Ultra-Campaign Playthrough Series, Part 5: The Caves of Nibin-Dum

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I have made it to the fifth quest of my ultra-campaign: The Caves of Nibin-Dum. What makes this quest notable is that it is the final quest of the Mirkwood Paths campaign — the first mini-campaign of my ultra-campaign. This means that after defeating this scenario, I reach a checkpoint, regaining any heroes and player cards that have become exhausted along the way. But don’t forget, any Fallen Heroes do not refresh at these checkpoints, so as the game goes on, I will only be losing more and more heroes. See here to refresh yourself on my ultra-campaign rules. For now, let’s jump right into the Caves of Nibin-Dum!

The Caves of Nibin-Dum: Deckbuilding

Deckbuilding Restrictions

I have now accumulated a hefty amount of exhausted cards that cannot be used in this quest. Here is a summary of which heroes must be used for this quest, and which cards are unable for use in this quest.

Heroes

Aragorn and Glorfindel are leading the group for this quest, which means that I have unfortunately been locked into a pretty high starting threat total, with these two heroes having a combined starting threat of 24 by themselves. For this reason, I want to avoid a third hero that also has a high starting threat value. I also kept in mind that I now have access to The Fervor of Lore boon card. This means that starting from the beginning of this quest, one of my non-Lore heroes can gain a Lore resource.

I ended up choosing Gloin as my third hero to join Aragorn and Glorfindel for a few reasons. For one, by choosing two Leadership heroes and placing The Fervor of Lore on one of them, two of my heroes will have Leadership resource icons, and two will have Lore icons. This nice resource smoothing should allow me more opportunities to play both types of cards. Additionally, Gloin has a very useful resource generation ability that allows him to gain one resource for each damage he takes. This ability, paired with the healing abilities found in the Lore sphere, added to the fact that Gloin can have two resource icons using The Fervor of Lore, should make him a very powerful resource generator in my deck.

So, welcome Gloin! Let’s hope your penchant for taking damage doesn’t backfire on me…

Player Cards

Just like last week, I am again playing two Leadership heroes and one Lore hero, so my deck looks fairly similar to last week’s, with a few notable changes. For one, some of my favorite cards have been targeted for exhaustion, so I was only able to include one copy of each Gleowine and Henamarth Riversong, only two copies of Snowbourn Scout, Sneak Attack, and Steward of Gondor, and no copies of Celebrian’s Stone! Luckily, Gandalf has avoided all rounds of exhaustion thus far, so I was still able to add three copies of him to my deck.

The main change that my deck saw compared to last week was a stronger prioritization of healing effects to better allow Gloin to generate resources throughout the game. Using this logic, I added two copies each of Daughter of the Nimrodel, Self Preservation, and Lore of Imladris — a healing ally, attachment, and event. I also added two copies of Lorien’s Wealth to make it easier for me to draw these healing cards. In short, I have created a deck that is largely based around the strategic damaging and healing of Gloin in order to accelerate my ability to play more cards.

Find my full deck list here.

The Caves of Nibin-Dum: Playthrough(s)

Number of attempts to beat scenario: 1

Attempt Log

Attempt 1: SUCCESS

There you have it, another single-attempt victory! This playthrough really exemplified how useful Gloin can be in some of these early quests. The key is only using him to defend (or take undefended attacks) against relatively small enemies. In this playthrough, that meant defending against enemies such as Goblin Sniper, Cavern Warg, and Stalking Goblin. By only taking one or two damage at a time, Gloin was able to steadily gain resources, allowing me to pump out a decent number of allies in a small number of rounds. Early in the game, I also was able to place a Self Preservation attachment on Gloin, which meant that he could continue taking small amounts of damage every round.

A sad moment came when I defended with Mendor against Goblin Sniper, who was dealt a shadow card boosting its attack by 3 and killing Mendor. Our elven messenger finally met his end, long after he joined us for our passage through Mirkwood. Luckily, we would be losing him at the end of this quest anyways (due to the ending of the Mirkwood Paths mini-campaign), so his dying here wasn’t too much of a strategic loss.

Once I had a large amount of allies out on the board, there wasn’t much the quest could do to stop me from winning. A Sneak Attack/Gandalf helped the heroes defeat a pesky Cavern Warg. A Miner of the Iron Hills freed Gloin from Watchful Eyes. And the fellowship was able to travel across the Cracked Pillar and defeat the Goblin Chieftain to finish the quest!

  • Overall Score: 152 (11 rounds, 42 ending threat, 0VPs, 0 damage on heroes, and 0 total threat of dead heroes)

Campaign Notes

Ultra-Campaign Notes

No more VPs or losses to track from this quest, so things remain at the same levels as before.

  • 0 Fallen Heroes
  • 23 VPs
  • 1 loss

Mini-Campaign Tracker

I have completed the Mirkwood Paths, the 5-quest mini-campaign to start out my ultra-campaign. This means that all of my boons and burdens are gone, and all exhausted cards are now able to be played with once again! The next mini-campaign will be the 6 remaining quests from the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle. Importantly, only two out of three heroes are required to carry over from one quest to the next. After randomization, Aragorn and Glorfindel were again chosen to carry the fellowship forward! Any hero is now available to join them for the next quest: The Hunt for Gollum.

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