QOTW: Helm’s Deep Results

It was now past midnight. The sky was utterly dark, and the stillness of the heavy air foreboded storm. Suddenly the clouds were seared by a blinding flash. Branched lightning smote down upon the eastward hills. For a staring moment the watchers on the walls saw all the space between them and the Dike lit with white light: it was boiling and crawling with black shapes, some squat and broad, some tall and grim, with high helms and sable shields. Hundreds and hundreds more were pouring over the Dike and through the breach. The dark tide flowed up to the walls from cliff to cliff. Thunder rolled in the valley. Rain came lashing down.

Helm’s Deep Stats

Groups registered: 16
Total attempts: 55
Most attempts: 12
Average attempts per entry: 3.4

Total number of wins: 28
Win-rate: 51%

Average opinion on the quest: 4.5

The Defense of the Walls

In this quest, the players are trying to prevent the quest from advancing. I polled players on how far the quest progressed before the King rode out:

Campaign Mode

Achievements

Here are the two achievements we had for this quest:

Hold the Line!

Complete the scenario without advancing to stage 4.

Devilry Upon Devilry

Complete the scenario where you resolve the “when revealed” effect on Devilry of Saruman 3 or more times.

Encounter card Opinions

Receiving 6 votes, the favorite encounter card for this quest was Deeping Wall. This location gives all heroes +1 defense, which can be very useful. I personally struggled with this location in one of my playthroughs because they kept being explored and I eventually threated out. Woops!

The only card to appear on both the favorite and least favorite encounter card lists, and the winner of least favorite card (with a whopping 12 votes) was Devilry of Saruman. Just like in the book, Saruman’s Devilry can foil even the most well-thought plans. It can spiral out of control quickly if you reveal this as an encounter card during the quest phase, it causes you to progress to the next quest stage, and then the enemies make a lot of progress on the next stage. Also, don’t forget that it blanks everyone’s text boxes! Chaos on the battlefield!

Cool moments that happened during the games

I decided to keep going with the Gimli/Legolas theme, blending Forth the Three Hunters with At The End of All Things

I made it almost the entire game staying on 1B. I was one willpower away.

Distant Stars (one of my favorite cards) came in absolutely clutch, with Aragorn able to exhaust to fulfill the cost. I ended up using all three, and one I drew exactly when I needed it after advancing to stage 3 and I couldn’t take the effects of Helm’s Gate. Another I drew right after revealing another Helm’s Gate, so I was able to travel there and replace it (again) with Deeping Wall. At that point, I had not quested anyone and burst quest 3 to get to quest 4, then drew down lots of enemies with my high threat and wiped them out. That meant I could quest successfully the rest of the game with a +1 defense location backing me up.

This is definitely one of the best quests in the game. Mechanics, theme, excitement, it really is perfect.

I was lucky when drawing encounters

Playing solo after the first quest phase I had archery 5 in play and 6 damage on the heroes (Soldier of Isengard + reveal from 2a was Isengard Uruk + another Isengard Uruk revealed during first quest phase). At the beginning of round 2 all my heroes were at 1 health and without healing I would lose heroes from archery in combat phase. I played 1 drinking song, didn’t get warden, but played second drinking song that was on top of the deck after reshuffle (with Gandalf) and finally got the warden of healing. Warden (boosted by Elrond’s ability) was able to save the day.

I decided to end on a thematic high. I played Gandalf (the only copy in either deck) on the final round where I advanced to 5A, then played Oath of Eorl to kill all the enemies engaged with one deck with Theoden, Eowyn, Aragorn, and Legolas, while the other deck used Gandalf to kill its final enemy.

I was forced onto quest card 4 by the end of round 2 and thought for sure I had lost. But, miraculously, I was able to stabilize after that and never lost a quest phase again. Such an incredibly thematic and clever quest.

The first game, I played Defense as Siege and threated out with both decks on turn 2. The third game (the one I won), I brought Gandalf out as my 9th character, triggering the Fellowship Contract, as I placed the 8th resource token on The Defense of Helm’s Deep. I felled all the enemies in that same round, winning the game with 45 threat on one of my decks and 3 progress on Deeping Wall. Gandalf came just in time to not only win but stop me from threating out.

Secret Vigils works great in this quest. Due to successively advancing to stage 4, stage 5, and exploring a Deeping Culvert, I ended up with 7 enemies in staging which all engaged me. Thanks to Aragorn having a ton of resources, I was able to defend and defeat them all in the first combat phase.

The theme for my winning playthrough ended up being shadow cancellation. Erkenbrand, Jubayr, Armored Destrier and Gandalf’s Staff were all working overtime to ensure combat was manageable, which helped me to clear the board on turn 6 and continue on to victory.

Fun to find the location tech that’s actually helpful here, since exploring them is generally a bad idea. Heirs of Earendil and Thror’s Key are the obvious ones, but West Road Traveller proved surprisingly useful, both for swapping out progress-heavy locations and for getting Helm’s Gate into staging when you hit 3B. Combat-wise, shout out to whoever in Discord pointed out that 7 is the magic number to kill any enemies in this quest. Getting Glorfindel and Grimbeorn up to 7 attack (or 5 with the DEF debuffing) is fairly straightforward and made combat a lot less of an issue.

There’s a lot of fun ways to work around Poisoned Counsels (I wouldn’t take it if I was playing campaign, but as a one-shot it’s fine). My favourite tech for this quest is just using location manipulation or management: West Road Traveller to get you off Helm’s Gate. Path of Need for multiple rounds is bonkers. Thror’s Key or Heirs of Earendil to give you breakthroughs in locations. And Widfast! OMG she shines in Helm’s Deep.

My first attempt was one of the best wins. I quested successfully every round and the enemies never advanced past stage 2 (nor did they even clear a single location).

I ended up revealing all 3 copies of Devilry of Sarumon in the same quest phase

Decklists used

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/561209

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

Custom Merry and Pippin to work well with Treebeard the White and the other Ents.

Three Hunters: Grimbeorn, Arwen, Gildor (Grimbeorn’s Path)

Grimbeorn, Radagast&Mablung + Eowyn (sp), Leomer & erkenbrand

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/52229/ring-bearersallroundmd-rcoc-1.0 with slight modification to add Aragorn’s saga cards

Burglar’s Turn and Woodmen (with some minor tweaks): https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20726

QotW Does the Sagas! https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/53840/helmsdeep-2players-2024-11-23

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21214

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

Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21100

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/561351; https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/561248

Played 8 different decks against it this week. My favourite was a Grey Wanderer Loragorn deck I’ve been playing though a bunch of these Saga QOTWs. No uniqueness conflict with Fellowship hero here, no sir.

Samwise, Bombadil, Goldberry – Hobbit/Minstrel last alliance to do the Fireside Song on Bombadil trick.

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21255

This week we rouse the ents and bring doom and destruction to Saruman’s fortress at Isengard. Take this one slow, especially if it is your first time playing it. There are lots of triggers that are easy to miss. Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/VRGMRB4YPx4iN7Vv9

If you are using the quick start for campaign mode, either because you didn’t get a chance to play all the quests before this one 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 Helm’s Deep:

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, each player may choose one of the Skill boons from The Uruk-Hai
Burdens: The Ring Draws Them, Panicked, Overcome by Grief, Ill Fate

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