Path Less Traveled: Journey in the Dark

In my previous two Path Less Traveled posts (1) (2), Frodo and the gang made it from Rivendell through the Doors of Durin in one piece, in both Standard and Campaign mode. Now it’s time for me to take my intrepid adventurers on the next leg of their quest, a Journey in the Dark through the twisting hallways of Moria!

Best to keep moving, I think there might be something following us!

What we’re up against

Because the plot of this box is simply the narrative of The Lord of the Rings, I’m not going to go out of my way to avoid story spoilers. If you’re the sort of person who wants to avoid spoiling the quest mechanics, though, you can skip over the collapsed sections of this post—they contain a detailed analysis of what to expect.

Drums, drums in the deep

This quest does a great job at capturing the dread of being hunted through the dark by a demon of the First Age. At the start of the game, you add the Objective Doom, Doom, Doom to the Staging Area and place 10 damage tokens on it. Those damage tokens are a counter that ticks down at the end of each Quest Phase, and when the final token is removed from the card, The Balrog enters play.

The Balrog is a super nasty Enemy, for so many different reasons. First of all, it can’t be optionally engaged, meaning it contributes its 5 threat to the Staging Area no matter what you do. Even so, the first player has to weather two attacks from it each round, once in the Quest Phase and once in the Combat Phase. And worst of all, even if you somehow manage to cut through its 9 defense to deal 25 damage to it, it’s Indestructible. The only way to actually kill The Balrog is during the final Stage of the Quest, when you can discard a Hero (you read that right!) after clearing The Great Bridge, causing the monster to lose its Indestructible keyword. (Of course, you still have to do the hard work of dealing enough damage if you want to try to kill it!)

It’s probably best to try to beat the quest before the counter runs out and The Balrog rears its ugly head. That’s a lot easier said than done, however. In addition to encounter card effects like Fool of a Took! that just straight-up remove tokens from Doom, Doom, Doom, each Quest Stage has its own way of tripping you up and buying The Balrog some extra time: the first one removes a token whenever you engage an Enemy, the second one forces you to defeat a certain number of Enemies while at that Stage before you can move on, and the third one prevents you from placing more than 5 of its required 15 progress per turn.

The result is a frantic race against time to get as far as you can before The Balrog shows up, and to be as ready as possible for when it does!

You can see everything the encounter deck has to offer over at the Hall of Beorn.

Standalone mode

I built a pretty successful Hero Gandalf deck for the previous quest, so rather than reinventing the wheel I’m just going to carry it forward into this one too. If you want to read up on how the deck is played, feel free to check out its description on RingsDB. Here’s the decklist again for easy reference:

Hero (4)
Frodo Baggins (The Road Darkens)
Aragorn (Core Set)
Éowyn (Core Set)
Gandalf (The Road Darkens)
Ally (22)
2x Bilbo Baggins (The Road Darkens)
2x Faramir (Core Set)
3x Galadriel (The Road Darkens)
3x Guard of the Citadel (Core Set)
1x Henamarth Riversong (Core Set)
2x Lórien Guide (Core Set)
2x Silverlode Archer (Core Set)
3x Snowbourn Scout (Core Set)
2x Son of Arnor (Core Set)
2x Wandering Took (Core Set)
Attachment (13)
1x Celebrían’s Stone (Core Set)
3x Fellowship of the Ring (The Road Darkens)
3x Gandalf’s Staff (The Road Darkens)
2x Steward of Gondor (Core Set)
1x Unexpected Courage (Core Set)
3x Wizard Pipe (The Road Darkens)
Event (15)
2x Common Cause (Core Set)
2x Ever Vigilant (Core Set)
3x Flame of Anor (The Road Darkens)
2x Hasty Stroke (Core Set)
2x Sneak Attack (Core Set)
2x The Galadhrim’s Greeting (Core Set)
2x Valiant Sacrifice (Core Set)
3 Heroes, 50 Cards

This deck on RingsDB

The playthrough

Attempts: 1

Victory on: Normal mode

I was surprised to have won on my first try! This quest is far from easy but having played it so many times before I guess I knew what to expect and how I needed to play in order to beat it—not to mention that it’s slightly easier as a Standalone experience than it is in Campaign mode. It was certainly an exciting game nonetheless!

Give me the details!

I managed to get both Faramir and Fellowship of the Ring out fairly early, making it easy for me to place progress quickly. I did end up losing a couple of Doom, Doom, Doom tokens to encounter cards along the way, such that I only had 1 token left when I reached the final Stage of the quest. The Balrog came out and did a number on my board state, but I had so many Allies out at that point that I could afford to lose a few of them as chump blockers.

On the last turn, The Balrog got an extra attack against me (due to the When Revealed effect on Fool of a Took!) and I was forced to lose Aragorn to an undefended attack, but I still had enough willpower committed to the quest to carry me through to the end. I didn’t kill The Balrog—I don’t actually think I could have mustered enough attack power for that with my current deck—but that’s not actually a requirement for victory.

