As if his indomitable spirit had set its potency in motion, the glass blazed suddenly like a white torch in his hand. It flamed like a star that leaping from the firmament sears the dark air with intolerable light. No such terror out of heaven had ever burned in Shelob’s face before. The beams of it entered into her wounded head and scored it with unbearable pain, and the dreadful infection of light spread from eye to eye. She fell back beating the air with her forelegs, her sight blasted by inner lightnings, her mind in agony. Then turning her maimed head away, she rolled aside and began to crawl, claw by claw, towards the opening in the dark cliff behind.
Sam came on.
Shelob’s Lair Stats
- Groups registered: 12
- Total attempts: 24
- Most attempts: 6
- Average attempts per entry: 2
- Total number of wins: 12
- Win-rate: 50%
- Average opinion on the quest: 3.7
Campaign Mode
There are no decision points in the campaign here, or anything you need to try to earn. Players always earn the Heavy Burden card just for getting through this quest. So instead of asking about possible boons and burdens in the poll this week, I asked respondents if they have ever gotten further than this quest in campaign mode. We had 5 people respond that this is the furthest in the campaign they’ve ever gotten. Glad to be part of this journey with you!
Achievements
Here are the two achievements we had for this quest:
Taste it Again!
Defeat Shelob using the “response” effect on Sting (boon).
Taking the Long Route
Complete 3 or more side quests before traveling to Smeagol’s Secret Way.
Looks like we didn’t have anyone playing any side-quest hungry Thurindir decks, but we did get a few people pull out the thematic achievement of defeating Shelob with Sting:
Encounter card Opinions
The card to get the most votes for favorite encounter card in this quest was none other than Shelob herself! I agree heartily with this one: the mechanics of this boss fight are so unique, so dynamic and interesting, and she has really thematic weaknesses to exploit (such as Sting).
This time there were no cards that appeared on both the favorite and least-favorite lists.
The winner of the least favorite encounter card was Rage and Hunger. This one gives Shelob an attack bonus and then she attacks each player. The attack bonus lasts until the end of the phase, so if you reveal multiple of these in the same quest phase, her attack will continue climbing higher and higher and she will keep making attacks. Particularly nasty at high player counts. The shadow effect also causes Shelob to make an additional attack. This treachery is definitely a contender for the card that you save your Test of Will for.
Cool moments that happened during the games
I managed to keep Shelob to just 2 resource tokens by the time I could engage her. I traveled to the Cleft of Cirith Ungol, engaged her, and removed both resource tokens with Beechbone and some booming Ents. I had Sneak Attack and Gandalf in hand (and a Gandalf in play), then used sneak attack Gandalf during the next resource phase to deal 4 damage, then played Gandalf during the planning phase to deal another 4. I then explored the Cleft of Cirith Ungol and avoided Shelob’s powered-up state.
Gandalf the White with Shadowfax and a Burning Brand was all that was needed to fend off Shelob for the whole game, and made it easy to finish her off at the end.
Even after mulliganing, it took me about 5 rounds to find Vilya. That was also with heavy card draw and Imladris Stargazer in from round 1. Despite that, I was able to turtle on the first quest card for round after round and build up a comfortable board state — mainly, getting my Tower of Sam good to go. This is an interesting quest and I appreciate what they’re doing, but it did remind me of some Ered Mithrin quests with how long it ran. It was many rounds before I could officially claim victory that I knew I had won, and had to just go through the motions. Also, all 3 of my Hail of Stones got discarded through card effects, and Sting whiffed all but once or twice.
Firyal discarded 3 or 4 treacheries with Surge with her ability.
Bouncing Galadhon archers &Beechbone managed to clear the resources quickly so that I could overthrow Shelob with damage before travelling to the Cleft. I had a nasty turn before though, with Rage and hunger (both Shelob and Gollum engaged), We hated them, and managing to draw Pursued by the enemy twice due to a reshuffle. Nothing the deck couldn’t handle though!
Sam had so many attachments, it was absolutely crazy. After I ‘won’ the quest, while cleaning up, I found a Nazgul under Sam’s attachments! I had lost track that I was engaged with it because I had so many cards in play!
Tactics Bilbo was questing for around 16 at one point. This is such a fun quest for him.
A 9 defense Frodo with 7 readies really helps when dealing with Spiders!
The only combos in my game were the ones the encounter deck pulled off. There’s a LOT of surge in this quest. Most memorable was probably We Hates Them -> We Hates Them -> Overcome by Terror -> Nazgûl, just for the first encounter card revealed for the game.
Sam used Sting to take down Shelob. Thematic win!
Decklists used
Custom Merry and Pippin lead an army of Ents with hero Treebeard
Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21313
Forth Bard, Gandalf & Glorfindel + Damrod, Amarthiul & Sam
QotW Does the Sagas! https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/54547/shelobslair-2players-2024-12-26
Beregond, Gandalf, Legolas & Denethor, Eowyn, Galadriel, Thurindir https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21321/birdmanssagafellowship-qotw
The ent-ranger team (with Beregond) and the silvans
Chad’s thematic youtube grey wanderer Sam deck
Woodmen and Burglar’s Turn, subbing in Tactics Bilbo: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20726
https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21409
Hobbit Fellowship (A Weary Pilgrim)
This week we rejoin Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli and see what they’re up to. Hope you ain’t afraid of no ghosts! Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/8c614jrVJgLUvUvm6
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 The Passing of the Grey Company:
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, A Heavy Burden
Harad Enemies: 1x Oliphaunt
And for achievements for this quest, this is what we have:
Swift Shadows
Complete the scenario where at least 1 player has a threat below 40.
I’d Never Hear the End of It
Complete the scenario without removing a copy of Overcome by Fear from any player’s threat dial.
Vision Of The Palantir 