Quest 51: Temple of the Deceived

Victory on the Second Attempt!

Talk about "semi-chronological," eh? Skipping from quest 34 to 51!

I, and I trust I do not stand alone in this, have been itching to get my hands on Temple of the Deceived since it was first announced. That is a very rare occurrence for me. There are other quests that have grabbed my interest but it is usually the player cards I am chomping at the bit for. Temple had such a unique, board-game like feel to it that I wanted to stop my blog in its tracks and take a crack at this one.

The Deck

There's a level of satisfaction in using cards that come with a quest to tackle that quest. Rohan horses is an archetype I have been playing around with a bit this year, so hero Elfhelm made me justifiably excited to return to that archetype. Adding in Tactics and Spirit gives quite a few horse to choose from, with the Charge of the Rohirrm and Westfold Horse-breeder being natural accompaniments. I wrestled with how many Rohan-centric cards to add in and went with Astonishing Speed, since a massive and dramatic questing phase would be needed to wrap up the quest. Oh, it's worth noting that this draft of the deck was made after my first play-through. The initial deck was brimming with cheap Rohan allies and cheap allies are not favored in this quest (there are still a few in the below decklist, though).


I considered using the new dwarf, Ered Luin Minder, as he fulfills the needs of 3-cost allies (this scenario punishes you for allies costing 2 and under), multi-sphere resource management woes, and a chance of combing with A Very Good Tale. In the end I went with an (almost) pure Rohan course, with the exception of Beorn for fun.

Pretty basic goal with this deck: Get a horse on everyone, load up Eowyn with resources, and pump out allies. Chumping with allies will allow Eomer (equipped with a mount) to take out any enemy that pops up. Save at least one Astonishing Speed for an astonishing last round.

You Get A Horse

Heroes
Elfhelm (Temple of the Deceived)
Eomer
Eowyn (Core)

Allies
Cerol x2
Eothain x2
Beorn (Core) x1
Deorwine x2
Westfold Outrider x3
Eomud x2
Gamling x2
Hama (The Treason of Saruman) x2
Westfold Horse-breeder x3


Attachments
Amored Destrier x2
Steward of Gondor x3
Rohan Warhorse x3
Snowmane x1
Steed of the Mark x2

Events
A Very Good Tale x3
Captain's Wisdom x2
Charge of the Rohirrim x3
A Test of Will x3
Astonishing Speed x2
Elven-Light x3
A Good Harvest x3

Sets Used
Core
Conflict at the Carrock
Return to Mirkwood
Over Hill and Under Hill
The Steward's Fear
The Morgul Vale
The Voice of Isengard
Celebrimbor's Secret
The Treason of Saruman
The Land of Shadow
The Dread Realm
The Thing in the Depths
Temple of the Deceived

RingsDB Link

The deck actually miss-fired. Steward of Gondor did not show up until the final round. A Very Good Tale and Elven-Light never made an appearance. Yet the deck more than held its own, which probably speaks more to the strength of Eowyn and Eomer than anything else. Elfhelm's contribution was welcome, and it was fun to use him, but I likely would have done just as well with Spirit Theoden.


The Recap

For my first attempt against Temple of the Deceived I messed up at the set-up. Being told to use the Ruins of Numenor encounter set from The Grey Havens, I picked out all the Lost Island cards that had the Ruins of Numenor expansion symbol. The problem? Just take a look at the Lost Island cards that come with Temple of the Deceived. What do you see on their Lost Island side? The Ruins of Numenor expansion symbol. They all have it! Their actual expansion symbol is on the back of the card. Told to set up all 15 Lost Island cards, I simply dealt out the appropriate number and chalked it up the extra four cards to intended randomization and set them aside. Fortunately one copy of Cursed Island was a part of the map I built (the other one was set aside). After beating the quest, I asked around on the appropriate subreddit and was shown the error of my ways. Now removing any The Fate of Numenor cards (goodbye Shrine to Morgoth!), I reset the map and began anew...

For my second attempt, the encounter deck kind of handed me a victory. I flipped to reveal a Jungle Path Jagged Cliffs* in the upper left and a Cursed Temple in the lower right during the opening set-up. Starting at the Jungle Path (a great location to start at), I discovered a Winding Caverns bridging the two locations. Taking my time and building my forces, I went down to the Cursed Temple, dispatched the Temple Guardian (I had two ways to chose from by that time, allowing me to keep one in reserve for future use), made my way back to the Winding Caverns and jumped three spaces over to a Drowned Graves. With two Rohan Warhorses on Eomer and a few allies to expend chump blocking, three undead foes were easily removed. Using the Gate Key I found that the adjacent Temple of the Deceived card was The Grotto's Entrance. Ran over, took a chump block from the Temple Guardian, and quested like crazy (thank you Astonishing Speed) for a victory.

I usually pay little attention to the difficulty level, but this seemed far easier than I felt it would be. Seeing the "DL = 4" made sense: The quest is not a total breeze but you will not be wracking your brain on how to beat it. On future attempts I actually intend up the challenge by mirroring my erroneous setup: Placing one Cursed Temple in the card pool and one to the side, I will randomly deal out the appropriate number of Lost Island cards with The Fate of Numenor included. I will also place a stipulation on myself that the heroes cannot win if the Temple Guardian is still in play. Does this massively increase the difficulty? No, but it will have an impact. Honestly, I got pretty lucky and even reshuffling the encounter deck might give me all the difficulty I need. Temple of the Deceived is decent as a 4 but I would love it even more as a 5 or 6.

*Note: I actually had a Jungle Path in the upper left and miss-read what "not considered to be in the staging area" implied in terms of travel. Figured a re-do was needed, but checked the cards and Jagged Cliffs would have played out exactly as reported. We'll fudge that for now. But this does show that simply re-shuffling the island may give the added complexity I want.

Final Scoring
9 Completed Rounds x10: 90
Ending Threat: 41
Total Damage on Heroes: 4 (Elfhelm 4, Eowyn 4)
Threat of Defeated Heroes: 0
Victory Display:0
Total Score: 135