“We will make such a chase as shall be accounted a marvel among the Three Kindreds: Elves, Dwarves, and Men.”
-Aragorn, The Two Towers
And on Day Six, our intrepid party rested on the banks of the Anduin, having dispatched to the Gates of Hell both the Hill Troll and the nasty Goblins. Our heroes slept in, then woke to a sumptuous breakfast and strong coffee left them by the departed ally Gandalf. What a guy! [You’ll recall that after he is used in a round, Gandalf must be discarded].
The woods are quiet. There are no creatures in the staging area, and no allies in the adventurers’ party. There are only Beravor, with one resource token and two wounds, Elwyn, with none of either, and Theodred, also with two wounds. Beravor also has the attachment Unexpected Courage, acquired on Day Five.
In our hand: two copies of Faramir, and one each of Hasty Stroke, Lore of Imladris for healing, the ally Northern Tracker, and a Dwarven Tomb.
Threat Level rises to 32
Resource Phase Bereavor adds a resource token and now has two, Elwyn has one and Theodred gains one. In addition he taps his attachment the Steward of Gondor for an additional two tokens.
We draw an event card — the alliterative Galadhrim’s Greeting!
Like Gandalf, the threat reduction of this card is pretty damn strong, and can be used strategically to keep monsters who may at some point hover in the staging area from automatically engaging us in combat.
Planning Phase. Since we face no threats at all at the moment, we opt to do nothing in the planning phase — we should save our resources for the coming days!
Quest Phase Again, since we eliminated the Goblins and Troll on Day Five, and there are no enemies in the staging area, we have no need to commit many heroes or allies to combat. This gives us a great opportunity to advance forward in the actual quest.
We commit only Eowyn to questing, in case the Encounter deck reveals an enemy with whom we must immediately engage.
In the staging portion of the quest phase, we draw a card from the Encounter Deck: the location Necromancer’s Past:
To resolve Eowyn’s questing, we subtract the Necromancer’s threat level of 3 from her Willpower strength of 4 to get a progress of 1. Since there is no current location, it is applied to the actual quest stage of “To the River,” and gives 8 needed to close that first portion of the quest!
This allows us to immediately move on to the next quest stage, Anduin Passage:
Note how this quest stage changes the rules of the game, albeit temporarily: each quest phase brings out two encounters cards, not just one. On the plus side, we will not be forced to engage enemies from the staging area when their engagement level is below the threat level. Engagement for this phase will be wholly optional.
Travel Phase: We opt at this point to travel to the location just revealed, Necromancer’s Past. As you see from the card’s travel stipulation, we must discard two cards at random. This forces me to lose the Dwarven Tomb and the strong ally, Northern Tracker.
Combat Phase: On this day, with no enemies either engaged or in the staging area, our valiant party gets a respite from combat.
We tap Beravor, which allows us to summon two more cards to our hand, making up for the cards lost to the Necromancer’s Pass, and bringing us more options to choose from in the ensuing turns: a second Galadhrim’s Greeting (who shuffled this deck?) and, one of our favorites, Sneak Attack.
And thus the quietest of days, one without a drop of bloodletting, comes to a close, and our party hopes we are ready for the threats that lay ahead.