Quest 49: Flight of the Stormcaller

Victory on the Second Attempt!

The Deck

After taking a break for a little over a month, my return via Flight of the Stormcaller started off rough last night. The netdeck I was trying out was based around a combo that never showed. Then the encounter deck decided to throw out just about every stop possible. I had all three copies of Sahir's Escort in play by the time I advanced to stage 3 and I was fully off course. Not an enjoyable experience.

While I do want to stretch my deck-building muscles again soon, my highest priority was getting my excitement for the game started. A.C.E. was such a fun deck for me during The Grey Havens box that I decided to make a few minor tweeks (switching out Song of Wisdom for a second copy of Elrond's Council) and give it another run.



The Journey

With Gandalf in my starting hand, the start was explosive. I prioritized staying on course, then blew past the first stage. I decided to go off-course during Round 2 when Sudden Storms arose, but committed four characters + the Dream-chaser turned up three positive results for the sailing test and got me back to calm seas.

The Stormcaller just crawled along the whole time. During both Round 1 & 2, the discarded encounter card was a treachery. A far different play than attempt #1!

Final Scoring
2 Completed Rounds x10: 20
Ending Threat: 29
Total Damage on Heroes: 3 (Arwen: 1, Cirdan: 1, Erestor: 1)
Threat of Defeated Heroes: 0
Victory Display:0
Total Score: 62



The Recap

Flight of the Stormcaller really helps show me how much a certain play experience can color my overall opinion of a quest. After attempt #1, I felt this quest had too many moving parts and was frustrating to crack. After attempt #2, I felt it was an enjoyable challenge for a quest-heavy deck with an optional path to try a deck that can quest well and fight very well (a path I would not mine exploring one day in the future).

This quest hit a lot of points for me: Strong theme overall and in key card,s (Jagged Reef is amazing), different victory paths the player can choose, and a moderate level of difficulty. I'm not going to mark this one down as a favorite yet, mainly due to the trauma of last night's attempt, but look forward to making more of a martial attempt in the future as well as seeing if my questing-focused decks can get the job done faster than the Stormcaller.