QOTW: The City of Corsairs

Then it came to pass in that time that the Númenóreans first made great settlements upon the west shores of the ancient lands; for their own land seemed to them shrunken, and they had no rest or content therein, and they desired now wealth and dominion in Middle-earth, since the West was denied. Great harbours and strong towers they made, and there many of them took up their abode; but they appeared now rather as lords and masters and gatherers of tribute than as helpers and teachers. And the great ships of the Númenóreans were borne east on the winds and returned ever laden, and the power and majesty of their kings were increased; and they drank and feasted and they clad themselves in silver and gold.
–Akallabêth

The Elf-friends go chiefly to the North-west, but their strongest place is at Pelargir above the Mouths of the Anduin. The King’s Folk establish lordships in Umbar and Harad and in many other places on the coasts of the Great Lands.
-The Peoples of Middle-earth

The City of Corsairs Stats

Groups registered: 11
Total attempts: 14
Most attempts: 3
Average attempts per entry: 1.3

Total number of wins: 11
Win-rate: 79%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.5

Campaign Mode

Achievements

Here are the achievements we had for this quest:

Soft Docking

Have no characters take damage from the effect on stage 2A.

Well, That Got Out of Hand

Allow Sahir to have 5 or more resources at once (10 or more in a 3 or 4 player game).

It’s Sabotage [Dream-Chaser Campaign Guide Achievement]

Win The City of Corsairs after destroying the Stormcaller in the first or second round.

Encounter card Opinions

We had 10 different cards nominated for favorite encounter card for The City of Corsairs. Only a single card, Watch Tower, got more than one vote (it only got two votes). This is a fairly soft location in low player counts (to which our data heavily skews). If this is the only card you reveal, the chances of it actually doing anything before you travel to it are pretty slim. In higher player counts, though, this will cause more problems.

The only card to appear on both lists this week was the iconic Stormcaller. The first stage of this quest is a frantic race to either defeat the Stormcaller or quest past it (while it very likely continually engages you and causes problems). Some players like the early game challenge that presents. Others have pointed out that almost all of the challenge of this quest is in the very beginning, and if you can get past the initial quest stage the quest is fairly easy. At least it’s not immune to player card effects (in standalone mode) so you can do interesting things with it!

Taking over a third of the votes, yet again, was the Corsair Warship. What it left to say about this card? People really don’t like it. This time let’s just appreciate the art. Look at the sheer number of archers lined up on the deck of that ship. No wonder it has archery 4!

Things worth sharing from the games

I really dislike the design of this quest. It’s The Thing in the Depths on steroids, where the start is so difficult, and the rest is a cake walk if you managed to have a board that could beat the first stage. I never find the damage after completing stage 1 evens it out. Add in some very swingy mechanics in boarding and sailing, and this is probably my least favourite quest in the game. Game 1 I got destroyed by non stop ships off the encounter deck. Game 2 I had 12 damage on the Dawn Star when I destroyed the Stormcaller, but was able to put half of it on Citadel Custodians, and spread out the rest. The rest of the quest was a cake walk (which has been my experience the other times I played this quest as well).

Using Expert Trackers on Sahir when he engaged to dump 6 progress on The Shattered Monument (and subsequently clearing it with Box of Earth) felt very thematic.

An upgraded Tactics Send for Aid netted me Lore Aragorn and Tactics Eowyn. After Eowyn melted two corsairs, I was able to destroy the Stormcaller, deal damage to Aragorn and Eowyn, and use Aragorn’s ability to lower my threat by 11 in the resource phase. Unfortunately, I discarded my lore copy of Send for Aid as a shadow with Gandalf’s Staff twice, so no getting two Gandalfs in play at the same time for me.

I used almost the same strategy (and same deck) as in the previous adventure: kept my threat low and avoided any possible engagement with the ships. 14 rounds later, I had a good mix of Hobbits and Ents ready to move on to Stage 2. I never lost secrecy (my final threat was 10) and only faced a few corsairs before Sahir. At that point, three damaged Booming Ents finished the job.

Campaign: Cirdan’s Blessing (Leadership and Tactics) placed on the defending/attacking ships was helpful to prevent damage from an engaged Stormcaller while dealing damage to it.

Took out the raiders on the first round on the Final confrontation. I got lucky and got leadership Cirdan’s blessing on to Jubayar with a Stallion in the next round. Then I could just “wait” out the black sword.

I went all-in on sailing/questing and was able to complete stage 1 on round 2 (albeit w/out destroying Stormcaller). From there I slowly built up my forces, completing side quests (Gather Information, Double Back, Keep Watch) and sending Gavin repeatedly to Send for Help, until I was more than ready to take down Sahir. A few fun moments included: using Bilbo Baggins (T) to slowly wound a Raid Leader to death despite his 9 defense, Send for Help (T) summoning Eowyn (T) to go beast mode on two corsairs, killing two Corsair Infiltrators with a single Skyward Volley, and realizing at the very end of the game that I had forgotten to attach Parrying Cutlass to Thranduil during setup and so was operating at a 2/3 defense deficiency the whole time(!). This has been a fun and rewarding campaign, and it is bittersweet to see it end.

