QOTW: Danger in Dorwinion

‘Things move in the far East beyond the Inland Sea, it is reported; and north in Mirkwood and beyond; and south in Harad. And now all realms shall be put to the test, to stand, or fall–under the Shadow.’
–Beregond, The Return of the King

Danger in Dorwinion Stats

Groups registered: 12
Total attempts: 21
Most attempts: 4
Average attempts per entry: 1.8

Total number of wins: 11
Win-rate: 52%

Average opinion on the quest: 4.3

I wonder if Submit or Die is more difficult than the other plots, or if it just randomly appeared less often than the other ones. I know I attempted a game where the plot was Submit or Die and I eventually lost, whereas the game I won was against Sauron Worship. If you lost a game against Submit or Die and then went on to win against a different plot, let me know in the Discord channel!

Achievements

Here are the achievements we had for this quest:

Totally Lost in the City

When faced with the option to travel, the players must travel to a random location, if able.

A Conspiracy Unmasked

Forced: When stage 2A is revealed, add an additional random set-aside Plot objective to the staging area.

And these were tough achievements to commit to in a quest that is already very tough. Nobody got any of these achievements.

Encounter Card Opinions

With 40% of the votes, the winner for favorite encounter card was Evidence of the Cult. While this card makes an enemy even more difficult, it can spawn an enemy and allow you to ignore their When Revealed effect, and it can get you one turn closer to winning the quest if you defeat the enemy at the right time. Plus, on stage 2, getting resources on the main quest via exploring locations causes you to reveal extra encounter cards, whereas this card doesn’t.

The card to receive the most votes for least-favorite encounter card was also the only card to be nominated (several times, at that!) for both categories: Secret Cultist. Anyone who has played this quest has fun stories involving this card. It is a card that is so evocative that it probably single-handedly creates more emergent storytelling moments in this quest than any other card in this quest. Personally, this card kept ruining my attempts to keep a Fellowship (for the contract of the same name), but it’s hard to be mad because this card is so fun.

Things worth sharing from the games

Bill the Pony turned out to be a Secret Cultist, so poor Sam had to put him down.

We realized after exploring 6 locations that we had completely forgotten about the “Bribes” plot, so we called our game a loss right then and there.

I played twice with my Hobbit Into the West deck. The first try went pretty smoothly, I was in secrecy for most of the game with all the threat reduction that deck has. Sam defended well against the Black Numenorean and could just discard his shadows with a Staff of Lebethron, while the Gaffer fended off other attacks. Elrond ended up being a Secret Cultist and still sailed Into the West, so that was fun. Sauron Worship was not a problem at all. For the next try, things didn’t go as smoothly, and eventually I realized I’d forgotten to follow the textbox of the Servant of Sauron. I wasn’t sure if that would’ve caused me to lose or not, so I decided to count it as a loss. But it cemented this quest as great, the encounter deck does a good job of comboing you even in solo with all the threat raises and extra revealed cards.

I had no trouble with the quest this time. I had plenty of questing + location control to avoid the travel effects I didn’t want to deal with along with enough shadow cancellation and threat reduction to counter the main challenges of this quest. I’m actually looking forward to playing this one at the Con now!

I kept getting my ass kicked with Fellowship decks, so I had to bring out the old reliable: woodmen and Burglar’s Turn. My Burglar deck having to discard a hand of 6 allies from “Disappearances” wasn’t fun though. Still won!

Thurindir was feasting in this one. Not too many side quests in the encounter deck itself, but side quest decks love those 0 progress, “do X to advance” sorts of quest stages.

I played twice with my Isengard in Peril deck. In the first game, Sauron Worship was the plot that came out, and I ended with 64 threat and an elimination level of 66. Getting to the end of the round would’ve eliminated me, so it tense at the end. In the second game, Bribes was the plot, which was nicer, and I ended on 73 threat with an elimination level of 78. The Isengarders recruited Gandalf The White in both games, but in both games he turned out to be a Secret Cultist! In the first game, he had his Staff, and I was able to exhaust it to discard Secret Cultist from play (and since The White says that attached character can’t be discarded from play by card effects, I took him back), but I never found his Staff in the second game, making it necessary to destroy that filthy, treacherous Gandalf.

Very happy with my two Mirkwood explorers who could snipe out a Side street to be able to snipe a Hillside manor, to be able to speed up the threat decreasing effects. Great times! Decks worked well, not very valour focused in my game play today, but the doomed speed is awesome! My boosted defender of Cair andros turned out to be a secret cultist..!

Got to do the fun spell interaction between You Cannot Pass! and Flame of Arnor. Big defense and attack boosts together. It’s fun when a single character can quest for 10, attack for 6, and another is defending for 5. If you haven’t tried a Blue Wizards deck, I’d highly recommend!

Favorite moment was intentionally under questing by 10 just to engage the Priest of Sauron.

Decklists used

Dale (Brand, Bard, S Beregond)

Frodo/Sam/Merry/Pippin – https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/363292

Autumn’s “The Cult of the Rod” (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/587542) and “All Dogs go to Valinor” (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/53612/alldogsgotovalinorbeyondthewest-1.0)

Into the West deck https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/60897/notalltearsareanevil-1.0

Rohan 3 Hunters + Location Control (both decks will be at the Con) https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/389241 https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/595008

Council of the Wise support deck Then Hobbits for Game 1 Three hunters Spirit Dain Thorin Stonehelm Balin for Games 2 and 3

I lost with All Dogs Go To Valinor (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/53612/alldogsgotovalinorbeyondthewest-1.0) and Location Nuke (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/550628). I won with my Burglar’s Woodmen fellowship (https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20726)

Coreagorn/Arwen/S.Beregond and S.Theoden/Erkenbrand/Thurindir

Isengard with Perilous Voyage https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/61296/isengardinperil-2.0

Doomed mirror – Loragorn, Galadriel, Grima (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/624789) Valour rekindled; Hirgon and his Rohan friends (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/624634)

Autumn’s “Cult of the Rod” Blue Wizards deck (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/587542)

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/60483

This week we are playing the final quest in the Shadow in the East deluxe box, and a quest with another big reference to the Indiana Jones franchise. Once you have finished The Temple of Doom, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/k86sVMPKDnwnztHT9

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