QOTW: Journey to the Cross-Roads Results

To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight, Sam saw a vast shape crash out of the trees and come careering down the slope. Big as a house, much bigger than a house, it looked to him, a grey-clad moving hill. Fear and wonder, maybe, enlarged him in the hobbit’s eyes, but the Mûmak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk… His upturned hornlike tusks were bound with bands of gold and dripped with blood. His trappings of scarlet and gold flapped about him in wild tatters. The ruins of what seemed a very war-tower lay upon his heaving back, smashed in his furious passage through the woods; and high upon his neck still desperately clung a tiny figure–the body of a mighty warrior, a giant among the Swertings.

Journey to the Cross-Roads Stats

Groups registered: 13
Total attempts: 36
Most attempts: 9
Average attempts per entry: 3

Total number of wins: 13
Win-rate: 36% (this makes it the lowest win-rate so far in the Saga)

Average opinion on the quest: 3.8

Campaign Mode

I think this is the first week where 100% of participants played campaign mode!

This quest gives each player a choice: an additional resource on each of your heroes at the start of this quest, or shuffle Brace of Coneys into your deck and earn that boon. Looks like a couple of players opted for the resources, but most people got the Brace of Coneys.

Achievements

Here are the two achievements we had for this quest:

Perfect Score

Complete the scenario with 0 cards underneath The Black Gate.

Close Enough

Complete the scenario with X cards underneath The Black Gate where X is 2 more than the number of players.

There was some confusion this week with the “Close Enough” achievement. A number of groups responded that they completed that achievement, but looking at the actual number of enemies under the Black Gate, nobody actually did it. For a true solo game, you would need to beat the quest with 3 enemies under the Black Gate (more in higher player counts), but nobody had more than 2 enemies under the Black Gate.

So, because the results of the achievement question are incorrect, here instead are the results of how many enemies were under the Black Gate for all groups:

As for how many of each enemy were under the Black Gate, the most common enemy was the Oliphaunt:

Second was the Haradrim Solider:

And then each of the other three non-nightmare enemies (Man of Harad, Captain of Harad, and Haradrim Archer) only had a single group with a single copy under the Black Gate.

Encounter card Opinions

With more than half the votes, the favorite encounter card in this quest was Hills of Ithilien. It has low threat, no travel cost, manageable quest points, and a beneficial effect while it is active. Also, there are a whopping four copies of this in the encounter deck. What’s not to love?

The two cards to appear in both the favorite and least favorite sections are both cards that help define this quest: Henneth Annun, and the Oliphaunt. The Oliphaunt in particular is a defining card of this quest as you are guaranteed to see at least three copies of it over the course of the game. A big part of planning for this quest is planning for how to deal with it.

With four votes, the overall least-favorite encounter card was Arrows Thick in the Air, which gives each Harad enemy 2 archery until the end of the round. This card can get out of hand pretty quickly, especially in higher player counts where the odds of drawing more copies of this compounds with the odds of drawing more enemies each round. It also combos with the Oliphaunt, as that enemy is very difficult to get rid of in a single round, meaning you are likely to have one or two Oliphaunts that are still in play from previous rounds that now have archery 2.

Cool moments that happened during the games

Burglar-King Theoden dug his shield and plate mail out of the treasure hoards of the ithilien woods and then solo defended an oliphaunt without taking damage.

What a stressful game! Trying to keep all the Oliphaunts from entering the Black Gate is a challenge, and I didn’t have any cool tech to remove enemies from the staging area. I was relying on my Gaffer Gamgees and just engaging everything I could. On my second game, I managed to only have 2 Haradrim Soldiers enter the gate, killed 2 Oliphaunts and nearly a 3rd one, and didn’t lose a single character despite all the archery going on. Feel relieved; it definitely could have gone a lot worse!

Sam was tanking Oliphaunts. Fellowship gives him +1 to all stats, as does Sting. Between Bill the Pony, Rosie, Hobbit Cloak, Fast Hitch and the Tireless Ranger and Forewarned Boons, he was practically invincible.

Not cool, but Arrows thick in the air was the shadow card twice in a row, had to let one of the Harad slip unfortunately.

Twice I traveled to Hills of Ithilien before playing West-road Traveller to avoid nasty travel costs. I just dealt with the enemies including the mumaks. Beregond with Gondorian Shield and UC on one side and Denethor with the two defensive boons, Gondorian Shield, and Armored Destrier + Arwen’s boost on the other. At once point mid-game, I played The Free Peoples to put a bunch of progress on Stage 1B and still clear the board of 4 enemies (including a mumak).

Between Hunting Party and Put Off Pursuit, I was able to keep the number of enemies that I actually had to deal with to a minimum.

The Dark Lord’s Summons cost me a perfect game 😦 That said, splashing leadership access with Denethor might be my new favorite way to play trap decks. Sneak + Faramir and full-cost Heed the Dream were both super clutch throughout, and the latter let me grab Song of Wisdom for some Great Hunt-ing

Black Riders Frodo was used multiple times early on to cancel surge (man of Harad is really too much solo when he surges into another enemy). Henneth Annun came up at a nice time, and once I explored it, I traveled to Ithilien Woods, then engaged the Oliphaunt, readied an ally from Ithilien Woods, and two Captains of Harad, readying two more allies. It was a nice way to get around the Oliphaunt’s forced effect.

Bard with a weapon and straight shot works like a charm

I had a very satisfying top-deck of a Galadhon Archer, perfect for finishing off the Captain of Harad I couldn’t quite kill the previous turn. Maybe the best play I’ve ever made with that card.

Decklists used

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21405

Chad’s thematic deck from youtube Mono tactics burglars turn (eagles and rohan)

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

Beregond, Malung and the Ents, The Elves, Thranduil, Arwen & Galadriel

Hobbit Fellowship (A Weary Pilgrim)

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

Beregond, Gandalf, Legolas & Denethor, Eowyn, Galadriel, and Thurindir

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

Thematic traps: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/562564 Standard hobbits: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/546566

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/534158

Custom Merry and Pippin with Treebeard to lead an army of Ents

Tactics Bard, Gandalf & SpGlorindel (forth contract) + Sam and the rangers Amarthiul & Damrod

Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21307

This week we follow Smeagol into the Cirith Ungol and fight the spawn of Ungoliant. Get Sting ready! Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/Q2c79k9k3QksqQ1z6

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 Shelob’s Lair:

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, Brace of Coneys
Burdens: The Ring Draws Them, Panicked, Overcome by Grief, Ill Fate, each player gets 1 copy of The Searching Eye
Harad Enemies: 1x Oliphaunt

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