‘A broad stairway, climbed from the Deep up to the Rock and the rear-gate of the Hornburg. Near the bottom stood Aragorn. In his hand still Andúril gleamed, and the terror of the sword for a while held back the enemy, as one by one all who could gain the stair passed up towards the gate. Behind on the upper steps knelt Legolas. His bow was bent, but one gleaned arrow was all that he had left, and he peered out now, ready to shoot the first Orc that should dare to approach the stair. ‘All who can have now got safe within, Aragorn,’ he called. ‘Come back!’ Aragorn turned and sped up the stair; but as he ran he stumbled in his weariness. At once his enemies leapt forward. Up came the Orcs, yelling, with their long arms stretched out to seize him. The foremost fell with Legolas’ last arrow in his throat. but the rest sprang over him. Then a great boulder, cast from the outer wall above, crashed down upon the stair, and hurled them back into the Deep. Aragorn gained the door, and swiftly it clanged to behind him.’

Now that I have saved the captive heroes from Saruman’s brutal Uruk-Hai, the next step in my Nightmare Saga Campaign is the iconic and memorable battle of Helm’s Deep! The ordinary version of this quest is quite a doozy already and it posed quite the challenge when first released. There are certainly plenty of quests that can be much tougher or more punishing than this one but there is something about Helm’s Deep, maybe the Defense keyword making it so different from the usual way you play a quest and/or maybe the fact that encounter cards simply pour off the encounter deck, that always makes it seem like an impossible battle when you actually play. A plethora of foes constantly enter play and the threat in the staging area skyrockets. On top of this the fact that you travel to locations far less often in this quest and usually want to keep the active location free of progress and buffing the quest for as long as you can doesn’t help either as it means that locations quickly pile up in the staging area and remain there.

This is all very thematic as the defense of Helm’s Deep was an extremely one-sided and desperate battle that very nearly resulted in the utter defeat of Rohan. Had it not been for Gandalf and Erkenbrand arriving at the exact necessary moment the battle surely would have been lost. Similarly the importance of the Huorns is often understated or overlooked, many Orcs retreat and attempt to rout the battlefield but they are swiftly destroyed by the angry Huorns of Fangorn Forest. Had this sizeable force been allowed to retreat properly they could have potentially regrouped in order to lead a second siege against the Hornburg that may have been successful, even with Erkenbrand and Gandalf’s group now on the scene. The Uruk-Hai and Dunlendings vastly outnumbered the Rohirrim and the defenders of Helm’s Deep to begin with and the majority of those defending Helm’s Deep would have fallen in battle considering how close the fortress comes to being completely overrun and taken. Had he taken Helm’s Deep Saruman could have then swept across the rest of Rohan with ease. Saruman’s very undoing is his mistreatment and destruction of Fangorn and it’s trees! Had he not angered the Ents and Huorns so badly he very well may have still wiped out the people of Rohan. Without Rohan’s aid the Battle of Pelennor Fields and the Siege of Minas Tirith would have had an extremely different outcome!

Lets move on to the actual quest itself and my experiences. First off the decks being used have not changed since the last Nightmare Campaign Quest. The following Fellowship is being used with the one key change being that Tactigorn is no longer around and is replaced by Tactics Eowyn. There is also a single copy of Herugrim included in the questing deck: http://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/4924

So yes this quest is a doozy but so long as you have a clear and concise plan it is not quite as difficult as it initially seems. Don’t get me wrong it is still a very tough quest but you can certainly tech or plan against it in various ways. One very specific and unique way to mess with this quest is player side quests. The defense keyword; where the encounter deck is trying to place progress instead and players are trying to stop this from happening, only applies to the main quest so any time a player side quest is the “active quest” during the quest phase the defense keyword is ignored and you are able to quest normally; placing progress on the active location and active quest stage if successful and raising your threat if you quest unsuccessfully. Not only does this have the potential to give you some respite from the Encounter deck placing progress and forcing you to move through the progressively nastier Quest Stages but it also gives you the opportunity to quickly clear a few locations and remove their threat from staging as well, all while still placing resource tokens on The Defense of Helm’s Deep and getting closer to the final quest stage!

You will need to be careful with which locations you choose to explore however as they all have a nasty effect that triggers when they are cleared. You also need to be very careful when using player side quests in general as they can indeed be extremely useful and powerful when playing this quest but they can also be very risky as questing unsuccessfully against player side quests can result in a huge bump to all players threat. Now due to the fact that you can’t normally raise your threat by questing unsuccessfully (you will instead place progress on the main quest stage and active location thanks to the defense keyword) the encounter deck for this quest will raise your threat in other ways, namely Deeping Wall and Night without End. This means that raising your threat from questing unsuccessfully against a side quest can have dire consequences raising your threat to an unmanageable level. You have to survive a bare minimum of 8 rounds when playing this quest and cannot race to the finish so managing threat is extremely important. Having your threat at too high a level will also mess with enemy engagement and will force you to take on the majority of foes that appear. Essentially Side Quests can be very beneficial in this quest but only if you have a ton of willpower and can actually clear them quickly. All of this being said, even questing unsuccessfully against a player side quest can still potentially be really helpful as it still stops the encounter deck from placing progress on the main quest stage or active location bumping threat up instead, if you can manage the threat gain this can be a much better outcome than placing progress!

