“I am uncertain of the band’s numbers, but I know they are led by a particularly large and gruesome specimen of their kind — a chieftain who goes by the name of ‘Mugash.'” Saruman pursed his lips as if the word was bitter.
…
Saruman lowered his voice to a near whisper. “The task I request of you, is not to kill this specific Orc,” he curled his fingers to form a cage as he asked the impossible, “but to capture him.”
— The Voice of Isengard Deluxe insert
Cycle: The Ring-maker [The Voice of Isengard Deluxe Box]
Week 33/34, 2026.
Here we attempt to find an orc and hang on to him, like some kind of buttered slug.
To Catch an Orc’s Stats
- Groups registered: 7
- Total attempts: 13
- Most attempts: 4
- Average attempts per entry: 1.9
- Official difficulty: 4/10
- Community-rated difficulty: 6.7/10
- Total number of wins: 7
- Average win-rate: 72.6%
- Average opinion on the quest: 2
If you couldn’t tell, this is one of the least liked quests in this cycle. Akin to trying to restrain Gollum in the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle, Mugash can take a long time to find again if you lose him, making for a frustrating rather than challenging play through.
A couple people played this for the very first time. Hopefully they didn’t get too turned off playing Greased Up Orc, The Card Game ™. The rest of the cycle is much less frustrating!
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!
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.
This is a surprising section as not a single person who submitted managed to complete either achievement presented this week. There’s no shame in that, especially for this quest!
Encounter Card Opinions
The Favorite
This week’s favorite encounter card is Orc Cave!
It’s obvious to anyone who has played this quest why Orc Cave is so beneficial: Search lets you look for either Mugash or one of his guards, drawing one of your cards discarded in the process. Not only that, but there’s three of them in the encounter deck in normal! If you’re ready to face Mugash you can purposefully go find these locations to speed through the first player’s out-of-play pile.
Honorable mentions: Methedras and Mugash’s Rage (nightmare).
The Least-favorite
The least favorite for this week’s Quest of the Week is the diabolical Take Cover!
If you’ve spent much of stage 2 preparing your board state to take on Mugash and his orc bodyguards, this card can quickly thin it. If that’s too painful, you may end up losing more time counters to its other effect and potentially getting more encounter cards. That’s not even the cherry on top: this card surges! Necromancer’s Reach move over! Oh sweet, merciful Eru…
Honorary mentions: the shadow effect of Mugash’s Lair.
Things worth sharing from the games
I absolutely smoked this quest, even on nightmare and forgetting to add cards to my hand whenever I resolve the Search keyword. When Mugash and a bunch of orcs showed up at once, I used Hour of Wrath on a suped-up Gwaihir.
I remembered this quest as being quite hard because of the 2 extra encounter cards it can reveal during Phase 1, but it looks like the deck I used wasn’t good enough. With a proper deck and no extra reveals for running out of time, it is actually quite easy.
Ents were what finally pushed me across the finish line. Still lost several times with them, but it helped having a swarm of allies that (mostly) benefit from taking damage. Made the million reveals of Take Cover feel slightly less bad.
Honestly, nightmare might be an improvement on this one; I’m not sure. But I do know that in a quest that can drag on interminably, having something like Mugash’s Cunning actually do some searching for you was a welcome change.
Went at it with Noldor. I had 5 excess willpower my first round, so I thought I’d be safe. No, an Orc Hound surged into Mugash’s Lair, adding 5 threat to the staging area. But, I managed to kill the hound and explore the Lair just fine, and made sure to commit plenty of willpower in all subsequent rounds, so I never ran out of time tokens on any quest. Stressful, not my favorite quest, but it also didn’t make my list of least favorites either. Love how this and Into Ithilien are officially difficulty level 4.
Take Cover! came out when all my characters were ready. Felt so good. Playing Fair and Perilous to take out a Methedras Orc on turn 1 also felt really good.
My first game was bogged down by location-lock (I had all four copies of Methedras out at the same time) and never got off the ground. The second attempt was much more successful, with Haldir using dual Bows of the Galadhrim to snipe across the table and Legolas using Hands Upon the Bow to snipe into the staging area. Once Mugash reared his ugly head (he was about 40% into the capture deck), Legolas helped to take him down and then kept an eye on him while I quested out. The final cool moment was when Galadriel’s ability netted me my first copy of Host of the Galadhrim on the very turn I needed it to quest through stage 3 w/out losing control of Mugash.
Very first time playing this quest, the first card off the top of my set aside deck was Mugash. After that quick scoop, the next game went smoothly with a Dwarf swarm. I didn’t hate the quest as much as many seem to do, but it is certainly flawed and I can imagine it being negative amounts of fun in higher player counts.
Decklists Used
A Radagast + Gwaihir eagle deck (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/53563/gwaihirsdebtrepaidbeyondthewest-1.0) along with Saruman Giftmaker (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/62209/sarumangiftmaker-1.0)
Spi Aragorn ft Gifts of Galadriel – https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/671909
Autumn’s Into the West eagle deck on one hand; Le. Faramir/T. Eowyn/Lore Pippin ents on the other
Noldor
https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/58862/hopefromthelasthomelyhouse-1.0
“Revised Silvan Synergy (#RCO)” – https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/24537/revisedsilvansynergyrco
Progression Dwarves: Dain, Nori, Ori
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: To Catch an Orc 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/ucZc3T3WRT6hFG4e7.
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 Into Fangorn, this is what we have:
Skimming the Forest
Complete the scenario without advancing to Stage 3.
The Forest Closes In
Forced: At the start of the combat phase, each player raises their threat by 1 for each Huorn enemy engaged with them.
