Having barely escaped from Moria, the Company of the Ring flees into the forest of Lórien where they are welcomed by the Elves of the Golden Wood and supplied with boats and other gifts by their Lord and Lady, Celeborn and Galadriel. Then they set out upon the River Anduin. But soon they are swarmed by enemies and are forced to go ashore. Seduced by the Ring and divided what to do next, the party splits up.
The Game
As setup speed (and thus card draw) is crucial, I decide for Three Golden Hairs. Two new burdens are mandatory to shuffle into the encounter deck. I switch back to my original version of Frodo, just to have more control over the encounter deck. My starting hand has Thorongil and a Drinking Song, which I keep. I play both and then get a Warden of Healing (nice, I expect some archery damage here) and Gather Information which might come in handy to fill the gaps. But first I decide to investigate in the main quest.
I do not have that much willpower, so it takes some turns to get to stage 2, where 2 enemies are waiting for me. I could defend one with Tom Cotton. The second one would be a big problem. One of the surge trains of this game reveals Gildor Inglorion, which then helps me defend the two enemies. With Frodo disappearing, I cannot spend any more resources for Gildor, so two characters less for me.
Reaching stage 3, my setup is still not complete, especially Gaffer Gamgee is missing. That is why I choose The Seat of Amon Hen as my quest and with it two more cards per round for my hand. Due to a forced shuffle of the encounter deck, I am able to discard Frodo’s Choice very soon. Another side quest (and still not that much willpower) let me easily control the forthcome of the quest, so another surge train reveals the so loved Seat of Seeing – well, it’s easy to reveal cards when you have to reveal two per round. Isn’t it?! I can explore it in the last round and I decide to remove Pursued by the Enemy from the list of my burdens.
I win after 9 rounds. The duration of play was 37 minutes. Fallen into Evil is not attached to a hero, so no fallen hero to note on the campaign log. I have to choose one of the new burdens to keep, which is Ill Fate for me — I allready get punished for having a character destroyed (which means the charater has to be kill during an attack) and this should not happen with a beefed up Tom Cotten and Gaffer Gamgee — both „defend“ without shadow cards. As I basically want to keep my Hobbit deck and this has some restrictions (due to Bond of Friendship), I need a captive which can be replaced, so I guess the only possiblity to do so is Pippin. There goes my card draw machine. Later, I did notice that this hero does not get replaced. Well, maybe I’d better chosen Sam (but that would exclude Red Book of Westmarh from direct play). This way round I might get my Lore allies with The Storm Comes into play. Also, there is A Good Harvest, which helps anyways.
| Heroes | |
| Sam Gamgee, Threat 28 |
|
| Fallen Heroes | Threat Penality |
| - | - |
| Boons | Burdens |
| Gildor Inglorion | The Ring Draws Them |
| Valiant Warrior | Eaten Alive! |
| Three Golden Hairs | |
| Sting, Mithril Shirt, Glamdring, Andúril | Overcome by Grief |
| Ill Fate | |
| Statistics | |
| games played: | 6. |
| win ratio: | 100% nice. |
| time spent (actual playing): | 171 minutes |
The Lord of the Rings card game is a living card game by Fantasy Flight Games. The head line picture is made by Aurore Folny. Gildor Inglorion is a card from the game itself, taken from Hall of Beorn.