Quest 26: The Blood of Gondor

Victory on the fifth attempt!

The Deck


Deck repeat!

After defeating The Fords of Isen, it struck me that there were a lot of tactical similarities to The Blood of Gondor: fight multiple, strong enemies while making significant questing progress. To experiment, I used Of Elves and Chumps (my Isen deck of choice) and came away with another slow and steady victory. I prefer to change my decks up between quests, but I'll happily take the victory!



The Journey

Well, this was not fun. In trying to undo a paragraph for this write-up, somehow Blogspot glitched and replaced the text of my The Blood of Gondor draft with the text of my Fords of Isen write-up (which I had been working on just before) and I could not figure out how to get it back. So the entire log of my journey was lost!

My first attempt was a co-op one with my wife and we got slaughtered. The highlight for her was fighting off two enemies that ended up receiving 14 shadow effects between them, due to card after card calling for additional shadows to be dealt. It was a brave fight!

The fifth attempt (a solo one, as were attempts 2-4) was not filled with as many thrilling moments. Just like Fords of Isen, this was a relatively easy slow and steady victory during the midst of round 7. I played fairly cautiously (never having a hero defend against Orc Rabble) and it paid off.


The Recap

The Blood of Gondor gets a spot among Favorite Quests where The Fords of Isen did not (for now, at least, in terms of Isen's exclusion). Why? As I mentioned above, there are a lot of tactical similarities in the quests, so both should either be loved or not. The thematics of the enemies is probably an issue. It might be just as subjective phase I'm going through, but I felt the Orcs and Uruks were justifiable in their scaling here. The Black Numenorian was a pretty powerful guy, but he is one big master villan and I can buy into that.

And I like the hidden card mechanic. It added even more choices of consequence into each round (how do I use Farimir most effectively? Is it better to take another card during the combat phase or reveal the one I have?). Variety in decision making appeals to me greatly.

So Gondorian blood will flow again and I shall return!