QOTW: The Dungeons of Cirith Gurat

Loud rose a din of laughter hoarse,
self-loathing yet without remorse;
loud came a singing harsh and fierce
like swords of terror souls to pierce.
Red was the glare through open doors
of firelight mirrored on brazen floors,
and up the arches towering clomb
to glooms unguessed, to vaulted dome
swathed in wavering smokes and steams
stabbed with flickering lightning-gleams.
–The Lay of Leithian

The Dungeons of Cirith Gurat Stats

Groups registered: 6
Total attempts: 9
Most attempts: 2
Average attempts per entry: 1.5

Total number of wins: 6
Win-rate: 67%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.2

Achievements

Here are the achievements we had for this quest:

Quick Getaway

Rescue Abaan during the first round.

The Eye is Upon Us

Setup: Search the encounter deck for Uruks of the Eye and add it to the staging area. Uruks of the Eye gains: “Cannot leave play.”

Encounter Card Opinions

Taking 80% of the votes for favorite encounter card was Captured. In a quest that can severely limit the amount of threat reduction you can get from player card effects, it’s nice to see a way to reduce your threat baked into an encounter card. Just be careful, if you defeat this side quest while you are at quest stage 1, you will have to reveal an encounter card.

There were no encounter cards that were nominated for both categories this week.

The only encounter card to get more than one vote for least favorite encounter card was Torture Chamber. Again, this quest hits your threat pretty hard, so this Forced effect can be pretty brutal (especially if you have more than one of them in staging). Not only that, but the When Revealed effect has the potential to cause a lot of board damage (especially if the ally discarded is a non-unique ally that all players have copies of in play).

Things worth sharing from the games

This quest is my personal Ghost of Framsberg.

Ah, you’re telling me to discard an ally! Joke is on you, the eagles and beornings just love to come and go anyway!

I realized halfway through that I had forgotten to reveal an encounter card when rescuing two Sailors of Lune, but through the magic of Dragncards, I quickly retraced my steps and rectified the issue. My board state was very well established going into round 3 (I had almost every ally in my deck in play and powered up by Lords of the Eldar) -> I could engage four enemies (including Uruk Chieftain) and dispatch them the same round. This allowed me to rescue Arwen at leisure the following round to clinch the win. One other fun moment was losing Glorfindel to the Captured! side quest, and then dropping my threat by 5 the following round.

My Three Hunters deck and my Guarded attachments deck both did very poorly against this quest!

Decklists used

Lothiriel + Escort From Edoras + Thengel + Gamling combo: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/60801/anescortedwife-1.0

The Beacons are Lit in Umbar https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/22821

Hirgon, Beregond /tactics/, Arwen with beornings and eagles https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/619970

Spegolas, Splorfindel, Beravor + Gimlead, Amarthuil, Thranduil

“Storm Chasers” (#RCO Noldor Deck) – https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/456944

This week we are finishing off the cycle with Crossings of Poros. Once you have finished the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/UTFPakhkVh6cdpjc8

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

Mordor BOGO!

Forced: After a set aside encounter card is revealed, put into play, placed in the encounter discard pile, or shuffled into the encounter deck as a result of an encounter card effect, choose an additional encounter card from that set aside encounter set when resolving the encounter card effect, if able.