In the days that followed his crowning the King sat on his throne in the Hall of the Kings and pronounced his judgements. And embassies came from many lands and peoples, from the East and the South, and from the borders of Mirkwood, and from Dunland in the west. And the King pardoned the Easterlings that had given themselves up, and sent them away free, and he made peace with the peoples of Harad; and the slaves of Mordor he released and gave to them all the lands about Lake Núrnen to be their own. And there were brought before him many to receive his praise and reward for their valour…
–The Return of the King
The Fortress of Nurn Stats
- Groups registered: 16 (great turnout!)
- Total attempts: 48
- Most attempts: 10
- Average attempts per entry: 3
- Total number of wins: 13
- Win-rate: 27% (still not our lowest win-rate!)
- Average opinion on the quest: 3.5
Achievements
Here are the achievements we had for this quest:
Freebie
Complete the scenario.
Heart of Darkness
Stage 2B gains “Players cannot play events.”
Encounter Card Opinions
There were a lot of different cards that got nominated for favorite encounter card, and there was absolutely no consensus reached.
There were two cards this week nominated for both favorite and least-favorite encounter cards. Shockingly, one of those was The Dark Lord’s Reach. We’ll talk more about this one shortly. The other was Soldier of Nurn. One of the things I find fascinating about this enemy is that, although it certainly looks like an orc, it doesn’t actually have the Orc trait, meaning that there is a Man beneath that ugly armor!
Unsurprisingly (to me), the card to get the most votes for least-favorite encounter card this week was The Dark Lord’s Reach. It’s like the team looked at old-faithful Necromancer’s Reach and said to themselves “Yeah, we can make it worse.” Very cool art, though!
Things worth sharing from the games
Beregond, Leadership Frodo, and a few side quests successfully stalled on stage one to build up quite the resource bank and get my threat down in the tens. Eowyn showed up to the fight to take Thane Ulchor out in the final round.
Playing double Burglar’s Turn against this quest was actually really good tech.
Every game seemed to have something, even the losses were a lot of fun. In my winning game, treebeard made the ultimate sacrifice against multiple enemies to give Aragorn and Eowyn their chance (Eowyn with her boost) to get the 12 damage on Thane. This truly is a great way to final cycle. It is well worth the blood, sweat, and tears to say that I have a win against the hardest quest in the game!
I had a great starting hand that included Nori, Arwen, and Warden of Healing. I quickly found both Henemarth and Gandalf. Henemarth let me stall on the first stage while I managed my threat by cycling Gandalf with Nori. After my threat was low enough, I moved on with a large board state to an easy win in the 25th round. My Power of Mordor card order was Khamul the Easterling, Tower of Barad Dur, Covered in Darkness, then The Armies of Mordor.
Kept my threat under control with Beregond and Frodo. Fatty gave me an easy early game by canceling an enemy. Faramir boosted Willpower to quest over the Tower of Barad-dur to place exactly 12 progress on the Final Confrontation. I risked an undefended attack, and Fatty died to Ulchor’s attack. And the reveal was… Ulchor’s Guard. Which engages the player engaged with Ulchor. So IT had to attack. Ugh. Beregond defended, and Eowyn used her ability to smite Ulchor in the face. I BEAT NURN!
Wow, that took me so many attempts. The coolest part was probably losing both my copies of Armored Destrier to No Quarter, but I was still able to have Beregond hold off the enemies with the help of some Honor Guards
On my victorious attempt, I was playing while updating the people in the QotW discord about my plays while they coached and rooted for me. Amazing, and made it so much more memorable and meaningful. My favorite victory so far in this game, and it’s because of the cameraderie, not the difficulty. My goal was to try to win before my Doug Beer order arrived today, and I did 🙂
I appreciated having a really difficult quest. It’s not something I’ll play often because so many of the decks I like to play simply won’t ever work here, but it felt great to take it down. Beregond, Frodo, and Elfhelm all helped me get my threat down to 30 by the end of the game, and Treebeard helped me destroy so many enemies. Sadly, I never saw either of my Legacy Blades, which also made Roheryn pointless, but Sword that was Broken came out at the perfect time to save my bacon. Thalion had 7 neutral resources at the end of the game and absolutely nothing to spend them on, and my Honour Guard did great work before my Gondorian Shield showed up for Beregond. I also for the Heart of Darkness achievement by default: I never had an event in hand during 2b!
