QOTW Recap: The Dunland Trap

‘I thought Fangorn was dangerous.’

‘Dangerous!’ cried Gandalf. ‘And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord. And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Glóin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly the forest of Fangorn is perilous — not least to those that are too ready with their axes; and Fangorn himself, he is perilous too; yet he is wise and kindly nonetheless.’

— The Voice of Isengard Deluxe insert

Cycle: The Ring-maker Cycle Adventure Pack 1

Week 37/38, 2026.

Queue a crossover event with Admiral Akbar, this quest put us all in a bind! With our backs to the wall a group of Dunlendings make their attacks like bashing fish in a barrel. Many players came prepared!

The Dunland Trap’s Stats

Groups registered: 8
Total attempts: 21
Most attempts: 5
Average attempts per entry: 2.6
Official difficulty: 7/10
Community-rated difficulty: 7.5/10

Total number of wins: 10
Average win-rate: 57.7%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.4

In a wild swing from Into Fangorn, despite the massive spike in difficulty, The Dunland Trap receives much higher marks! Better than average for this Quest of the Week series, only beaten so far by Stone of Erech and The Fords of Isen.

Like last week, most people have played this quest but it’s much more well-liked than Into Fangorn.

Achievements

For anyone who thought that traps were a long-term solution to the surprise in this quest or were relying on Unexpected Courage for easy combat, the first achievement “You’ve Deactivated My Trap Card!” will pump the brakes a bit.

Stealing From the Poor can be a simple achievement for those who built decks with attachments such as Lembas, Cram, or the aforementioned Unexpected Courage, or are playing a pseudo-Three Hunters deck.

“You’ve Deactivated My Trap Card!”

Stage 2A gains: “Discard all Trap and Condition attachments.”

Stealing From the Poor

When resolving stage 2A’s When Revealed effect, each player discards no Item and Mount attachments, and has no more than 1 ally in play.

Encounter Card Opinions

The Favorite

One card was a clear winner for The Dunland Trap: Plains of Enedwaith.

With art like that, what’s not to like?! In a cycle full of so much draw- and hand-hate, Plains of Enedwaith gives you a comfortable out for at least a turn, or as long as Legolas can keep his bow loose. As noted by some

It’s not present in NM, but Plains of Enedwaith – it’s nice to have the option not to draw cards in this scenario.

…interesting to align it with the Time triggers from Stage 1

Clever! This is also a decent card to try to quest over considering it gives an enemy +1 attack as a shadow, and 3 if you’re more than likely taking an undefended attack.

The Least-favorite

Like the rest of this cycle, an oft-revealed card is the least favorite across more than one language: In Need of Rest.

As for cards that are specific to The Dunland Trap, Dunlending Ambush, Boar Clan Stalker, and Boar Clan Warrior all got mentions.

Things worth sharing from the games

Hardest part is seing Gandalf’s Staff on top of your deck first round and don’t playing it becuase you are going for the achievement^^
I wanted to stall first quest as long as possible ; in order to do it side quest are a great help. They get the Surge treachries that attach on the quest, they enable another charater to be kept after 2 quest (hero thalion).
This quest is also good with a council deck, because it’s way easier to see all your deckWith Elf-friend and Elvenkind, i made a Galadrim Weaver bounce a Word of Command back once my deck was empty, so when thrid quest went online i could start extermely fast.

Surge train with 1x Off Track and 2x Wild Men of Dunland dit almost no effect as the Wild Men went onto a side quest that was cleared during that quest phase. Take that, encounter deck!

Boomed and Trumpeted carried me through stage 3. I also purposefully didn’t clear Plains of Enedwaith to avoid extra attacks and shadow cards.

I relly loved to play a deck without ally and attachment! really cool and fun to play!

I don’t hate this quest, but it’s swingier than I remember. In my loss, I pulled In Need of Rest early and couldn’t find condition removal, plus multiple copies of Hills of Dunland meant the board flooded with enemies before I could clear them out. In my W, I never saw In Need of Rest and while Hills of Dunland was in play, it whiffed pretty regularly and by the end of the game was just helping me remove time counters.

After scooping four times, the quest gave and took away by spitting out multiple copies of Hills of Dunland, but having them whiff 90% of the time (especially nice when two copies were in staging at the same time). An early Gather Information and some well-timed draws helped (Feint, Hands Upon the Bow, Elrohir). A Revealed in Wrath also allowed me to ignore a Boar Clan Stalker during a crucial round.

Took my trusty Noldor deck against this one. Cirdan was able to keep Steward of Gondor, Narya, and Light of Valinor, while Arwen kept To the Sea, To the Sea! when the trap was sprung, and I also decided to keep a Guardian of Rivendell around. I thought I’d be able to replay Glorfindel, I wasn’t ready to shuffle my discard into my deck! I would’ve played an Elven-Light beforehand so it was in my hand had I known exactly what would happen. Later, I used The Evening Star to explore both Munuv Duv Ravine and Plains of Enedwaith in the Planning Phase, then revealed Dunlending Ambush and Off Track, right when there were no locations to attach to. Lucky me! Weathered the attacks, had Elrond discard In Need of Rest a couple of times.

Putting Boar Clan Stalkers back on top of the encounter deck or having them available as a target when you have to fetch a Dunland enemy made this quest much more manageable. Nightmare makes it a little less swingy but no less difficult.

Decklists Used

https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/259864

BOF side quest deck – https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/689574

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/67148/rousingtheents-2.0

A no ally, no attachment one! https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/68225/noallynostuffnopainqotdthedunlandtrap-1.0

Autumn’s Into the West eagle deck for one hand, and a Gildor/Balin/Grimbeorn signal-heavy deck for the other

“Date Night Dragon Hunt” (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/433032) & “Aragorn, Arwen & the Twins” (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/680136)

Noldor

Celeborn/Dori/TLegolas (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/13864)
Eowyn/Erestor/Rossiel (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/13865)

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 Three Trials on the LOTR Quest Companion

For the next quest in the cycle, you can submit your playthrough of The Three Trials using the form here: https://forms.gle/2iihQ9tSmztKEWjJ7.

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

As a special note: if you’re going to be at the Con of the Rings this October, come find me and get your run in of The Three Trials for Quest of the Week!

And for achievements for The Three Trials, this is what we have: