- Aragorn, in the Lord of the Rings, book II, chapter II
Times were weird around Gencon 2016: we'd only just heard about Sands of Harad and gotten our hands on the Flame of the West when the first Haradrim adventure pack was announced, and promised for Q4 that year! Of course, none of us believed it, and as it happened, we got our copy of the Mûmakil in February 2017. February was also when the last pack in the cycle was announced; it officially came out a year later, in February 2018, but we didn't get our hands on it until the very end of April. At this release rate, the Ered Mithrin cycle should still be going!
John Howe: Haradrim, 2002
**
The Mûmakil - DL 4
The first quest in the cycle picks up right where Sands of Harad left off: our heroes have met up with Kahliel and his tribesmen, and are going to make their way back to Gondor. To do this, we're going to need to catch some Mûmakil, or Oliphaunts, to carry us across the Harad desert.
In practice, the quest is pretty heavy on locations until you get to the final phase, where you have to take on the Mûmaks and do damage to them in order to catch them. Out first three-handed attempt with the hobbits ended in location lock, so bring location control! There's also a treachery that turns into a condition attachment, Terrible Fever, and even an enemy that does the same, so bring something to get rid of them as well.
Next time, we brought a bear. This time, we survived the initial flood of locations and got our questing going. The enemies aren't very tough, but when the Mûmaks showed up, we got into a proper fight. Beorn died defending a Mûmak attack, but was brought back by Landroval, and eventually (pre-errata) Boromir secured some Support of the Eagles and memorably defended three Mûmakil in a turn! Soon enough, a Northern Tracker cleared out the locations, and when the last Mûmak fell into one of our traps, we won!
I still think that condition attachments are one of the worst-thought-out ideas in an otherwise excellently designed game; most quests don't have them, so something like Power of Orthanc will be a dead card most of the time. It feels a bit silly to have a list of the quests where I need to remember to add them to my deck. I like condition attachments as such - they work well in this quest - but I wish they were better integrated with the rest of the game.
Having said that, though, we enjoyed this quest. It's a bit heavy on the locations, but the mechanic where you first have to find and then catch the Mûmakil feels really thematic and a little different than anything we've done before. My only real complaints are that the locations all feel a bit too similar, and the encounter deck is really thin; in a reasonably succesful three-player game where we weren't particularly taking our time, we reshuffled at least twice. But like I said, it was fun and thematic, and I feel that this is a necessary part of the Harad experience.
Card spotlight: Wait No Longer
There were lots of useful player cards in the Mûmakil: we got Leadership Feint, Lore Feint, and, of course, Kahliel and the other objective allies from the Long Arm of Mordor as player cards. But the most interesting card here is the one that gives Tactics some encounter deck manipulation. In most quests, swapping an encounter card in staging for an engaged enemy is simply a great deal, especially for someone like Core Legolas, or a Dúnedain deck. Obviously this is an amazing card in solo, where it lets you skip staging entirely, but even with more players, everything is just that much easier with less encounter cards. Especially brilliant for a last-ditch questing push, where the extra engaged enemy just won't matter.
**
Race Across Harad - DL 6
Now that our heroes have captured Mûmaks to ride, they take off across the desert for the river Harnen, which marks the boundary between Harad and Gondor. Pursuing them are orcs on wargs, so not only do we have to survive the desert, but also outrace the orcs.
In practice, the quest setup is identical to Flight of the Stormcaller: there's the usual quest deck and staging area, and the orcs have their own area, as well as a quest deck they're advancing on. There are orc and warg enqemies, and the wargs will sometimes attach to the orcs as mounts, which is clever and works with the concept of the quest. Other than that, however, there isn't a whole lot of new stuff here. We took a swing at this back when it came out, but misplayed the orcs' questing at first, so although we won, I'm afraid we have to forfeit the result. We did have a fairly epic time of it, though, using a Boromir bomb to survive one last onslaught of enemies until a last questing push, aided greatly by Wait No Longer, got us to the river.