Just an observation after a half dozen recent plays… the most surefire way to lose this quest seems to be staging a couple of rounds of locations in a row. All the locations in this quest have high enough Threat and Quest Points that, in 1 Player, it’s really easy to get locked, and once you lock there’s no way out. I was even running Asfaloth, Box of Earth, and Thror’s Key in some of my builds, and pretty much every loss stemmed from locations piling up and slowly outstripping the ability to quest above them. Enemies were rarely a (fatal) problem.
My threat was rising quickly towards the end. My last round consisted of drawing the Ulchor attack during the staging, drawing into an Ulchor guard. In the combat phase I was engaged with Thane, 1 Ulchor guard and 1 Easterling Mercenary. Since Thane had already attacked Frodo had only one defense left. Thane’s attack drew into another Ulchor guard. And 2 guard dogs came from the shadows. Many fell, Butterbur, Pippin eg. But in the end Merry, Treebeard and Quickbeam took Thane down for good!
We did a last-minute re-configuring of decks to try this at the Con. After two heroic attempts, the second which cleared the Castle Garrison, we got overrun by enemies and lost with no time left for more attempts.
See my conistent win against Nurn deck 😉 I like this quest (i may be only one here^^), because it’s a little puzzle
Autumn was able to one shot Thane Ulchor right as he was no longer invincible
Glorfindel, loaded with Legacy Blade and Durin’s Axe, was able to knock out every Guard, Soldier, and troll that came off the deck. Cycling allies with mostly events let my Sailors of Lune be the heavy lifters for questing. I had a lot of fun testing this deck and making it work finally!
Decklists used
https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/625428
I played my Mono-Tactics Burglar’s Turn deck (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/539699). Mike played a Gifts of Galadriel deck with LeDenethor, TaGlorfindel, and Lanwyn. Ian played a LeDain, Elrond, SpGlorfindel deck. Kyle played an Alatar and Pallando Burglar’s Turn deck.
For the first multiple attempts, I used Chad’s Hobbits against Nurn deck. Lost each time. Finally got a win using Sackmoney’s Deck: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/62257/questoftheweek-fortressofnurn-1.0
Storming the Fortress of Nurn by Mormegil https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/44686/stormingthefortressofnurn-1.0
Tactics Eowyn, Spirit Beregond, Leadership Frodo, and Lore Fatty: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/62349/thisjusttookanurnfortheworstquestoftheweekfort-1.0
Doomed Mirror & Valour rekindled
https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/637705
The Chap’s “Nurn Hobbits” https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/636304
https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/62257/questoftheweek-fortressofnurn-1.0
Noldor 3 Hunters, Noldor BoF, Noldor 4 Hunters
The brave hobbits
Na’asiyah/Thurindir/Amarthiul/Eleanor Kahliel/Ingold/Boromir(Le)
https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/601772 It’s an alep variation of my « Consistent win against Nurn » deck https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/344115
I brought Elrond, Leadership Dain, and Spirit Glorfindel
Galadriel/Thranduil/Glorfindel (Tactics) [https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/61571/burglorfindel-1.0]
Cycle Retrospective
Congrats to everyone who got a win against this gruelingly hard quest! Let’s take a look back at the cycle as a whole. We got 11 responses to the cycle questionnaire, and I know the quests in this cycle are hard to get and hard to play, so I first asked which quests participants have actually ever played. Unsurprisingly, the deluxe box has the most people that have played it.
When asked which quest in this cycle was their favorite, this is how participants responded:
- The Temple of Doom (3 votes)
- The River Running (2 votes)
- Wrath and Ruin (2 votes)
- Danger in Dorwinion (1 vote)
- The City of Ulfast (1 vote)
- The Land of Sorrow (1 vote)
- The Fortress of Nurn (1 vote)
From the votes during each week’s survey, these are the order of the Vengeance of Mordor quests based on the average rating for the question “How much do you like this quest?”
