QOTW: Shadow and Flame

It came to the edge of the fire and the light faded as if a cloud had bent over it. Then with a rush it leaped across the fissure. The flames roared up to greet it, and wreathed about it; and a black smoke swirled in the air. Its streaming mane kindled, and blazed behind it. In its right hand was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left it help a whip of many thongs.
–The Fellowship of the Ring

Shadow and Flame Stats

Groups registered: 9
Total attempts: 22
Most attempts: 5
Average attempts per entry: 2.4

Total number of wins: 13
Win-rate: 59%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.9

Achievements

Here are the achievements we had for this quest:

I Fear Neither Shadow Nor Flame

Complete the scenario without reducing your threat.

Doing All the Heavy Lifting

Only commit allies to complete stage 2B.

Encounter Card Opinions

The winner of the favorite encounter card was Dark Pit. This is the key location in this quest that actually lets you win by discarding Durin’s Bane from play. It’s an interesting location that shows some early game design because if you accidentally travel here too soon and then explore it, you basically lose the scenario. It also has an interesting uncertainty mechanic where if you get Durin’s Bane down to low hit points, you have a chance to defeat the boss in the Refresh phase, which is a fairly unique mechanic in this game.

The only card to be nominated on both lists, and the card to take the most votes for least-favorite encounter card was Counter-Spell. This is also a very unique treachery and we’ve never seen anything quite like it since. It essentially acts as an encounter deck equivalent to A Test of Will, and honestly with all the encounter cards we’ve shut down with our own cancels, we deserve to have the encounter deck cancel us once in a while. I also like this from a lore standpoint, as we are facing off against a powerful maia. Great Magali art, too.

Things worth sharing from the games

That was really fun boss fight! I came in expected to rate it a 2 put ended up giving it a 4. It helped that I had a very smooth run. I avoided Fiery Sword and cancelled any bad treacheries with Eleanor. Balin took care of all the bad shadows. I got Armor of Erebor and Unexpected Courage on Spirit Dain on turn 1 and my three-hunters deck flipped early.

Kept my threat low with Galadriel and Beregond and took the Balrog down with Dunhere.

I decided to try out my Gondor deck against this quest on NM mode, even though it more frequently punishes chump blocking. The Balrog destroyed many, many Citadel Custodians, who were remembered with honor and with the knowledge they weren’t even paid. I was careful never to chump with any ally with 1 HP, as Blazing Grip would turn such a defense into an undefended attack. I successfully defended with Denethor with Blood of Numenor a few times too, so at least the leader of Gondor did something and didn’t *always* let his servants perish in his service.

4 tries, 4 one-hits (thanks Galadriel): Gimli 42 dmg Glorf 40 dmg Treebeard 30 dmg Hail of stones 28 dmg

I made an entirely unnecessary 3 elven rings deck, especially since Galdariel can’t use hers since she lowers threat instead. It was nice bringing Elrond to the quest he came in, but it was frankly quite anticlimactic since Galadriel breaks the intended design of the quest. I just stayed at 0 threat until I got bored of playing 4-6 cost allies for free, and then finished the next round. Wizard pipe guarantees the top card of your deck is high cost for the finale.

Solid quest. Played it in Nightmare, and Fiery Depths was a real problem at times, and Blazing Grip caused Frodo to die (can’t turn two instances of damage into threat in one phase, shouldn’t defend with 1 HP left) in one of my runs. Never revealed the Fiery Sword or Many-Thonged Whip, which was lucky. I did have a Captain of Mordor cause two Goblin Spearmen to engage me, so that was exciting. One of them got +3 attack and did 4 damage to Aragorn, who, luckily, had been full health.

Struggled to keep up with defending the Balrog and questing over other enemies/locations, so had to switch to my other progression deck with Loragorn, Elrond, and Splorfindel. Managed to get out Arwen, Burning Brand, and a Warden of Healing early to repeatedly defend with Elrond, giving him the defense buff and shadow cancellation, then heal off the damage with the Warden every round. Eventually Vilya’d Northern Trackers, Elfhelm, and Haldir to help chip away at the Balrog to finally come away with a win after a slog of a game.