This is by no means an easy quest: quite a lot of threat can pile up in the staging area, and quite a few orcs in their staging area. I have to say, though, that as much fun as riding Oliphaunts across Harad is as an idea, in practice this is kind of a forgettable quest. It doesn't help that it really is exactly like Flight of the Stormcaller, but whereas that quest did a really good job of creating the feeling of an intense chase on the high seas, this is just, well, a slightly humdrum quest with like a desert, and some orcs. Decent but unimpressive.
Card spotlight: Steward of Orthanc
Two willpower and two hit points for three neutral resources? Spirit is the only sphere in which this isn't a great deal, and it's amazing for Tactics. The ability is a pure bonus. Also, it was a real pleasure to see an Orthanc ally again; it's a long time since the Ring-maker cycle, and we weren't expecting to see any more of these guys. It was kinda weird to see a whole archetype like Doomed introduced and then almost abandoned, so not only is this a really good card, but also a pleasant surprise.
**
Beneath the Sands - DL 5
In the comedy of errors that is our heroes' trek across Harad, they've now stumbled across desert spiders, and have to go rescue their companions from a spider cave in the desert.
We gave it a shot, and while the quest itself isn't too difficult, we eventually lost to location lock because several copies of Blocked Passage showed up, completely negating all of my deck's location control abilities. So that was annoying. Other than that, it's not a bad quest, but the on track - off track mechanism is a bit fiddly, and basically the quest consists of clearing uninteresting locations and fighting weakish enemies. Not exactly memorable.
Card spotlight: Keep Watch
An interesting side quest for several reasons: not a battle quest like the previous Tactics side quest, and a potentially very useful effect. Side quests are very situational, and since they're limited to one copy each, rarely show up, but this is one I really wouldn't mind seeing in, say, Moria.
**
The Black Serpent - DL 8
With the spiders behind us, our heroes come across the Black Serpent's forces. This quest is a pleasant surprise, as we're the ones doing the raiding for a change: you advance the quest both by placing progress and capturing objectives, which earns you the increasing attention of your enemies. Also, we're finally fighting the Haradrim again, in this adventure pack cycle called the
We took a stab at this quest three-handed with our visiting hobbit player, and pretty comprehensively threated out after losing several heroes to a combination of nasty shadow effects and the Black Serpent himself. Like the quests in the Harad deluxe expansion, this one was difficult (even if DL 8 feels a bit high), but it didn't steamroll us with massive enemies or giant piles of threat. Instead, this is another intelligently designed quest where the different pieces interact with each other to produce an escalating threat that you feel like you have several ways to fight. So a good quest, then; if you don't mind a little difficulty, I might even recommend it.
Card spotlight: Southron Refugee
An inadvertently topical card in terms of contemporary politics, the Southron Refugee is also the first faction reducer character like the ones we're used to seeing in the Game of Thrones LCG. She's certainly well suited to the expensive unique Harad allies, and the second hit point means she's not entirely useless on her own either. I also wanted to highlight this card because it reminds us of a feature of Tolkien's works that so often gets overlooked: his humanity towards the enemies of the Free Peoples. Sam gets a moment of empathy with the dead Southron warrior; Gandalf tells us he even pities the orcs. Similarly, the suffering and destruction of war isn't elided in the Lord of the Rings, but is part of the overall tragedy. So as a Tolkien fan, I'm very happy that Southron Refugee is part of our card collection.
**
The Dungeons of Cirith Gurat - DL 7
I guess the raiding of the southron caravan didn't go all that well, because the next quest is a jailbreak. This one focuses on capturing allies, but I have to be honest and say that we didn't really get anywhere with this quest, so this is a bit of a non-review. We found the combination of pure difficulty right off the bat and the sheer amount of text and special mechanics so offputting that we gave up on this one. Maybe there's a good quest hidden under all that stuff, but honestly, I doubt it.
Card spotlight: Heirs of Eärendil
Not only is this an excellent location control card, but I love the way it takes the Haradrim cycle mechanic of playing off heroes' traits and executes it in a very Tolkienian way. I used this with Arwen and Idraen, which I find adorably cute in so many ways.
**
The Crossings of Poros - DL 5
The last phase of our heroes' journey takes them to the Poros, the river that marks the boundary between Gondor and the lands of the Haradrim. Continuing the trend of really fiddly quests right to the end of the cycle, here you get an encounter deck and four different set-aside encounter decks. The occasional treachery will make you reveal a random card from a set-aside deck, and which randomly selected quest stage you end up on also removes some decks. This is another one of those things where on the one hand, I see how this is good for replay value and it's kind of interesting in itself, but again, it's fiddly, overly complicated and distracts from the actual gameplay. Because you can also draw just about anything, on our first try we found ourselves facing both the Uruk Chieftain and a Southron Champion - in addition to The Black Serpent, obviously - on our second turn! So the difficulty level can be, shall we say, variable. Still, at least it's an interesting quest, although again we didn't get very far.
Card spotlight: Wind from the Sea
Magic Ring is also in this adventure pack, and it's a really cool card because it's about time we got an artifact that represents both the potential and the danger of Rings of Power! But I like Flight to the Sea more, because it's also intensely Tolkien, and it lets you screw around with the encounter deck, and that's always fun. Specifically, for the measly price of two Spirit resources, you get to shuffle this beauty into the encounter deck:
It doesn't even have surge! I love the art, and the card itself is such a delight to see in staging. When it turns up as a shadow card, it can sometimes feel a bit wasted - but in that case it goes back into the discards, so if you're lucky you'll draw it again. An excellent card, very cheap and I think definitely worth bringing in any Spirit deck that can afford it.
**
On the whole, then, the Haradrim cycle was a bit of a mixed bag. None of the quests really stand out; Black Serpent was pretty good, Dungeons of Cirith Gurat wasn't; Crossings of Poros was kind of interesting, most of the rest of them weren't. I think Poros is the only one we'd be interested in revisiting at all. So I might actually go as far as to say - with the considerable caveat that we've barely played the Angmar adventure packs at all - that unfortunately the Haradrim cycle is the blandest adventure pack cycle in the game.
**
As for my deck, it remains unchanged.
57 cards; 33 Spirit, 20 Lore, 4 neutral; 25 allies, 13 attachments, 16 events, 3 side quests. Starting threat 27.
Lanwyn (TTitD)
Idraen (TTT)
Rossiel (EfMG)
Allies: 25 (19/6)
Elfhelm (TDM)
Northern Tracker ×2
Bofur (TRG)
Elrohir (TMoF)
Greyflood Wanderer (TTT) ×2
Rhovanion Outrider (TotD) ×2
Arwen Undómiel (TWitW) ×2
Bilbo Baggins (TRD)
Curious Brandybuck (TWoE)
Galadriel's Handmaiden (CS) ×3
West Road Traveler (RtM) ×3
Elladan (TMoF)
Mablung (TLoS)
Warden of Healing (TLD) ×3
Henamarth Riversong
Attachments: 13 (7/5/1)
Unexpected Courage ×2
Light of Valinor (FoS) ×2
Mithril Shirt (TFoW)
Song of Eärendil (RtR)
Warden of Arnor (TTT)
A Burning Brand (CatC) ×2
Cloak of Lórien (CS)
Dúnedain Pipe (TBS)
Map of Rhovanion (TWoR)
Magic Ring (TCoP)
Events: 16 (5/8/3)
Flight to the Sea (TCoP) ×2
A Test of Will ×3
Leave No Trace (EfMG) ×2
None Return (AtE) ×3
Daeron's Runes (FoS) ×3
Keen as Lances (EfMG) ×3
Side quests: 3 (2/1)
Rally the West (TBS)
Double Back (EfMG)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)
Sideboard:
Dwarven Tomb ×2
Power of Orthanc (VoI) ×3
Deep Knowledge (VoI) ×3
Lord of the Rings saga expansions with Fellowship Frodo when the hobbit deck isn't around sideboard:
Sam Gamgee (TTitD) x1
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