The Black Gate Opens

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“The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man. The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr he was, and his name is remembered in no tale; for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: ‘I am the Mouth of Sauron.’“

– The Return of the King, The Black Gate Opens

We have reached the end of the road for Aragorn, and the finale of the official Saga campaign. At the Black Gate, Aragorn and his companions creates a diversion, allowing Frodo and Sam time to destroy the One Ring forever. For a strategy article, we find ourselves in a peculiar position, for this scenario is unwinnable. Your goal is not to win, but to make a stand for as long as possible. The more time you hold one, the longer you leave for the Ringbearer to finish his task. This also means that the quest makes little sense as standalone – you can play it, but without the interplay with Mount Doom, a lot of connections will be lost. With that in mind, we will do our very best to guide you through.

The Black Gate Opens

  • Found in The Mountain of Fire Expansion
  • Official Difficulty: –
  • Community Difficulty: 9.1
  • Encounter sets: The Black Gate Opens, Orcs of Mordor
  • Quest cards: 2
  • Play if: You like to see how far you can make it. You want an epic battle against an overwhelming force. You want to play epic multiplayer.
  • What is different about this quest?: This scenario cannot be won – you try to hold your ground for as long as humanly possible. You reveal a very large number of encounter cards. Threat elimination level is 99 rather than 50.
  • Solo or Multiplayer?: In this scenario, the first player will reveal an increasing number of encounter cards each questing phase. In multiplayer you can soften the blow somewhat by distributing enemies, but things can still easily get out of hand. However, solo can be a rough and swingy experience.
  • Can I bring Side Quests for this scenario?: You will have a hard time providing sufficient willpower for side quests. However, you don’t really need progress for the main quest, so if you can somehow pull if off, go for it.

The Quest

Setup

The first player gains control of Aragorn. This version can ready for a resource, and has sentinel. Your number of setup steps is determined by whether you play saga and/or epic multiplayer. But from quest card 1A, setup is pretty simple: Add The Black Gate and The Mouth of Sauron to the staging area. Set the objective ally Gwaihir aside, out of play. Shuffle the encounter deck. The Black Gate is a unique location with 0 threat and no progress value – the players cannot travel there. It gets +1 threat for each resource on it, and at the beginning of the quest phase, the players place 1 resource on the Black Gate, and raise their threat by 1. So the Black Gate will gradually ramp up threat in the staging area. We also have the Mouth of Sauron – a boss enemy you won’t really have to fight. With 4 threat, 6 attack, 5 defense and 11 hit points he is certainly boss-territory when it comes to stats. Unfortunately his engagement cost is 99, so he won’t come down to play, and he cannot even leave the staging area! He is also immune to player card effects, and have a Forced ability: When the players cancel a “When Revealed” effect, he makes an immedate attack. So he tries to steer you away from heavy cancellation. The attack can of course be blocked by a strong defender or a chump, but as we will see in a moment, you are going to need every fighting hand you can get, so he is a major inconvenience. After a shuffle of the encounter deck, you are ready to begin if you play normal mode. If you play Saga, you have some additional steps.

In saga, you can change hero without getting the +1 threat penalty. The first player may raise their threat by 1 to search their deck for Anduril and add it to their hand. Burdens from the following sets are removed: A Shadow of the Past, Flight to the Ford, The Ring Goes South, The Passage of the Marshes, Shelob’s Lair. This means you will have a number of nasty burdens in play, from the Road Darkens,Helm’s deep, Isengard and worst of all, Wraith on Wings. The Wraiths in particular will have a major impact on the battle to come.

If you play epic multiplayer, this battle will be one of two staging areas, along with a staging area for Mount Doom. The players here will be fighting to give the others sufficient time to destroy the One Ring. The players are divided into two teams that play the two scenarios, and no more than four players can be in each team. One copy of In Darkness Bind Them is added to each encounter deck. The Eye of Sauron is placed in the Mount Doom staging area, but can enter play later. We will talk more about Epic Multiplayer below.