I may have gotten a little lucky with some of my draws during this game—I never saw any of those nasty Great Cave Trolls, for instance—but in all it felt like a pretty solid win with an exciting leap-across-the-finish-line ending.

Campaign mode

Under the Campaign mode rules, I have even more incentive to keep the same deck as last time (in the form of a permanent threat penalty if I switch any of my Heroes). I could tweak the contents of the deck itself if I wanted, but my deck worked well enough as-is so I see no reason to make any alterations. Here’s a refresher on what it looks like:

Hero (4)
Fatty Bolger (The Black Riders)
Frodo Baggins (The Black Riders)
Merry (The Black Riders)
Sam Gamgee (The Black Riders)
Ally (15)
2x Bilbo Baggins (The Road Darkens)
2x Bill the Pony (The Black Riders)
3x Gandalf (Core Set)
2x Gondorian Spearman (Core Set)
3x Snowbourn Scout (Core Set)
3x Wandering Took (Core Set)
Attachment (15)
1x Celebrían’s Stone (Core Set)
3x Dagger of Westernesse (The Black Riders)
3x Fellowship of the Ring (The Road Darkens)
3x Hobbit Cloak (The Black Riders)
2x Hobbit Pipe (The Black Riders)
2x Steward of Gondor (Core Set)
1x Unexpected Courage (Core Set)
Event (20)
2x A Test of Will (Core Set)
2x Feint (Core Set)
3x Frodo’s Intuition (The Black Riders)
3x Halfling Determination (The Black Riders)
2x Quick Strike (Core Set)
2x Smoke Rings (The Black Riders)
2x Sneak Attack (Core Set)
2x The Galadhrim’s Greeting (Core Set)
2x Valiant Sacrifice (Core Set)
3 Heroes, 50 Cards

This deck on RingsDB

The playthrough

Attempts: 2

Victory on: Normal mode

I’m honestly a little surprised that I didn’t get stuck replaying this quest more times. I managed to eke out a win on only my second game—but it was a really close call! I ended with my board state utterly destroyed and all of my Heroes at max damage; one wrong move or bad encounter draw could have toppled me over into utter defeat. But somehow, I managed to cross the finish line without losing any Heroes!

Give me the details!

I lost my first game pretty early. I didn’t end up drawing any copies of Frodo’s Intuition and I used my copies Gandalf for his direct-damage ability instead of his card draw, which turned out to be a mistake. I stalled out in the midgame and ended up with an empty hand and with no way to fight back against the ceaseless tide of direct damage that the encounter deck was dishing out.

In my second game, I managed to draw into a copy of Frodo’s Intuition early enough to keep my hand full, so it went much better. I aggressively canceled anything that would force me to remove tokens from Doom, Doom, Doom—once with A Test of Will, and countless other times with Fellowship Frodo’s ability.

In Campaign mode, I really wanted to beat the quest before The Balrog even showed up. The reason is partially because The Balrog is fairly likely to kill off a Hero (permanently) with an undefended attack. But perhaps even more important than that are the Burdens that are earned during this quest. If you leave Moria with The Balrog in play you have to take all 4 of them with you, but if it’s not in play when you win the quest—either because you killed it or because you managed to escape before the tokens on Doom, Doom, Doom ran out—you only have to bring along 2 of them. I wasn’t likely to have enough damage output to kill The Balrog, so I decided to outrace it instead.

Each of these Burdens can be pretty nasty—in fact, Grievous Wound nearly cost me this game as it forced me to push Frodo to the brink so I could keep using his willpower. I decided to take Overcome by Grief with me—it seems by far the milder of the two Objective Burdens, since it triggers only when a character is destroyed (something I can control) rather than taking an entire Hero out of commission as soon as they take damage. The two Treachery Burdens are a little more evenly matched, but because I tend not to leave Enemies engaged with me for long periods of time I think Pursued by the Enemy wins out as the slightly better choice going forward.

The surprise MVP of the quest turned out to be none other than Bill the Pony. The direct damage was flying fast and loose in this quest, and his bonus hit points turned out to be vital not only for keeping my Hobbit Heroes alive until the final round, but also for buffing my Hobbit Allies so they could each soak an extra damage before ultimately expiring.

In all, it was a super exciting win—one of those down-to-the-wire nailbiters that makes for the most satisfying of victories!

Final thoughts

I want to emphasize that even though I was able to win with both decks in only a few tries, this is far from an easy Quest. It’s pretty common for Journey in the Dark to stump folks for a while, so don’t be surprised if it takes some time to figure out your strategy. It’s both fun and intense, and well worth working at until you achieve victory! A Core Set and The Road Darkens seem to be all you need to have a good time with this one.

But what about the last quest of the box? Will The Breaking of the Fellowship be the Quest that breaks the deluxe for a small card pool, or will it manage to show its quality? Next time, I’ll share my thoughts on it as well as the entire box as a whole.

“Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread.”