Nightmare Flight of the Stormcaller

It has been a while since my last Nightmare scenario analysis, hasn’t it? I have used this time to work on the new book, and with the bulk of the text now finished, I can use the time I’d normally spend on that, on some more articles instead! We are in the process of going through the text again and correcting some mistakes, after which we will hopefully have the book ready soon. Stay tuned for more info.

In the meantime, let’s revisit one of the community’s favourite quests of the Dream-chaser cycle. Flight of the Stormcaller was the first of the so-called “chase quests”, where the players and encounter deck each have their own set of quest cards to complete. In this one, you are catching up to the Stormcaller after their raid on the Grey Havens. In the normal version of this quest, you had to either overtake the Stormcaller or defeat the ship while you were on the same stage as it. You could somewhat cheat this quest by throwing everything into willpower and making sure you beat stage 2 or 3 well before the Stormcaller did. It took some luck from the encounter deck, but you had a good chance of defeating the quest that way. That approach gets countered hard in the Nightmare version. On top of removing that strategy, this quest is made tougher to sail through, and more powerful Ship and Corsair enemies will either aid the Stormcaller, or try to defeat you before catching up. Hoist the sails, as you’ll need all the speed you can get!

Nightmare Flight of the Stormcaller

Found in: Flight of the Stormcaller Nightmare deck, Dream-chaser cycle pack 1.
Size: 19 encounter cards, 1 rules card
Increase in Difficulty: Well, yes, it’s Nightmare mode. But the concept of the quest remains the same, you just don’t have an easy shot at the finish like in the normal version. You either quest much harder, or have to balance questing hard with dealing damage to the Stormcaller. Decreased chances at beating sailing tests will also make this quest more difficult.
Fixed Loopholes: In the original version, players could beat the game by turn 3 by forsaking all stats but willpower. If you sailed right and had some luck with the speed of the Stormcaller, you could quickly overtake it and beat the game. That is now fixed, as each time you are at the same stage as the Stormcaller, the quest cards get boosted by the remaining hitpoints on the Stormcaller.
New Mechanics introduced: Various ways to increase the number of quest points per stage. More cards interact with whether or not you are at the same stage as the Stormcaller. New enemies can be added to the game if you encounter them during the Sailing test.
Play this scenario if: You want a tougher race against a stronger Corsair fleet. You are confident in your sailing abilities and can weather the storms that this quest throws at you.
Solo or multiplayer: It is always tough recommending a playercount to these sort of sailing quests. You will have the advantage in solo as you’ll get 2 ships, but overcoming all of these Nightmare cards by yourself while Sailing every turn is difficult. 3 players would be the sweet spot, as otherwise, the Stormcaller will be getting even more chances to get away quickly as more and more cards are added to its area.
What to look out for: Sailing tests, Stormcaller will win if it beats you past stage 4, Boarding keyword adding additional enemies, quest cards gain additional quest points, players being eliminated if their ship is sunk.

New Rules

There is one new rule that has been added to this version of the quest. Players are no longer able to blitz past the same stage as the Stormcaller, as the quest cards will gain extra quest points based on the remaining health on the Stormcaller. At the start of the game, that would be an additional 18 quest points to get through, at which point, the Stormcaller has likely moved onto the next stage already.

This change really incentivises the players to not only quest hard but also deal some damage to the Stormcaller in order to reduce the buffer on the quest cards. Remember that the progress on quest cards will reset each time you move on to a new one, meaning that you have to go through that buffer again if you want to overtake the Stormcaller. It will be better to damage the Stormcaller wherever you can so that you can still overtake it if needed. You can also ignore the win condition on the quest cards and instead try to deal all 18 damage to the Stormcaller, thereby winning you the game. However, keep track of the damage cap at some of the earlier stages. The Stormcaller will likely have moved to stage 3 (or even 4) before you can fully kill it thanks to that limit to damage you can place per turn.

New Setup

There is nothing really changed about the setup of this quest other than shuffling in the Nightmare cards after having removed the ones on the back of the Rules card. The one this to point out is that the new Corsair enemies should go into the Corsair deck to be brought out whenever the Boarding keyword triggers. Other than that, follow regular instructions.