Accidentally cheated on the first 8 rounds or so, not realizing that the Stormcaller had only 20 engagement cost this time, but I tried my best to make up for it. The quest is way too fiddly in its setup for me to have wanted to scoop and retry. Fun cycle though!

Drew Send for Help (spirit) to generate another Refresh phase to remove the Black Sword and kill Sahir one turn earlier than would normally be possible. I saw all 4 Send for Helps in the same game!

Decklists used

Leadership Gondor (Denethor, Boromir, Faramir)

EDH: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/609340

Mining Deck https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/57834/thespirityearnsfortheminesrcofriendly-1.0

Traveling Weedbuddys (Hobbits looking for adventure): https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/44693/travelingweedbuddys-1.0

Arwen, Purple Dain and Galdor – Last Alliance ally swarm https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/524262

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/22705

Caldara on a bit of a journey

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.

Noldor Dreams of Discard https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/600283

Riddle-Game Dunedain: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/59013/riddlehowmanyattackscanyoutakewithoutexhausting-1.0 Last Alliance of Rohan and Dunedain for Side Quests: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/59014/weregoingonasidequest-1.0

Cycle Retrospective

When asked which quest in this cycle was their favorite, this is how participants responded:

A Storm on Cobas Haven (6 votes)
Raid on the Grey Havens (2 votes)
Flight of the Stormcaller (2 votes)
Temple of the Deceived (1 votes)

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

Quest	Average Rating
A Storm on Cobas Haven	4.7
Flight of the Stormcaller	4.2
Raid on the Grey Havens	4.1
Temple of the Deceived	3.7
The Thing in the Depths	3.5
The City of Corsairs	3.5
Voyage Across Belegaer	3.2
The Fate of Numenor	2.9
The Drowned Ruins	2.9

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

Quest	Average Win Rate
Temple of the Deceived	0.90
Flight of the Stormcaller	0.81
The City of Corsairs	0.79
The Drowned Ruins	0.77
The Fate of Numenor	0.75
Voyage Across Belegaer	0.74
Raid on the Grey Havens	0.61
A Storm on Cobas Haven	0.58
The Thing in the Depths	0.56

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

My favourite campaign moment was in Flight of the Stormcaller, when I had an epic clash with the Stormcaller and Thunderstruck, managing to destroy both in the same round to win!

The challenge of defeating Graxar during an already difficult quest, and the phenomenal boons on offer if you succeeded, was really cool. Nevermind the fact I missed with my Throwing Axe almost every time, starting with that attack boost was super helpful anyways. The Send for Aid cards were also a lot of fun, and I enjoyed seeing Crowley so often.

Gavin and the help he brings. Tackling my first nightmare quests a close second. I will definitely go back and complete the whole thing in nightmare at some point.

The black sword- it adds a huge swing of difficulty to the final boss battle combined with the black key

Gavin and Send for Aid

I like the ships, and the levelling of cards in campaign mode. The Corsairs are good enemies, sadly it feels like the smartest move is to avoid the ship enemies and their boarding key word, which takes away a part of the fun and what builds suspense. And I really like Gavin, perfect campaign to have him in!

I enjoyed branching out in campaign mode beyond what I had previously done, mainly by choosing Glorinaith as my second ship, investing in having an upgraded Spyglass available, and in taking down Graxar to score the Parrying Cutlass for the first time. Even though sailing is not my favorite LotR LCG mechanic, two of my favorite quests in the game (Flight of the Stormcaller and A Storm on Cobas Haven) have so much theme and tactical decision-making that I almost don’t notice it :).

I love upgrading cards! It gives you so many different options. I’m excited to go back and try to gain the throwing axe boon.

Send for Help + Gavin

Revised Content Retrospective

We have now played through every single Revised Content quest as part of Quest of the Week. That gives us some useful data to offer to newer players regarding the relative difficulty of different products and how well received the quests are.

Box	Average Quest Rating
The Fellowship of the Ring	4.30
The Return of the King	3.87
Angmar Awakened	3.68
Ered Mithrin	3.68
Dream-Chaser	3.63
The Two Towers	3.40

Box	Average Quest Win Rate
Dream-Chaser	0.72
The Fellowship of the Ring	0.70
The Two Towers	0.61
Ered Mithrin	0.58
The Return of the King	0.55
Angmar Awakened	0.53

Conclusion: I would recommend the Fellowship of the Ring box to new players looking to expand outside of the core set. It has absurdly good quests and some of the easiest, on average.

Before we resolve the cliffhanger by going into the Haradrim cycle, we’re going for one last sail on the high seas with Hunt for the Dreadnaught. Once you have completed the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/YzXD64hM2u7GtPY38

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