QOTW: Under the Ash Mountains

When day came at last the hobbits were surprised to see how much closer the ominous mountains had already drawn. The air was now clearer and colder, and though still far off, the walls of Mordor were no longer a cloudy menace on the edge of sight, but as grim black towers they frowned across a dismal waste. The marshes were at an end, dying away into dead peats and wide flats of dry cracked mud. The land ahead rose in long shallow slopes, barren and pitiless, towards the desert that lay at Sauron’s gate.
–The Two Towers

Under the Ash Mountains Stats

Groups registered: 5
Total attempts: 11
Most attempts: 4
Average attempts per entry: 2.2

Total number of wins: 5
Win-rate: 45%

Average opinion on the quest: 1.5

This makes it our lowest-rated quest in all of QOTW history. Ouch. Too bad the last quest that Caleb Grace ever designed sucks so hard.

Achievements

Here are the achievements we had for this quest:

Who Needs a Guide Anyways?

Complete the scenario without playing a Dwarf character.

Close Call

Complete the scenario with at least one player having exactly one card left in their deck.

Encounter Card Opinions

The card to get the most votes for favorite encounter card was Ransacked Supplies. This card is of the family of encounter cards that are broadly “Add a certain amount of threat to the staging area until the end of the phase.” We see this family of encounter card go all the way back to the core set, and broadly speaking they are pretty harmless. I tend to think of them as getting a location with a blank text box that discards itself at the end of the phase. The only wrinkle here is that it discards the top card of your deck, which in this quest brings you one step closer to death.

There were no cards to receive votes in both categories this week.

With 75% of the votes, the winner for least-favorite encounter card is Burning Reek. If you thought discarding ONE card off the top of your deck was bad, imagine discarding 3 to 20 cards! Later in the game this treachery can be a “Cancel or Lose” card, so make sure you brought Test of Will!

Things worth sharing from the games

The Tunnels of Torech Gorgor almost sank me. It was my starting side quest, and I never revealed enough locations to place any progress on it. I had one or two side quests in play the entire game (9 rounds). Had I been able to clear it early, I could’ve cycled Host of the Galadhrim to cycle my three Galadhrim Weavers and stall out the discard effects, but discarding 3 cards each round buried it beyond my reach once played. Still played Galadhrim Weavers a lot of times, and ended the game with 4 cards in my deck, purposefully not using all the card draw I had available.

The recommended deck was, as expected, perfect tech for this quest.

This is not a fun quest, but it was fun to think up a deck that could beat it, and having the quest effect give me a pile of resources and a few free dwarves was pretty great.

Decklists used

A Silvan deck focused on spamming Galadhrim Weavers https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/634919

Ain’t No Ash Mountain High Enough (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/16736/aintnoashmountainhighenough-1.0)

“Ain’t No Ash Mountain High Enough” by electronjon (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/16736/aintnoashmountainhighenough-1.0)

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/630460

Do you ever think about the fact that we often call this cycle the “Mordor Cycle” even though you don’t actually enter Mordor until the last 2 quests? Well now that we have passed under the Ered Lithui, we are officially in Mordor. We are playing The Land of Sorrow this week. Once you have finished playing it, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/CGQe5EbakHErtJtb7

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