| Quest | Average Rating |
|---|---|
| The River Running | 4.3 |
| Danger in Dorwinion | 4.3 |
| Wrath and Ruin | 4.0 |
| The Land of Sorrow | 3.9 |
| The Temple of Doom | 3.9 |
| The City of Ulfast | 3.8 |
| The Fortress of Nurn | 3.5 |
| Challenge of the Wainriders | 3.1 |
| Under the Ash Mountains | 1.5 |
And this is the order of the quests from highest to lowest win rate:
| Quest | Average Win Rate |
|---|---|
| The River Running | 0.71 |
| Wrath and Ruin | 0.67 |
| Danger in Dorwinion | 0.52 |
| The City of Ulfast | 0.52 |
| The Land of Sorrow | 0.50 |
| Challenge of the Wainriders | 0.46 |
| Under the Ash Mountains | 0.45 |
| The Temple of Doom | 0.38 |
| The Fortress of Nurn | 0.27 |
Players were also asked what their overall thoughts on the cycle were. This is what they had to say:
I loved it. I was scared going in. If it wasn’t for the (amazing) community on Discord, I don’t know that I ever would have seriously attempted it. Thanks to the shared support, advice, and decks, I was able to do it, and enjoy it thoroughly.
Hyper-niche deckbuilding and lots of reps against one quest just to get a win isn’t really what I enjoy about LOTR, so I mostly only care for the first half of the cycle. The first 4 quests in the cycle are masterpieces.
Overall a more fun cycle than I expected. Any scenario with The Power of Mordor set isn’t one I’m just going to get out on a whim, and the quests generally encouraged me to switch up the deck I was using often, because each one does counter a pretty large number of ways to play a deck, but approaching them with many possible decks was quite rewarding. I also appreciate having some really difficult quests (Temple of Doom or The Land of Sorrow are probably the most fun of the highly difficult ones), and Danger in Dorwinion is simply excellent. I also appreciated that for most of the quests, cancellation isn’t strictly necessary, and the encounter deck will beat you by simply overwhelming you, not because you revealed that one horrible card that you had a 7% chance of revealing.
Love it, a fantastic ending to the 9 cycles and is delightfully punishing.
I think it’s awesome! I love the difficulty and just how much strategy you have to bring to the table to overcome the absurdity of the opponent before you. It reminds me of souls like games where you will likely lose over and over again, but that makes victory so much sweeter. I had a blast playing the few quests I did at the con, I only wish I could have had time to go through the whole cycle there!
Not fun.
I was quite intimidated before playing through the cycle, but after getting a few plays of each quest in, apart from Ash Mountains and Nurn, I quite like all the quests. I could see myself revisiting these quests again in the future.
It’s edgy with both ups and downs. The cycle is stronger in the beginning than in the end. I really like that all quests on the whole are pretty short and intense, or at least not too long. I think that they really nailed the encounter cards, and the levelling of difficulty of esp the treacheries (in the same ways as in Harad). And not to be repetitive, but the art on many of the cards are really top notch!
The first half of this cycle (through City of Ulfast) has some truly excellent quests. Once you hit the Ash Mountains, things slow down a lot and become more about building a deck that counters the quest rather than effectively piloting your deck to adapt to the quest. Very glad I have them and got to experience them. River Running, Wrath and Ruin, and City of Ulfast are definitely going into my long term quest rotations.
Really hard but the once I tried so far were very enjoyable. Very unique quests overall
I appreciate it for what it is. There are some excellent design mechanics throughout and the scaled-up difficulty makes sense. I wish the back half of the quests did not require incredibly fine-tuned decks as much, but I’ve had fun playing all of them at some point (even Under the Ash Mountains and Nurn). The front half of the quests, however, are just outstanding!
We are now starting the Dwarrowdelf cycle! These quests are 13 to 14 years old, and they do show their age in the jankiest of ways. But I have a soft spot for them. We’re starting with Into the Pit. Once you have finished with the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/F2uaqQwKsrjuDhNw7
If you want to share in the discussion of this quest live, join the Cardboard of the Rings discord and look for the Quest of the Week channel: https://discord.gg/5tkTeSCdxc
And for achievements for this quest, this is what we have:
OH YEAH!!!
Complete stage 1 in less than 3 rounds.
Show Me a Sign
Forced: When stage 3B is revealed, shuffle each copy of Signs of Conflict from the discard pile into the encounter deck. Then, each player reveals one encounter card.
Vision Of The Palantir 