather than guarded. This resulted in me getting three objectives locations out at once, as well as the cards guarding them. Had I played it correctly, it would have been much easier without the inflated staging area, but might have gone more slowly, so I don’t think it changed the end result.

I am just loving the story those far 🙂 this is our first Full Campaign in LotR LCG

Lost first game from Unseen Danger. Had hero with 3 WP but discarded Mirkwood Patrol (4 threat). In second game that same hero got captured by the Patrol. They had it out for me. Won the game at 47 threat and forgot all about Haldan.

I enjoyed getting to pull out some seldom-used (at least for me) cards/combos for this quest: -Faramir (L) + Glamdring + Hands Upon the Bow -Guarded Ceaselessly + Familiar Lands -Loragorn + Desperate Alliance -Playing multiple copies of Mirkwood Hunter for free with their discount My favorite moment would have to be using Guarded Ceaselessly + Familiar Lands + Sulien to completely neutralize a crowded staging area on stage 4 to place the requisite 8 progress and be able to take down the Nemesis (Chieftain Ufthak) with Eowyn and Anborn. My least favorite moment(s) were losing a questing hero on stage 1 to Unseen Danger on two separate occasions, leading to two of my losses :(.

My favorite moment would have to be using Guarded Ceaselessly + Familiar Lands + Sulien to completely neutralize a crowded staging area on stage 4 to place the requisite 8 progress and be able to take down the Nemesis (Chieftain Ufthak) with Eowyn and Anborn. My least favorite moment(s) were losing a questing hero on stage 1 to Unseen Danger on two separate occasions, leading to two of my losses :(.

I had Ufthak up to 17 attack before I could swing back at him. My minstrels sang a song of slaying to help the ents achieve a photo finish victory at 49 threat (thanks Nalir).

Another beorn + side quest friendly quest! The final boss being chieftain Uthak is brutal and beat up on me pretty bad.

At 47 threat for Silvans and 35 threat for Hobbits, we traveled to the final objective-location where we needed to discard encounter cards and raise our threat. Silvans discarded a treachery (whew!) to stay in the game. The Hobbits quested for 20+ on their own to cruise through the last stage which was Escape from Taur-Nu-Fuin.

My deck was drawn and I was playing blind so didn’t expect to put 21 cards under a location!

Decklists used

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/528487

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/47454/mybestrevisedcoredeckmd-csosolo-1.0

Dalefenders (Dain/Brand/Bard): https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/531193 Grimbeorn & The Eagles (Mablung/Radagast/Grimbeorn): https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/531302

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

Denethor/Gildor/Theodred (mono-Leadership) and Glorfindel/Idraen/Eleanor (mono-Spirit): https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/18291

Good old Dwarf Decks! https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/18745/dwarvesofmiddle-earth

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/114648

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/315968 https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/313169

My Rohan fellowship I built for the campaign: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20177

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/528434 A Grimbeorn deck, though I limited my usage of Steward to not get hit so hard by swarms of bats

Elf Pre-Built Deck and Gondor Pre-Built deck (with some cards moved around)

Dale Three Hunters https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/357966

I used a semi-thematic fellowship of Faramir (L) and Eowyn (T) and their rangers of Ithilien combined with a Woodmen/Dunedain hybrid of Loragorn, Idraen, and MotK Haleth: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20199

still rocking minstrels: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/521532

Thranduil, Legolas, Gildor & Merry, Pippin, Nob

Core + Wilds deluxe only Dale deck

For next week, we will leave the Core Set days behind us and advance to the Iron Hills. Here we get to test our resolve against our first Dragon of the cycle. Once you have slain the dragon, please fill in this form so we can register the number of dragons killed with the Wildlife Preservation Foundation of Rhovanion: https://forms.gle/p9r4HLs5HeMDbhUW8

Achievements for this week will be:

Spelunking

Complete the scenario with 0 cards in the Caves deck.

Traveler’s Guide to Emyn Engrin

The “forced” effect on Stage 1B should read “Forced: At the beginning of the quest phase, discard cards from the top of the encounter deck until a location is discarded. Add that location to the staging area.”