Due to just how much combat and archery damage you are going to see in this quest anything that provides a nice boost to combat is also going to be extremely helpful. The player side quests Keep Watch and Delay the Enemy both have the potential to be really helpful as they are both Player Side Quests and cards that help with combat. Not only would Delay the Enemy discard enemies from play but it also… Delays the enemy (ha!) by stopping them from placing progress on the main quest. Discarding enemies from play without having to deal damage is fantastic in this quest as most enemies are quite hard to kill with a ton of hitpoints and armor and the Nightmare version of this quest buffs them even further! Keep Watch is also great as it will lower the attack of all engaged non-unique enemies by 1, you would just need to clear it quickly and as early as possible for it to have as much effect as possible.

Strong combat capable allies are also extremely useful and could mean the difference between victory and defeat. Strong defenders as well as strong offensive allies are both necessary as the slew of enemies that appear will both need to be defended against and taken out quickly if you don’t want to be overwhelmed and mobbed by foes. Allies that have the potential to both attack and defend in the same phase like Boromir or Treebeard are especially helpful.

Lastly and possibly most importantly is willpower, simply put you need an absolute TON of it if you want to beat this quest, unless of course you are bringing some special tech or strategy against it. Each and every round you need to generate more willpower than the total threat in staging or the encounter deck is going to place progress and bring you closer to the automatic loss condition upon advancing from Stage 4 due to placing 8 progress. The reason you need to generate so much willpower is that unlike most other quests you are pretty much always going to see additional cards revealed every round when playing this quest so the threat value in the staging area can suddenly change from fairly manageable to several points higher than your total committed willpower! There is a fair bit of surge going on but even worse are the multitude of encounter cards and quest stage effects that force you to reveal additional cards. The very first quest stage (not including The King of the Golden Hall) forces the first player to reveal an encounter card at the end of the combat phase if there are less enemies in the staging area than there are players in the game. This creates an awful choice from the very start of the quest, do you optionally engage any enemies you can to clear them from play or do you leave them in the staging area to avoid an additional card being revealed. The issue with keeping enemies in staging is that at the end of each round you must also place 1 progress on Stage 2B for each enemy in the staging area (bypassing the active location) which means that if you do go down the route of leaving enemies in staging the first quest stage is not going to be around for long and you will advance rather early. Either way you are going to have to face the encounter deck revealing additional cards or quickly advancing through Stage 2B.

The third quest stage has a similar effect forcing you to reveal an additional encounter card if the encounter deck does not place any progress on the main quest stage during the quest phase and this is made even worse by the copy of Helm’s Gate that becomes the active location as soon as you arrive at Stage 3A. Helm’s Gate forces the first player to reveal an encounter card at the end of the staging step if ANY player is not engaged with a foe! The combination of Stage 3B and Helm’s Gate can be absolutely brutal so staying on Stage 2B as long as you can and also clearing Helm’s Gate once you do advance as quickly as you can are both very important indeed.

It is not just quest stages that will reveal additional encounter cards though as the following encounter cards have the potential to do so as well: Deeping Culvert, Night Without End, Isengard Uruk and in the Nightmare version Helm’s Dike. This is not that many encounter cards but given this quest does not have a very big encounter deck to start with and the fact that these effects are on top of the quest stage effects means you are pretty much always going to be revealing a ton of additional cards throughout any attempt at this quest. That is enough of a breakdown of the quest itself for now, let’s move on to my actual attempts and victory!

My plan is essentially always the same for this quest; attempt to take as much control over the board state as possible and ramp up willpower as fast as I can while also trying to avoid the encounter deck progressing through quest stages too quickly. Now this is a fairly obvious plan that I imagine all players have going into this quest so I am not doing anything that out of the box during this particular quest except for perhaps my focus on player side quests. Opening hands that feature a Player Side Quest are certainly going to be prioritized over opening hands that do not include a side quest.

One other minor part of my plan that may differ from others and is worth mentioning is that I will not be taking the Poisoned Counsel burden in order to spend a round at Stage 1B preparing for the onslaught. Yes this can be very handy and can give you an edge against the quest but it is just not worth it as far as the actual campaign goes. Taking such an awful Burden on for the rest of the entire campaign is not worth this single quest being a little bit easier to beat in my opinion, especially not in Nightmare! To be honest I don’t think I have actually EVER been to Stage 1B when playing this quest as I just cannot bring myself to take on such an unnecessary and easily avoidable burden.

Now as far as my actual attempts and eventual victory I am only going to be able to discuss these to a certain degree as it has actually been a few weeks since I took on and beat this quest as I have simply not had the time to write-up my report and blog post since then. This is also due to the fact that I beat the quest much faster than anticipated on only my third attempt! I was prepared for this one to potentially take 10+ attempts across multiple nights/weeks and did not think I would need to do the write-up for it so soon.