Stage 1B: Embassy of the Dark Tower (0 progress)

First thing we notice is the Dire keyword – in this scenario, players are eliminated at 99 rather than 50 threat, and player’s threat levels cannot be decreased by more than 1 each round, except through Boon cards. Furthermore, the Valor keyword does not trigger until the players are at 80 threat. The Dire keyword is not really relevant yet, but we appreciate the consistency. Since the progress threshold is 0, we should immediately advance – but there is a “When revealed” effect to resolve first – the game has a little Devil’s bargain to offer…

In player order, each player will reveal a card from the top of their deck, until a total of four cards are on the table. Then, we reveal four cards from the encounter deck, and pair them with the player cards, so that highest resource cost goes with highest threat cost encounter card, and so forth, until four pairs are on the table. As a group, the players must now decide for each pair to immediately play the player card at no cost, but also reveal the paired encounter card. Whether you take it really depends on the setup and your gut feeling – if the card is a conditional event with no effect, don’t bother and discard it. If it is your combo piece then consider it – but if the card is paired with an enemy, think long and hard about it before you take it. If the Gorgoroth Hill-troll or Nâzgul of Mordor are on the table, this is a no-brainer for me – I do not take it. You will face more than your share of enemies and there is no reason to make things harder for yourself. I am particularly happy to see locations at this stage. As we will see below, locations are less of a problem here, and often you can get lucky and get them paired with some high cost allies, especially if you pull the Wall of Morannon – this location has a rather trivial cost in terms of travel and active effects at the game’s start, and with a threat of 5 it will be paired with a high-cost card. In that case, it’s a hard yes from me! Otherwise I tend to be on the cautious side. For this scenario, I will play a deck with heavy acceleration (otherwise you get overrun) and I don’t want the extra encounter cards. Take locations and treacheries with minor effects like Onslaught of Mordor and Jaws of Steel and ditch the rest. Now, it’s battle time.

Stage 2: The Battle of Morannon (- Progress)

We start by having each player search the encounter deck and discard pile for a different Orc, Troll or Nazgûl enemy, which rules out the Easterlings for some reasons. Since they are added and not revealed, my first choice is Orc of Mordor (because it is a small enemy and you can bypass Surge), then Snaga Archer (no obvious benefits but only takes 5 attack to kill), then Uruk Soldier (though I would rather not). In four-player you will have to add one more – and here I would really, REALLT rather not, as your choice is between the Gorgoroth Hill-troll and the Nâzgul of Mordor. Neither are ideal choices and I would actually gravitate towards the Nazgul if pressed, because it has a higher engagement cost (so it is future Me’s problem). But both of them punish you for getting attacked or using chumps so both are nasty. Both are prime targets for a Great Hunt.

The text also instructs you to shuffle Gwaihir into the encounter deck. Gwaihir is an objective ally with 3 willpower, 3 attack, 3 defense, 5 hit points, ranged and sentinel, with the following “When revealed” effect: The first player must choose to either take control of Gwaihir, or spend 1 Fellowship resource and discard Gwaihir to discard a non-unique enemy in the staging area. Since the encounter deck will loop rather frequently, you may get to see Gwaihir more than once if you are lucky. Unfortunately, I mostly tend to see him as a shadow card, where the attack deals no damage, but you miss out on all Gwaihir’s nice effects.

Then we flip the card to 1B. We once again see the Dire keyword, and special rules text: during the staging step, the first player does not reveal an encounter card. Instead, they reveal one card pr. resource on the Black Gate. In other words, they are in for a world of hurt. We do get some help: when the players quest unsuccesfully, they discard the active location. The last rule text confirms what we already knew: this stage cannot be won. The goal here is to last as long as possible to give the Ring-bearer more time. In stand-alone this scenario is a bit of a “how low can you go” type, where you see how long you can last. In saga and epic multiplayer, you need to stay afloat, literally keeping the Ring-bearer in the game.

You have two primary goals here: stay alive, and don’t threat out. Especially in saga, you will start with a lot of threat in the staging area, because of the Wraiths on Wings. If you cannot clear them, and you leave enemies and locations there, your threat will ramp up quickly. And then you don’t get a choice when the Nazguls and trolls come down. Several locations have quite nasty effects, blocking ally play, blanking text boxes or giving you additional enemies. Needless to say, you have to keep on traveling to them. You just have to pick the ones that provides the lesser evil. Which one that is, is a matter of your board state.

You need to have a deck that hits the ground running, particularly if you need to fight the Wraiths on Wings early. Tactics Eowyn is as always a good fit here, as are decks that pump out allies rapidly, like Elrond–Vilya A very good tale decks. The key here is to clear locations and enemies, and worry less about questing. In multiplayer with a dedicated quester, you may be able to quest over, but in solo I found it to be a secondary priority. In saga, I plan to deal with the Wraith on Wings by turn 2. You need to either Feint it, chump it, or have strong defender who can take a couple of swings. Unless you have amazing combat efficiency, it may take a few rounds to bring them down. I found that they needed to be dead by turn 4 for any chances of success. Remember that the first player can use Aragorn’s resource to ready him if you need an emergency blocker – and he has sentinel so he can reach across the table for a quick block.

In solo, you should expect to reset a lot. An untimely early troll or nazgul can wreck your chances and overwhelm you. If you mid-game reveals five enemies, it is probably game over. The wrong shadow card can kill Aragorn unexpectedly. Don’t be afraid to reset. I didn’t make it past 7 resources in my solo campaign, but that was enough – though I did need some luck to make Mount Doom in seven.

There is a silver bullet that can cheese this scenario, particularly in multiplayer. It is a niche card that I have never played outside of these specific circumstances. It is expensive, and it more or less assumes you play Steward of Gondor due to its 5 Leadership cost: Doom Hangs Still. Normally, Doom Hangs is a planning action that prevents you from raising your threat when you quest unsuccessfully. But in Valor mode (here, above 80 threat) it lets you skip the questing phase. This means that if you play your cards right, once you go to 80 threat, you can have up to three phases with no encounter cards. No new enemies appear, no locations are discarded, you get a free pass. And in a four-player game, there are no restrictions on how many you can play. I heard about a table at Con of the Rings where they got to 14 resources…

No matter the route you go, the choice is the same: you have to fight and hold your ground for as long as you can. Once your heroes die or you threat out, if you play Saga, you have a little bookkeeping to do once the scenario is over. If a Wraith on Wings is in the victory display, remove that copy from the campaign pool. If the first player controls Gwaihir, add him to the campaign pool. The players have earned that boon. If a hero is in its controller’s discard pile, do not add that hero’s name to the list of fallen heroes. The number of resource tokens on The Black Gate is noted in the campaign log. This determines how long you will have for Mountain of Fire.

Epic Multiplayer Mode

Epic multiplayer adds a few more effects to take care of. Once the setup steps on the Epic Multiplayer Card described above are resolved, the card is placed next to the Mount Doom staging area, and flipped over which reveals some additional rules text. The Forced effect on the Mount Doom campaign card is negated, which is not relevant for this scenario. However, the next part is. The Eye of Sauron (yikes!) is placed in the Mount Doom staging area, where it has the following rules text: Add an eye to each fortitude test (only relevant for Mount Doom, so we can ignore this). At the end of the round, the first player at Mount Doom must either raise their threat by 3 or flip The Eye of Sauron to it’s reverse side, and move it and all Nazgul enemies in the staging area to the Black Gate opens staging area. This refers to the Ringwraith of Sauron, a nasty enemy with 3 threat, 6 attack, 3 defense and 10 hit points. And as we discussed above, you will have your hands full, so this can be exceptionally bad. If the Eye flips and comes to the Black Gate, it grants +1 threat to each enemy in the staging area (accelerating that you will threat out more easily if you cannot provide sufficient quest power) and giving each enemy -10 engagement cost. This is obviously worst when it causes trolls or nazguls to suddenly come down that you aren’t ready to face. At the end of the round it will jump back to Mount Doom, along with all Nazgul’s in the staging area, which can get really ugly if you have Wraiths on Wings flying around. It can be canceled the same way as above – by raising the first player’s threat by 3. The right call here is dependent on board state and how well the two tables are doing. But later in the game it is worth keeping the Eye at the Black Gate, particularly if you start doing Doom Hangs Still shenanigans.

