Ultra-Campaign Playthrough Series, Part 2: Journey Along the Anduin

Welcome back to my ultra-campaign playthrough series! This week, I tackled the second quest of my ultra-campaign: Journey Along the Anduin. This quest marks a steep increase in difficulty compared to Passage Through Mirkwood, which is evident in my playthrough below. If you would like a reminder of the rules for the ultra-campaign, check out the main page for the ultra-campaign here. But for now, let’s jump right into my deck-building and playthrough attempts for this quest!

Journey Along the Anduin: Deckbuilding

Due to the exhaustion rule of my ultra-campaign, I had a few deckbuilding restrictions going into this quest. As a reminder, I must continue using the heroes I used in the previous quest, except for a randomized hero that becomes “exhausted.” After successfully defeating Passage Through Mirkwood last week, Denethor was chosen to become exhausted, so I needed to choose a replacement for him this week. Additionally, five player cards from my deck become “exhausted” after each successful quest. These exhausted cards can be used again at the beginning of the next mini-campaign. This added rule forces me to get more creative when deckbuilding and try out different strategies. Below, you can find a summary of my deck-building restrictions for this week.

• Required heroes: Aragorn and Eowyn
• Exhausted heroes: Denethor
• Exhausted player cards: 1x Henamarth Riversong, 1x Gleowine, 1x Self Preservation, 1x Steward of Gondor, 1x A Test of Will

Heroes

1. Use a number of delaying effects until you are ready to kill the troll. Keep your threat under 30 (engagement cost of the Hill Troll), use Feint, return the troll to the staging area using A Light in the Dark, etc.
2. Engage the troll, suffer for one turn, and then place a Forest Snare on the troll to prevent it from attacking you on future turns.

Given my requirements of Aragorn and Eowyn, I had to decide if I once again wanted to play a tri-sphere deck. Forest Snare is a lore card, so if I want any chance of playing it, I would need to choose another lore hero as my third (either Beravor or Glorfindel). However, I ultimately decided against this; while tri-sphere worked well for Passage Through Mirkwood, I wanted to be able to play cards faster to have a better chance at taking down the Hill Troll. Therefore, I focused on Hill Troll technique #1: delay. To have at least one turn of delay, I needed a starting threat below 30. Since Aragorn and Eowyn have a combined starting threat cost of 21, I needed my third hero to have a starting threat cost of 8 or lower. This reduced my options to Theodred, Dunhere, and Eleanor.

While I think any of these three heroes could have worked in my deck, I ultimately decided on Theodred due to the great synergy that his resource generation has with Aragorn. Welcome to the party, Theodred! Let’s take down a Hill Troll.

Player Cards

Again, just like last week, some cards are auto-includes by the nature of their power in the Core Set. Celebrian’s Stone works great, especially when Aragorn is in a deck with another spirit hero. Sneak Attack/Gandalf is still essential and can be extremely helpful against the Hill Troll. Then we have Unexpected Courage for readying, Steward of Gondor for resources, and A Test of Will/Hasty Stroke for when revealed/shadow cancellation. Unfortunately, one copy of both Steward of Gondor and A Test of Will were randomly selected for exhaustion (see ultra-campaign rules), so I was only able to include two copies of each of those cards in my deck. Now that I’m playing dual-sphere instead of tri-sphere, I feel much more comfortable putting three copies of both Faramir and Northern Tracker in my deck. And don’t forget about Snowbourn Scout, who is not only a great chump blocker but whose Response allows you to clear out any pesky Brown Lands that get stuck in the staging area during this quest.

In terms of more quest-specific inclusions, I added three copies of A Light in the Dark as a stalling technique in case the troll engages me before I am ready for it. But most importantly, my deck features three copies of The Galadhrim’s Greeting so that I can keep my threat under 30. This quest also has a number of punishing treachery cards if your threat reaches 35, so I additionally added a couple copies of Dwarven Tomb in case I want to use/recycle my threat reduction. After that, I got my deck up to 50 cards by adding in a number of decent (but not great) allies and a few extra utility events like Ever Vigilant and Valiant Sacrifice. With that, I’m ready to tackle this quest!

Take a look at my full deck-list here.

Journey Along the Anduin: Playthrough

Number of attempts to beat scenario: 1

Attempt Log

Attempt 1: SUCCESS

What an intense playthrough! I wasn’t sure if I was going to come out ahead, but after 13 rounds (and a little bit of luck), I was able to destroy all enemies and beat the quest!

From the start, my troll avoidance worked perfectly at the beginning of the game. I started with a copy of The Galadhrim’s Greeting in my hand and was able to reduce my threat quite a bit before the Hill Troll engaged with me. This allowed me to get a number of allies out to help with questing and fighting before engaging the troll. But things didn’t only go smoothly during this turtle of an early game. A number of direct damage encounter cards were revealed (multiple Necromancer’s Reaches/Dol Guldur Orcs), putting my heroes in poor condition from the get-go. And, with no lore healing effects, they stayed that way for the rest of the attempt. Thankfully, my knowledge that only three of each of these cards are in the encounter deck helped inform who to quest with on any given turn. After building up a number of allies and managing the board state for 8 whopping rounds, I was able to play Gandalf, optionally engage the Hill Troll, and kill it — all in one round. This demonstrated the power of Ever Vigilant with Gandalf, as he was able to both defend the Hill Troll and then help kill it.

After the troll threat, a combination of Faramir and Gandalf helped me quest through the second quest stage while adequately fending off my enemies. Even Snowbourn Scout made a heroic appearance, exploring the Brown Lands in the staging area before being eaten by a Dol Guldur Beastmaster. By the time I quested through the second stage of the quest, there were only five cards left in the encounter deck, and I had to reveal two of them. While there was one more copy of Hill Troll left in the deck, I luckily did not draw it; in fact, I only drew two locations, which essentially do nothing during the third quest stage. I was able to fend off the rest of my enemies with no problem and finally defeat the quest!

• Overall Score: 159 (13 rounds, 33 ending threat, 10 VPs, 6 damage on heroes, and 0 total threat of dead heroes)

Campaign Notes

Ultra-Campaign Notes

I collected my first Victory Points during this quest! As a reminder, for every 10 VPs that I collect, I can revive one Fallen Hero at any time. I’m happy to bank some VPs right now before we get into more difficult scenarios where I will start to lose some heroes.

• 0 Fallen Heroes
• 10 VP
• 0 losses

Mini-Campaign Tracker (Mirkwood Paths)

Now for exhaustion. Aragorn and Theodred must be kept as two of my heroes since they both have mini-campaign effects currently targeting them (Aragorn has the permanent Valor attachment, while Theodred has been chosen as the Escape from Dol Guldur prisoner). Unfortunately, that only gives me one option for my exhausted hero: Eowyn. Questing is about to get a lot harder!

Above is the current list of exhausted player cards (newly exhausted cards are bolded). Dropping 2x Celebrian’s Stone from my deck is going to be rough for questing, especially given that we are already losing Eowyn as a hero. We are also slightly weakening the Sneak Attack/Gandalf combo by losing one copy of the former. With Eowyn being likely the best hero from the Core Set, I am definitely in for a challenge with Escape from Dol Guldur. Join me next week to find out how it goes!