QOTW: Fog on the Barrow Downs Results

Fog on the Barrow Downs was the Quest of the Week during Con of the Rings, and it was fantastic being able to play this quest several times with lots of other people. A few have remarked that this quest was low-key one of the harder ones of the Con, and I think I agree. It tends to fly under the radar and surprise you, especially in four players where you really have to be ready for it.

Fog on the Barrow Downs Stats

Groups registered: 19
Total attempts: 34
Most attempts: 5
Average attempts per entry: 1.8

Total number of wins: 18
Win-rate: 53%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.0

It looks like I was the only one to use The Two Towers version of Frodo! I thought his ability to get extra willpower or extra attack would be useful when one player is isolated from the group, all their allies are discarded, and they are left with just heroes. Most people went with Cancellation Frodo, which I can’t fault them for. There are some horrible treacheries in this quest.

Campaign Mode

There is no condition for earning this quest’s boon, Ho! Tom Bombadil!, so everyone who played it gets to add it to their campaign pool. This card is a once per campaign cancel, which will come in handy in some of the harder quests down the line (especially Black Gate Opens and Mount Doom).

Achievements

Our two achievements this week were fairly difficult to achieve, requiring some very specific conditions to align.

Tell Me, Where is Gandalf?

Choose Gandalf as the ally to place facedown under Ancient Barrow when resolving its “forced” effect.

Strength of Will

Defeat Trapped Inside a Barrow (stage 4) by questing with only one character.

Encounter card Opinions

Once again, Tom Bombadil was the favorite encounter card for most people. However, unlike The Old Forest, this was a much closer vote. Tom won with only 5 votes, and there were a lot of other encounter cards represented. At second place, with 3 votes, was Long Groping Arm. This card captures one of the creepiest moments from The Lord of the Rings, and the art by Mariusz Gandzel is fantastic.

The clear winner for least favorite encounter card was Frozen by Fear. Many people have shared that they don’t like that it basically blanks all text boxes on all player cards, even those in your hand. At the Con we joked that the text of the card reads “Surge. Doomed 1. Until the end of the round, players cannot play Lord of the Rings The Card Game, which is a Living Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games.”

Cool moments that happened during the games

Tom is still alluding me, happy to oboy be dragged into one barrow

All was going great in my first attempt. I had a really great board state and then the Great Barrow hit, all my Hobbit allies left, including poor Bill the Pony, which then instantly killed Sam. Instant restart.

Halfling Determination gave Sam the defense he needed to tank a Barrow-Wight attack, the attack he needed to kill it with Merry, and the attack he needed to take out a Cold-Wight with a bit of assistance in the same combat round!

I was one willpower shy of defeating the final quest stage, my only option was to play Drinking Song, which delivered the Elrond’s Counsel needed for Victory.

Gandalf with his staff, pipe, Shadowfax, Narya, and Unexpected Courage was a beast.

Going into the barrow supercharged my eagles of misty mountains which was fun. Threat was definitely an issue though.

I forgot to use Frodo so had one fewer hero: had I remembered, I probably would have won the first game with my Thorongil Dain mining deck. But the Children of Elrond Three Hunters stomped it since there were no allies to lose at stage 4.

Having learned my lesson at the recent Con of Heroes (going 1 for 8 with loses on Thursday, Friday and Saturday before a Sunday morning win), I was well prepped for this one. We only lost one Longlake Fisherman to Ancient Barrows–and really, if this guy was wandering this area of Middle-Earth he was lost indeed. No fish for miles.

In the final round with 3 cards left in the encounter deck and 5 progress needed on 3B I managed to pull Long Groping Arm as my first card in staging, then Ancient Barrow as the second. The final card remaining in the encounter deck was the 5th and final Great Barrow. I won by the hairs in Gandalf’s beard.

Had to resort to Hidden Way and Gildor’s Counsel. Best way to win is not to play (or to not let the encounter deck play, at least)

I was between 45-49 threat for probably 5 turns, that was spicy

Enter the Great Barrow while engaged with one wight lets you keep one (ideally powerful) ally in play.

After my first attempt met an untimely end to a swarm of wights, I enjoyed a relatively uneventful victory on the second try by stalling on stage 2 for awhile, aided by constant threat reduction (Merry, Keen as Lances, Elrond’s Counsel, Double Back). By far the biggest annoyance was losing allies to Ancient Barrow (RIP Ioreth). However, I was able to steadily fill up the Victory Display with cards to power up Keen as Lances. Once I advanced to stage 3, Merry, Sam, Gildor & Frodo were caught in the Great Barrow but used Frodo’s Intuition to escape right away -> both decks were able to quest for enough to clear stage 3 on the next round before any more Great Barrows showed up. Highlights: Got Frozen by Fear into the VD with Out of the Wild and was able to neutralize it with The Door is Closed!. I also got one Barrow-wight into the VD and used Woodland Sentry to discard another.

Even the ents manager to come out the Great barrow.

Decklists used

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

Grimbeorn, Radagast, Beravor – all the creatures big and small Pippin, Spirit Merry, Sam

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

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/52844/fogonthebarrow-downs-1player-2024-10-04

My Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20749

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

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

Eagles with Grimbeorn, Eowyn, and Radagast

Lost with Dwarven mining deck, won with children of Elrond (three hunters contact)

At The End of Dale Things https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/52683/attheendofdalethingsconofthering2024-1.0

[Le. Aragorn/Sp. Fatty/Gandalf](https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9967) [Sam/Ta. Merry/Lo. Pippin](https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9968)

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/551563

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/550957

“We’re Going to See the Elves” semi-thematic victory display fellowship – https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20722

Treebeard & the ents + The Silvans

This week we visit the Inn of the Prancing Pony, meet Strider, and set off into the wild to evade the Ringwraiths. Be careful out there, those Nazguls are nasty especially in numbers! Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/WAVYPBMPHaQKzssg9

If you are using the quick start for campaign mode, either because you didn’t get a chance to play the first three quests 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 A Knife in the Dark:

Boons: Mr. Underhill, Old Bogey-stories, Ho! Tom Bombadil!
Burdens: The Ring Draws Them

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