Cards Removed

The following cards were removed because they either made the game too easy, or to make space for the new Nightmare cards

2x Calm Waters (It should be obvious why this was removed for the Nightmare version)
2x Corsair Skiff (Small boat that makes way for the new Ship enemies)
2x Southron Sailor (Gets replaced with the new Raider of the Storm enemy)
2x Serpent’s Blade (While not an easy enemy, his trigger was way too infrequent to matter)
1x Hidden Cove (One copy remains to offer some healing to your ships)
2x Jagged Reef (Replaced by the Sharp Jetties)

The Quest

The same principles as the normal version of this quest will apply to the Nightmare version: Quest hard and try not to fail any sailing tests. As long as you stay on course, you can maximize your progress each turn and have a decent chance to catch up to the Stormcaller. Moreover, staying on-course will prevent several of the new encounter cards from triggering their abilities. Tide-runner and Sharp Jetties become much more manageable if you are on course, as you can ignore part of their text box. In order to stand a better chance at beating the sailing tests, you can use scrying effects like Far-sighted to see if there is any hope in beating the test this round, or if you are better off keeping your ships and characters ready for a bigger round of questing and combat. Needful to Know can also be a great scrying option, as it potentially lowers your threat by 6 if you hit a Vast Coastland with it. Shadow of the Past is also an interesting event to use at the end of the combat phase if you happen to have a card with an icon on top of the encounter discard pile. Putting this on top of the deck will guarantee you pass the test with just 1 character. It will require some careful timing with shadow cards the round before though.

When you do end up at the same stage as the Stormcaller, you will be under a lot of pressure all of a sudden. All encounter cards that were previously in the Stormcaller’s area will be in the staging area, adding a lot of threat to the total. On top of that, you are almost certainly going to be facing some ship enemies. At least you will want to start engaging the Stormcaller itself, as placing damage on that ship will reduce the number of quest points on the main quest while you are at the same stage. This can lead to a weird scenario where you have already exceeded the printed number of quest points on the card, but the Stormcaller’s buffer is preventing you from winning. Should the Stormcaller advance to the next stage, then that buffer disappears and you can chase right after it. This minimizes the build-up of cards in the Stormcaller’s area and puts you right back into the fight.

Your games against the Nightmare version of this quest are likely to take longer than against the regular version, and the game might drag on to the final stage. At stage 4, you will be forced to deal damage to each ship (ally and enemy) in play when revealing Weather treacheries. This could give you the final point of damage you would need for the Stormcaller, but it is more likely that your own ships will finally go under. This quest throws a lot of damage your way from both Ship enemies, Weather treacheries, and locations like Sharp Jetties. With limited ways to heal damage from your ship, you will want to prevent getting to the final stage, or at least have a way to put Weather treacheries in the Victory Display.

The good news at stage 4 is that all limits to progress on the quest and damage on the Stormcaller are gone. This can allow you to setup some amazing willpower pushes by using effects like Scouting Party, readying ally Faramir several times to do his thing, or to just nuke the Stormcaller from orbit with whatever effects you have left. Hopefully, you have softened the ship up before getting this far, as the 6 defence will be tough to crack. Investing in Ranged characters to help out in a joint assault against the Stormcaller will be your best chance at reducing its health.

Whenever the players deal 18 damage to the Stormcaller or whenever they make enough progress on the same quest card as the Stormcaller (remember the buffs to quest points from the Nightmare Rules card and Cliffside Inlet), the player will have won the game. It might very well take a few attempts, as the pace at which the Stormcaller advances is very luck-dependent.

The Encounter Deck

Global

The encounter deck is made up of 39 cards at the start of the game. On top of that, the Corsair deck starts with 13 cards which will be revealed with the Boarding keyword.
Shadow chances are relatively low for a Nightmare quest, at 51.3%
Average threat on cards revealed has quite a large spread, ranging from 0 threat treacheries to 6 threat locations. It averages out to 2 threat per card per player during the quest phase.
There are 14 cards in the encounter deck with a Ship Wheel icon that will pass you during the Sailing test. This is a 38% chance at the start of the game.
Dark and Stormy will always surge, and the Tide-Runner enemy can surge as well if no player immediately engages the ship upon reveal. That makes for 5 cards in total.
There are various ways to have to raise your threat in this quest, though it is likely not what is going to cost you the game. Doomed 2 appears on two cards, and that’s it.
Immunity
- All ship enemies are immune to attachments
- While your heading is at its worst setting, Winds of Wrath and Man Overboard! cannot be cancelled
- Note the damage and progress caps on each quest card. You cannot put more tokens on these cards than mentioned.

Note that these statistics do not take the following cards into account: The Stormcaller (as it will never be in the encounter deck), 1 copy of Rolling Seas (as the players start with at least 1 copy in the staging area), and all the cards from the Corsair deck, as those are not revealed outside of the Boarding keyword. Because of this, the total number of cards in the deck is a little less than normal, and you can see in the card type spread that there are not that many enemies in the encounter deck. But you’ll be stuck with the Stormcaller during the entire quest, and the new ships will definitely bring out some more Corsairs to fight off once you engage them.

Enemies

There are two new Ship enemies to look out for, and 1 new Corsair enemy card that will get added into the Corsair deck at the start of the game.

