QotW: The King’s Quest Results

With the revisited Core Set quests behind us, our road took us to the Iron Hills to do a bit of dragon hunting! The community was tasked with tracking how many dragons were slain this past week. On top of the regular two achievements I put out, there was also a third one posed by the campaign box itself. So it will be interesting to see how many people obtained all three! And then there are of course the different changes that were introduced in Campaign mode, all of which will be discussed in this article as well.

The King’s Quest Stats

Groups registered: 15
Total attempts: 54
Most attempts: 14
Average attempts per entry: 3.6

Total number of wins: 13
Win-rate: 24.07%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.73

Campaign Mode

Played campaign mode: 5/15 (33.3%)
Added Isolde to their deck: Nobody added her to their deck, she is on the hunt in all campaigns
Treasures discovered: Glittering Lure, Anvil of Gundabad, Helm of Heroes
Burdens added:

Added for A Growing Threat: Only 1 group had to add the Bats to their campaign pool. The others managed to avoid adding anything!

Achievements

As for Lost in Mirkwood, we have a third achievement for this week, courtesy of the campaign box. The regular two achievements come from my Field Guide and were mostly centered on the Caves deck, of which this was the introductory quest. The other achievement forces you into more of a location lock, which can get tricky early on in high player counts. The achievements were:

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.”

Slain by Greed [Ered Mithrin Campaign Guide Achievement]

Attach a unique Weapon to the Dragon Hoard, then defeat the Fire-drake with an attack from a hero with that Weapon attached.

Encounter card Opinions

There are some beneficial locations in the Caves deck for this quest, hence why the Ancient Treasury and the Lost Armory were both mentioned as favorite encounter card for this quest. Ancient Treasury takes the top spot, with people preferring the flexibility of more resources over having to get some attachments that they may not have in their deck.

For least favorite encounter card, Eyes in the Dark wins the poll. This treachery requires you to either raise your threat by 1 for each questing character you control, or discard a questing character you control. This can rapidly increase your threat over the course of a game, considering there are 3 copies of it, and it also comes with Doomed 1. The shadow effect is also nasty, where you are forced to discard an ally if you take an attack undefended. Annoying when you are engaged with Bats.

Cool moments that happened during the games

After losing my first game, I realized a couple easy tweak to my deck should make this quest pretty simple (assuming no bad luck with the Deep deck early on). I put in 3x “A Test of Will” and 3x “Rhovanion Outrider”. I stalled on the first quest stage until I got my Outriders out, then used them on 2B to almost never make an active location, so I wouldn’t need to deal with dragon attacks. I ended up not losing a single ally to this quest, and had a great time.

I got Durin’s Axe into play on Eomer using the Dragon Horde (thought that was pretty thematic) and then defeated the Fire-Drake before it could resolve attacks that round by discarding a Deeping Bowman to reduce its defense to 0 and then using quick strike to attack with Eomer against it for 19! I ended up unlocking all 3 achievements on one go too!

For Gondor!!! I had a reset all characters after we all quested to dump progress on quest. Then just one shot the drake with a giant Gondor army

Getting ground into paste until aragorn could confidently tank a hit and heal everyround

I succeeded on 49 in threat. I had just added 4 points of progress to The Fire Worm, making an attack by 3x Erebor Battle Masters and Oin with his newly added Durin’s Axe possible. The fire drake didn’t stand my army of dwarfs 🙂

Finally putting to good use Ever My Heart Rises

I brought the wrong deck

This quest seemed to have made a deal with my deck to absolutely screw me over time and time and time again.

Super cool moment when my side-quest deck couldn’t draw side quests or get Aragorn his title attachments until 3/4 of the way through the quest.

West Road Traveller is pretty cool tech for this quest. Deep only triggers on travelling, so you can use her ability to clear a Deep location out of the staging area without risking a nasty Cave. You can also use her to avoid the nasty effect on Lightless Grotto entirely, something I made use of on my way to the Spelunking acheivement for having no cards left in the Caves deck.

When Lightless Grotto came up, I played Evening Star to place 2 progress on it, then I used sneak attack with Meneldor to clear it before its forced could fire off

We kept our threat constantly around 30 using Nori and Ever My Heart Rises, thus avoiding nasty enemies as well as the fire drake until we wanted to kill it. Lure of Moria being our absolute champion card in the last two rounds, making short process of both the dragon and the quest.

Resulted in a loss, but in the final round against the Fire-drake Brand, Bard, and Dain stood alone after losing Grimbeorn, Haldan, and Radagast the round prior to threating out. Quested for 26 to finish off the Dragon’s Hoard and add Glamdring to a Guardian of Esgaroth. The Fire-drake had 17 health and 3 defense; I could only come up with 17 attack. I lost by 3 attack at 49 threat.

My Quest Log Summary: After re-tooling my fellowship, had a really satisfying playthrough. Used Woodmen’s Clearing and Double Back to drop threat down into the low to mid 20’s on stage 1 and took a bit more time building up a board state of smaller allies going into stage 2. Finished by questing for just enough to place 2 progress on 3B (helped by Guarded Ceaselessly), which allowed Éowyn (10) and Faramir (13 with Glamdring + Black Arrow + Dagger of Westernesse + 3 enemies in Ranger Spikes) to take the Fire-Drake down themselves. Highlights: -Got Necklace of Girion from the Dragon Hoard -Woodmen’s Path helped get me out of Frozen Lake -Used Mirkwood Explorer to place the final two progress on Lightless Grotto and avoid the treachery reveal -> advance to stage 2 -Miner of the Iron Hills got rid of the first Dragon Breath (had to stomach the second one with my Woodmen) -Scout Ahead took care of a Stone Troll (and never saw the other one) -Both Werewolves were neutralized by Ranger Spikes + Secret Vigil -Twice had just enough progress on stage 3 to attack Fire-Drake with two characters (first time to get rid of Dragon Scales and second time to take it out)

In my only win for the week (see previous submission), after exploring Abandoned Ruins in the final stage the Fire-drake moved back to the staging area with 3 health left to make an immediate attack. Dain blocked the first, and Grimbeorn the Old blocked the second while managing to riposte for 5 damage using Beorn’s Rage to eliminate all defense, killing the Fire-drake in the staging area and securing the Helm of Heroes at the last possible moment.

Decklists used

Dale Don’t Fail

A Rohan fellowship: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20177

Gondor (with tweaks) and pre-built elf deck

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/529662

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/534535

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/534722

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/525025

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/420699

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/420699 https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/478815

A sidequest focused Fellowship: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20058

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/528434 and https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/518036 One is a Grimbeorn and hobbits deck that shredded the Fire-drake in two hits, the other is a Noldor deck that is a great all-rounder but might find boss-level enemies more difficult

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20254

[Grimbeorn/Haldan/Radagast] https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/534370 [Sp. Dain/Bard/Brand] https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/531193

Date Night Dragon Hunt (https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20217/qotwthekingsquestdatenightdragonhunt) – a two-handed fellowship featuring Faramir (L) & Eowyn (T) along with some trusty rangers and woods(wo)men.

With the Deluxe box now completed (if there was a thing like a Deluxe box for these campaigns at least…) we move on to the longer quests of the cycle. The Withered Heath is likely to take all week, so best start this one early. If you happen to complete the quest before next week Friday, then fill in this form: https://forms.gle/2RysQhnx1vBArnj78.

As if the quest wasn’t tough enough, you can complete the following achievements to spice up the playthrough a little bit. This is of course also recommended for players who aren’t interested in the campaign mode.