Unlike a few other victories I have had in my Nightmare Saga Campaign so far this one was certainly not due to any lucky reveals from the encounter deck. I don’t want to toot my own horn but victory was achieved pretty much 100% because of and thanks to; both decks performing at more or less maximum power and the player strategy/choices made throughout the game. The encounter deck really brought it all and did not hold back. The first two games and resulting losses were devastating as I got completely and utterly crushed, the first time I threated out while desperately trying to clear a player side quest and the second time I lost two heroes to enemy attacks in the same combat phase leading to me immediately conceding (even if I was ok with extra heroes on the Fallen heroes list there is absolutely no way I would have won after losing them). During my third and final game the encounter deck still brought it hard but my decks brought it even harder!!! Within the first three or four turns I was able to clear Gather Information which not only allowed me to fetch whatever card was needed most for both decks (really can’t recall but I am pretty sure I searched for Elrond who already had Vilya and Steward for Gimli who already had Shield) but also allowed me to avoid the defense keyword for a few turns. I actually quested unsuccessfully on one turn that I was trying to clear Gather Information and was able to raise each decks threat by 3 or 4 points instead of having to place progress, this made threat a bit more of a concern and something I had to keep an eye on but this certainly contributed to my victory considering how close I was to instant failure when I was at Stage 4B later on. I also had to endure and last the siege for a very nasty 10 rounds and not 8 as twice I chose to remove a counter from The Defense of Helm’s Deep due to copies of Night Without End appearing. I’m not sure if this was definitely the best choice looking back now but it led to a victory so I’m certainly not too concerned!

Once I had Gather Information cleared and was able to build my board state up a bit I managed to get myself into a pretty decent position but this didn’t last long thanks to two specific locations and constant enemies pouring out of the encounter deck. The two locations that really made things difficult were Deeping Culvert and Hornburg Wall.

Deeping Culvert has x threat where x is 1 more than the amount of allies controlled by the first player, whenever the questing deck was the first player x was a much higher value often around the 9 or 10 mark whereas whenever the combat deck was the first player x would drop to only 6 or 7 instead. With two copies of this location in play, the total threat in the staging area was changing even more drastically than usual adding an extra layer of strategy and complexity to the quest. On turns where x was lower I could afford to keep more characters back for combat and questing successfully was far more likely whereas on turns where x was higher I had to overcommit and hope for the best!

I didn’t even dream of travelling to either copy of Deeping Culvert as I could barely handle the enemies I was seeing already and I also had very few opportunities to travel late game as I was no longer utilizing side quests and could therefore only clear locations if I failed at questing and let the encounter deck clear them for me. With no way of clearing locations in the staging area I just had to deal with the threat generated by the Deeping Culverts and hope to last until I reached Stage 5!

Hornburg Wall hurt me in a very different but equally frustrating and detrimental way. Hornburg Wall is a new Nightmare location that honestly was my most hated card when playing this quest. The Toughness 1 it provides to enemies is extremely infuriating! I found myself TIME and TIME again unable to kill or at times even harm enemies at all thanks to this effect. It really doesn’t seem like much but most enemies in this quest already have a toughness value as well as a ton of hitpoints and armor so the ability to soak up and avoid even more damage really makes things tough. Once two copies of Hornburg Wall were in play this became completely unmanageable. Here is an example of how bad this can be: Soldier of Isengard, one of the enemies you will see the most as there are four copies in the encounter deck, has 1 defense, 4 hitpoints and toughness 1 which means it already takes a total of 6 attack strength to kill this foe. Now add on an additional 2 points of toughness and it instead takes a whopping 8 attack strength to kill this enemy! It is not only that the enemy is being buffed either, it is the very nature of the toughness keyword as well that makes this card so nasty. Not only would it take 8 attack to kill the foe but because of the way toughness works it would take at least 5 attack strength to do any damage at all to the enemy after toughness 3 soaks up the rest!

Essentially these two locations combined together in a very powerful way. I had to quest as hard as I could and couldn’t hold many characters back for combat due to the two Deeping Culvert’s extremely high threat levels and then when combat rolled around I could not destroy or even really damage enemies due to having so few characters left to attack with and the extra Toughness 2 enemies had thanks to the two copies of Hornburg Wall. It got to a point where there were a ton of enemies in play that I simply couldn’t keep up with or destroy. Luckily this happened right towards the end of my game and I was able to eventually reach Stage 5A and slowly take the remaining enemies out one by one. There were a few rounds where I had to defend against an absolute ton of enemy attacks but allies like Derndingle Warrior, Gildor, Treebeard and even Glorfindel made sure I was able to defend everything and never take anything undefended. Elrond and Gimli voltroned up to more or less their upper limit were also certainly instrumental for defending against so many enemy attacks and they put in some serious work to ensure all heroes remained alive. Fellowship Aragorn also really helped in this regard allowing me to ready heroes at key moments to defend that last attack or to provide the last few points of attack needed to kill a foe.

Towards the end of the game Gimli had the following attachments: Tireless Ranger, Forewarned, Steward of Gondor, Gondorian Shield, Armored Destrier, Hauberk of Mail, Dunedain Warning x2 and Unexpected Courage x2! Each turn he could defend up to four attacks with a defense strength of 7 and the ability to discard up to two shadow cards from those attacks via Forewarned and Armored Destrier. I could also pay a resource from his resource pool to ready another hero if need be.

Elrond had the following attachments towards the end: Noble Hero, Leader of Men, Vilya, Unexpected Courage, Light of Valinor, Elven Mail, Gondorian Shield and Burning Brand. This allowed him to do the following every round: use Vilya, ready with UC, quest without exhausting due to LoV and finally defend with 4 defense and 6 hitpoints and shadow cancellation thanks to Burning Brand. Noble Hero bumps him to 4 willpower and Leader of Men provides a resource so long as he quests successfully (not nearly as often as usual when playing this quest!). Gimli could then ready Elrond allowing him to defend another attack and discard another shadow card if need be.

Once I was able to finally place the 8th and final resource token on The Defense of Helm’s Deep in order to advance to Stage 5 the quest quickly changed into a desperate race to kill all enemies as fast as possible before threating out. I only just managed to survive long enough on Stage 4B as it had 4 of 8 progress leaving me only 4 progress away from instant defeat! All four points of progress placed on Stage 4B was placed there by the two copies of Host Of Isengard in the staging area triggering their effect two turns in a row. Now I don’t think it has ever taken me more than two rounds (including the round that you arrive at Stage 5) to clear all enemies in play and beat the quest once I have actually reached Stage 5 considering you no longer have to quest with any characters and everyone can help with combat. The Nightmare version very quickly changed this as I had, if memory serves correctly, something like 8 enemies in play all with an additional 2 points of Toughness thanks to Hornburg Wall. Two of these foes were copies of the new Nightmare enemy Host Of Isengard who already has Toughness 2, 2 points of defense and 8 hitpoints without the additional Toughness 2 from the copies of Hornburg Wall..

With the boost from Hornburg Wall it takes a total of 14 attack strength to take one of these guys down and this is no small ask especially when there are plenty of other foes to worry about as well! I focused on taking out weaker foes first and on the final round destroyed both Hosts outright with almost all characters in play taking part in the final attacks, even Arwen!

It took 3 turns of combat to defeat all enemies in play even though all characters in play could participate in combat since the quest phase gets skipped while at Stage 5. This was due to three things: the sheer amount of foes in play, the additional 2 points of toughness given to all enemies and the two copies of Host Of Isengard. This was not all that difficult however and in the end I was more worried about threating out then actually losing any heroes to attacks as I was well and truly set up by this point and combat was fairly stress free and under my control. It would have been really handy to use Eowyn’s “boss killer” attack boost during these rounds but I had to use her ability very early on to provide some breathing room for the decks, I’m glad that I did as it probably stopped me from being overwhelmed much earlier when I might not have been able to handle it.

This was my final board state upon achieving victory:

BREAKDOWN OF NIGHTMARE CARDS

Now that I’ve gone over my overall experience here is my break down of each individual Nightmare card. First and foremost we have the front side of the setup card but there is nothing special here and we simply have the familiar “You are playing Nightmare mode” text and no additional rules or mechanics. Moving on!

Next up we have the back side of the Nightmare Setup card that tells you what cards will be removed from the regular version of the quest to facilitate Nightmare mode. One copy of the Isengard Uruk and all three copies of the Uruk-Hai Fighter are removed for Nightmare mode. This is already a bad omen as the Uruk-Hai Fighter is certainly one of if not the most manageable enemy in the encounter deck and anytime you are forced to search and add enemies to the staging area or into play engaged with a character I pretty much always choose the Uruk-Hai Fighter. Similarly the Wild Hillman is removed from the quest entirely and he has the same stats as the Uruk-Hai Fighter minus Toughness 2 and with a nasty progress placing ability instead. These enemies are replaced with the new Nightmare enemies Host of Isengard and Bloodied Berserker both of whom are extremely nasty and far more troublesome than the enemies that are removed. Goodbye manageable foes, hello new beast mode foes!

Next up all three copies of The Hornburg are removed! Say goodbye to reducing the Archery value via this location. One copy of Deeping Wall is also removed which is actually not such a bad thing, yes Deeping Wall gives a nice defense boost to heroes but it also has 4 threat and can raise all players threat by 4 if explored. The last location removed for Nightmare Mode is both copies of the Postern Door which is another change that is actually not so bad, again yes the attack boost for heroes is nice but that forced effect when Postern Door is explored has actually been a game ender for me in the past. If it triggers at the wrong moment and you are overwhelmed with foes you will not be able to take any out and will get even more overwhelmed the following turn. Now as far as the new Nightmare locations most of them are pretty horrendous but there is one new location that provides a somewhat beneficial effect but I will cover this below.

The only treachery removed when playing Nightmare mode is Reckless Hate. Much like many of the other cards being removed this is a fairly heavy blow! In all honestly Reckless hate can be a little bit of a joke, yes it provides an enemy in play an attack which at the wrong moment could be dire but because this quest is so damn combat heavy you are usually trying to set yourself up to defend as many attacks as possible to begin with. This means that this Treachery is sort of like a free somewhat harmless staging reveal so long as you can deal with the actual attack, no extra threat in staging and no new additional foe or location to deal with. Then again with the new Host of Isengard enemy this treachery would have had the potential to provide an additional 8 strength attack from staging! Lets move on to each individual Nightmare Card as I have covered the overall changes to the encounter deck. First and foremost I am going to cover a few non-nightmare cards that deserve to be mentioned.

Deeping Culvert honestly may as well be a Nightmare location! The Culvert can reach an awfully high threat level as its threat value continues to grow as your forces do. Thankfully it reads allies instead of characters and it is dependant on the first player so the actual threat value of this location will fluctuate depending on what deck/player is currently the first player and just how many allies that player or deck controls. Considering you need to generate a ton of willpower when playing this quest there is likely always going to be at least one player or deck that has an army of allies in play meaning some turns will be much harder than others as far as questing is concerned as the threat in staging will fluctuate greatly. If you want to travel to this location and get the threat out of staging however you risk the awful forced effect triggering if it gets explored. It is an effect we see on many locations across many quests; once explored each player searches the encounter deck and discard for an enemy and adds it to the staging area. It is actually worse than most locations with this sort of effect however for two reasons; the first being that it also reveals the enemy so you cannot cheat the effect by choosing say Isengard Uruk who is clearly the easiest foe to deal with in this quest (if you ignore the when revealed effect that is) as you will also face the Uruk’s awful when revealed effect that can either reveal an additional encounter card or deal 3 direct damage to your characters! Most other locations with this sort of effect only add the enemies to staging and do not force you to reveal them as well. The second reason is that this location is featured in a quest that is already very combat heavy so it is far less manageable and much more menacing having to add multiple additional foes to staging in this quest as opposed to others. As you would have seen in my actual play reports above this location was one hell of an obstacle for me. I think the lowest threat a copy of this location ever had was 5 and that was early to mid game during one of my losses. The highest threat it reached was 12 when I had 11 allies in play with the questing deck.

Ahhhhh yes, the dreaded Fire of Orthanc!! This card is honestly the NUMERO UNO must cancel save your test of will or be prepared to be blown to bits treachery when playing this quest or at least it certainly is for me and the type of decks I play. Blanking characters text boxes is perhaps my most hated encounter effect with “characters cannot ready from player card effects until end of turn” coming in close second. This means: No Galadriel ability, no bonus healing from Elrond, no discarding of cards for resources via Arwen, no boss killer powerup for Eowyn and no progress placement upon kills from Legolas, and that is just my heroes! A ton of allies are affected by this as well including Faramir, Firyal and Treebeard. Now not only does this treachery provide this effect until the end of the round but it also places a whopping 3 progress on the current quest bypassing any active location. Considering you only have 3 quest stages to burn through until you lose from the effect on Stage 4B and also keeping in mind each Quest Stage only has 8 progress points this is far worse than it initially seems. Essentially its like the encounter deck got a free round of placing progress bringing you that much closer to defeat, imagine this treachery appearing on a round you happen to have quested unsuccessfully. That could be a ton of progress being placed and may advance you to the next Quest Stage immediately. During the game I actually won I did not let this treachery go off once, the only copy that appeared was promptly cancelled. In fact I don’t think I actually allowed it to go off during any of my losses either as I pretty much ALWAYS save Test of Will for this treachery if I can.

The last non-Nightmare card I am going to cover is Night without End. If Devilry of Saruman is the clear winner for worst Treachery then this surely takes 2nd place. First off Doomed 2 is never something you want to see but the when revealed effect is what really hurts here. Removing a resource from The Defense of Helm’s Deep is awful and means you will have to last an additional round (on top of the 8 round minimum) before you can advance to the final stage and have any chance at victory. The other choice; revealing an additional 2 encounter cards, is also horrid though as there are already plenty of other effects that add additional cards to the staging area as discussed above so there is actually quite a high chance that you will see this card on the same turn that another encounter card or more likely a quest stage also reveals or adds additional encounter cards to the staging area. Often in the past I would actually choose to reveal additional cards thinking that was the obvious better choice but during the game I actually won this time around I revealed this treachery twice without means to cancel it and BOTH TIMES I chose to instead remove a resource token from The Defense of Helm’s Deep. I did this in an attempt to stay on top of the staging area and the various locations and enemies in play, my rationale was that I would rather be forced to survive additional rounds where I can continue to work on the board state and build up my decks than run the risk of being overwhelmed and not even lasting the minimum 8 rounds to begin with! This certainly paid off in the end and I am also a little proud that I managed to survive Nightmare Helm’s Deep for two additional turns. This card is certainly a Treachery you always want to cancel if possible but just be careful that you still have ways to cancel any copies of Devilry of Saruman that appear!



