QOTW: A Knife in the Dark Results

This week was one of my favorite quests of the saga, and it’s been awesome being able to share experiences of this quest with other players during the week. On that note, thanks everyone for the fantastic response to Quest of the Week. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that this project has helped people feel engaged with the community, helped people be motivated to play quests, and it’s just been a lot of fun. I agree on all counts!

A Knife in the Dark Stats

Groups registered: 22
Total attempts: 30
Most attempts: 3
Average attempts per entry: 1.4

Total number of wins: 25
Win-rate: 83%

Average opinion on the quest: 4.2

I’m curious to see if the majority will change to Road Darkens Frodo when we get to The Ring Goes South. I know that Black Riders Frodo is a very popular Frodo choice for any quest, but do most people just use the “current” version of Frodo?

Campaign Mode

This quest has one of the most pivotal boon decisions of the entire saga. Each player earns a permanent boon attachment that will stay on the selected hero for the entire rest of the saga. That’s 17 quests you could get reliable value out of this!

It’s not surprising to me that Tireless Ranger is the most popular choice here. Having a reliable defense buff from turn 1 on your key defender can often be the different between surviving or being defeated in the first few pivotal turns of a quest. Granting the Ranger trait also opens up a very important defensive boon that we will see in The Two Towers…

For those who weren’t able to attend Con of the Rings 2024, the organizers of the Con did something really creative with this boon choice. When you register for the Con, you select whether you want your name badge to have a bow, sword, axe, or dagger on it. There is no indication during registration that this is for anything other than cosmetics. However, during the Saga quests that take place after A Knife in the Dark, the permanent boon you get is based on the weapon choice you made for your name badge. Bow got Skilled Healer, Sword got Noble Hero, Axe got Valiant Warrior, and Dagger got Tireless Ranger. It was a great way to get people to try out boons they normally wouldn’t have bothered with. Since I chose the Bow for my name badge, I was stuck with Skilled Healer for the whole con. This boon is the one that I usually think of as the worst of the bunch, but being forced to play with it for the whole weekend really made me realize how good it can be, especially in combination with its paired boon from The Two Towers.

Achievements

For those who haven’t read the books, this first achievement refers to one of the most satisfying moments from Fellowship of the Ring: when they are leaving Bree, Sam throws an apple and nails Bill Ferny right in the face. Then he mumbles about it being a waste of a good apple.

Waste of a Good Apple

Destroy Bill Ferny by the end of the second round.

Massing at Night

Complete the scenario with all copies of Ringwraith shuffled into the encounter deck.

Encounter card Opinions

There was a very close run for favorite encounter card this week between The Prancing Pony and Weather Hills. The former gives someone a free ally but brings down a swarm of enemies on them the next turn, while the latter gives the players some breathing room from a difficult enemy for a round. Enjoy those helpful locations! As we get farther from the Shire, they will become rarer and rarer!

The vast majority of votes for least favorite encounter card was Power in Their Terror. This card is a double-whammy, making it harder to quest successfully if you’re relying on allies for your willpower, and also dealing two (!) damage to each ally whose willpower is zero (either natively or as a result of the first effect!). This card can absolutely wreak havoc on anyone’s board state if you are using allies at all. Think about ways to work around this card because we also have to deal with it for Flight to the Ford!

Cool moments that happened during the games

I defeated Bill Ferny on round one, engaging him with a Westfold Outrider. At the end of the quest I used Widfast to travel to 2 copies of Weather Hills, making two Nazgul leave play while I defeated the other two.

We hated Black Breath so much we just took it out of the game for a semi-sleazy mode. A loaded up Legolas played Hands upon the bow in the first round to take out Ferney.

1. I successfully engaged Bill Ferny on turn 1 only to have a shadow send him back to staging. I had to wait 3 more rounds to deal with him. 2. At one point Bill Ferny had 2 successive shadow cards that made him attack again. My Vigilant Dunedain laughed at him and defended them all. 3. I used The Free Peoples to ready 16 characters in the combat phase so I could attack The Witch-King for 31 and win the game.