Decklists used

Dwarf the Three Hunters + Gondor ft. Eleanor https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/576542 https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/636550

Galadriel, Bilbo (tactics), Dunhere + Beregond Spirit, Argalad, Beravor

Gondor https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/63534/almostthematicgondor-1.0

One-hit with Gimli: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/60852/shoppingwiththemirror-1.0 One-hit with Glorfindel: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/647280 One-hit with Treebeard + Fair and Perilous: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/63331/treebeardkillsabalrog-1.0 One-hit with Hail of Stones: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/63275/hailofrockandstone-1.0

3 rings (Galadriel, Elrond, Gandalf)

This deck can lower its threat frequently without abusing hero Galadriel, so I figured it would work well enough: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/62597/ironlung-1.0

Progression: Aragorn, Elrond, Glorfindel (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/647829)

Dwarf swarm once, Noldor discard once, and Last alliance of Beornings and Eagles once

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/63240/wingedguardianleviosa-1.0

Cycle Retrospective

Now let’s take a look back at the cycle as a whole. We got 11 responses to the cycle questionnaire, and first I asked which quests in this cycle folks have actually played:

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

Foundations of Stone (7 votes)
The Seventh Level (3 votes)
Shadow and Flame (1 vote)

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

Quest	Average Rating
Foundations of Stone	4.4
The Seventh Level	4.0
Shadow and Flame	3.9
Into the Pit	3.5
The Watcher in the Water	3.1
The Redhorn Gate	2.9
Flight from Moria	2.4
Road to Rivendell	1.9
The Long Dark	1.9

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

Quest	Average Win Rate
Foundations of Stone	0.84
The Long Dark	0.81
The Redhorn Gate	0.67
Into the Pit	0.62
Shadow and Flame	0.59
The Watcher in the Water	0.58
Road to Rivendell	0.54
The Seventh Level	0.53
Flight from Moria	0.38

Players were also asked what their overall thoughts on the cycle were. This is what they had to say:

Some of it is undoubtedly nostalgia (this was the first full cycle I played after the Core Set back in the early years of the game), but I really enjoy the theme of each of these quests. The large encounter decks are annoying, Sudden Pitfall & Sleeping Sentry still stink, and the story doesn’t make any sense within the broader lore, but wandering in and around Moria feels like being in Middle-earth (and the larger encounter decks can lend variety/replayability to these quests). Overall, this is a great cycle to bring a more fun/gimmicky deck(s) to and piddle around without being crushed. And Foundations of Stone still holds up!

Love this cycle so much–maybe my favorite? So many memories of playing it as it came out, and have gotten to play it was so many new players over the years. And how you can not love facing off against the Balrog? “You cannot pass!”

I am very much a dwarf fan so I enjoy it thematically. But mechanically it has quite a lot too unbalanced treacheries. *cough cough* Sleeping Sentry *cough cough*

The quests became so much better in later cycles, this is almost a different game. But I still have a lot of nostalgia and good feelings connected to it. And the NM Watcher was fun!

It was the cycle I thought was punishing from the ‘instant wipe’ encounter cards. It made me hope at the time that they didn’t just follow the books and was pleasantly surprised with the game direction with the third cycle. So many good moments with Moria and the return to Moria and then facing the Balrog. Facing the Balrog was something I didn’t expect and it was great fun. As someone who got into the game in 2020 I managed to get an entire collection together. It was these three end quests of Long Dark, Foundations of Stone, and Shadow and Flame, that really solidified the game for me as my “forever game”

Not my favorite cycle. NM The Seventh Level (minus a couple stupid treacheries), Watcher in the Water, Foundations of Stone, and Shadow and Flame were all decent to quite good, but I didn’t care too much for the rest. I think I’d have enjoyed the quests a lot more if the treacheries had been designed to just hurt you and not simply kill you without cancellation, and if the encounter decks had been smaller to get more cohesive, consistent quests.

The quests are typically really fun until they get ruined by a shadow that discards a hero or something like that. Still these are quests I enjoy playing as they are all fairly straightforward and don’t require loads of setup

Ups and downs. Can be very good or outright terrible. Fun to revisit and was fun the first time I played it, but shows its age after playing many later quests

This one has nostalgia for me. When I got into the game, I bought and played the first three cycles one at a time (naively thinking I’d never buy all-in). It was fun to revisit these again with a full card pool and be able to build decks with a few more answers to some of the quests. In general, this time through was much less frustrating that the first time. Surprise standouts for me were The Redhorn Gate and Shadow and Flame.

The cycle has three clear tiers of quests: very good, mid, and very bad. The top tier is a lot of fun but the bottom tier is nearly unplayable (Sleeping Sentry, looking at you). This was my first time playing this cycle, and I’m glad I did, but there are certainly a few of these quests I will not play again for a long time. I thought the theming and mechanics of most of the encounter cards were quite good, but the decks themselves were too large to shine in solo play. I played a handful of the quests two-handed, which slightly improved the experience for those lower tier quests. Overall, through my progression play, I enjoyed Dwarrowdelf more than Shadows of Mirkwood.

We have now moved onto ALeP’s first cycle, Oaths of the Rohirrim. This week we are on the second quest in the cycle, Battle for the Beacon. Once you have finished with your playthroughs, please fill in this form https://forms.gle/DhVCzbBanvJdPcUv5.

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: