This is it, the conclusion of the Ered Mithrin cycle and your journey along nine consecutive scenarios. You’ve slain several dragons and have dealt with the wild creatures of Rhovanion. Now all that stands in your path to complete the cycle is that traitor Urdug with his army. Let’s see how the community brought an end to their Quest of the Week campaigns!
The Fate of Wilderland Stats
- Groups registered: 11
- Total attempts: 23
- Most attempts: 5
- Average attempts per entry: 2.09
- Total number of wins: 13
- Win-rate: 56.5%
- Average opinion on the quest: 4.3
Campaign Mode
Before we come to the campaign choice of this scenario, we wanted to see which quest was the favorite quest of this cycle. Opinions were split, which is honestly a good thing, as it means that many quests have their own merit. Here are the results:
Fire in the Night came in first, followed by The Fate of Wilderland. That is a bit surprising to me, since this quest is not talked about as often as Fire in the Night. Lost in Mirkwood took third place, and Mount Gundabad received one vote.
We also wanted to ask what your favorite addition was to the campaign mode of this cycle. Here are your answers:
I really liked the return of treasures! It was nice to see that mechanic revisited from The Hobbit saga.
Helm of Heroes is ridiculously good in a Three Hunters deck. 0 cost for a restricted armor attachment that adds 2 defense and sometimes gives a bonus resource to *any* one of your heroes? Yes, please!
It’s a lame answer, but I honestly just love all of it. This campaign was a brilliant experience for me from start to finish.
Turayn
As far as cards go, Anvil of Gundabad was perhaps the most critical treasure for my Dale deck in the first 3 or 4 scenarios. It allowed me to add some fuel to the Dale fire and keep the deck moving along. Mechanics-wise I decided to not add any boon characters to my playthrough, wanting to see how that might benefit me later (weighing short-term vs long-term). Thinning the encounter deck of some of the nastier enemies or treacheries helped quite a bit, especially later in the cycle when you know how some of them play when they appear. In hindsight I’d likely take Isolde with me for Dale since her ability is so powerful with something like a Bow of Yew or even a Warrior’s Sword.
Achievements
There were a couple of achievements that you could go for in this scenario. This was also done so that you have some replayability for this quest, which otherwise is pretty straightforward.
A Mighty Defense
The Heroes’ Defense should read “X is eight times the number of players” instead of five times the number of players.
Might As Well Quest Too
Complete the scenario with 5 or more player side quests in the victory display.
Three Armies [Ered Mithrin Campaign Guide Achievement]
Win The Fate of Wilderland with each player have no heroes that share a trait.
Encounter card Opinions
We have one final round of favorite and least favorite encounter cards of the quest. In the positive bracket, we got a very clear winner in the Dwarven Watchtower. This is one of those rare beneficial locations in an otherwise difficult scenario. The location boosts your defence on heroes while it is active, and beneficially impacts your objectives once it is explored. A shame that it has a victory score so that you cannot abuse it.
Opinions were split for least favorite encounter card of the quest. We have some staples of the cycle mentioned here, like the Hills of Wilderland and Swarm of Bats that have been a thorn in our sides since we went up the Anduin. As for quest-specific cards, the Gate of Gundabad, Slopes of Gundabad (primarily for their shadow effect), and Urdug’s Elite were mentioned.
Cool moments that happened during the games
I struggled to find readying (other than Destrier) and kept revealing enemies, so Arwen with Light of Valinor did a lot of defending. I would have Grimbeorn use the destrier to remove the shadow card from whichever enemy Arwen was blocking, to protect her from big swings. Also the contract helps heal some. Still, it was impressive how effective she can be as a defender for small to medium-sized enemies in a pinch.
Decided to play this quest again after my boring victory where I drew no enemies and was able to get my entire Dale deck out, and also decided to play around with Warrior of Dale, a card I felt was “win-more” for my deck, but heck, it’s the final quest of the cycle, it’s a fighty one, and I wanna have fun before I say goodbye to this deck. Had a rough start, with an un-helpful mulligan, but was relative quickly able to get a good board state, and even achieved the optional achievement “A Mighty Defense”, which has you treat X as 8 rather than 5 on “The Heroes’ Defense.” I played this for the Quest of the Week, and it was a lot of fun. This cycle was just so much fun and I’m sad to say goodbye to it, but excited to play through the Sagas next!
I ended up with a Goblin Troop as one of my first reveals, so I spent a number of turns waiting to engage him. That made stage 1 go by quickly, and by the time I got to stage 3 I was worried about crashing out. I managed to defeat four enemies the next two turns, giving me enough progress on the Heroes’ Defense to start engaging with Urdug.
My Rohan fellowship did it, but it was on the razor’s edge. I revealed nothing but enemies for the first 3 rounds or so (including getting all 3 stray goblins on turn 1) and The Goblin’s Assault just ramped up *so* quickly, giving me even more enemies to deal with. I almost scooped at one point but decided to try to see it through. Glad I did! I finally managed to stabilize and got a win with 20/24 progress on The Goblin’s Assault.
In my second attempt I managed to take Urdug down in the 7th round during stage 2. I was lucky to have two Dwarven Watchtowers in play to stall and maintain the handy +1 Def. In the final round I managed to put the Dragonslayer boon to good use, defeating an enemy that was added to staging and kicking Heroes’ Defense to 10. In combat I cleared all but one enemy from play, allowing Dale to deal a whopping 12 damage to Urdug’s measly 4 Defense and 5 HP. What a fun cycle!
On my first attempt, I managed to stall at stage 1 for three rounds (helped by Forest Snare) and to start putting resources on The Heroes’ Defense. Stage 2 spit out four enemies (two from the stage and two from the next staging) -> a bunch of tokens on The Goblins’ Assault, but I was able to weather the storm, helped by recurring Entangling Nets w/Erebor Hammersmith. Best moments were sniping one Pack of Wargs with Hands Upon the Bow and Lore Faramir and using a combination of Put Off Pursuit and Woodmen’s Path to dodge another Pack later. On my next attempt, I cruised through (ended up winning right before advancing to stage 3) by engaging three enemies on round 1 (two Stragglers following an Urdug’s Elite -> only placed 1 progress at a time on stage 1 for three rounds). Used a steady stream of traps and Hands Upon the Bow to work through enemies, plus Éowyn used her big attack to kill the Goblin Troop that Gate of Gundabad forced me to fetch. Urdug bit the dust after a single set of attacks (Faramir w/Ranger Spear + Dagger of Westernesse + Black Arrow had enough attack to finish him off).
Decklists used
Galadriel, Celeborn, Thranduil & Treebeard, Merry, Pippin
Grimbeorn, Arwen, Gildor – Three Hunters
Dale Don’t Fail https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/528487
https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/355884
https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/530852
🐎🐎🐎🐎🐎🐎 https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20177
https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20509/hirgonbringsthebearcalvary
All I knew was that this would be combat heavy, so I tried another Dunedain deck: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/536134
[Dalefenders of Erebor (Dain/Brand/Bard)](https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/531193) [Beards! Beards! Beards! (Haldan/Radagast/Grimbeorn the Old)](https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/534370)
Date Night Dragon Hunt Fellowship – https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20217
With the Ered Mithrin cycle completed, we want to start a LOTR Campaign in the same style soon. To give everyone some time to prepare, we are going to have a filler week with a POD quest. After some deliberation on which quest to do, we decided on Murder at the Prancing Pony. This should help us to get enough data to find out whether or not it truly is Johnny Goblin-fingers all the time. Another surprise is that Autumn will be doing the next three articles with QotW data, as I will be away from my pc on holiday for that period. It does mean I have to miss the start of the campaign, but I’m sure I can catch up.
If you have completed Murder at the Prancing Pony, then please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/2uPBQhv1rT9x4omH6
There will be two challenges for this week, which are:
I KNEW IT!!!
Complete the scenario where Johnny Goblin-fingers was the set-aside Suspect.
Worst. Detective. Ever.
Forced: If the players’ accusation is not correct, search the investigation deck and out-of-play areas for each Suspect and add them to the staging area. Complete the scenario where you incorrectly accuse a Suspect.
Vision Of The Palantir 