QOTW Recap: The Stone of Erech

Over the land there lies a long shadow,
westward reaching wings of darkness.
The Tower trembles; to the tombs of kings
doom approaches. The Dead awaken;
for the hour is come for the oathbreakers:
at the Stone of Erech they shall stand again
and hear there a horn in the hills ringing.
Whose shall the horn be? Who shall call them
from the grey twilight, the forgotten people?
The heir of him to whom the oath they sword.
From the North shall he come, need shall drive him:
he shall pass the Door to the Paths of the Dead.

— Malbeth the Seer, The Passing of the Grey Company, The Return of the King

Cycle: Scenario Pack — Gen Con 2013

Week 29/30, 2026

The one where we try to rescue the Lord of Lamedon’s lost son, Derufin, from an angry mob of Oathbreakers near Middle-Earth’s largest jawbreaker.

The Stone of Erech’s Stats

Groups registered: 4
Total attempts: 6
Most attempts: 2
Average attempts per entry: 1.5
Official difficulty: n/a
Community-rated difficulty: 6.5/10

Total number of wins: 4
Average win-rate: 75%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.5

The Stone of Erech is looked back on as a favorite of many players, although the ratings here line up well with it’s average rating.

Half of respondents played this quest for the first time!

Achievements

The achievements for Stone of Erech center, obviously, on the Midnight Night card. The first challenges you to push through the quest before you get to the point where you ramp up your threat every round. The second challenges you to ramp up your threat, anyway, because who doesn’t like setting the car on fire while driving?

Not Taking the Midnight Train

Complete the scenario before it becomes Midnight.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Stage 1A should read “Setup: Place Midnight into play, next to the current quest.” instead of Eventide.

Encounter Card Opinions

The Favorite

There was no clear favorite for this quest. Instead, there were four cards mentioned: Lord of the Dead, Groping Horror, Banks of Morthond, and Restless Dead.

Fighting The Lord of the Dead with either version of ally Gandalf, ally Saruman, or even ally Galadriel can make for an interesting game. Groping Horror also makes for a potentially hilarious game of Secret Santa where no one can play the cards they have. Banks of Morthond can ease a lot of pressure for players who have a harder time clearing locations. Restless Dead can return another Restless Dead to the top of the pile for either another easy enemy or a card with no shadow effect!

The Least-favorite

There was one clear card for the least favorite encounter of this quest: Driven by Fear.

This card can shut you down if you’re going into, or are already in, stage 2. Having heroes that cannot ready while the Stone is out means you may have a hard time either questing or getting rid of Oathbreaker enemies.

Things worth sharing from the games

This was quite fun, really flavorful locations and enemies. Using willpower to destroy my enemies changed how I played a bit too. The highlight was engaging Lord of the Dead, blanking all my character text boxes, which allowed my ready Galadriel to attack with her 4 willpower. I like the Night objectives that ramp up the difficulty with time as well, that’s a good mechanic to stop people from turtling.

The second game was a nail biter. I thought I was going to be able to sneak attack Beorn in to push my over the top for questing, then realized that Lord of the Dead would prevent him from activating. Fortunately, I drew Gandalf and had enough of a resource bank to get them both in play.

First game, got hit with driven by fear as my setup first card. Got pretty far, but it hit midnight the same turn I made it to quest card three and I went from a fairly controlled board state to four enemies (including Lord of the Dead) engaged with me, stone of Erech as my active location, and all my characters exhausted. I was wiped out pretty quickly.

Second game went much smoother and Ally Gandalf came in the last two rounds to push the heroes through on round 5! First time playing this quest and enjoyed it!

Aragorn could kill a Shadow Host Captain with Roheryn (with Spectral counted, of course), thanks to ATEOAT, Gilraen, Anduril, Sword that Was Broken and a Messenger of Manwe flying over [sic]

Decklists Used

A slightly updated variant of https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/57989/magicsilvancouncil-2.0 that I should publish

https://ringsdb.com/questlog/view/65732/thestoneoferech-1player-2026-07-23

TheChaps deck from his Single Core Series. It was a fun deck to boost will power. https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/28609/singlecoreseriesthestoneoferech-1.0

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/24556

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 Stone of Erech at LOTR Quest Companion

For the next quest in the cycle, you can submit your playthrough of The Fords of Isen using the form here: https://forms.gle/RjDZPxjH9xqDGF4u6.

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 The Fords of Isen, this is what we have: