QOTW: The Ring Goes South Results

We’ve had some really fortunate occasions where the day that the events actually happened in the book corresponded to the days we played those quests for Quest of the Week. This quest was one of those, as we started The Ring Goes South on October 25th, which is the same day that the Council of Elrond happened. This will be the last quest where this happens, though, as the Fellowship doesn’t canonically leave Rivendell until December 25th, and we will be long gone by then.

The Ring Goes South Stats

Groups registered: 19
Total attempts: 26
Most attempts: 2
Average attempts per entry: 1.4

Total number of wins: 20
Win-rate: 77%

Average opinion on the quest: 4.2

A few quests ago I posed the question of whether we would see the Majority Frodo change from Black Riders Frodo once we got to The Ring Goes South. While the plurality is still Black Riders, we’re seeing more people branch out into the other versions now.

Campaign Mode

This quest presents you with a dilemma: raise everyone’s threat by 5 to guarantee you won’t get Lust for the Ring, or risk shuffling it into the encounter deck and possibly earning it for the entire campaign.

We don’t have stats on how many of these people opted for the 5-threat increase at the beginning, or worked around having the burden in the deck for this scenario, but either way, most of us will not be taking that burden forward.

Achievements

Here are the two achievements we were shooting for this week. The first one seems like it would be much more doable in 4 player, but none of our groups had a group that big.

The Hunt is Up!

Defeat 6 or more Warg enemies in a single round.

Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

Deal 6 or more damage to the Watcher in the Water in the same round that it entered play.

Encounter card Opinions

The number one favorite encounter card this quest was Hills of Hollin. This location gives a beneficial effect of raising the engagement cost of enemies by 5 while it’s active, and when you clear it everyone raises their threat by 1 for each damage that was on it. This quest can really heavily pressure your threat, but at least that effect doesn’t ruin your board state! For second place there was a tie between the Watcher in the Water and quest stage 1B – the Council of Elrond. Both wonderfully thematic choices!

The least favorite encounter card for this quest was Eregion, which causes the players as a group to discard allies equal to the number of damage on it. This one is much worse in solo than it is in large groups, so I’m not surprised that we would see hate for it here where most people are playing only 1 or 2 players. In second place it was a tie between Snowdrifts and Bitter Cold.

Cool moments that happened during the games

Eregion came out at the wrong time, so I had to travel to it right after advancing to stage 3, then had to put two damage on it after engaging the great warg chief and its crony. Any effect that directly discards allies hurts my Ent deck significantly.

With the various attack-boosting boons and two unique boss enemies in this quest, Tactics Glorfindel (ALEP) ended up being a solid choice. One-shotted Great Warg Chief and (with a bit of help) got Frodo back from the Watcher on the turn it came out.

I’m getting lazy and need to build a new deck.

The snowdrifts don’t slow you down at all when you use Woodmen’s Path on every location. In fact, they make you more powerful with effects like Haldan and the Forest Road Traveler!

My favourite part of this quest was a phase in which I played each of A Test of Will, Strider’s Path and Hands Upon the Bow, ending the turn with the board totally free of encounter cards.

Upon the Watcher’s arrival, Eowyn solo slammed him…but not with the Eowyn you might suspect. Spirit Eowyn added her 4 wp to Windfola(+1wp) and 3 Hunters contract activation (+3wp for 3 restricted items) to pump up her attack by +8 via Herugrim, then exhausted Guthwine for another +2. Adding in her +1 base attack, she hit 11 total, bopping that mean Watcher for 6 damage.

As my tactics/lore-deck were about to threat out Grimbeorn and Beorn put the watcher through the ringer and got Frodo down. The entire group got safely into Moria the next round.

Dunedain Pathfinders are really excellent tech against the beginning of this quest. You play them during 1B, bringing out a location or two. This will make the flip to 2A easier, as you already have some threat in staging and are less likely to chain a bunch of treacheries before getting to the threat threshold.

I tried to recreate the original Fellowship, but oh boy this is hard in solo

I was able to use Hands Upon the Bow in round 1 to defeat an enemy in staging and use Foe-Hammer to draw cards. Leadership Merry ally showed right in time to make a big quest push to clear stage 3 in 1 round. I was able to stack 15 damage on the Watcher in the Water on the first round after it entered play. Most of the game I kept travelling to Redhorn Foothills and using Wizard Staff to stash Power of Orthanc on top of my deck so it wouldn’t get discarded from my hand.

Dealt 14 damage to the Watcher the turn it entered play with a Merry + Ent combo.

Grimbeorn’s text might as well say “Delete an enemy from play”. With Firefoot attached he might as well say “Delete 2 enemies from play”.

Got stuck with a snowdrift on the Doors of Durin which made for a rather extended fight with the Watcher.

West Road Travellers let you pile damage on a location and then bump it back to staging so you can quest through a clean Eregion.

After some initial skirmishing, it was ultimately Gandalf who used Flame of Anor to free Frodo. Very cinematic!

Decklists used

Deck with custom Merry and Pippin to work well with hero Treebeard

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/53126/fellowshipassemble-1.0

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

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/554171

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

Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20870

3 Hunters + Fellowship Contract Duos using reps from every race/nation

The alternate saga continues in peril, https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21016

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/556354

Beregond, Gandalf, Legolas & Denethor, Eowyn, Galadriel, Thurindir https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/18922/birdmanssagafellowship-qotw

The Silvans and the ents, https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20779

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/53426/theringgoessouth-2players-2024-10-29

A Three Hunters Gandalf, Cirdan, Grimbeorn combat deck alongside a mono-Spirit deck with Eowyn, Idraen and Beregond. Uses Stargazers and Zigil Miners to drive the engine.

Treebeard, Elrond, Arwen

Haldan Widfast Lanwyn Woodmen / Scout deck. Radagast/Alagos with MOTK Legolas Eagles and Creatures. And two Grey Wanderers (Loragorn and Arwen).

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

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/556818

This week we delve too greedily and too deep into one of Tolkien’s most iconic locations. Make a game plan for the Balrog, this one isn’t a pushover! Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/AS4PpAxY4eXqw5aB8

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 Journey in the Dark:

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

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