Host of Isengard is one very powerful and problematic enemy indeed! Eight attack strength is insane (matching both the Balrog and Smaug!!) and is the second highest attack value any enemy in the entire game has thus far as only one single enemy has 9 attack. That would be the Host of Angmar from Siege of Annuminas which is actually a very similar foe that also represents a whole group of enemies and not just one. The art for Host of Angmar is certainly more thematic as it actually depicts a group of Orcs, I imagine the full art for Host of Isengard potentially shows other enemies in the background but the actual card art seems to only show a single Uruk as monstrous as he may be. To be completely honest I am not really a fan of the art on Host of Isengard, I have no idea what is going on with his left hand and fingers, his tusks are just strange and his cape flapping up behind him looks way too much like hair. There are very few art pieces in this game that I do not like as the art is usually amazing but this one just doesn’t appeal to me especially considering the card is supposed to represent and visually depict part of the huge Host of Isengard that are marching on Helm’s Deep.

Anyway enough about the art back to the actual card itself! This enemy hits extremely hard (again, just as hard as a Dragon or Balrog!), has a ton of hitpoints (and toughness 2) and 4 threat so he is a potent foe in more or less every way possible! He also has a truly awful effect that punishes you for leaving him in the staging area, at the end of each and every round he will place 1 progress on the current quest bypassing the active location if he is in the staging area. This may not seem like much but it will quickly add up if you leave this enemy in staging too long especially if multiple copies are in play which is honestly very likely considering there are 3 copies of this brutal foe in this Nightmare Quest! This creates a nasty choice between actually dealing with the foe or letting it sit in staging slowly bringing you closer to defeat. All four progress I had on Stage 4B was due to two copies of Host of Isengard placing progress via their ability. Once I reached Stage 5 I engaged both and eventually took them down. They both appeared towards the end of the game and had they appeared earlier I may very well have lost. In some of my other games a copy showed up early and was extremely detrimental certainly contributing to at least one of my losses.

Bloodied Berserker is the second new Nightmare enemy and he has the potential to be just as problematic as the Host of Isengard albeit in a very different way. A fairly low engagement of 28 means the Berserker will engage the majority of decks straight away or fairly early after he appears, this is a drastic difference from the Host of Isengard who has an engagement level of 48 and can be left in the staging area if you cannot yet face it or would rather take the forced progress points. The Berserker may not hit anywhere near as hard but he has the potential to make multiple attacks and may even end up placing more progress with his forced effect than the Host! Any time the Berserker is dealt a shadow card with no effect it either makes an additional attack against you or you must place 2 progress on the active location. Placing two progress is certainly nothing to laugh at, especially when this may just clear the active location and trigger an awful forced effect. Taking additional attacks, so long as you can deal with them, is certainly the ideal choice here however the issue with this is that he could continue to chain attacks until you are forced to place some progress anyway or risk losing a hero to an undefended attack! My core strategy with the Berserkers was to either stop them from ever attacking to begin with or to discard their shadow cards to avoid additional attacks ever being made. At one point Legolas was able to use Hands Upon the Bow to destroy a Bloodied Berserker in staging and I believe I feinted at least 3 or 4 Berserker attacks across my several games. My favourite way of dealing with this foe however was Forewarned and Armored Destrier, because both of these cards actually discard the shadow card altogether (rather than cancelling the shadow effect) the Berserker no longer has a shadow card dealt to him and his effect has no opportunity to trigger. All together across my games I believe I only ever actually had a Berserker attack a second time due to its forced effect the once and on every other occasion I was able to either stop the Berserker from ever attacking to begin with or was able to discard its shadow cards until I took it out. The way in which I was able to deal with and tech against this enemy certainly helped a ton in being able to take on and beat this Nightmare Quest.

Helm’s Dike is the first of the new Nightmare Locations and is funnily enough one that I really did not see much of. I never travelled to this location so never had to face the -10 engagement cost effect and as I never explored this location either I never had to deal with the forced effect either. Deducting enemies engagement cost by 10 points could certainly be pretty devastating early to mid game or before you are set up to deal with a swarm of enemies. Fearsome enemies like the Host of Isengard or Warrior of Dunland would potentially no longer be foes you can leave in staging if you choose and would instead engage you ready to decimate your forces. Foes like the Isengard Uruk or Bloodied Berserker would drop to 24 and 18 engagement cost respectively making it even easier for them to engage a player immediately. The forced effect on this location is nasty but certainly nowhere near as bad as Deeping Culvert which forces you to add an enemy to staging for EACH PLAYER and not just once and Helm’s Dike only ADDS the enemy to staging unlike Deeping Culvert which forces you to both reveal and add to the staging area. Honestly this location is really not so bad and overall it is more the loss of the locations with beneficial effects that ramps up the difficulty in this Nightmare quest as far as locations are concerned, well… except for the next location that is!!

