West Wind blew there; the light upon the Silver-tree
Fell like bright rain in gardens of the Kings of old.
O proud walls! White towers! O wingéd crown and throne of gold!
O Gondor, Gondor! Shall Men behold the Silver Tree,
Or West Wind blow again between the Mountains and the Sea?
- Aragorn, the Lord of the Rings, book III, chapter II
Back while we were waiting for the Sands of Harad to show up, the logical thing to do seemed to be to move on to the last untouched deluxe expansion: Heirs of Númenor. Set in Gondor and centered on the battle against Sauron's armies, the second expansion to the game is renowned for its extreme difficulty. As I notoriously prefer thematically interesting decks to, well, efficient ones, we haven't done all that well against the more difficult scenarios thus far. So my confident expectation is that this is going to be an absolutely horrible experience. We're doing it anyway, because hell, the box is right there. And anyway, how hard can it be?
John Howe: Minas Tirith, 1989
**
Peril in Pelargir - DL 5
Our trip to Gondor begins with a bar brawl, and I approve entirely: I've GM'd enough fantasy role-playing games to know that this is a venerable, time-honored way to start an adventure. We've arrived in Pelargir, and a Gondorian nobleman called Alcaron wants us to deliver a scroll to Faramir.
Our first attempt at this scenario was way before Flame of the West, even, so I still had my old new Amazons. I'll admit that I had my doubts as to their usefulness, since Heirs notoriously includes a whole bunch of battle and siege questing, but we decided to give it a shot anyway. Thank the Valar for Idraen, without whom I'd barely have been able to muster any battle questing at all; I ended up deputizing Galadriel's Handmaiden to defend with Arwen's bonus and Cloak of Lórien, because it wasn't like she was doing anything else! Luckily we cleared the initial location pretty quick and survived a massive rush of Harbor Thugs; since most of the other enemies had only a couple of hit points, Thalin and a spear-wielding Boromir dealt with them pretty briskly. Finally, the last stage was regular old-fashioned questing, and finally my Handmaidens and West Road Travellers could do their thing, and we blasted right through, making our getaway from Pelargir.
This was a fun quest! It's like Trouble in Tharbad, only better: an urban adventure with a bit of a different feel to it than most other quests. I kinda wonder about how tough the street thugs in Pelargir are, if getting past them is a Battle quest, but fighting through Moria isn't... Still, though, we liked this!
**
Into Ithilien - DL 4
This quest is stupid. You start out with an active location that drops the engagement cost of all enemies to zero, and with one Southron Company per player in the staging area. You also get an objective ranger, who will die if you quest unsuccesfully or any characters leave play. Oh, and it's a Battle quest, meaning you use your characters' attack values to quest. So basically you need enough attack to clear the threat in the staging area and the active location, or a trick to get rid of it, or two Southron companies and any enemies you draw in staging attack immediately.
It's a bit disheartening to encounter a quest where I basically immediately know looking at the first turn that my deck is completely useless here. My Amazons are a mostly questing Spirit/Lore deck. There's almost nothing we can do in the first quest phase, and on their own, Team Boromir can't both battle quest and defend itself from enemies. On our next try, I switched decks, but we drew a Mûmak in our first staging, and since neither of us could actually defend it without a hero dying, that was the end of it; by the time we'd have done enough damage to it to kill it, my deck would've been destroyed.
I'll be honest: as a concept, battle questing sucks. One of the key challenges of nearly all quests in the game is getting the balance of fighting and questing right. Our current decks have a fairly strong division of labor, but both can also do a little bit of the other. This works great in ordinary quests. Battle questing, though, destroys this completely since all of a sudden one of the key variables doesn't matter at all any more. This quest is just straight up impossible for quite a few different decks. Admittedly this is a pretty key question of gameplay philosophy: are you interested in designing a new deck for every quest? If so, I'll bet this is a good challenge. If not, then I don't think it's worth bothering. To me, this is one of those quests that just kicks you in the head.
Oh, and did I remember to mention that this quest is DL 4? Because of course it is.
