68 - The Passing of the Grey Company (Progression Series)

This is another fellowship continuing on in my goal to play through all of the quests in release order to learn how all (or most) of the cards interact with one another. The first fellowship for the quests in the core set can be found here, and it contains a slightly more detailed overview of what I'm going for with building these decks. As always, any feedback is appreciated so that I can continue to learn more!

It's been a long time since I've updated these, but I figured with Dragn making things easier than ever to play 2-handed I would try to restart and see how far I get. My favorite quests in this progression series have been the ones that do things a little bit differently, changing up the things that you're worried about causing a loss. This quest is a perfect example. None of the enemies, locations, or even treacheries are super nasty on their own, but the slow build up of threat that they can all provide (along with Overcome by Fear and Stage 2B forcing multiple threat raises every round) can cause some serious issues.

Threat reduction and Willpower were the two main things that I felt the need to include in these decks, hoping to be able to advance to Stage 3 prior to either deck getting too ridiculously high in threat. As a result, I chose to include Galadriel, Nori and Beregond in order to be able to use their threat reduction effects nearly every round. I didn't want to include Purple Dáin Ironfoot, so I instead decided to go Dwarven Mining for the Dwarf deck. Zigil Miner and Imladris Stargazer should provide all of the deck manipulating and resources necessary to get this deck off the ground to the point where it can get be drawing multiple cards per round with Legacy of Durin and Ori.

Because almost all of the locations are Underground, I included a fair bit of tech for them in this deck as well. Bombur, Ancestral Knowledge, and Untroubled by Darkness can give a huge willpower boost once the board is set up, and can pile up a ton of progress on Stage 2 in a hurry to hopefully catch up to the threat increases.

The other deck wants to help Aragorn get set up and then provide a bunch of Willpower for questing as well. Denethor's resources at the beginning of the game can be really helpful to play as many cards as possible before discarding the opening hand, and he can also help out with defense pretty easily, since none of the enemies hit super hard. Tale of Tinúviel can be extremely useful to help Aragorn clear out enemies engaged with the players on rounds where you don't need Galadriel's extra Willpower with Nenya.