QOTW: Voyage Across Belegaer

Above all arts they nourished ship-building and sea-craft, and they became mariners whose like shall never be again since the world was diminished; and voyaging upon the wide seas was the chief feat and adventure of their hardy men in the gallant days of their youth.
-Akallabêth

Voyage Across Belegaer Stats

Groups registered: 19
Total attempts: 35
Most attempts: 5
Average attempts per entry: 1.8

It’s not surprising to me that there is a dip in the average player count for this quest, compared to what we’re used to seeing in previous cycles we’ve done for quest of the week. Sailing tends to be easiest in true solo, since you get access to two ships in solo.

Total number of wins: 26
Win-rate: 74%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.2

I’m also not surprised to see such a wide spread in the opinions of this quest. Sailing quests, and especially this quest in particular, definitely have very mixed opinions in the community. Some people love them, some people hate them. Speaking of sailing…

Absolutely no surprises here. The Nárelenya is very good at enabling a swarm-type build, which is also the type of build that excels at sailing mechanics.

Campaign Mode

Achievements

Here are the two achievements we had for this quest:

I Sunk Your Battleships

Complete the scenario with 2 Corsair Warships in the victory display.

What Do I Do With This Rope?

Fail every sailing test.

Seasick [Dream-Chaser Campaign Guide Achievement]

Win Voyage Across Belegaer without committing any characters to each Sailing test.

Encounter card Opinions

There was an extremely close match for favorite encounter card between Calm Waters and Fog Bank. They were tied for a long time, but the very last form submission at the time of writing pushed Fog Bank up as the winner with 7 votes (to Calm Waters’ 6 votes). Whether you’re more of a Calm Waters or Fog Bank fan, either way it’s nice to see some beneficial locations in the encounter deck. Calm Waters even has two sailing icons on it, to help out when you need to get back on course!

There was only one encounter card to appear on both lists, and it is a weird one: Winds of Wrath. Any effect that can deal 1 damage to each character in play is obviously going to be in contention for the most-hated card. However, this card only does that if you are off-course. If you stay on-course the entire game, this card’s revelation effect does literally nothing. It doesn’t even surge into a different card if you’re on-course. Special mention to the shadow effect, which can force you off-course.

There were 8 different cards that received nominations for least favorite card in this encounter deck, but the winner with 8 votes is Corsair Warship. A truly monstrous enemy. It has 8 attack, boarding 3, archery 4 when in the staging area, and can’t be damaged from staging either. Few enemies in the game have generated as much discussion of “How do I deal with this?” as the Corsair Warship. Do you just engage it and face the onslaught of enemies? Do you leave it in staging and just tank the 4 archery every round for the rest of the game? Do you discard it with The Great Hunt or shuffle it back in with Put Off Pursuit?

Things worth sharing from the games

Early on, I used a Dunedain Hunter to engage a Corsair Warship and lessen my chances of seeing it later because Boarding only triggers if the enemy engages you from the staging area, not from the encounter deck. Probably the best use I’ve made of the Hunter! I stayed mostly on-course, and Sword that was Broken was immense in boosting my willpower, especially once I triggered Perilous Voyage and all my heroes were questing for free.

During the critical round of combat (a Corsair Warship and 5 Corsairs engaged) I used Shadows Give Way to discard 5 shadow cards. That definitely made the difference in the game as I was able to optimally plan combat.

I played this quest twice. First, two-handed alongside Tritonwreck (shout-out to his awesome deck name: Lord of the Wings), and then again true solo, running my very first Noldor discard deck. In my true solo campaign, I drew the Corsair Warship first round, which is why I chose it as my least favorite card. That 4 archery every turn from the off was a bit stressful to deal with.

I just kept my threat low (really low, actually). Then saling and questing hard and avoid any engagement as much as possible. 🙂

It went fairly smoothly, I could skip half of the second stages and kept on course during the last bit of voyage.

First playthrough I just drew ships as encounters, could stay on course and pick off the ships worth XP. Second I only drew locations or treacheries so could quite happily fail all the sailing tests. My third playthrough was much more balanced but in every game I only got calm waters as a shadow.

I was able to use the combination of Bilbo Baggins (T), Glorinaith, and Skyward Volley to direct damage several corsairs (and ships) to death before they attacked. During one round, I popped in Galadhon Archer, pulled him back w/Pursuing the Enemy, then played Skyward Volley to finish off multiple enemies. I was also able to engage and sink Thunderstruck and add Crowley to the victory display, earning 9 XP overall (by far my most successful playthrough of this quest in campaign mode 🙂 ).

I was surprised how much I struggled with this one, as I haven’t had issues with it in the past but it took me 4 games to win. I was playing a mono leadership Gondor valour deck, which I don’t think lined up great with the quest. It was fun being able to start with Dawn Star as I didn’t care up the threat raise. But high threat made the boarding ships brutal as I often wasn’t fully prepared to engage them the turn they were revealed and couldn’t leave them in staging a turn. The final game went very smooth though, and I destroyed Thunderstruck for the first time!

Hid under the cover of Fog Bank in order to focus on taking down Thunderstruck, once that cleared I landed on the final quest stage causing 3 ship engagements with 6 corsairs, including Crowley — desperately struck down Crowley before questing to victory — wouldn’t have survived another round!

First game I played I revealed 4 ships in the first quest phase. Also drew back to back copies of boarding party in the second quest phase with no cancels, and I ended up with every card in the corsair deck engaged on the table, so it turns out that corsair warships aren’t super scary when they have boarding 0! Somehow still won the quest but with 5 dead heroes.

This deck focused on hunting party to discard ships rather than engage them, so I had 3 of that and 3 tome of attanatar to recur it. Only had to engage a ship once or twice over the course of 2 games.

No ship has been engaged. Avoided “Stage 2″s: “Into the Storm” and “Calphon’s Divination”.

I’d already played this quest — and the whole campaign — with Noldor, but this time I gave it a go with Secrecy and A Great Hunt. Those poor ships didn’t stand a chance!

Decklists used

Perilous Noldor-Dale: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/520090#

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/58016/inmemoryofarvedui-1.0

Starlight on the Western Seas (Arwen, Círdan, Galadriel)

Noldor Dreams of Discard: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/600283 Lord of the Wings: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/160722

Hobbiton Blues ()mono-spirit: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/44797/hobbitonblues-1.0

Caldara, Cirdan and Arwen

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/58421/thelastnauglamrallianceqotwdreamchaser-1.0

Dwarf mining with a perilous voyage (Spirit Dain, Thorin Stonehelm, Gandalf) and a dwarf swarm (Thorin Oakenshield, Ori, Nori)

Galdor, Cirdan, Arwen

Storm-Chasers (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/43973/stormchasersrco-1.0) – an #RCO Noldor deck featuring Cirdan, Erestor, and Arwen & “(Skyward) Volley!!!” (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/597751) – a direct damage deck designed to take advantage of Skyward Volley and some other lesser-used direct damage effects.

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/593579
https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/576138

Mono Leadership Gondor (Denethor, Boromir, Faramir)

Building out a Noldor deck https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/58426/noodlingwithnoldordream-chaser-1.0

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/22429

https://www.ringsdb.com/decklist/view/13573/starlightonthewesternseas-1.0

A standard “good stuff” Noldor deck: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/288515

Aragorn (Spirit), Gildor Inglorion, Theodred

Traveling Weedbuddys: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/44693/travelingweedbuddys-1.0

Mono-lore Great Hunt: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/599845

This week we land on an island that the Tolkien Estate warns “may be straying too close to using unauthorized material from The Silmarillion”. Once you have completed the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/gd8SHKfFkJRZ28re6

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