QOTW: Across the Ettenmoors

‘I reached here at last by a long hard road, up the Hoarwell and through the Ettenmoors, and down from the north. It took me nearly fourteen days from Weathertop, for I could not ride among the rocks of the troll-fells, and Shadowfax departed. I sent him back to his master; but a great friendship has grown between us, and if I have need he will come at my call. But so it was that I came to Rivendell only three days before the Ring, and news of its peril had already been brought here–which proved well indeed.’
-Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

Across the Ettenmoors Stats

Groups registered: 17
Total attempts: 27
Most attempts: 4
Average attempts per entry: 1.6

Total number of wins: 18
Win-rate: 67%

Average opinion on the quest: 4.1

Campaign Mode

Who is Determined:

Alatar, Pallando, Gandalf, Frodo Baggins
Elladan, Elrohir, Celeborn, Legolas
Beregond, Lanwyn
Aragorn, Beregond, Eowyn, Faramir
Imrahil, Elrond, Aragorn, Rossiel
Eowyn, Grimbeorn the Old, Radagast
Celeborn, Galadriel
Eowyn
Aragorn, Beravor, Amarthiul

Achievements

Here are the two achievements we had for this quest:

No Place is Safe

Complete the scenario without traveling to a safe location.

The Savegest Spawn

Defend an attack against a Savage Trollspawn with 8 or more attack.

And this week nobody completed either of the achievements! They are definitely tricky ones that encourage you to play sub-optimally.

Encounter card Opinions

We had submissions for 9 different encounter cards for people’s favorites. The winner, with 4 votes was Patch of Woods. Being a safe location, it has lots of value inherently (blanking side quests, cancelling treacheries, preventing engagement checks, etc.) This one also has lots of value in accelerating your board state early in the game, particularly to offset any resource strain you may have experienced from the Scavenge for Supplies side quest.

The two cards to receive nominations on both lists were No Rest and Ruthless Hill-Troll. These two cards are good showcases of the main themes of this quest: safe locations and damage. Here we are given two cards that present you with difficult decisions. No Rest adds an extra wrinkle to your normal thought processes on when it is advantageous to travel to a safe location and when you should save them for later. The Ruthless Hill-Troll gives you the conundrum (if you can’t kill it in one go) on whether you should partially kill it, making it stronger next turn, or wait until you have enough attack power to kill it in one hit and risk keeping it engaged for longer.

The overall least-favorite encounter card was Weight of Responsibility (although there were a lot of different submissions). We’ve seen this card several times in this cycle so far, but in this quest it is particularly nasty because this quest purposely pushes side quests onto you. This is the card that I save my cancels for.

Things worth sharing from the games

My first game was a scoop in the first round: Lie Low came out with some big enemies and I had to engage all of them. I might have survived it except a shadow card ended up killing a hero. My second game started out with a similar situation but I was able to use Determined and some spells to get through. Also! I used Word of Persuasion to tame two Giant Beeetles.

I was able to play my Ancestral Knowledge to remove the guarding card for Patch of Woods, so I got the resources just enough to play the 5th dwarf unlocking my hero bonuses making me able to kill the Savage Trollspawn.

Had all side quests completed (up to 5 in play at once…) before stage 3, which was surprisingly pretty fun. Lots of tense tactical decisions to be made about what to play and when to play it given the added costs (including damage for spending resources), inability to heal, and lurking threat of Weight of Responsibility.

Over the course of the game I managed to shuffle into the encounter deck 1 Tom Bombadil, 3 Rangers of the North, 2 Winds from the Sea, and 2 Eagles of the North.

Completed all side quests except Lost in the Wilderness. My 2nd copy of Firyal and Jubayr stayed lost.

I was able to get through the whole quest without ever taking combat damage thanks to safe locations and traps. Thalion got to play as a hero, and I was able to complete Fend Off Despair and avoid adding more than 2 Losing Time.

The trolls kept coming and I kept taking them down. Aragorn was great here where the trolls have a higher threat. Also helpful in the early game was Azain Silverbeard who I got out with Scavenge for supplies (not knowing it would be great). His ability to deal extra damage to other enemies really helped me take down the trolls, two a turn.

Extra lovely the response from Abandoned Camp using a deck based on discard pile shenanigans

First game I got bogged down on 2b for a very long time. Still would’ve won if I had found any threat reduction, but ended up hitting doomed 2 in staging on the round I would’ve quested to win the game. Instead hit 50 threat and that was it. This led to me taking a very different approach to game 2, where I stored up 2 safe locations in staging for 2b, then blasted through that part of the quest in 2 turns without needing to reveal the additional encounter cards.

I used Determination to ready Eowyn after questing and take down 2 trolls in one round.

The campaign punishing my Dúnedain deck for starting slowly definitely made the game more exciting. I almost added 4 copies of Losing Time to my campaign pool.

Decklists used

Istari 🧙‍♂️🧙‍♂️🧙‍♂️ https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/22070/theistari

The Dwarfs return https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/476030

Elladan/Elrohir/Arwen Three Hunters Galadriel/Celeborn/Thranduil Into the West

Dunedain SideQuest and Hobbit Pipes – https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/57348/hazythreat-1.0

Two Bond of Friendship decks designed to get as many encounter player cards into the encounter deck as I could

Scouting Burglars https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/581558

My new Last Alliance deck: Harad and Dale – https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/57509/haradale-northandsouthallied-1.0 Alongside my Last Alliance of Noldor and Gondor – https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/57510/lastallianceofcardsandresources-1.0

“Date Night Orc Hunt”, an #RCO version of an earlier thematic Faramir/Eowyn trap deck (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/56737/qotw-datenightorchuntrco-1.0) + Aragorn/Arwen/Beregond (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/584172)

Rohan Three Hunters Staging Area Attack: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/589361

Tacrahil, Scorpagorn, Gloin + Arwen, Elrond, Rossiel

Noldor Hobbit Last Alliance without To the Sea

Last Alliance Noldors and Dwarves Nauglamir deck

Radagast, Tactics Eowyn, Grimbeorn the Old

Silvans

BoF – Beravor, Eowyn, Erkenbrand, Glorfindel

Rainbow Dúnedain (T Aragorn, Beravor, Amarthiul/Halbarad)

This week we are playing a very well-loved deck-testing quest: The Treachery of Rhudaur. Once you have completed the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/1tds5UkgiKNhiKXc9

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