“As they cleared the crest of a long bracken hill, the landscape opened up to reveal the Gap of Rohan. Below them, fed by fall rains, the river Isen crawled south like a bloated serpent. The road descended the west-facing hill and led directly into the river where a ford bubbled and frothed among smooth-worn rocks.”
— The Voice of Isengard Deluxe insert
Cycle: The Ring-maker [The Voice of Isengard Deluxe Box]
Week 31/32, 2026.
The quest where we begin our journey as contracted archaeological bounty-hunters for Saruman in his quest for knowledge on ring-making. We begin with everyone’s favorite fifth wheel: Gríma!
The Fords of Isen’s Stats
- Groups registered: 11
- Total attempts: 17
- Most attempts: 3
- Average attempts per entry: 1.5
- Official difficulty: 5/10
- Community-rated difficulty: 5.9/10
- Total number of wins: 13
- Average win-rate: 84.8%
- Average opinion on the quest: 4.1
The Fords of Isen is one of the most popular quests from the cycle and it shows!
It seems a lot of folks are happy to jump in to play this Quest of the Week, with a few new players for good measure.
Achievements
Similar to the Stone of Erech from the previous week, The Fords of Isen’s achievements challenge you to crank up the main pinch points of the quest. With cards that fetch enemies from the discard pile and the deck, you’ll have enemies sticking around for an extra round with Hardy Folk. For how much punishment there is for card draw or big hands, Keep Your Cards Close To Your Chest reveals a floor of glass beneath your heroes! Don’t look down!
Hardy Folk
Each Dunland enemy gains: “When Revealed: This enemy cannot take damage until a time counter is removed from a card.”
Keep Your Cards Close To Your Chest
Side B of each quest card gains: “If a player has less than 2 cards in their hand, they are eliminated from the game.“
Encounter Card Opinions
The Favorite
Two cards tied for the favorite encounter card for this Quest: Ill Tidings and Gríma. Savage Hillman was the favorite for those who played Nightmare.
Not only can Ill Tidings help you with the second achievement for this quest, but it can count against your hand size for treacheries, and it can never leave your hand! Fun!
Gríma, on the other hand, can be a handy quester or card draw if you’re struggling to meet the encounter deck with multiplying Dunlendings.
Savage Hillman is, if you’re keeping your hand size low, much-needed relief in a deck that punishes you for drawing cards. Two passive effects that, while annoying to deal with if you qualify, aren’t painful to avoid and reward you with a 4 effective health enemy that only attacks for 2, assuming his shadow card isn’t too painful.
Honorable mentions: Dunlending Bandits, Berserkers, and Tribesmen, and the Gap of Rohan.
The Least-favorite
Only one card was the least favorite for this week’s Quest of the Week: Pillaging and Burning.
Speaking of painful cards, this one takes the cake (and the whole bakery). While you thought drawing a card might be handy, it comes with a potentially hefty threat increase. If you’re relying on undefended attacks to deal with the multitudinous enemies in this encounter, this card can sink your board without a Hasty Stroke, a Burning Brand, or Erkenbrand to deal with it.
Honorary mentions: Dunland Chieftain, Wild Men of Dunland, Down from the Hills, and Brutal Assault.
Things worth sharing from the games
Kudos to whoever brought out the Beekeepers to scare the Dunlendings off!
Usually the introductory quests for each cycle are boring and not much replayable. This is not, this one is fun, and fair with its draw hate.
Nothing cool here. But I really like the quest, the encounter deck combos in a great way, it’s hard to know if you’re supposed to be happy or glad to get to draw cards 🙂
I heard Ringmaker punishes card draw, so I chose a Noldor deck to see if it can power past. Turns out, Erestor and having no or few cards in hand once you’re past the Planning phase is the easy way to do things. Just be careful about when you play Elven-Light. Two plays of Lords of the Eldar also really boosted me and helped me with some higher attack enemies, and Glorfindel tamed a Wild Stallion, the likes of which would make Napoleon Dynamite proud.
Bard the Bowman with Great Yew Bow did yeoman’s work against Dunlendings in the staging area all quest. Even a round one Pillaging and Burning (the one round it would really hurt with Erestor’s card draw) didn’t do much more than slow the Three Hunters down.
My decks were not very well suited for this quest, and this was my first game after a 7-month hiatus, but I got the win!
The shadow that turns attacks into undefended attacks is brutal!
The nightmare version of this quest isn’t awful in terms of difficulty, and it introduces some “fun” combos if you can’t keep your hand size down. I had an unkillable Savage Hillman just chipping away at me for most of the game, and things only got worse once I drew Ill Tidings a time or two; it never felt overwhelming, though, and hand management strategy being so important to winning was a refreshing change from a game that normally pushes you to just draw through your deck.
6 Beorning Beekeeper triggers in 2 rounds killed 10 enemies in the staging area while Damrod cycled with Lothiriel kept my threat low enough despite 2x Old Hatreds on the third stage. First time I was looking forward to the Time running out there for more enemies.
Decklists Used
Wose-Gondor trap deck – https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/671704
Regular silvans with Erestor
Noldor https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/518036
Cirdan, Hirgon, Tactics Imrahil
Lanwyn, Elrond, Erkenbrand Fellowship
“Erestor Flips (The Contract) Out” – https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/24010/erestorflipsthecontractout-1.0
https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/550525
A Wose trap deck alongside a Grey Wanderer Haldir: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/24532
The Rohan forces comes and goes (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/649162)
https://www.ringsdb.com/decklist/view/67507/giftsfromthror-1.0
https://www.ringsdb.com/decklist/view/67458/noramiasinger-1.0
A classic core Gimli deck with Eowyn (S) and Mablung; plus a Wilhelm/Erkenbrand/Grima Isengard/doomed deck. Yes, Grima broke the uniqueness rule; he’s ethically dubious like that.
https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/61635/damrodsbeorningfriendsgoto0threat-1.0 Damrod + Beornings
If you haven’t yet voted on the difficulty of the quest over at the LOTR LCG Quest Companion, feel free to do so here: The Fords of Isen on the LOTR Quest Companion
For the next quest in the cycle, you can submit your playthrough of Into Fangorn using the form here: https://forms.gle/sbXg6Bx1yo9JVyoZ8.
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/pzKpyhTHx
And for achievements for To Catch an Orc, this is what we have:
No Time to Spare
Stage 2B should read “Time 1” instead of Time 2.
Second Wind
Forced: After Mugash enters play, the first player searches the encounter deck, discard pile, and the victory display for all copies of Mugash’s Guard and adds them to the staging area.
