‘…Nalir stood up from his seat and moved his chair aside
to get at the floorboard it had been sitting on. He lifted the board
and took a rolled parchment from underneath. “Here’s the map I
drew. It shows the way to the hidden chamber in Ost-in-Edhil,”
he spoke with obvious pride. “Lucky to find it, I was. Elves are
right clever about hiding things they don’t want found. Another
Dwarf might’ve walked right over it without ever knowing it was
there. I daresay you’d never find it on your own! But now that
you’ve got Nalir’s map, you don’t have to worry about that…”’— Trouble in Tharbad insert
Cycle: The Ring-maker Cycle Adventure Pack 3
Week 41/42, 2026.
This is where we are once again tasked with fleeing a barfight. This time with the worst traveling companion you can imagine, Nalir!
Trouble in Tharbad’s Stats
- Groups registered: 9
- Total attempts: 17
- Most attempts: 6
- Average attempts per entry: 1.9
- Official difficulty: 4/10
- Community-rated difficulty: 3.9/10
- Total number of wins: 9
- Average win-rate: 74.1%
- Average opinion on the quest: 3.2
Of all the quests played so far in this run of Quest of the Week, Trouble in Tharbad is the mathematically perfect average at 3.2. Neither hated, nor loved.
Achievements
Both achievements for Trouble in Tharbad crunch your threat from either direction.
“Just Ignore Him” makes it a little easier to act as if our unwanted Dwarven companion. Want to use him to defend a minor enemy? That’ll cost the table. Want to heal him after he took a damage to keep him from getting got (in nightmare)? Shame, he’s allergic to Kingsfoil.
Right Behind You works from the other end to squeeze you from the very beginning! Regardless of your starting threat, having only 10 extra threat as wiggle room is a tough ask! Although hard questing can bring your threat down as a function of 1B, there’s plenty in this scenario that can raise back up.
“Just Ignore Him”
Nalir gains: “Immune to player card effects. Forced: When Nalir exhausts, raise each player’s threat by 1.”
Right Behind You
Setup: Reduce each player’s threat elimination level to their starting threat plus 10.
Encounter Card Opinions
The Favorite
One card was a clear favorite for this week: Hidden Alleyway. Feel like time keeps on slipping? Get a round back by traveling here! Have Ghân-buri-Ghân? Do it without raising your threat! They’re practically giving these alleyways away!
The Least-favorite
Both normal and nightmare had their respective winners for least-favorite. In normal, the award goes to Spy from Mordor! While he’s a tempting target when you need to fetch an enemy, he can bring you to a swift defeat if you’re not able to knock him out in staging, before he attacks, or in the same round you’d engaged him.
In nightmare the least-favorite was Blood Hound!
This four-legged devil can ruin a game in the blink of an eye. I scooped more than once to his surprise. Not only is he always going to engage you, unlike Durin’s Bane, he also raises your threat just for doing so. His shadow effect adds salt to the wound by extorting your threat! This dog deserves a spot in the victory display.
Things worth sharing from the games
First time playing this quest. Really was not much of a challenge to the Dain-boosted Dwarf army. I was able to spit out a bunch of allies quickly and churn through my deck between Zigil Miners, King Under the Mountain, and Legacy of Durin, so I got set up early. Felt weird to not trigger Nori’s response. I did reveal the treachery that made me raise my threat by 15, but thankfully was well below my elimination level. Enjoyable quest, wasn’t overly hard but was a nice change of pace after The Dunland Trap and The Three Trials.
My first loss with the Twins deck was a result of location lock as I couldn’t clear The Empty Mug early and this deck is a bit slow on willpower. The second game, I found some Ethir Swordsmen, Ally Arwen, and Sneak Attack + Gandalf to help with a few rounds of burst questing to lower my threat. This also let me build resources on the Twins, so combat was easy.
After 10 rounds in Nightmare I finally got my threat low enough to move past stage 1, cancelling as many of the effects that remove time counters as possible. I was able to put Bloodhound (nightmare enemy with 0 threat) and Spy From Mordor into the victory display and discard them every time they came back out using The Door is Closed! many times.
Overall an interesting quest, but even in Nightmare it takes a while and you constantly feel the whipsaw effect of your threat, especially after Conspicuous Lot surges into Waylaid by Agents!
This quest kind of kicked my butt in Nightmare until I actually sat down to deckbuild specifically for it. My solution was to never engage an enemy if I could help it (fuck the Blood Hound)–I had certain cards in my decks like Lore Pippin to keep enemies from engaging me, even when they all have -30 engagement while Bellach is in play. Then i would kill them from staging with Dunhere and Haldir. Then it was just cramming in as much cheap willpower as possible.
Pretty standard Vilya deck: Tower of Elrond with Light of Valinor, Unexpected Courages, and Vilya, where I managed to get almost my entire fleet of Eagle allies into play. Took a few turns to get fully set up, and was actually a bit close to losing when my elimination level was 40, but then was able to start questing for 10+ progress a turn. Didn’t even need to revive Beorn with Landroval this time! Fun quest, I like the use of the time mechanic in this one.
My first game I lost by exactly hitting my that elimination level around turn 4. The next game I was able to rank my willpower much quicker to avoid threating out. Giant Bears helped tank Bellach’s extra attacks.
There wasn’t a lot that really happened, but the quest seems to have potential. There is some danger, with Get that Dwarf potentially ending your game, but it’s pretty easy to quest faster than the time counters require you to. I don’t really know why, but I still enjoyed it. I should try nightmare mode and see how that does.
Decklists Used
BOF Eagle deck
Progression Dwarves: Dain, Nori, Ori (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/699061)
Progression Twins: Elladan, Elrohir, Glorfindel (https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/699536)
Merry/Dunhere/Frodo (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/14239/thelineunbroken-nmtroubleintharbaddeck1-1.0)
Rossiel/Pippin/Mirlonde (https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/14240/thelineunbroken-nmtroubleintharbaddeck2-1.0)
Idraen’s Walking Song: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/698714 and a three siblings deck: https://ringsdb.com/deck/view/698921
A fellowship designed around killing enemies in the staging area: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/24976
https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/62554/theriddermarksfinestfinesthour-1.0
Noldor https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/68414/nulled-orenull-door-1.0
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 Nîn-in-Eilph using the form here: https://forms.gle/LCYHCoaDLmhNMoUAA.
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.
And for achievements for The Nîn-in-Eilph, this is what we have:
“Just Ignore Him”
Nalir gains: “Immune to player card effects. Forced: When Nalir exhausts, raise each player’s threat by 1.”
Right Behind You
Setup: Reduce each player’s threat elimination level to their starting threat plus 10.
