QOTW: A Shadow of the Past Results

The community has begun a long journey. We are now going to go through the entirety of the Lord of the Rings Saga, including the two Print on Demand quests, and ALeP’s Scouring of the Shire. That means this will take us 21 weeks in all! Let’s see how we all did on our very first step.

A Shadow of the Past Stats

Groups registered: 23
Total attempts: 38
Most attempts: 3
Average attempts per entry: 1.7

Total number of wins: 22
Win-rate: 58%

Average opinion on the quest: 4.0

I’m not surprised to see The Black Riders Frodo dominating this quest. His ability is a great way to deal with hide tests that you aren’t set up to deal with. The presence of abilities that care whether the Ring is exhausted also makes it difficult to use The Return of the King Frodo (which has to be used in the Planning Phase), although someone did use that version.

Campaign Mode

As is usually the case with players, Mr. Underhill won out over Gildor Inglorion. Many players prefer the reliability of having Mr. Underhill in play from the beginning of the game and dislike the chance of never seeing Gildor.

However, the decision between The Ring Draws Them and Gandalf’s Delay was much closer (a difference of only 1 vote!). The Ring Draws Them won out, so we will be adding that to our community campaign pool for anyone using the quick start campaign for each quest.

Achievements

We had two achievements for this quest, and the first one is very difficult to achieve.

Hello, I’m Baggins

Complete the scenario without making a successful Hide test.

World Travelers

Complete the scenario with Bag End, Woody End, Stock-Brook, Bamfurlong, and Buckleberry Ferry in the victory display.

Encounter card Opinions

There were a lot of different answers in this section. For favorite encounter cards, we received answers for 11 different cards. Many of the answers were beneficial cards like the beneficial locations or Gildor Inglorion, but many more of the answers were “bad” cards that the players appreciated the design of. The winner though was Bag-End. Players appreciated the huge card draw opportunity for Hobbit decks.

We also received 11 different cards as submissions for least favorite encounter card. The two answers that tied for first (at 3 votes each) were Buckleberry Ferry and Piercing Cry. Buckleberry Ferry has the potential to slow the game down to a halt, especially in larger groups, as you cannot travel to it unless it is the only location in play. It’s sort of like a Goblin Sniper in that regard, but immune to player card effects–so no getting tricky with it. Piercing Cry finds a Nazgul and puts it into play. Making it somewhat more difficult is the fact that it has Peril, so other players can’t cancel it.

Cool moments that happened during the games

I staged on stage 1 until turn 5 thanks to two side quests.

I got wildly lucky on 3 separate instances where I committed nobody to a Hide test and discarded only treacheries. Kept me sweating!

I love Chad’s thematic play through. I learned a lot from the game by watching that series. It’s a seriously powerful deck. Had all five Nazgul in staging area, five hobbit heroes, entire deck drawn, and the power couple Sam and Rosie just rocking the quest phases and hide tests.

Backtrack is perfect tech to get rid of excess locations in staging when you want to get to Bucklebury Ferry

Just trying an alternate version where Radagast and all the creatures were there helping from the start. Let’s see how it could have gone.

On my way to the World Travelers achievement I revealed and explored each of the unique locations in the correct order which was very satisfying.

The thematic highlight of the quest was having Farmer Maggot, assisted by Grip, Fang, and Wolf, see off the last Black Rider in play just before I explored Bucklebury Ferry.

There’s something a bit off about Merry and Sam one shotting Nazgul…

Since you’re (usually) still committed to the quest when hide tests take place, the Red Book is pretty great. In a thematic win for the card design, Black Riders can be pretty easily dealt with by having Gaffer Gamgee yell at them to get off his lawn.

Brought a thematic BoF Hobbit deck

Victory display shenanigans FTW

Nothing cool, but out of 6 rounds I drew a Nazgul or a Piercing cry for my encounter card for 5 of them

Spent 7 rounds on stage to set up thanks to Stock Brook. Three Hobbit Ponies helped me calculate exactly how much I wanted to quest.

It’s really fun getting two daggers on Merry so he can swing for a huge attack. The hobbit deck felt like it was doing more than my Vilya deck. I like to thematically imagine that Gandalf, Elrond and Glorfindel were just providing that extra support for the hobbits to get through Buckelberry Ferry themselves.

The fellowship handled things pretty well. Got two Black Riders into the VD (Out of the Wild and Scout Ahead) -> used Woodland Sentry to dodge one that engaged me thanks to The Ring Draws Them and used 2x The Great Hunt (recurred once w/Scroll of Isildur) to get rid of two more. Wandering Exiles + Elven Light was a clutch combo that allowed me to quest and be ready for hide tests while fueling additional card draw.

Decklists used

Hobbit/Harad last alliance deck!

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/305803

Frodo (Black Riders), Lore Pippen, Tactics Merry, Leadership Sam

Good-stuff Gandalf and BoF decks. https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/18922

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/13555/simplefolk-1.0

QotW Does the Sagas! https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20652

Chad’s Thematic Deck: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/34889/2023thematicsagashadowofthepast-2.0

Two Grey Wanderer decks. One was a Loragorn Doomed deck and the other was originally a SpGlorfindel deck but he kept dying so I retooled it to be an Arwen Undomiel deck and it went much better.

Burglar’s Turn and Woodmen: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20726

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20724

My “Mildly Thematic” Fellowship: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20655

A Treebeard, Merry, and Pippin deck where Merry and Pippin are custom heroes to work well with ents that damage themselves.

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/52569/ashadowofthepast-1player-2024-09-22

Black Riders trio – standard hobbit secrecy stuff GW Lorefindel – in-sphere access to Elf-stone and Asfaloth gives this a nice thematic touch. My version is also pretty ent-heavy, which is less thematic but at least consistent with Halfast’s rumors about seeing tree-people wandering around.

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/547785

Victory Display Hobbits https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/543004 Glorfindel Slays Nazgûl https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/542692

Minstrels: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/536702 And Legolas & Gimli End of All Things: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/416948

Bond of Friendship + Fellowship with Widfast creatures

Merry, Pippin, and Tactics Boromir Three Hunters deck.

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20662 I made some adjustments without editing these, but this is the idea of the 2H fellowship I used.

“We’re Going to See the Elves” – semi-thematic Merry, Sam, Gildor deck paired with mono-Lore Victory Display shenanigans (http://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20722)

This next week we try to throw the black riders off our trail by venturing into the unsavory and malicious Old Forest. Hopefully you’ll catch a glimpse of Ol’ Tom Bombadil! Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/BGY1wb85Z9r5mEMb9

If you are using the quick start for campaign mode, either because you didn’t get a chance to play A Shadow of the Past and still want to play campaign mode, or because you want to use the community’s shared campaign pool this is what your campaign pool looks like going into The Old Forest:

Boons: Mr. Underhill
Burdens: The Ring Draws Them

And for achievements for this quest, this is what we have: