Quest 8: The Dead Marshes

Victory on the first attempt

The Deck

I made my first attempt at this deck with only a vague recollection of the quest. I knew you had to quest, then make an escape check using your willpower again (while still defending an attacking as usual). With that in mind, I pulled a list of every Leadership and Spirit card that can help general characters ready (by that I mean not Dwarf-only cards or cards that are only useful in mono-sphere decks), then trimmed and adjusted to come up with...

Ready, Set, Go

Heroes
Aragorn (Core)
Sam Gamgee
Eowyn

Allies
Westfold Horse-Breaker x3
Gandalf (OHaUH) x3
Naith Guide x3
Envoy of Pelargir x3
Faramir x2
Eitheir Swordsman x3
Warrior of Lossarnach x3

Attachments
Cram x3
Miruvor x2
Unexpected Courage x2
Dunedain Quest x3
Stewards of Gondor x2
Ancient Mathom x3

Events
Ever Vigilant x3
Strength of Will x3
A Test of Will x3
Hasty Stroke x3
The White Council x3

Sets Used
Core
The Hunt for Gollum
A Journey to Rhosgobel
Shadow and Flame
Over Hill and Under Hill
Heirs of Numenor
The Steward's Fear
The Black Riders
The Dunland Trap

The biggest conflict I had in designing this deck was a three way tie between Hasty Stroke, A Late Adventurer, and Strength of Will. One of them was going to be cut and, not firmly remembering the quest, I could not recall which would be the most useful. I figured there might be some shadow effects that would effect some fundamental aspect of the quest, so Hasty Stroke was in. Realizing the final choice was between needing to exhaust another character (A Late Adventurer) or take advantage of a character still exhausted after the escape test had been made (Strength of Will) made the cut easier.

The Journey

I've been playing all the quests up to this point in the challenge using the physical cards, but I've actually logged a lot of time using OCTGN's online implementation of the game in the past. Since the last four quests worth of decks have yet to be disassembled and re-sorted, this seemed like a good opportunity to use the program again. And then I revealed A Knife in the Back...

Attempt #0: First attempt was an incomplete game (thus "Attempt #0"). Disconnected from the OCTGN server during the planning phase of Round 2. Shame. Despite facing a hill troll and having already failed two escape tests in Round 1 (due to The Lights of the Dead), I was still doing pretty decent with eight progress on stage 1B.

Attempt #1: The completed first attempt was much easier. Got a few blocking locations early on (The East Bight and The Heart of the Marshes). No huge enemies. Instead of the Hill Troll right off the bat, I had a Goblin Sniper come up in Round 3 (and I took his damage undefended, knowing I was likely going to end the game the next round). Out of the four escape tests I made, two of them had no escape value. My game-ending escape check, after questing through stage 2B, had me revealing four cards only to have a total escape value of 2 (vs. my 14). Nothing to write home about here. Sorry, all.

Final Scoring
4 completed rounds x10: 40
Final threat: 34
Damage on heroes: 3
Threat cost of defeated hero: 0
Victory points: 0
Total: 77

The Recap

This is only the second time I remember playing this quest. My wife and I beat it pretty handily our first time out and never returned to it. Maybe we had one failed "tester" round, but I can't quite recall and I just remember it being a breeze back then (with the limited cardpool available). As nasty as some of the treacheries are (causing you to quest, hold an escape check with a twist, then do you regular escape check), there was not a moment of "This is going out of hand!" this time around. Or even a moment really close to that. For my final round, I did have to consider if I had enough willpower to beat a 4 card escape check. Potentially, you can get in the range of 16-20 with that and I could only must 14 willpower (being able to ready every character I committed to the quest through the effects of four different cards).

The trick is that this quest seems handily beatable (for me) with the type of deck I designed, yet I could see just a few tweaks making it near impossible (like a treachery that prevents all exhausted characters from readying that round). I'll have to read up on how others are fairing with the Nightmare version.