Print on Demand 5: Fog on the Barrow-downs

Victory on the Third Attempt!

The Recap

After a peaceful round in the house of Tom Bombadil, Fog on the Barrow-downs has your heroes travel within sight of the Hollow Circle. This piece, despite being set in broad daylight, gives off a sinister feel and seems like something out of a colorized Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Maybe it's the muted tones. Maybe it's the birds for scale.

So there are thematic hits in the fifth Print-on-Demand* pack, but there are also slight misses when it comes to the wights themselves. I say "slight," because it does not feel thematic to be facing powerful wights right off the bat but we do not know what Sam, Merry, and Pippin faced when it came to the wights. Were they attacked directly? Were they lulled to sleep and then entombed? We meet them in the story after the fact and the only bit of wight we see is an arm. So as a direct relation of the novel there is a miss, but as a plausible "what if" there is no thematic issue. And I'm unsure about the strength of the wights, who are powerful and feared but basically keep to themselves. Enemy power vs. hero power is an issue that often comes up for me. Strong enemies do force players to put a lot of thought behind their deck and their decisions, which is a plus. 

*Note: I did not title this Fellowship 2014 simply because I was not able to attend that event. Thus this is either A) A passive sign of protest and resentment or B) The result of the fact that I simply have nothing to say about the event itself. 

Now a note on strategy. My second attempt was pretty close to a victory but repeated visits to Stage 4 stalled me out and allowed the high number of threat-increasing effects in this quest to do me in. While your deck may not be able to deal with revealing a Great Barrow during the quest stage, you can hold off the start of that chain by avoiding travel to the Standing Stones until you have 16 quest points on stage 3. This will greatly increase you chances of only 1-2 trips to stage 4.

Fog on the Barrow-downs is tough. This is to be expected for a Fellowship quest. Community gatherings such as GenCon and Fellowship events are going to attract a higher concentration of established players and those players are likely going to bring strong decks. This is not a pack to pick up if you are a casual player looking for a quest to try out a quirky deck idea. If you are looking for strong, but not crushing, challenge then you are looking in the right place.

Final Scoring
9 Completed Rounds x10: 90
Ending Threat:44
Total Damage on Heroes: 0
Threat of Defeated Heroes: 0
Victory Display: -12
Total Score: 122

Campaign Resolution
Boon: Ho! Tom Bombadil! (added to hand)

Previous Campaign Resolutions
Boon: Mr. Underhill attached to Frodo Baggins
Boon: Old Bogey-stories (added to hand)
Burden: Gandalf's Delay added to staging area


The Deck

Sometimes I'm happy with my deckbuilding skills and other times not so much. Part of the blame is not taking the time to dive into the wider community. People have been brewing up powerful decks for LotR since the game's inception and there are some fun interactions and combos I have been missing out on. Fog on the Barrow-downs seemed like a good starting point for exploring a few highly-rated decks.

The goal this time around was to stick with my campaign heroes of Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Looking at the RingsDB Hall of Fame, the second option on the list met what I was looking for: Sting Like a Bee by Tales from the Cards. At its heart, this deck is a pretty straightforward Black Riders hobbit build. The path taken here is to get out large allies ASAP while keeping a low threat. My only additions were my campaign boons & burden, along with Frodo Baggins (Land of Shadow).

In hindsight, this is a great deck but not the right one for this quest. Fog on the Barrow-downs is not friendly to amassing allies nor keeping a low threat. I realized this after my first attempt with the deck an was considering switching to Beorn's For the Shire! to get much-desired access to the spirit sphere. Threat reduction and Thror's Key would have been fantastic! I also considered adding in a little more card draw via Rod of the Steward or Frodo's Intuition. But I ultimately figured it was worth it to give the #2 another shot and I ended up walking away with a victory.

Sting Like a Bee is indeed a well-tuned take on the hobbit deck. Worth taking for a spin when you want to leave the Shire and hit the road.