Whew. Ouch. Difficulty: 4, the scale seems to go up to 10. I’m going to need better-tuned decks to survive harder quests. I did manage to beat every victory card in the deck. The Hill Trolls are definitely not fair.

Final score: 221, compared to 111 for the difficulty 1 quest.

Thoughts:

1. Power in the Earth is not a terribly useful card; should replace it with another Gandalf and Dwarven Tomb.

2. Always have at least one ally involved in a quest if you can, because The Necromancer’s Reach is devastating otherwise, especially if Eleanor is exhausted without an Unexpected Courage. This is hard for the Tactics sphere, which works by killing things.

3. Goblin Sniper is very annoying; Descendant of Throndor is almost necessary, especially combined with Born Aloft.

4. Eagle decks are the new angel decks. Concentrating on Eagles and creature cards is a nice way to get the most out of a Tactics deck.

5. Man, these games are brain twisters. In an enjoyable way, of course. I made a couple of mistakes that jeopardized the quest, and were it harder I probably wouldn’t have made it.

6. Faramir and Eowyn make a nice couple on the power questing side. Of course.

7. It’s hard for me to build a deck with high-threat heroes that works well. Lower threat helps a lot and gives you time to prepare. Of course, the alternative is to build a Tactics/etc deck with higher threat, bigger heroes, while keeping a Spirit/etc deck low in threat. I may try this… Boromir’s self-destruct damage-dealer may be useful on some of the harder quests.

Should I try the next quest in the series? Ah, like Sailor Moon, I’m a bit of a crybaby. o.o But it would be worth it for the experience alone.