1st round. 12 enemies in play, plus four cards from the encounter deck. 1 poor fool getting jumped on by 4 Snaga scouts, at least one of which is bound to get a nasty shadow.

Has anyone found a way to wind up with anything other than a massive 1st-round questing defeat, followed rapidly by a pile of dead and wounded heroes?

The only way we've been able to defeat this quest is by "cheating."

That is, after setup, we shuffle the Snaga Scouts back into the deck.

Even then, we still don't usually win unless we draw Gandalf more than once.  This is the toughest quest for us to defeat.

 We've done it with 3 and that was brutal enough but hopefully gonna try with 4 soon. 

 We've never beaten this with our "normal" decks, regardless of how many players. With four players, I don't think we've ever survived past turn 3.

This quest scales baddy it is easier with more players not harder.. I am not sure what problem you are having.Maybe post your decks... here is a hint.. LOW threat.. as in REAL low, as in do you REALLY need three heroes on every team?

 I think more players are much harder. Just did a sample staging and I am looking at 24 threat, and 4 times doomed 1 and one cut off.

So this would be an interesting first round. 

booored said:

4 Players = lowest-threat player gets hit by 4 Snaga scouts first turn. Generally everyone else has got to deal with the other scouts, so they can't help out much (i.e. ranged)

Generally, by the end of round 1, we've got at least one dead hero. So many attacks that have to be taken undefended, you can guarantee a horrific shadow effect on one of them.

Mighty Jim said:

Hmmm... I disagree. 4 scouts only hits for 4 assuming you get no crazy shadows. You can easily soak that up with 2 heroes. It is true I have ony played it 3 player though.. so maybe I am wrong but 3 player was way easy. I'll do some 4 playuer games and get back to you with a battle report, though I think afgter a fwe run though to get used to teh quest it will not be a problem.

 It is doable. Our group of 4 did this on our second try over the weekend. We were playing a very balanced party with extremely dedicated deck builds - lost 2 heroes on the way to victory - 1 to the early scout rush and the other in order to quest at the last stage (we managed to gain control of both rangers enroute and sacrificed them). It could have gone either way if certain encounter or shadow cards were different.

booored said:

No freaking way. It is so MUCH harder with more players. In a similar way Dol Guldur is harder solo. I have seen you say this before but NOTHING ever in my experience - or many others - have me believe this. Have you actually happened to play it with three mates and beat it? I am not saying it is not beatable, we did once, but it is terribly hard compared to solo which can get up to medium hard when you have a right deck. The problem is with the current "few" heroes it is hard to pick 12. But even then the quest does scale badly. Starting with 4 threat per player isn't easy solo but awful for four players when there are two heroes of threat 2+. Also, the surge makes it hard. But most importantly the Rangers. It is totally luck-dependent to get them to the questing party - since there shall be probably no more than two really hot on questing. If they don't get the Rangers, heroes go down, etc.

booored said:

Just do the math, no you don't. With four Snagas and no shadow cancelling, it is more likely than not one of your heroes dies round 1.

So I have read more, you haven't played it with four players. Well I have, over 20 times. And well over 100 times altogether. I really like this quest but trust me if you will, it is harder coop.

Mighty Jim said:

And the problem was even when we did clean the board - mostly due to Boromir and haven't even fallen much behind in quest, it hasn't got any easier then. Usually quite the opposite. And as the encounter deck is rather small, it all jumps at you soon enough even when you get rid of it once.

lleimmoen said:

yes maybe you lose 1 hero and what??? this not the end of the world. Then you play more carefully.. Anyway is hard yes is  but that what we need right?

I hate the feeling in this game when you play  p with Beravur and Zigil. in the middle of the game each player have more then 10 cards in hand, lot of resources and shuffle back discard pile already by Will of the west. each reduce his threat by endless GG cose will of the west and each players have in hand Test of will at least one. Yes this is really interesting game right?? So good and cool players! What encounter deck can do against it??? You right: Nothing.

At least this quest try to change this stupid lock.  But there is another problem: If you manage to build up 2 decks and can beat this quest almost every time all other quest is like peace of cake.

My group always plays 4 player LotR. Osgiliath was tough. We built 4 dedicate decks, mono sphere (except for Aragorn's Leadership deck splashing some Spirit to help deal with Shadow and When Revealed effects, and tackling Threat). It took awhile before we understood how the treachery deck needs to be dealt with.

The best way to survive first turn is to load your deck with 1 or 2 cost characters. Each player Optionally engages one of the Warg units, sacrifice the cheap guy to the Warg (Warg goes back into the deck to be dealt with later), The Spirit player generally has the lowest Starting threat and must deal with the Snaga scouts, since you can build Tactics with heavy range support /sentinel pegging them off is not hard (plus there is an Event that can take them all out in one play if needed).

The deck is very tough, but doable, it really relies on having a good opening hand. The first turn Threat hit is always nasty but you can recover. Deck cycling is important.

With all of the Lore/Spirit cards that hurl progress tokens onto locations in the staging area, and with a Lore card that reduces the number of cards revealed from the Treachery deck by one things are manageable, you just need an extremely tuned deck.

Tactics/Eagles works very well in it when you get a Horn of Gondor first turn, so many characters bite the dust you can gain alot of Resources off of it, plus most of the Eagles really want to enter then leave play for good effect at moping up the Staging Area.

Team play is just so important against this deck, but beating it shouldn't be impossible if you time things right and have good deck construction skills.

We plan to play this monster Quest again with the cards from the Dwarrowdelf Cycle and Moria as they weren't out when we last played it.

Plus, with a dedicated Tactics/Eagles Ranged/Sentinel deck abusing Horn of Gondor, Landroval becomes a very helpful ally bringing those dead heroes back, loosing one or two early on happens, but it's not so bad because mid game you can bring them back with Landroval and that Spirit Event.

Nathan_in_Vic said:

Sounds to me like you wanna use Landroval mid-game to recover a hero lost from the early game. Landroval only works if he is in play at the moment your hero dies though. Or did I misinterpret your intention?