If you play epic multiplayer, you also get a little help: the first player at Mount Doom gets to choose a bonus for both tables. One table gets 1 card pr. player, and the other gets to decrease their threat by 3. If anyone controls Gwaihir, they may give Gwaihir to any other player at either scenario. This way the threat increase from keeping the eye can be managed. The card furthermore states that if all players at one of the two scenarios are defeated, the players lose the campaign. And to win, the Mount Doom group must win their game and destroy the One Ring. So you have to hold your ground in epic multiplayer!

You also get one more treachery card in the encounter deck at each scenario:In darkness bind them. This treachery plays on the presence of the eye of Sauron in the staging and has the following When Revealed effect: Each player exhausts a character they control. If The Eye of Sauron is in the staging area, characters cannot be readied by player card effects this round. This can be very rough if you are counting on readying for your combat, so this may be worth canceling if you have a cancel, and can weather an attack from the Mouth of Sauron. As a shadow card it punishes you for having the Eye, and grants +2 attack and returns the attacker to the staging area if you have the eye on the staging area. In spite of all this, it is still worth taking the Eye if you can to buy the other table more time. As you will see in our next installment, they are going to need it.

The Encounter Deck

The encounter deck stats assume you do not play epic multiplayer. It’s just a single card this mode adds – I think you can handle that. We have faith in you.

Global

  • The encounter deck consists of 47 cards (38 on easy)
  • 26 cards have shadow effects on normal, giving a shadow risk of 55 %. 23 cards have shadow effects on easy, giving a shadow risk of 61%
  • Average threat reveal pr. card is 1.74 for normal and 1.71 for easy. Threat ranges between 0 and 5 (plus one X equal to the number of characters controlled by the players with the most characters)
  • Doomed 1 is present on 3 cards (The Hour of Doom).
  • Archery is present on 6 cards (Archery 1 for Easterling Bowman and Archery 2 for Snaga archer, 3 copies of each)
  • Surge is present on 3 cards on normal, and 2 on easy (Orc of Mordor)
  • Peril is present on 8 cards (7 on easy) – Rage Filled Him (3), Hell-hawk (2/1), Easterling Bowman (3 copies)
  • Towers of the Teeth, The Black Gate and the Mouth of Sauron are all immune to player card effects. The Mouth of Sauron cannot leave the staging area. Players cannot travel to the Black Gate.
  • Nâzgul of Mordor cannot have non-morgul attachments and Gorgoroth Hill-troll cannot have attachments at all

Enemies

We begin our enemy roster with the nasties minion in Mordor – the Nâzgul of Mordor. With an engagement cost of 66, you do not have to face it until later in the game. But when you do, you will face the “usual” Nazgul stats we have gotten used to by now. 4 threat, 6 attack, 4 defense and 9 hit points, with the Nâzgul trait, which is relevant for some treacheries. It is not immune to player card effects, so you can Feint it, or discard it with The Great Hunt. However, it can only have Morgul attachments, so there is no Forest Snare shenanigans. After the Nâzgul attacks, you must either raise your threat by 4, or send it back to the staging area. There are situations where the latter option is favorable – if you are trying hard to squeeze one final round out , or if the Nâzgul was sent down through effects lowering the engagement cost. The card comes in 3 copies on normal, and 2 on easy mode. The card has no shadow effect, so this is where I am most happy to see it.