Raider of the Storm: With 4 copies in the Corsair deck, you are bound to encounter a couple of these Corsairs whenever you engage a Ship enemy and get boarded. This enemy provides a passive +1 bonus to threat, attack, and defence to each Ship enemy that you are engaged with. On top of that, it borrows the effect of Southron Sailor and adds the ship’s threat to the staging area’s total. This often makes it so that you are going to have to prioritize this enemy over any ships engaged with you. However, if you manage to overcome all your engaged ships, and have none engaged with you anymore, then this enemy basically has no effect. He turns into a standard enemy that doesn’t hit that hard but can still be a pain to take down thanks to his 3 defence and 4 hitpoints. The effect is worse than the enemy itself, so if you manage to separate him from his fleet, you can easily deal with him. Just avoid having several of these Raiders engaged with you, as new Ship enemies might become too tough to defend at that point.
Tide-Runner: This is the generic new ship, and you will be facing it a lot if you have a habit of getting off-course during this quest. When this ship is revealed, the players must choose to either engage it immediately (Hobbit players rejoice in the 44 engagement cost enemy), thereby triggering its Boarding keyword as well or have it go to the Stormcaller‘s Area and gain surge. I would advise to engage this ship as soon as possible to avoid the surge, though it will depend on your boardstate and how many enemies you have engaged with you. The tricky part with this ship is that it can be in several places at once if you are anywhere off-course. It will be considered in the staging area, adding its threat to the total, preventing your progress. It will also be considered to be in the Stormcaller’s area, aiding Sahir’s escape. And it can also be engaged with you, forcing you to deal with it in combat. Luckily, the stats on this ship aren’t horrible, though the Raider of the Storm can boost them if you aren’t careful. 4 attack is manageable, and the 9 hitpoints will melt fast considering there is only 2 defence protecting it. It will be in your best interest to get rid of this enemy as soon as possible, as it will otherwise mess up your math a lot with its quantum-positioning.
Venom’s Bite: It’s the same ship, just at a different angle, right? WRONG, this is the ship that you will have to watch out for, as it can absolutely ruin your fleet if you encounter it too early. Just look at the stats compared to all other ships, even the Stormcaller! 8 attack is crazy and will definitely leave a dent in your own ship. The Boarding 2 keyword isn’t helpful either, but at least it is not as high as some other ships in this cycle. The interesting thing with this ship is that it can come out of the encounter deck a lot sooner than you might expect. That’s because of the asterisk next to its ship’s wheel icon. While it does still count during the sailing test, you will need to set it aside until after the test has been completed. If you are on-course, the Venom’s Bite is put in the Stormcaller’s Area and you have some time to prepare yourself for it. Otherwise, it is put in the staging area, where players will likely have to engage it this turn. 34 engagement cost isn’t that high, so decide early on which player is best equipped to deal with this ship and its two boarding crewmates. It will take a total of 19 attack to get rid of this enemy, and while it is not immune to player card effects, it does have a Victory score and is unique, preventing you from using certain tricks. Combining this ship with Raiders of the Storm is likely to be Game Over for you, as players will quickly lose their own ships having to defend a 9-10 attack enemy for a few turns. It will be best to throw everything you have at this ship and hope you can sink it before it sinks you. Cool art though.

Locations

Two new locations are added to the encounter deck that will punish you for being off-course and will prolong the quest even more.

Sharp Jetties: I hope you have been keeping to your course, because if you are off-course, then Sharp Jetties will immediately become the active location, pushing any previous active location (likely those with a higher threat or terrible Travel cost) back to the staging area. If you are on course, it will just go to the staging area, where I would advise you to keep it until the end of the game. This is a low-priority location to travel to, and you would actively harm your progress or your ships by going to this location. Even if you find yourself with the Sharp Jetties as the active location, search for ways to switch it out of the active slot with something like a West Road Traveller. Whatever you do, don’t make progress on this location if you cannot face the consequences. What are those consequences? Well, the Forced effect on Sharp Jetties will instruct you to either deal damage or remove progress from the main quest based on the amount of progress you make on this location. It can have a maximum of 6 progress, which is enough to cause some serious damage to all ship objectives over the course of a game. If you want to instead remove progress from the current quest, please note that you already likely lost 6 progress due to this location being in the way, so losing 6 more progress will put you far behind the Stormcaller. Either have this location sit in the staging area for the rest of the game where it cannot hurt you, or find a way to discard it or reduce its impact by lowering the quest points with Woodmen’s Path.
Cliffside Inlet: The other new location for the Nightmare version of this quest is a more passive problem that you will want to get rid of as soon as possible. Not only can you get rid of 4 threat in this way, but having this recycled into the encounter deck also gets you an additional ship’s wheel icon for your next sailing test. While Cliffside Inlet is in the staging area, it will passively increase the quest points on the main quest by +2. This sounds trivial, but think back on how often you just nearly avoided moving on to the next quest phase by 1 or 2 progress. This buff is also on top of the main Nightmare mechanic where quest stages are buffed by the number of remaining hitpoints on the Stormcaller, so if you are trying to outrun the Stormcaller, consider going to this location. However, do bring something to avoid having to trigger the Travel cost. Having to discard cards until you hit a Ship enemy and putting that in the Stormcaller’s area will allow Sahir to make more progress later on. If you manage to hit a Tide-runner with this effect though, it would be beneficial, as you can avoid the surge on that When Revealed effect. Still, an extra ship enemy might be more than you can handle at the moment, so only travel if you are certain you can catch up to the Stormcaller soon. Cancelling the Travel cost by going here through card effects will be a better call.

Treacheries

The two new treachery cards are best avoided during your playthrough, as they will either boost each ship enemy’s ability to fight, or will trigger the nitro on the Stormcaller as Sahir makes more progress this turn.

Dark and Stormy: “And now for the weather forecast. How’s it looking out there Gwaihir?” Yeah, Dark and Stormy can be the forecast for most of the Nightmare sailing quests, as it will be rough to keep on course for long. However, this treachery doesn’t actually interact with the sailing mechanic or the weather trait at all. Instead, the dark weather creates deeper shadows in the form of shadow cards being dealt to every Ship enemy in play. To make sure that these extra shadow effects go off, all shadow effects (even those on Corsair enemies) cannot be cancelled. It is really going to depend on your ability to kill ships to know the impact of this treachery. If you are not engaged with any ships, then you probably do not have to worry about this treachery that much. The shadow cards will be discarded anyways at the end of the round. But if you are in the middle of trying to do more damage to the Stormcaller, and are also engaged with other ships, then the additional shadows can really hurt. Especially if you get this treachery as a shadow effect as well, as additional attack (especially by ship enemies) are never nice to have. This treachery will also surge, meaning that you will likely have more cards to worry about, and can chain into several copies of this treachery at once, stacking up the shadow effects. At least it doesn’t make any progress for Sahir if it is discarded for the Stormcaller’s progress.
Sahir’s Getting Away!: This treachery is going to widen the gap between you and Sahir if you are not cancelling it. Upon reveal, the treachery will make 1 progress on the Stormcaller’s stage for every ship in the Stormcaller’s area. If you have been saving up ships in there for a few turns, this is where that bites you. The additional progress might mean that the Stormcaller advances a round earlier than it would have otherwise. On top of this, the players must either shift their heading off-course or count this treachery as having 8 threat until the end of the phase. This will further restrict your progress that you would make this round and is therefore a good contender for the treachery to cancel whenever you see it. Having this go through might be the end of the game for you.

Tips and Tricks

Making progress on the main quest is of utmost importance. Because of this, side-quests are an obvious no-go, but you should also not include anything that will add quest points to the active location. Woodmen’s Path can do a lot of heavy lifting in this quest, as it will set the quest point value of a location like Sharp Jetties to 1, allowing you to make 5 more progress than you otherwise would.
Keep an eye out for how many Ship Wheel icons you have revealed from the encounter deck and how many of these cards are already in the staging area or the Stormcaller’s area. This should help you to predict how many characters you can commit to the Sailing test.
Remember to keep track of the Tide-runners in play whenever you are off-course. It is easy to forget that they will add their threat to the staging area and the Stormcaller’s area at the same time, even when engaged with you.
Try to do the maximum amount of damage to the Stormcaller each turn while you are on the same stage. You can choose to leave the other ships engaged with you and focus on them when the Stormcaller has moved on to the next stage. By maximizing damage each turn, you will need less progress during the next stage to potentially overtake the Stormcaller.
Putting in your own encounter cards (Tom Bombadil, Eagle of the North, etc) can be both a blessing and a curse for this quest. While they offer no benefit during sailing tests and you get lower chances of finding a ship’s wheel icon, they also offer no additional progress to the Stormcaller at the end of every round. If you are able to stack the deck in your favor, then you might be able to catch up sooner, despite never getting the cards you put into the encounter deck.

Playthroughs

Sadly, like so many of these Nightmare Dream-chaser quests, there are not so many videos to be found online. You might need a few more attempts at it yourself to see what makes this quest so difficult.

True solo, Outlands deck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldN10I9rX3k

I hope that this article will spark a series of more articles by me to come in the near future. The Dream-chaser cycle is about halfway done in Nightmare mode, so I should really keep going and have this finished by the end of the year. I will be going through the quests at random, though, since I need to take some more time with the quests I have not played myself that often. Nightmare Raid on the Grey Havens and City of Corsairs is going to be rough, so please allow for some extra time on that.