QOTW: Passage of the Marshes Results

It was dreary and wearisome. Cold clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers.

As the day wore on the light increased a little, and the mists lifted, growing thinner and more transparent. Far above the rot and vapours of the world the Sun was riding high and golden now in a serene country with floors of dazzling foam, but only a passing ghost of her could they sea below, bleared, pale, giving no colour and no warmth.

Passage of the Marshes Stats

Groups registered: 12
Total attempts: 26
Most attempts: 10
Average attempts per entry: 2.2

Total number of wins: 18
Win-rate: 69%

Average opinion on the quest: 2.5 (This makes it the lowest rated quest so far in the saga, just barely lower than last week)

Campaign Mode

This quest gives the players the choice of two evils: a permanent +2 starting threat, or The Searching Eye.

Achievements

Here are the two achievements we had for this quest:

It Burns! It Freezes!

Defeat Gollum 3 or more times.

Enough of You

Defeat Gollum in the first round and complete the scenario without flipping Sméagol to Gollum.

Encounter card Opinions

With four votes, the favorite encounter card in this quest was Groping Dead. Players appreciated an easy enemy that was easily dealt with and didn’t really have any negative effects.

There were quite a few cards that appeared on the favorite list and the least-favorite list. Those cards are: A Fell Light, Bitter Reek, Call of the Ring, and Stagnant Pools.

With just three votes, the least favorite encounter card for this quest was Bitter Reek. These treacheries that are variations of The Necromancer’s Reach tend to score very highly for least favorite!

Cool moments that happened during the games

I used 2 side quests to stay on stage 1 and build up a board state.

Minstrel-Hobbits had a tough go with stage 1 Gollum, his inscrutable defense is highly annoying when you only muster 6-7 attack at a time. Eventually we just power through with Songs of Slaying.

My Dunedain deck had all of the enemies in the encounter deck engaged with it by the time I reached stage 3!

Nope. It felt like trudging through a swamp. If not for saga I would not choose to play this again.

I revealed Shifting Quagmire right on my last round of quest 2b. So 3a revealed, shuffling in all the locations from the victory display, and I just let the mire discard Shifting Quagmire into nothingness at the end of the round.

This is by far my least favorite quest so far in the sagas. It was a long, frustrating, drawn-out slog, which I suppose is fitting with the setting of the quest.

Nothing cool. first time w thranduil and Quicker than sight, and I liked it! (Missing Celeborn who was mistakenly lost in Moria though…). I also tried out Fierce defence since the deck is built to withstand The Mumak. it proved useful here aswell.

Gollum is hard enough to deal with – getting the Candle-bearer shadow card is a nightmare!

Decklists used

Sam, Amarthiul, Damrod & Forth Tac Bard, Hopeful Gandalf & Splorfindel

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

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/556954

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21343

Hobbit Fellowship (A Weary Pilgrim)

Custom Merry and Pippin with Treebeard and an army of Ents

QotW Does the Sagas!

Arwen, Galadriel, Thranduil & his Silvan forces + The Ents quicker to battle-variant with Mablung & Beregond

Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21277

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

This week we ambush the Haradrim in the woods of Ithilien. Ware! They brought Oliphaunts! Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/U5wb649R8QDCnFqEA

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 Journey to the Cross-Roads:

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, Palantir of Orthanc
Burdens: The Ring Draws Them, Panicked, Overcome by Grief, Ill Fate, each player gets 1 copy of The Searching Eye

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