QOTW: Breaking of the Fellowship results

We come now to the end of our Fellowship, and to the end of what I think is the best single box of quests in the whole game. All three quests in The Road Darkens are 5/5 quests in my opinion, each doing a masterful job of balancing representation of the key events from the books with fun and tense gameplay. Here’s a review of our results from the last quest in that box, Breaking of the Fellowship.

Breaking of the Fellowship Stats

Groups registered: 13
Total attempts: 19
Most attempts: 2
Average attempts per entry: 1.5

Total number of wins: 14
Win-rate: 74%

Average opinion on the quest: 4.7

Campaign Mode

This quest also features the Seat of Seeing, which allows you to remove a burden from the campaign pool. Of the twelve people/groups who played campaign mode, 25% were not able to find Seat of Seeing, while the other 75% used it to remove one of the burdens from Journey in the Dark from the campaign pool.

Captured Heroes

Radagast & Merry

Pippin

Merry

Beravor + Eomer

Widfast and Theoden

Eowyn

Pippin and Galadriel

Widfast

Merry & Pippin

Merry (Spirit) and Erestor

Pippin and Beravor

Achievements

Here are the two achievements we had for this quest:

A Hero’s Sacrifice

Defeat a hero that has Fallen into Evil attached to them.

Rough Ride

Complete the scenario with all characters damaged by the “forced” effect on Sarn Gebir still in play.

Encounter card Opinions

No surprise that the favorite encounter card was the Seat of Seeing (with 54% of the votes). The saga campaign is long and burdens never stop getting added, so any chance to remove a burden is a welcome reprieve.

Here are the encounter cards that got votes for favorite and least favorite encounter card:

Black Feathered Arrows
Fallen into Evil
Seat of Seeing
Wooded Shoreline

The card that got the most votes for least favorite encounter card was Black Feathered Arrows. Against decks that use ally swarms, this card will shred your boardstate to pieces. There is already a lot of archery and archery-adding cards in this quest, and this one can definitely take it over the top. Get those Tests of Will ready!

Cool moments that happened during the games

I scooped quickly in my first attempt after drawing Fallen into Evil as my first encounter card. My second attempt started better, but ended a bit dramatic. My healers were playing hide and seek in my deck. The seat of seeing were discarded as the first of two cards, so my shadow of the past did not help. Grimbeorn fell into evil, the same round as Aragorn found a bit of Athelas. So at least he was quickly brought back from the brink after a feinted attack. After I found my healer and since i was set on finding the Seat I kept from traveling to parth galen. Luck had it that the first card that came out of the reshuffled encounter deck was just that one. Struggling to get there I drew two Black feathered arrows and one wooded shoreline leading to 10 archery damage in the same staging area. The rest was a cake walk, until Merry and Radagast were captured.

I engaged 4 enemies on stage 2 and didn’t lose a character. Hobbit Gandalf with Narya and Shadowfax did serious work, with help from Jubayr and Glorfindel allies.

I had Scout Ahead at stage 3, and I knew that Seat of Seeing and Frodo’s Choice were in the bottom six cards. I used Treebeard’s flexible willpower ability to whittle the encounter deck down to 6 cards, then defeated Scout Ahead so I could reveal Seat of Seeing. That allowed me to eliminate Pursued by the Enemy. On Stage 4, I planned to damage Treebeard enough to destroy him (so he can come back as Treebeard the White), but when he had five damage and an Ent Draught he fell into evil. Changing him into an enemy, I reasoned that the Ent Draught no longer gave him +2 HP because he was no longer a character, and I discarded him. If I shouldn’t have, I could’ve easily defended his attack and hit him with a single booming Ent, who had 13 attack from all the damaged Ents I controlled. So he’ll be going from Fallen into Evil to Treebeard the White.

Widfast very briefly fell into evil, but luckily I had a Miner of the Iron Hills snap some sense back into her.

Legolas + Hands Upon the Bow was great on stage 1.

I quested for 52 on the last round (solo player) and I only needed 15, so that felt nice

First play through Gandalf got absolutely peppered with arrows. Things went smoother on the second play through, but even then a late Black Feathered Arrows left me with no characters in play with more than 1 hit point left at the end of the game.

I needed time to prep for Stage 2, time which I used to complete the Keep Watch side quest. Enemies were not a problem after that.

Tactics Aragorn is great for this quest. Thematic and mechanical home run, and you have the nice bonus of getting to swap somebody out for Uruk-hai. Spirit Merry is also great as he completely offsets the threat increase for engaging enemies on 4B

Decklists used

Radagast, Grimbeorn & Aragorn With all the creatures + Sam, Spirit Merry, Tactics Boromir

Hobbit Fellowship (A Weary Pilgrim)

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

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

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

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

QotW Does the Sagas! https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/53569/breakingofthefellowship-2players-2024-11-08

Hero Gandalf, Spirit Eowyn, Lore Pippin

Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20999

Merry (S), Pippin (L), and Sam – standard Hobbit shenanigans Aragorn (T), Arwen, Erestor – Beorning-heavy play-from-discard shenanigans

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/53679/breakingofthefellowship-2players-2024-11-13

This week we move to the next volume, The Two Towers. Leave all that can be spared behind–we travel light. Let’s hunt some orc! Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/Th3vwnmpJEcAVqZK8

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 Breaking of the Fellowship:

Boons: 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, Each player may choose one of the Gift boons from Breaking of the Fellowship
Burdens: The Ring Draws Them, Panicked, Overcome by Grief, Ill Fate

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