QOTW: The Scouring of the Shire

Saruman laughed. ‘You do what Sharkey says, always, don’t you, Worm? Well, now he says: follow!’ He kicked Wormtongue in the face as he grovelled, and turned and made off. But at that something snapped: suddenly Wormtongue rose up, drawing a hidden knife, and then with a snarl like a dog he sprang on Saruman’s back, jerked his head back, cut his throat, and with a yell ran off down the lane. Before Frodo could recover or speak a word, three hobbit-bows twanged and Wormtongue fell dead.

We come at last the very end of our Saga together. Thank you everyone for your participation! This has been so much fun from start to finish.

The Scouring of the Shire Stats

Groups registered: 10
Total attempts: 13
Most attempts: 4
Average attempts per entry: 1.3

Total number of wins: 10
Win-rate: 77%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.7

Achievements

Here are the three achievements we had for this quest:

Grima’s Choice

Win the scenario with Grima as one of the heroes.

No Pipeful to a Beggar

Win the scenario without ever using an Action ability on quest stage 1B or 5B.

Join the Revolt

Complete all available encounter side quests before advancing from quest stage 3B to 4A.

Encounter card Opinions

With three votes, the winner of favorite encounter card was the Feather-capped Shiriff. This enemy is a different take on an enemy, as they might end up being your friend later on!

There were no cards this week that appeared on both the favorite and least favorite lists this week.

We got 8 submissions for least-favorite encounter card, but got 7 different cards nominated. The only one to get 2 votes was Voice of Saruman. Honorable mentions to Brick Building, One Ill Turn, Take Him Lads!, Wooden Shed, Hidden Blade, and Against the Rules.

Cool moments that happened during the games

I lowered my threat by 13 be clearing Double Back and defeating 2x Gang of Ruffians with Secret Vigil attached.

My threat got up to 49 a few times, but I was able to recur Woodman’s Clearing enough times to get through without threating out.

My deck runs singletons of every ally except Gandalf, so it’s a slot machine in terms of who shows up for the Fellowship. In this game Treebeard and ally Beorn both showed up to help clear out the rabble. That mental picture just gives me all the joy.

I decided to try a Grey Wanderer Grima deck for fun, and it worked surprisingly well (it didn’t hurt that I managed play all three(!) copies of Resourceful on round 1). I slowly built up an army of ents (and the odd hobbit) on stage 2 and then completed all three side quests on stage 3. Scariest moment was drawing Hidden Blade from the Sharkey deck, but fortunately Grima had an Ent Draught, or he would have fallen in an ironic twist of fate.

Decklists used

Three Hunters SpLegolas, Gandalf, TaBeregond and BoF LeDenethor, TaEowyn, Galadriel, Thurindir

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

Radagast, Grimbeorn, Malung + TaMerry, Pippin, Sam

Rousing the Shire – https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/424601

A couple of woodman decks using Beorn’s “Autumn in Mirkwood” set.

Hobbit Secrecy (A Weary Pilgrim)

“The Choices of Master Wormtongue” – Grey Wanderer Grima (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/579653)

Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21875

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

Saga Retrospective

With 21 quests from start to finish, this has been quite the journey. When asked which quest from the entire saga was their favorite, these were the results:

Battle of the Pelennor Fields (4 votes)
A Knife in the Dark (1 vote)
Journey in the Dark (1 vote)
Breaking of the Fellowship (1 vote)
Helm’s Deep (1 vote)
The Road to Isengard (1 vote)
Shelob’s Lair (1 vote)

From the votes during each week’s survey, these are the order of the saga quests based on the average rating for the question “How much do you like this quest?”

Quest	Average Rating
The Battle of the Pelennor Fields	4.8
Breaking of the Fellowship	4.7
Journey in the Dark	4.5
Helm’s Deep	4.5
Knife in the Dark	4.2
The Ring Goes South	4.2
Shadow of the Past	4
Flight to the Ford	4
The Black Gate Opens	4
Journey to the Cross-Roads	3.8
The Siege of Gondor	3.8
Shelob’s Lair	3.7
The Scouring of the Shire	3.7
The Tower of Cirith Ungol	3.6
Mount Doom	3.6
The Passing of the Grey Company	3.4
The Uruk-Hai	3.3
Fog on the Barrow Downs	3
The Old Forest	2.9
The Road to Isengard	2.6
Passage of the Marshes	2.5

And this is the order of the quests from highest to lowest win rate:

Quest	Average Win Rate
The Old Forest	0.94
Flight to the Ford	0.84
Knife in the Dark	0.83
The Uruk-Hai	0.80
The Siege of Gondor	0.78
The Road to Isengard	0.78
The Ring Goes South	0.77
The Scouring of the Shire	0.77
Breaking of the Fellowship	0.74
Passage of the Marshes	0.69
The Passing of the Grey Company	0.62
Shadow of the Past	0.58
Fog on the Barrow Downs	0.53
The Tower of Cirith Ungol	0.52
Helm’s Deep	0.51
Shelob’s Lair	0.50
The Battle of the Pelennor Fields	0.45
Journey in the Dark	0.45
Mount Doom	0.39
Journey to the Cross-Roads	0.36
The Black Gate Opens	0.00

Players were also asked what their favorite campaign-specific mechanic or moment from the saga was. This is what they had to say:

Getting Gwaihir in the Black Gate on my last round of drawing encounter cards was amazing. That eagle came just in the nick of time!

I loved the quests at the end where your decisions/results really affected the upcoming quests.

Waiting for Aragorn to arrive in Pelennor Fields.

Playing the Mount doom and The black gate opens in epic-mode brings extra tension and a feeling of urgency. Great campaign all around!

As brutal as those last two quests are, the time mechanic for Black Gate/Mt Doom is just an incredible thematic win. After the fairly steep penalties for losing heroes throughout the rest of the campaign, being forced to play until everyone dies or threats out is pretty memorable. Looking forward to trying it in epic multiplayer someday.

Doing Mount Doom and Black Gate in Epic Multiplayer (both at the Con last year and by myself for QOTW) is such a wonderful experience.

The beautiful poetry of Samwise Gamgee being the MVP of the entire campaign. In terms of capturing the theme and feel of Tolkien’s writing, this game has no equal.

Getting all Riders from Mordor into the Victory Display in A Knife in the Dark and then one-shotting the Witch-King with some angry Noldor.

The time achieved in The Black Gate carrying over into the time limit for Mount Doom.

Beyond All Hope on Treebeard was a lot of fun

Apparently we haven’t had enough of playing brutally difficult quests, because this week we are playing Attack on Dol Guldur. Once you have completed the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/vxvHsQATJtq1r34t8

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