Ahhh Hornburg Wall, the only location that potentially gave me as much if not more trouble than the beast that is Deeping Culvert! I have already covered this location above in my play reports explaining just how troublesome it can be so I won’t get into too much detail again. Essentially Toughness 1 might not seem like much but it REALLY adds up when most enemies already have a Toughness Value of their own and a solid amount of defense and hitpoints to begin with. The fact I no longer have Tactigorn in my lineup didn’t help either as that would have at least reduced enemy defense. Two copies of this location in play at once can certainly make killing enemies far more difficult than usual and can help the encounter deck swarm you with ease. Not being able to take out foes quickly will have some dire implications in this quest, not only will you be forced to endure and defend against additional attacks which in of itself could be more than enough to tip the scales but enemies like Bloodied Berserker or Warrior of Dunland also have more opportunities to trigger forced effects and enemies with an Archery value are going to stick around longer and deal even more Archery damage. Also because the win condition on the final Quest Stage is having no enemies in play destroying every enemy at the end may not really be feasible if you have allowed enemies to pile up to an unmanageable level.

The forced effect when you explore this location is not exactly pleasant either and actually has a somewhat similar effect to the extra Toughness it provides enemies; normally you are going to explore the active location in the quest phase which is shortly before engagement and combat, if you clear Hornburg Wall during this time all allies will be exhausted and none of them can help out in defending against or counter attacking enemies giving your foes a nasty advantage. I had this exhaust Azain Silverbeard and Boromir at a crucial moment where they could have helped take out foes and give me a little more breathing room during the combat phase, this forced effect stopped that plan dead in its tracks and allowed those enemies to stick around much longer. Even the shadow effect on this location is awful! Essentially this location really does not look or seem that bad on paper but in practise it can do some serious damage and really stop players from keeping up with the various enemies in this Nightmare Quest.

Now we come to Glittering Caves, the one new Nightmare Location with a beneficial effect that somewhat replaces all those others that are removed in the Nightmare version of this quest. Glittering Caves is a rather interesting location that can be a big help at a crucial moment but it is not always quite as beneficial as it may seem. You can only utilize the Caves and travel there when at Stage 4B which means if you do really well and never see 4B you will never get an opportunity to travel to this location. If you are at Stage 4B things are already fairly dire and you are close to possible defeat so avoiding combat for a single round may not necessarily help very much in the grand scheme of things. Skipping the combat phase means you also cannot declare attacks against enemies stopping you from reducing the amount of foes in play, this is not always a drawback however as you may not even have the attack strength necessary to kill or even damage any foes anyway in which case this effect could be highly beneficial. This location actually may have been really helpful during my eventual win as there were a few rounds late game where I was utterly unable to destroy or really even harm any enemies due to two copies of Hornbug Wall buffing all enemies Toughness value and also due to me needing to overcommit to the quest phase leaving few attackers behind for combat. I even had it in play while at Stage 4B but just did not travel there to avoid not being able to declare attacks against enemies for a round, had I known that there would be a few rounds in a row with me utterly unable to damage or kill foes anyway I surely would have travelled there and utilized its effect. Then again that being said the decks did finish on 44 and 47 threat respectively so they would have been on 46 and 49 instead had I travelled to Glittering Caves! Perhaps not the best idea after all!

Now not only is skipping the combat phase for a round only useful in certain situations but there is a cost to be paid for this effect. Each player must raise their threat by 2 and Glittering Caves is placed is the victory display at the end of the round. Essentially to sum up this location can provide a fairly nice effect but only in certain situations, the effect can also be slightly detrimental (especially if you are set up and can deal with enemy attacks with ease) stopping you from declaring attacks against enemies for a round and there is a small threat cost you must pay at the end of the round to even make use of the location to begin with. Honestly the best thing about this location for me personally was simply its low 2 threat and lack of any nasty forced or when revealed effects, this made seeing this location during staging an absolute blessing.

Rain of Arrows is the first of the two new Nightmare Treacheries and it is certainly the less troublesome of the two. As already covered above for Night Without End; removing resources from The Defense of Helm’s Deep is awful and means you need to survive additional rounds before you can reach the final Quest Stage and have a shot at victory. A ton of archery damage can also be pretty nasty though and could even potentially be a hero killer if you already have a ton of archery damage spread around the board. The actual amount of Archery this treachery adds however is pretty swingy and could be anywhere from 0 to 10+ depending on the amount of players in the game and how many locations are actually in the staging area, for me playing two handed I don’t think I ever had this treachery provide more than 5 or 6 points of Archery damage. So long as I have repeatable healing set up or an army of allies that can absorb archery I am pretty much always going to take that option over removing a resource from The Defense of Helm’s Deep. Not once in any of my games did I allow this treachery to remove resources and instead I always took the archery hit. This was honestly a treachery I didn’t mind seeing during staging as it meant no additional threat to deal with in the staging area and no enemy or location to deal with just a bit of direct damage across the board which I can then hopefully heal or even just ignore if I can beat the quest fast enough.

Crippling Weariness is the other new Nightmare treachery and boy is this one nasty!! As I mentioned earlier when talking about Devilry of Saruman, one of my most hated encounter effects is when characters cannot be readied by player card effects. My decks run a ridiculous amount of readying (UC x3, Gimli himself, Lembas, Miruvor, Armored Destrier etc) and rely upon heroes being able to make multiple actions throughout any given turn especially defenders like Elrond and Gimli so stopping any characters from readying via player card effects can really sting and put me in a precarious position during the combat phase. I cancelled multiple copies of this treachery throughout my various games and only ever actually let it trigger once, had I not prioritized cancelling this treachery in particular (alongside Night Without End and Devilry of Saruman) however and let it trigger more often I may not have beaten this quest with so few attempts! The shadow effect is pretty nasty as well and although it only targets one character it is likely your primary defender that will get hit by this stopping you from using them to defend multiple attacks that round (if you are even using readying effects and a primary defender of this nature to begin with). I had this treachery appear as a shadow card a few times but thankfully it was often dealt as the shadow card for the last attack Gimli was defending that round and so had next to no effect!!

Conclusion:

As I am sure you have gathered by now I certainly did not expect to beat this Nightmare Quest quite as fast or easily as I did, don’t get me wrong it is certainly quite a difficult quest but it was simply no match for my decks this time around! My winning match was an extremely close one and had I not utilized player side quests I really don’t think I would have won that particular attempt and would have had to keep trying instead. The threat hit I took from questing unsuccessfully against a player side quest early on would have resulted in progress being placed instead and considering when I advanced to Stage 5 I had 4 of the 8 progress needed to “clear” Stage 4B and immediately lose, this progress likely would have been enough to seal my fate later on!

I actually had a really great time playing this Nightmare Quest as it was exciting and tense throughout every game from start to finish. Both of my most hated encounter card effects appear in this quest which honestly made me think that it was not only going to be harder but somewhat less enjoyable as well. This was simply not the case although I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I went in prepared with a clear game plan knowing exactly which treacheries are must cancels and which can be more or less ignored. The Nightmare version of this quest certainly ups the ante and provides a much harsher challenge for players, I did not have as much trouble against it as I have had against the regular version of this quest in the past however. As strange as this sounds I think it is easily explainable; the Nightmare version is certainly a lot more difficult but my decks are just that much more efficient and powerful than they used to be and I am also used to this Quest being unrelenting so knew exactly what to expect and how to deal with it. Again had I not known just how useful Player Side Quests can be against this quest I would not have had that additional advantage and it may have taken several more attempts and losses to achieve victory. All in all I am both very happy with my result as well as this Nightmare Saga Quest! It was certainly not frustrating like The Uruk Hai was as having a hero missing from your line up and not having as many resources to play with can really neuter your decks and stop them from working like they are meant to. Instead it was difficult but in a very fun and rewarding way. As always thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my report on Nightmare Helm’s Deep! Join me next time as I attempt to tear down the walls of Orthanc and get some sweet revenge on Saruman.

Campaign Choices:

Now there are no boons that can be earned from this quest only burdens but I have thankfully avoided picking any up by skipping Quest Stage 1B and advancing immediately to 2A during setup. No copies of Poisoned Counsels for me!!

Something worth mentioning while we are on the subject of the Campaign Pool and burdens/boons is that I did not have to use either of Galadriel’s gifts to beat this quest. In the past when playing this quest as part of a campaign I always used one of the two one-use only boons to give me a little bit of a boost and somewhat counter the fact that I would always start at 2A to avoid Poisoned Counsels. More often than not I would use Phial of Galadriel during an intense combat phase so that I could take the majority of attacks undefended (now that most enemies are reduced to 0 attack strength!) and hit back really hard against enemies with additional characters I would have otherwise used to defend enemy attacks. I consciously decided to try and beat the quest without having to use either of these boons this time around so that I still have them later in the campaign for even trickier quests than this one. This worked out really well and I was not even forced to use one after losing one too many attempts which I thought was a very real and likely possibility.

With no actual changes my campaign pool remains the same:

Boons

– Mr. Underhill (attached to the Ring-bearer during setup)

(Removed from Campaign pool by The Uruk Hai Campaign Card effect)

-Old Bogey Stories (attached to a hero of the first players choice during setup)

– Ho! Tom Bombadil! (placed in the first players hand during setup )

(Used to cancel They Are Coming! during Journey in the Dark)

-Tireless Ranger (attached to Gimli during setup)

-Forewarned (attached to Gimli during setup)

-Noble Hero (attached to Elrond during setup)

-Leader of Men (attached to Elrond during setup)

-Glamdring (shuffled into questing/support deck during setup)

-Anduril (shuffled into combat deck during setup)

-Phial of Galadriel (attached to a hero during setup)

-Three Golden Hairs (attached to a hero during setup)

Burdens

-The Ring Draws Them (shuffled into the encounter deck during setup)

-Fear of Discovery (shuffled into the encounter deck during setup)

-Pursued by the Enemy (shuffled into the encounter deck during setup)

– Grievous Wound (added to the staging area during setup)

(Seat of Seeing used during Breaking of the Fellowship to remove this Burden from the campaign pool)

-Ill Fate (shuffled into the encounter deck during setup)

Fallen Heroes List

-Cirdan the Shipwright

Threat Penalties

+1 Starting Threat for both decks from adding Galadriel back to line-up after Cirdan was added to the Fallen Heroes List.