Gorgorth Hill-Troll is a hard-hitting miniboss, almost as bad as the Nâzgul. With an engagement cost of 56, it is also something you do not have to deal with right away. 3 threat, 7 attack, 3 defense and 8 hit points make it a formidable foe. It cannot have attachments, and after it destroys a character, the defending player discards a card at random, and increases their threat equal to the printed cost of the card. It makes chump blocking a dangerous affair, and makes it more worthwhile to have a dedicated defender. It comes in two copies on standard, and one on Easy mode. It has no shadow effect, so like the Nâzgul it makes me happy when I see it getting flipped in combat.

Easterling Bowman has an engagement cost of 54, sending a signal that this enemy will have archery tricks up his sleeve. 2 threat, 3 attack, 1 defense and 4 hit points mean we are in the kind of territory where one strong attacker can fell him in one swoop. He has peril, archery 1, and a when revealed effect that makes you deal 1 damage to a questing character you control. It is an enemy I am not too stressed out about, since the can be dealt with rather easily, and blocked without too much fanfare. You have three copies in the deck regardless of difficulty. As a shadow card he can be quite nasty: After this attack, the attacking enemy engages the next player and makes an attack. When a game is about to capsize, and attack/defense resources tightly allocated, this can be game wrecking. This could be a shadow to cancel, if the circumstances call for it. In solo you just look smugly at the game, and cherish the fact that you are alone, and hence have no next player.

Warrior of Rhûn is our second Easterling enemy in the deck. 34 engagement cost makes it a mid-game enemy, and with 1 threat, 4 attack ,3 defense and 4 hit points we are in a territory where attacks can be dangerous, and it takes some resources to take down. When revealed, you must choose a questing character you control and remove it from the quest, which in many cases will contribute to a threat raise. It can be annoying, but is usually not the end of the world. You will have three copies regardless of difficulty. As a shadow card it punishes dedicated defenders, making the defender unable to ready for the rest of the round. Under the right circumstances this can be very bad, but it is context dependent.

Orc of Mordor is an early-game enemy with an engagement cost of 28. 1 threat, 3 hit points, 1 defense and 3 attack means this can be killed by most strong attackers, and even defended without too much trouble by heroes with 2 or more defense. Of course an enemy like this comes with Surge and due to the high enemy density, it means he is rarely alone. After the Orc engages you, you must exhaust a character you control. The encounter deck has 3 copies on normal, 2 on Easy. As a shadow card you must also Exhaust a character you control – this can be annoying but is rarely game breaking.

Snaga Archer is the second archer of the gang, and has an appropriately high engagement cost of 44. 2 threat, 4 attack, 2 defense and 3 life makes it a strong attacker, but someone who can be killed without requiring all your resources. It has Archery 2, and after Snaga Archer engages you, you must deal two damage to a character you control. Later in the game, this can easily cost you an ally you would prefer to keep in play. The encounter deck comes with 3 copies. As a shadow card it can be pretty brutal: Attacking enemy gets +1 attack, or +2 if the defender is damaged (and they will get damaged). This is one to look out for.

Lastly we have Uruk Soldier a beefy mid-game enemy. With an engagement cost of 38, threat of 3, attack of 5, 2 defense, and 5 hit points, it packs punch and is not trivial to take down. When it engages you, you raise your threat by 2, contributing to the game ending. You have 3 copies regardless of difficulty. As a shadow card this can be quite punishing and may be worth a cancel: attacking enemy gets +1 attack, and if this attack destroys a character, the attacker goes back to the staging area. This can be brutal, and contribute to even more threat piling up.

