Victory on the Seventh Attempt!
The Deck
Having picked up Flame of the West the week before my first attempt at The Antlered Crown, I tried my first attempt at a Tactics Eowyn / Spirit Beregond / Tactics Merry deck. No bueno. At least not the way I built it that time around (I have ideas for making that a stronger deck in the future). Location lock and floods of enemies were things during two attempts so I changed tactics (for Lore) and went in the direction of a Noldor/Dunedain willpower & action advantage route heavily supported by Tale of Tinuviel. Once again, a solid concept (I think) that just wasn't clicking right for me. One thing is that my allies were not full Noldor & Dunedain. In fact, I had some key Rohan support in there that I was reluctant to cut. Why not make that cheaper, helping to empty my hand, and use the Tale's spot to further support our Rohan friends? Putting Gamling to good use was on my back burner and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Santa's Antlers
Heroes
Theoden (The Treason of Saruman)
Arwen Undomiel (The Dread Realm)
Elrond (Shadow and Flame)
Allies
Gamling x2
Escort from Edoras x3
The Riddermark's Finest x3
Westfold Horse-breeder x3
Gleowine x1
Miner of the Iron Hills x1
Warden of Healing x3
Derndingle Warrior x3
Ceorl x1
Attachments
Herugrim x1
Light of Valinor x1
Snowmane x1
Steed of Imladris x1
Unexpected Courage x3
Asfaloth x1
Events
Dwarven Tomb x3
Elronds Counsel x3
Elven-light x3
Fair and Perilous x3
Helm! Helm! x2
Power of Orthanc x1
Ride to Ruin x2
Stand and Fight x2
The Evening Star x3
Sets Used
Core Set
A Journey to Rhosgobel
The Hills of Emyn Muil
The Watcher in the Water
The Long Dark
Foundations of Stone
Shadow nd Flame
The Voice of Isengard
The Treason of Saruman
Escape from Mount Gram
Across the Ettenmoors
The Land of Shadow
The Dread Realm
The Grey Havens
Temple of the Deceived
RingsDB Link
The Recap
So, there is a question mark up there next to the victory. What is up with that?
The deck performed well. The quest was hard but under control. Finally, the end was in sight! I was engaged with a Dunland Prowler, a Raven Warrior, and the Raven Chief. The Raven Chief had six damage sitting pretty on him. With a copy of Fair and Perilous in my hands and an Unexpected Courage on Theoden, I needed to survive one round of enemy attacks and I could swing for well more than I needed. A Derndingle Warrior, with boosted defense, takes on the Raven Chief. Shadow card? No effect. Theoden takes on the Raven Warrior. Shadow card? No effect, but Theoden still takes on two damage. Finally Chief Turch, with three damage on him, faces down a two attack Dunland Prowler. Shadow card? Raven Skirmisher. Shadow text: "Attacking enemy gets +X Attack, where X is the Time X value on the active location." What's the active location? Raven War-camp, with a Time X value of 3. Chief Turch dies. Game over.
I like playing Halo on the Legendary setting. You come up against skirmish after skirmish where multiple, sometime an agonizing number, of attempts are needed before you can move on (if your goal is to take all the enemies out instead of running past them in a mix of bravery and terror). And what happens when you fail all of those initial attempts? Back to the previous checkpoint with you! Sometimes that checkpoint is a ways back, but it is always a reasonable distance and you do not have to let one skirmish cause you to replay the entire level. Lord of the Rings: the Card Game is not like that and those moments are the frustrating ones. You can get a handle on the initial and even middle part of the quests, then one false steps or twist of fate sends you right back to the start. This was a major problem I had with The Dunland Trap, the first quest in this cycle, where there was a brutal transition point near the end that wiped away much of your earlier progress in amassing forces.
So I decided to give myself the win. This shadow could have easily belonged to the Raven Chief and brought about the end of the Derndingle Warrior. Chief Turch's attack was not even needed! Elrond w/Fair and Perilous + Theoden had this under control. And I realized I had already given myself quite a handicap in this quest (and in this cycle).
The First Handicap: The Death of Arwen. As the final round began, I looked up to the quest stage and realized I forgot to take off the final time counter at the end of the last round. That means the Raven Chief should have attacked again! I was pretty sure I had enough of a board presence to take that into account, but I could not remember exactly what I had in place during the previous combat round and how it would have played out (a downside of eliminating the detailed notes in my write-ups!). My threat was low enough to soak up the threat of not questing the final round (I hoped) and Arwen was not needed to take out the Raven Chief, so I decided to let her go.
The Second Handicap: Time X Locations. Early on in this final attempt I was dealt the treachery Raising the Cry, which has the text: "Remove 1 time counter from each location in play. Place X time counters on each location in play with no time counters on it. X is the "Time X" value on that location. If there are not locations in the staging area, Raising the Cry gains surge." I looked at it with puzzlement. When is a location ever going to have zero time counters? Does that mean a location will have twice as many time counters? That doesn't sound like a punishment, nor does it fit the title of the card. That would be more like "Delaying the Cry." Then it hits me. I run to grab my Voice of Isengard rulebook and the truth is revealed: I have been playing Time X on locations incorrectly this entire cycle. Taking cues from the quest cards, which typically have you re-ad time counters when you reach zero, I had been placing fresh time counters on my locations after they were all removed. No wonder I found Time X a crazy, overly-punishing mechanic! No wonder so many of these quests were missing an element of fun for me! I'll have to make a back-burner note in my mind to take another crack at this cycle in the future and see if some of the quests shine a little more for me.
What did I think of the quest itself? It was actually pretty decent. Not one that struck a "How many cool decks can I test against this?" sort of note, but it was a thematic and appropriately difficult final quest for the cycle. There are some very punishing and nightmarish scenarios that can pop up, with your board getting flooded by enemies out of nowhere, but once again that is a thematic note and goes with the assigned difficulty level of 7. I will go back and attempt it again some day, especially now that I understand what Time X locations really mean...
Edit: Returned with Santa's Antlers and got a good lead the third time around with a Derndingle Warrior and Warden of Healing down early. Kept Theoden up most of time and he plus Chief Turch took care of most enemies (with a Riddermark's Finest helping on occasion). I had actually switched out Helm! Helm! x2 and Ride to Ruin x1 with three copies of Hasty Stroke, since shadow effects were making blocking with Chief Turch too risky, but I never had to use one.
(Updated) Final Scoring
8 Completed Rounds x10: 80
Ending Threat: 43
Total Damage on Heroes: 0
Threat of Defeated Heroes: 0
Victory Display: -7 (Raven Chief's Camp, Raven Chief)
Total Score: 116
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