**
The Siege of Cair Andros - DL 7
In the last quest of the box, our heroes are participating in a siege. The are some clever mechanics here: certain locations take damage, but if you manage to clear them, you get to skip entire quest stages. Some of the encounter cards, like The Power of Mordor, are interesting; some, like Orc Vanguard, are awful.
Although this is a much more interesting quest than Into Ithilien, it's also even more restrictive in terms of what kinds of decks will be succesful with it. With Orc Vanguard stopping players from using any non-Tactics resources, and The Master's Malice punishing all non-monosphere decks, clearly mono-Tactics decks will have a considerable advantage. The weakness of Tactics has traditionally been questing, but since all we do here is battle quest or siege quest, which is the same except with defense, that doesn't matter. So again, this is one for those of you who want to create an optimized deck to beat it.
**
The player cards in Heirs of Númenor are a strongly thematic collection of Gondor cards. To start off, you get the Tactics incarnation of the best defensive hero in the game, Beregond, and the Leadership version of Boromir, who boosts all Gondor allies.
There are some outstanding cards here, like the best defending ally you can get, some invaluable resource smoothing for Leadership decks, and the Spear of the Citadel, not to mention the sassiest ally in the game. Spirit players might be a bit underwhelmed, although Blood of Númenor certainly has its place in the right deck. In general, a powerful collection of Gondor cards, essential for anyone interested in that archetype.
**
So, while I thought Peril in Pelargir was a pretty good quest, the next two aren't really ones I think we'll be playing again. This isn't to say that they're bad quests. On the contrary, I kind of liked Siege of Cair Andros. Rather it's that the combination of a very high difficulty level and battle/siege questing means that you'll almost certainly have to custom-build very specific decks to beat the last two quests. If you think you'd enjoy that kind of deckbuilding challenge, then this is the box for you. If, like us, you're not into that kind of thing, then we can't recommend buying this box for the quests.
**
With the arrival of the Mûmakil, we get our hands on the player card versions of the Harad objective heroes we met in the Long Arm of Mordor quest in the Sands of Harad box. Not only do I absolutely love the idea of Harad allies in general, but Jubayr is also a brilliant defender, especially with his sentinel and shadow-discarding abilities, and I have to at least try including him in my deck. Also, just because this is an Amazons deck, I need a copy of Firyal. I don't know where I'll ever be able to find the resources to pay for her, but what the hell.
To make way for them, I'll be leaving out the allies that I tend to be least pleased to see in an opening hand: my Wandering Ents. Yes, ents are a great bargain at two resources each, but those are Lore resources, which I tend to have other uses for. This is especially the case now that I mostly find myself playing three- to four-player games, where there tend to be less turns. Like I said, I have no idea where I'll find the resources to pay for Firyal if Wandering Ents feel prohibitively expensive! But I also used ents extensively in my Lore Silvan deck, and I feel that it's time to move on to new things, so I'm trying out the new Harad allies.
56 cards; 34 Spirit, 18 Lore, 4 neutral; 21 allies, 15 attachments, 18 events, 2 side quests. Starting threat 28.
Arwen Undómiel (TDR)
Idraen (TTT)
Rossiel (EfMG)
Allies: 21 (16/4/1)
Jubayr (TM) x2
Northern Tracker x2
Súlien (TCoC) x2
Rhovanion Outrider (ToTD) x3
Bilbo Baggins (TRD)
Galadriel's Handmaiden (CS) x3
West Road Traveler (RtM) x3
Firyal (TM)
Warden of Healing (TLD) x3
Gandalf (OHaUH)
Attachments: 15 (11/4)
Herugrim (TToS) x2
Unexpected Courage x2
Ancient Mathom (AJtR) x3
Light of Valinor (FoS) x2
Snowmane (TLoS) x2
A Burning Brand (CatC) x2
Cloak of Lórien (CS) x2
Events: 18 (6/9/3)
A Test of Will x3
Elven-light (TDR) x3
Leave No Trace (EfMG) x3
None Return (AtE) x3
Daeron's Runes (FoS) x3
Keen as Lances (EfMG) x3
Side quests:
Double Back (EfMG)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)
Éowyn isn't around sideboard:
remove Herugrim (TToS) x2 and Snowmane (TLoS) x2
add Elrond's Counsel (TWitW) x3
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