Contents

For our complete run-through, see:

1. The Hobbit Saga
2. Core Set & Shadow of Mirkwood Cycle
3. Khazad-Dûm & Dwarrowdelf Cycle
4. Heirs of Númenor & Against the Shadow Cycle
5. The Voice of Isengard & Ring-Maker Cycle
6. The Lost Realm & Angmar Awakened Cycle
7. The Grey Havens & Dream-chaser Cycle
8. The Sands of Harad & Haradrim Cycle
9. The Wilds of Rhovanion & Ered Mithrin Cycle
10. A Shadow in the East & Vengeance of Mordor Cycle
11. Thematic Campaign ~ From Bag-End to Rivendell
12. Thematic Campaign ~ Fly you Fools!
13. Thematic Campaign ~ A Red Sun Rises
14. Thematic Campaign ~ To Mordor
15. Thematic Campaign ~ The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
16. Thematic Campaign ~ The Hour of Doom Hangs Still
17. Thematic Campaign ~ We Wants It, We Needs It

Piloting

If by my Life or Death I can Protect you, I Will

This is a standard Forth, The Three Hunters! deck, so I'm going to use my usual of describing its piloting, but the "best case scenario" for attachments:

• Aragorn with 2x Armored Destrier, Anduril, Ancestral Armor and a Golden Belt, as well as Steward of Gondor. With his Boon, he's now a 7 / 4 / 5 / 9 hero, he can quest and ready with his ability, defend thrice and kill a small enemy in the process.
• Legolas with 2x Mirkwood Long-knife, Celebrían's Stone, Strider and/or Light of Valinor. He's now 10 / 5 / 1 / 4 , questing without exhausting, discarding an Elven-light to ready Gimli.
• Gimli would have a War Axe, 2x Blade of Gondolin, Dwarrowdelf Axe and a Golden Belt. He's now 6 (+1 with Legolas) / 7 (+2 if attacking an Orc, +4 if fully damaged) / 2 / 5 . You can replace one of the Weapons with a Citadel Plate as per usual.

Just modulate your attachments and the order in which you play them, as well as your Unexpected Courage, the most intelligently depending on what you're currently facing. Once again, this is something you should strive for. Reality is different.

Sideboarding: Mod for Breaking of the Fellowship:

• Swap Aragorn from its to version, and the reverse for Gimli. The idea is to get a good amount of those Toughness Uruk-hai to be 0 and discard them with Straight Shot
• -3x Captains of the West
• +3x Need Drives Them
• -3x Goblin-cleaver
• +3x Straight Shot
• +2x Dwarven Shield
• +1x Ring Mail
• -1x Dwarrowdelf Axe
• -2x Gondorian Shield

Servant of the Secret Fire

This is a combo deck. You should strive to be the first player, just so you can benefit from Frodo's resource on turn 1 and have an additional card (Ho Tom Bombadil) in your hand, that's getting you even more cards with your Drinking Songs. The deck was mostly built to:

1. Be able to handle Journey in the Dark
2. Thematically sacrifice Gandalf to the Balrog, but still get enough resources to retrieve him with The Houses of Healing (yeah, theme stops to the number of starting threat increase I definitely don't want to be dealing with!)

So this is how it goes:

• Draw cards. A lot of them. With Expert Treasure-hunter, We Are Not Idle, Frodo's Intuition, Daeron's Runes, Drinking Song, if need be re-mulligan with Old Bogey Stories, as well as Pippin and Gandalf's Staff (although the staff should be primarily used to discard shadow cards or get resources).
• Get resources with Expert Treasure-hunter+Hidden Cache using your Wizard Pipe to get your Hidden Cache on top of your deck. Name "event", discard it, get 2 resources, get back in hand. Rince. Repeat.
• Play stuff.

Specifically for Journey in the Dark keep enough resources for a few turns of pure epicness, chaining several Flame of Anor with Beorn and an unused The Houses of Healing (if you're lucky, I was, because I drew Galadriel and was thus able to organize my cards in that amazing way) to get Gandalf to attack for at least 14 . With a allies, you should be able to swing for a good amount. Sacrifice Gandalf on the next turn and you should be close to killing the Balrog. Have 5 resources saved on Pippin to play The Houses of Healing and that's done.

Sideboarding: Just adapt play for the other two quests Journey in the Dark and The Breaking of the Fellowship.

• Beorn is never played as an ally, only here to give a +6 for Flame of Anor
• Shadow of the Past is used in Breaking of the Fellowship to get Seat of Seeing on top the deck and get rid of a burden
• The Galadhrim's Greeting was used in The Ring Goes South to keep the threat in check after not shuffling the Lust for the Ring burden.
• The Houses of Healing was used in Journey in the Dark.

Runthrough

The Ring Goes South: 1/1 We were a bit concerned by the numerous threat increase we had from locations leaving play, and at some point damage was piling up, but in the end, once The Three Hunters got rolling, the quest was easy to handle. => nothing of note going on the Campaign side of thing, except that we're totally using the Boons in our decks. Sting and Glamdring for the Servant of Secret Fire deck. Anduril and Mithril Shirt for the other one.

Journey in the Dark: 1/1 Just read the description for "Servant of the Secret Fire", because that's just how we handled the quest, and it went perfectly smoothly. Discard the 1st shadow card with Gandalf's Staff and then chain-discard the other ones with Armored Destriers was essential to our victory. Shadow cards in that quest are nasty! And I just love getting rid of shadow cards. Truthfully it went even better than expected, because I was able to provide a massive healing boost to Aragorn with Elrond just in time, and luckily discarded the last card of the encounter deck with Sting so the Balrog didn't have any shadow card on its last attack. => We killed the Balrog so only had to add 2 burdens to the Campaign Pool and we chose Pursued by the Enemy and Overcome by Grief

Breaking of the Fellowship: 1/1 For this quest we took advantage of the fact that you can swap same heroes of different sphere without penalty. We switched to a Aragorn and Gimli combination because we wanted to give those Uruk-hai -1 and abuse Straight Shot, since killing them is so hard anyway. We managed to travel to the Seat of Seeing with a timely Shadow of the Past, and decided to get rid of the Pursued by the Enemy burden. => Our choices for Boons went on Phial of Galadriel and Leaf-wrapped Lembas. No additional Burden was added.

A Partial Conclusion

There it goes, the Fellowship of the Ring has finally broken. All in all, we are very satisfied with our Campaign, it's going super well, with only 4 Burdens, 3 of which are not really too impactful really (we never rely too much on chump-blocking, and exhausting the ring every now and then doesn't sound too bad).

A summary of the Campaign Pool:

• Frodo Baggins has Mr. Underhill (though it will be removed at the beginning of the Uruk-hai), Noble Hero
• Aragorn has Skilled Healer.

Other Boons:

• Old Bogey Stories
• Ho! Tom Bombadil!
• Sting
• Mithril Shirt
• Glamdring
• Anduril
• Phial of Galadriel
• Leaf-wrapped Lembas

Burdens:

• The Ring Draws Them
• Overcome by Terror
• Overcome by Grief
• Ill Fate
• Pursued by the Enemy

Captives: Pippin and Legolas.