by Alan Smithee
Last time I posted about how I built a Lord of the Rings LCG deck around three randomly drawn Heroes: Boromir, Dunhere, and Dwalin. Over the weekend, I took this deck on its first foray through the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle by playing through The Hunt for Gollum expansion. I won't bore you with the entire turn-by-turn (I've got notes for anyone who's remotely interested, though), but I will post some highlights and thoughts from this eleven-turn(!) game.Setup and Initial Card Draw: Since I drew two sets of duplicates in my inital hand, I took the mulligan. Here's my opening hand:
Blade of Gondolin
Gondorian Spearman
Lorien Guide
Vassal of the Windlord x2
Winged Guardian
My Setup card from the Encounter Deck was Evil Storm, which here had no effect. Unfortunately, it wasn't the last Evil Storm I'd see.
Turn I: I realized later that I made my biggest mistake of the game right away in Turn I: I attached Blade of Gondolin to Dunhere instead of Boromir. I was expecting to use Dunhere's ability to hit enemies in the staging area, but while my threat was low, the enemies never seemed to appear. In the long run, Boromir took out more baddies with his Refresh ability than Dunhere ever did, and the Blade's potential for adding Progress Tokens was limited.
Turn II: During Turn II I drew Bofur. Between him and the Lorien Guide I played this turn, I was able to start laying down a lot (for this deck, anyway) of Progress Tokens on the Locations and Quest Cards during the early turns, including overcoming Gladden Fields on this turn.
Turn III: Here, the first Enemy appeared: Eastern Crows. Boromir's Refresh ability allowed him to participate in the Quest, and take out the Crows. These dumb birds would also plague me throughout the game.
Turn IV: Turn IV revealed the first Signs of Gollum, which was attached to Dwalin after a successful Quest. Lorien Guide got bounced back to my hand by the Shadow effect of Pursued by Shadow, and I never got to play it again.
Turn V: More Signs of Gollum (two, in fact!) and more Crows. At this point, I was seriously worried about an appearance by Hunters from Mordor; with three Signs of Gollum on the table, the Threat alone would kill me. Luckily, they never appeared in the Staging Area.
Turn VI: By this point, I was wanting to get the Quest moving; after five turns, I was still stuck on Stage 1! I probably should have replayed Lorien Guide, but instead I played Escort from Edoras and Ride to Ruin to drop a bunch of Progress Tokens. While this took out the current location (Eaves of Mirkwood), I didn't have enough Willpower to Quest successfully.* Eaves of Mirkwood was revealed, so this whole turn has a wash.
*Something I never caught before: Questing successfully is defined as having more Willpower committed to the Quest than Threat in the Staging Area; Questing unsuccessfully is defined as having more Threat in the Staging Area than Willpower committed to the Quest. When you tie, you're neither "successful" nor "unsuccessful", which is hard for me to wrap my brain around. The reason why I note this is that, on both Turns VI and VII, I tied. I scoured the rulebook and the FAQ trying to figure out what to do with poor Bofur (he remained in play, as I didn't "quest successfully")!
Turn VII: I drew my first Gandalf here. I should have played him right away (I had the 5 resources on my Heroes), but instead I decided to hold him until next turn so I could combo him with another Escort from Edoras in order to carpet-bomb the game with Progress tokens. It might have even worked, if I hadn't revealed Misty Mountain Goblins. When MMG attacked, they stole a Progress Token from the quest. I ended up 1 short on Turn VIII.
Turn IX: A fairly uneventful turn: I got to put a couple of Progress Tokens on the current location, and let Goblintown Scavengers attack undefended to save some of my growing Threat (41 at the end of the turn).
Turn X: Turn X saw the return of Eastern Crows, and my first unsuccessful Quest of the game. I also drew another Gandalf, but didn't have the resources to play him. The interesting thing here was that, due to cards bouncing back into the Encounter Deck, I knew the entire contents of that deck: 2 Signs of Gollum and 1 Eastern Crows.
Turn XI: It's probably best to experience the card reveals as I did:
Reveal Eastern Crows(1)
Surge on EC(1) reveals Signs of Gollum(1)
Guarded on SoG(1) reveals Signs of Gollum(2) *Reshuffle Encounter Deck
Guarded on SoG(1) reveals Eastern Crows(2), which attaches to SoG(1)
Guarded on SoG(2) reveals Gladden Fields, which attaches to SoG(2)
Surge on EC(2) reveals Eastern Crows(3)
Surge on EC(3) reveals Signs of Gollum(3)
Guarded on SoG(3) reveals Evil Storm (again!), which damages Dwalin, killing him.
So, between the Dwarf-killing storm and a literal murder of crows, all my Heroes died this turn, ending the game. I was still on the very first quest card. My final Threat was 42, and that is (perhaps) a good answer to this game.
Final Thoughts:
Lots of mistakes this game -- Hopefully less next game.
I have yet to figure how to make Dwalin useful here. I thought he'd work well with Boromir, but he'd always end up committed to questing, and never fought.
On a related note, Unexpected Courage sucks if you never draw it. :shake:
I love the "Bofur Bounce"!
We'll see if I do any better against the Trolls next weekend. Please post your thoughts, and Thanks!
Dumpy