Locations

We begin with Towers of the Teeth, the location equivalent of a icy snowball to the groin. This beautiful piece of real estate has X threat, where X is the highest number of characters controlled by one player, and 8 progress. It is immune to player card effects, and when the Towers of the Teeth is the active location, the players cannot play allies. This location represents a counter to dwarf swarms and outlands decks, and can cause a huge threat increase when it appears. It can cost you games, and there is nothing you can do about it. The only good thing I can say about it is that it has no shadow effect. The encounter deck contains 2 copies on normal mode, and 1 on easy.

Beleaguered Hills is something as strange as a somewhat benevolent location. 2 threat, 3 progress means that it does not crank up your threat. When beleaguered hills is the active location you reduce the total threat of the staging area by X, where X is the combined threat cost of each engaged enemy. So it rewards you for taking down enemies, at least for a little while. After it becomes the active location, each player must engage a non-unique enemy from the staging area, which can lead to awkward situations when you have Nâzguls and hill trolls up there. The low threat cost means that I breath a sigh of relief when it appears during the questing stage. The encounter deck has two copies regardless of difficulty. It has no shadow effect, so even if you see it during combat, there is a silver lining.

Waste of Dagorlad is a 3 threat, 6 progress that blanks the text box of allies when it is the active location. This can be a setback to many decks, but seems particularly aimed at countering Outlands decks. Unless this royally screw over your strategy this one is pretty harmless. It has no shadow effect so not much to say here. I am not too nervous when I see it during questing. The encounter deck has three copies regardless of difficulty.

The Slopes of Cirith Gorgor is a location that makes me very nervous, and I try to leave it for as long as I can. 4 threat means that it is a nuisance to leave out, and 1 progress makes it enticing to clear with location control. But don’t be fooled – they want you to clear it. When Slopes leaves play, the first player shuffles the encounter discard pile back into the deck, and discards cards until an enemy is discarded. Then they put that enemy into play, engaged with them. I like to call this effect “Nâzgul roulette” because you are running a pretty big risk here. You might get a wheenie orc, but it could also be so much worse. This is a location that can wreck games. Travel at your own caution. The deck includes two copies on standard, and one on Easy. It has no shadow effect, which is more or less the only good thing I can say about it.

Reeking Moat is another location that is tempting to leave in the staging area, because it only contributes 2 threat. It requires 4 progress to clear, and when it becomes the active location you get to tug a non-unique, non-Nâzgul enemy underneath it from the staging area. When it leaves play, each enemy underneath it becomes engaged with the first player. So it is a way to buy yourself more time, if you are getting overrun. It can be a good idea to leave it as an emergency button. The encounter deck contains three copies regardless of difficulty, and it has no shadow effect.

Lastly we have Wall of Morannon, a beefy wall that looks like it escaped the Game of Thrones LCG. 5 threat and 5 progress means that it holds most wildlings out. When it is the active location, it protects all enemies and locations against player card effects, greatly limiting your option for trickery. It can be a good emergency button, as traveling to it causes all enemies engaged to return to the staging area. This can of course also lead to a huge threat spike, so use it with caution. The encounter deck contains two copies on standard, one on easy, and it has no shadow effect.

Treacheries

Our first stop in the treachery-department consists of the Hell-Hawk, a Peril treachery that either brings out a Nâzgul enemy from the encounter deck, discard pile or victory display and adds it to the staging area (boooo!) or attaches to a Nâzgul in play as a Mount attachment (also boooo!). When attached it grants +2 threat, +2 defense, +2 attack, and makes the attached enemy immune to player card effects. If this attaches to a Wraith on wings, you are suddenly in deep trouble. Not many heroes can survive an 8+ attack, so unless you can take one hit and bring it down quickly, it will likely require chump blockers, which can be unsustainable because it chips away at your board state. The higher defense also makes it harder to kill, and more inefficient to kill over multiple rounds.. Does this mean it’s better to fish out a Nâzgul? This also really depends on the board state. If one player is fired up and ready to go for some combat, it may be a better solution (though an unmodifed Nâzgul still swings for 6+). This is a good target for cancellation, even though this triggers the Mouth of Sauron. The encounter deck only contains two copies (one on easy) and it has no shadow effect. This one is rough.

The Hour of Doom has some creepy art, and is a card you will see quite frequently, as it comes in three copies regardless of difficulty. It has Doomed 1, making you closer to threat out with each appearance. This is yet another Swarm/Outlands counter, as it forces each player to either raise their threat equal to the number of characters you control, or discard the highest cost ally they control. What you choose can depend on your board state – if your deck depends on a fired-up Glorfindel with a bunch of attachments, you probably don’t want to discard him. But unless you are running a Three hunters build, chances are that the first effect will cost you a threat increase of at least 10. If you are running a dwarf swarm, it is probably not the end of the world to discard one of them. Hence, it is somewhat rare I will go for the first option. As a shadow card, the card forces you to discard a non-objective attachment, which can either be annoying or game-breaking if it snatches away Vilya. Consider having some cheaper attachments for collateral.

Jaws of Steel is a treachery that usually is in the milder end, until it wrecks your board state. Each player assigns X damage to their characters, where X is the number of resources on the black gate. In the first couple of rounds, this is basically a freebie. But as resources pile on, things get dangerous, and suddenly it takes out your entire ally cohort and a hero. It is rare I will cancel this, as cancelation triggers an attack from the Mouth, and if you are in a position where you cannot assign X damage, you may not be able to take another attack, unless you still have a strong defender in play. In that case, it can be a good idea to cancel. The encounter deck has two copies on normal, and one on easy.

Rage filled him is another Peril attachment in three copies, regardless of difficulty. When revealed The Mouth of Sauron makes an immediate attack against you, and if this attack destroys a character, your threat is raised by 4. It punishes chump blocking and tries to threat you out. This can be bad, particularly if your defender is busy elsewhere, but this scenario requires readying effects, so this effect is often more about tying down your resources. The threat increase is also annoying, and can be the difference between another round and defeat, but this scenario has so many ways to bump up your threat, so this one does not stand out in particular. As a shadow card it grants +1 attack, or +3 if the attacker is the Mouth of Sauron. This card makes it quite dangerous to cancel cards, and is worth spending your shadow cancelation on.

Onslaught of Mordor is another card that tries to bump up your threat, but in a slightly more refined manner. When revealed, each players deals 1 damage to a questing character they control. Until the end of the phase, each damaged character gets -1 willpower, and cannot be healed. if you have taken a lot of archery damage, or seen Jaws of Steel a bunch of times, this can suddenly knock down your questing power quite significantly, leading to a large threat increase. However, this is rarely a card I want to cancel, unless it literally will cost me the game – the effect is not severe enough. The encounter deck has three copies (two on easy) and as a shadow card you must choose a non-unique enemy in the staging area and deal them a shadow card. This can be quite brutal, and is worth canceling if you can.

Tips and Tricks

  • You are going to do a lot of combat. Readying effects are really strong here, especially for your combat characters
  • Doom Hangs Still is your silver bullet. Use it wisely.
  • While neglecting questing altogether is a mistake, because your threat will sky rocket, you need to save enough characters for combat. It is better to keep a few characters in stock for combat than to burn them all for questing.
  • At lower player counts you are getting a lot of encounter cards as the game goes on. You become very prone to streaks of bad luck. Expect several scoops before you reach a satisfying result. The same can hold true if you play epic multiplayer. It one table starts wobbling, it can cause them both to crash
  • Make a plan for how you intend to deal with the Wraiths on Wings in saga. They are formidable foes and you need a strategy for blocking and dealing sufficient damage.
  • Remember the Dire keyword – you cannot reduce your threat by more than 1 from non-boon effects.
  • You should aim for a minimum of 7 resources on the black gate – otherwise consider playing again

Playthroughs

One more challenge awaits before the Saga is complete. Tune in for our next installment at Mount Doom.

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