In all three games I played I didn’t shuffle a single Ringwraith into the deck.

In the very last round I used a Put Off Pursuit to evade a Nazgul that had been reshuffled into the encounter deck so I didn’t have to defeat it a second time.

Bill Ferny was trying to prey on tiny helpless travelers, he wasn’t expecting a troop of angry animals that could engage and murder him in the first round.

Mulligan for Westfold Outrider

I wanted to highlight how the Dunedain kept protecting the Hobbits in secret for centuries.

After traveling to Weather Hills and removing a Nazgul, I was able to kick that location back to staging with Hidden Way and leave it there for the rest of the game. You could do the same with Strider’s Path, and if necessary travel to that same location again to hide multiple enemies at once.

Hail of Stones saw off Bill Ferny on turn 2. It required exhausting all characters in one deck, but Jubayr was at the Prancing Pony to provide backup.

Poor hero Sam setting up to ready against higher engagement cost enemies, then getting hit with 3 Lure of the Ring cards with the One Ring previously exhausted. Was a good early test of threat management I didn’t expect. Love the variety this quest can throw at you but it all feels fair (and is obviously super thematic).

Thought I would not be able to participate since on fall break vacation with family but my daughter another laptop along so thanks to her and Seastan, I’m playing Dragncards at night in dark under the blankets.

Because my Bill Ferny tech didn’t show up, I started somewhat slowly and built a board state bit by bit as my threat rose ever higher (I didn’t end up taking care of him until deck 2’s threat hit 39 on stage 2). However, my opening round Out of the Wild did nab one of the Riders from Mordor, so that worked out well (I was able to eventually kill the second one and use None Return to get it into the Victory Display too). I ended up completing Scout Ahead, Send for Aid, and Double Back before the game ended and got 27 total cards into the Victory Display before the end. As a result, The Witch-King was all alone when I hit stage 3, and he quickly fell to an army of angry Elves (3x Wandering Exile, Gildor Inglorion, Glorfindel) after I explored Weathertop.

Decklists used

The ents & the silvans

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/52963/aknifeinthedark-1player-2024-10-10

Glorfindel, Idraen, Arwen https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/550914 Sam, Folco, Fatty https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/550911

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

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

Minstrel deck paired with Legolas and Gimli deck

Arwen-Caldara-Cirdan and Beregond-Haldir-Legolas

1|Gandalf, Beregond, Legolas 2|Denethor, Eowyn, Galadriel, Thurindir https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/18922/birdmanssagafellowship-qotw – Slightly modified BoF deck to add some allies to help me engage Bill Ferny

I ran 6 different decks against this during the week (3 x 2-handed games). First was a Bond of Friendship built to kill Bill on turn 1 (alongside a Haldan, Lanwyn, Widfast Woodmen deck). Second was a mono-Spirit deck beside a Gandalf, Grimbeorn, Cirdan 3 Hunters. Third was an Alagos and Radagast Eagles deck beside a pretty typical Dale deck.

Bond of Friendship creatures

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/551869

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/552382

Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20759

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20895

An Ent deck, with custom Merry and Pippin heroes to go well with hero Treebeard.

Grimebeorn Three Hunters

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

“We’re Going to See the Elves” – semi-thematic Victory Display fellowship (https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20944)

Spirit merry, Pippin & Sam the man + Grimbeorn, Radagast, Beravor and all the creatures

This week we are making a mad dash to the Fords and the safety of Rivendell. Bring those Glorfindel decks, this is the one where he reveals his wrath. Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/Qy2zy2kSJqE1eL51A

If you are using the quick start for campaign mode, either because you didn’t get a chance to play the first four 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 Flight to the Ford:

Boons: Mr. Underhill, Old Bogey-stories, Ho! Tom Bombadil!, Each player may choose one of the permanent boons from A Knife in the Dark
Burdens: The Ring Draws Them

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