Part 10: The Passage of the Marches

This quest is the first quest of the 4th saga box and I play it for the first time. With heading into this quest I passed the first half of the Lord of the Rings saga campaign.

Frodo and Sam left the Fellowship above the falls of Rauros and crossed the great river to climb the Emyn Muil upon the Eastern shore. After days of wandering through that maze of rocky crags, they have finally reached the edge of the Dead Marshes only to discover that Gollum is following them. They have to deal with Gollum, the shifting and sinking of the marshes, and with undeads coming from the marshes.

The Game

Thrilling moment within this game: an exhausted ring while a Nazgul shows up

Travelling again with Frodo Baggins instead of Aragorn, I change Good Meal back to The Shirefolk. It is ment to play this quest with a more aggressive version of Frodo. Together with Speak Your Promise! he makes a good combo against Gollum. But as you are free to use any Frodo from that sphere, I use the copy with encounter card manipulation abilities again. I will need Thorongil to handle the enemies anyways.

Gollum is immune to most player card effect. To turn Gollum into Smeagol I need +7 attack. So, in conclusion, Thorongil and Hobbit Cloak are my most wanted cards. My first hand had none of these, but my mulligan gave me said Cloak and a Dagger of Westernesse. It took me a few turns to get enough attack power, but everything the encounter deck threw at me was manageable. Again, Gaffer Gamgee helped a lot. In the end, the quest was not complicated at all and Gollum did not show up again.

One time I close to lose a hero and it was kind of thematic, too. I exhausted Bilbo’s magic ring to cancel a revealed encounter card. The card I had to reveal due to the rings effect was a Morgul Wraith. I even had forgotten that there were Nazguls in the encounter deck! That enemy now had a threat of 15 and was about to engage. Luckily, Tom Cotton had a Ring Mail and with it a defense value of 4. There was a shadow effect, but noting crucial.

It felt quite long to win this one: 10 rounds within 39 minutes. As quest resolution I choose to keep The Searching Eye. Its a card you do not want to see, but with Horn of the Mark (and Gaffer Gamgee) my deck usually draws half the cards after defending the enemies, so its effect might be not that bad. A high threat with my Hobbit deck — even if it would be only +2 (for now) — might be worse.

Heroes
Sam Gamgee, Pippin, Tom Cotton, Merry (Valiant Warrior)
Threat 28
Fallen HeroesThreat Penality
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BoonsBurdens
Valiant Warrior (Merry)The Ring Draws Them
Sting, Mithril Shirt, Glamdring, AndúrilEaten Alive!
Palantir of OrthancOvercome by Grief
Ill Fate
The Searching Eye
Statistics
games played:11 (1 lost).
win ratio:90.9%
time spent (actual playing):5 hours, 37 minutes

The Lord of the Rings card game is a living card game by Fantasy Flight Games. The head line picture is a crop of a photo by SplitShire on Pexels.com. The Nazgul card is from the game itself, taken from Hall of Beorn.

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