An LotR:LCG Saga: The Hobbit – We Must Away, Ere Break of Day

ETA: I played things wrong; my threat being that high meant that all three trolls should have engaged. Been playing the game wrong all this time! Better rewind and replay a bunch of stuff.

I’m using this deck and blew through the first quest with the ease I associate with Passage Through Mirkwood, even though the quest is a lot harder than Mirkwood—and getting the best result, where you win Orcrist, Foe-Hammer, and Sting, is far more difficult and something I didn’t achieve.

Mind you, even with this deck, there are a couple of things to keep in mind with the quest, namely:

1. Build up resources on Bilbo Baggins, you’ll need them to (a) unsack characters when the trolls come out, and (b) to claim objective cards that let you have access to the Troll Cave (Troll Key, optionally Troll Purse).

2. Quest slowly through the first phase. You want to build up allies, get a Troll Camp in the staging area (otherwise Bilbo can’t unsack people), and build up resources on Bilbo. It’s ok to fail at questing in this case, though you might want to keep an eye on your threat as well.

3. Read through the Sack cards (there are only seven) and determine what conditions would cause a character to get sacked. Then, try your best to make sure that you’re not in a position where your best characters and/or heroes are sacked. For instance, don’t dress up the Erebor Battle Master with more attachments than other characters.

4. When engaged with trolls or about to be engaged with trolls, do not exhaust Bilbo for any reason other than unsacking characters after the combat phase has resolved. You don’t want an exhausted Bilbo to get sacked, then even he can’t unsack himself. Note: this concern goes away with Fast Hitch, though this deck doesn’t have it. Improvement time?

5. The encounter deck for this quest is made up primarily of treachery cards and locations. This makes it easy to quest too quickly if you’re not careful, which will result in pain when the three big hairy trolls come out.

For more about this quest, see this FFG forum thread.

Erebor Battle Master reminds me of Eowyn, except on the combat rather than questing side. Their abilities aren’t exactly parallel; but their utility in certain kinds of quests are.

An amusing thing about the trolls: I ended up engaging them from hardest to easiest instead of the other way around due to the amount of threat I got, but with Erebor Battle Master, Khazad! Khazad!, Goblin-Cleaver, and Dwarrowdelf Axes I was able to one-shot each troll. I ended up not using my Feint for the last and littlist one.

This is one of the few times I’ve played a single-deck solo, rather than working two decks. I don’t mind using other people’s decks, as it does teach me about the synergy between cards and the various strategies and play styles available.

Scoring:

Final Threat 44
Threat Cost of Each Dead Hero 0
Damage Tokens on Heroes 4 (all on Gimli)
Turns taken x 10 70
Minus Victory Points -12 (all three Trolls)
Total 106

In other news, getting a binder and Ultra Pro pages to store my cards has been rather a success. I have the following sections:

– Heroes
– Spirit
– Lore
– Tactics
– Leadership

Each major set or cycle is ordered by character, then enchantment, then event cards. I do no other sorting. Three cards store easily to one slot, so no need to worry about duplicates taking up extra pockets. I can flip through pages easily and gaze at nine cards at a time, which covers ground very quickly, especially if I know what major set or cycle a card is part of (made easier thanks to Card Game DB).

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