A Journey to Rhosgobel Adventure Pack
As the heroes continue through the Anduin Valley, they hear the piercing cry of an eagle over the distant ridge. They hurry to investigate, only to find a great eagle, suffering from wounds that appear to have come from goblin weapons. They only have short time to get the eagle assistance before it perishes.
A Journey To Rhosgobel is the third Adventure Pack in the Shadows of Mirkwood Cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game! After facing a fearsome group of trolls, the heroes have pressed further into the Anduin Valley to continue their search for Gollum. However, when they stumble across a dying eagle wounded in a fight with goblins, they are compelled to offer their assistance.
During their search for Gollum, the heroes must take a detour in order to save a valuable ally. Since the Eagles play such an important role in the Shadows of Mirkwood Adventure Packs, players will want to retain the trust of their winged allies by saving one of their kin. In order to do so, they must bring the bird to Rhosgobel and seek out the wizard Radagast, who knows many secrets of the wild.
A Journey to Rhosgobel contains 60 fixed cards from the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle. In this exciting expansion, even more Eagles join the Tactics sphere, while Leadership players are given a Dúnedain Quest that will inspire confidence in their cause. The heroes’ trek through Mirkwood leads them to Haldir of Lórien, whose unnatural agility will aid the party in their task. However, the sky grows dark with foul minions of the Shadow, and every step toward Rhosgobel causes the heroes’ avian ally more pain. There is no time to lose!
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Overview
A Journey to Rhosgobel is the third adventure pack for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and the third installment in the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle (consisting of six adventure packs), which revolves around the search for Gollum in the vicinity of Mirkwood and the Anduin River. The heroes is following Gollum’s trail (which they picked up in The Hunt for Gollum) and have just helped the Beornings against a group of trolls (in Conflict at the Carrock) when the trail takes them back towards Mirkwood and Rhosgobel, the home of the istari Radagast. Close to Rhosgobel they find a severely injured Wilyador (a giant eagle), who needs their help getting to Radagast to be healed.
The quest
The quest included in A Journey to Rhosgobel is—once again—quite different from the previous quests (the ones found in the base game and in the previous adventure packs). I am astonished at how well the designers at Fantasy Flight Games manage to vary the gaming experience through extensively different quests, at the same time as very few rules (often none at all) have to be added to accomplish it. This quest is quite challenging, with a nominal difficulty level of 6, but it can be managed with most decks as long as you have one player with some Lore cards (with healing abilities). It is playable both in solo mode and multi-player mode and I have really enjoyed it in both configurations.
The hero
The hero included in A Journey to Rhosgobel is Prince Imrahil, a Gondor noble with a truly great trait [Response: After a character leaves play, ready Prince Imrahil. (Limit once per round.)]. It works especially well in a Leadership deck (and Imrahil belongs to the sphere of Leadership), since you often have a fair amount resources and can add cheap allies. This means you can use Imrahil for questing or defense and still get to use his great attack value (3) if you just sacrifice a ally to an enemy attack. His has Willpower 2, Attack 3, Defense 2, Hit Points 4, and a threat cost of 12. I have included in every Leadership deck since I bought A Journey to Rhosgobel and I haven’t regretted it once.
The new allies, attachments, and events
There are several great player cards included in A Journey to Rhosgobel. My favorite belongs to Leadership: Dúnedain Quest, an attachment (cost 2) that gives a hero +1 Willpower (and it can be moved to another hero if you pay 1 resource from the attached hero’s pool). Leadership also gets a new event card, Parting Gifts (cost 0), which lets you move any number of resource tokens from a Leadership hero to any other hero, a great addition for Leadership decks (which often have a good enough influx of resource tokens). A similar card for Lore decks is the event card Infighting (cost 1), which for a very low cost lets you move any number of damage from one enemy to another (a great way to wear down hard-to-kill enemies such as trolls). Spirit decks get a very useful ally, Escort from Edoras (cost 2), who is removed from play after questing, but on the other hand adds 4 Willpower to that single quest (he has Attack 0, Defense 0, and Hit Points 1). Tactics deck will benefit from the ally Landroval, a giant eagle (cost 5) who besides being a sentinel also has a smashing ability: “Response: After a hero card is destroyed, return Landroval to his owner’s hand to put that hero back into play, with 1 damage token on it. (Limit once per game.)”. And it does not end with these carda; there are a few more useful player cards included, beside the ones mentioned here.
Summary
A Journey to Rhosgobel contains a lot of really nice player cards. In fact, it is the adventure pack with the greatest addition of player cards (this far). Moreover, it includes a wonderful quest, which gives a great gaming experience for both solo and multi-player modes. A Journey to Rhosgobel is without a doubt the best adventure pack this far, which really makes me look forward to all the ones I haven’t tried yet. If FFG can keep up the variation and replay value of their LoTR:LCG products in this way, it will render loads of great gaming time to an already intriguing game.
While searching for Gollum, your team of heroes comes across a wounded eagle. You must bring the eagle to Rhosgobel in order to save the eagle’s life. If the eagle dies, you lose the adventure.
The eagle has twenty hit points and starts off with two wounds. The eagle loses two hit points per turn, and can not be healed more than 5 points at a time.
It is important to play with a healing deck, or at the very least Glorfindel who can heal every turn. The adventure deck is made up of cards that can hurt either the team or the eagle. For example, if you leave an attack undefended, the shadow card pulled will more than likely say the damage has to go on the eagle. For an example of team injury there is a card that causes a wound on every hero who has attachments.
This expansion lends itself to some nice story telling. We have our eagle on a make-shift stretcher, and we are fighting spiders, and other birds that want to attack us and wound the eagle even more. There is even an insect card that can do damage. Glorfindel is running around trying to keep the bird stable until we get to Rhosgobel, where we then go searching for athelas. If you can find enough healing herbs the eagle is healed and you win the game!
Play with a deck of eagles and other ranged fighters. A lot of the creatures that you are going to fight can only be damaged by these two types.
There is a lot of fun to be had with a fighters killing spiders that pop up, and ranged heroes shooting down birds. Unlike the last scenario where you had to kill four trolls that I don’t believe can be done solo, I have completed this one as a solo adventure.
Take a time out from searching for that evil loving Gollum and save an eagle. The trolls in the previous quest were harder, but I found this quest more rewarding.
The Hero
Prince Imrahil: A Leadership Hero with a threat cost of 11. Will 2 Attack 3 Defense 2 Hit points 4.
This character is a strong and well rounded character similar to Aragorn. His special ability to ready once per turn when a character leaves play can be a strong one in the right type of deck. Unlike some of the other, debatably better abilities, it takes some finessing to get this ability to be useful.
The Player Cards
Escort from Edoras and Ancient Mathom are the better of the player cards added by this expansion. So, if you are looking to expand your spirit decks power, this pack will come in quite handy.
The Quest
The quest involves defending an ally that swaps hands every turn. Then you need to dig through the encounter deck to find objective cards before you get to the end of the last stage of the quest. If you don’t have enough healing or get the right encounter cards before too long, you will fail.
Conclusion
There are some staple player cards in this set. The quest is a mixed bag. You could potentially have a great time with it, but usually it takes a group a few tries to start to understand the strategy of how the quest works.
The mechanics of this quest are a bit wonky, and having a healing deck makes it much much easier