Conflict at the Carrock Adventure Pack

Here’s a quest for those that love a good old-fashioned brutal fight. This is a tough quest, rated as a Difficulty Level of 7 which is the same as the Escape from Dol Guldur quest found in the base set, and so is not for the faint of heart.

Additionally, this quest will be even more difficult with less players since there are four trolls regardless of the number of players. What makes this dangerous to a solo player especially is that the trolls all have the same Engagement Cost; get to that threat number and they all engage you at once. Not only that but each troll also augments the strength of all the trolls in play, making them all even tougher. (Therefore, I recommend that if playing solo, play ‘two-handed’ and/or randomly select only two or three of the trolls to be used in the game.)

The Conflict at the Carrock Adventure Pack also includes some player cards and a new Spirit Hero – Frodo Baggins. The player cards consist of two new cards for each Sphere (3 copies of each card) as well as the neutral card Song of Wisdom. That neutral card will only be of use to those who use multi-sphere decks, but overall, the new cards are quite useful and worth getting.

Your threat count will be a very important element to maintain at a low level in this quest. Thus, using Frodo Baggins can be helpful in starting off with a lower threat level since he contributes only seven to the total. As an additional side-note, Frodo Baggins is also a great hero to use with the The Hunt for Gollum quest for those who get frustrated with being sent back to the second stage from the third one (he allows you to transfer damage to your threat counter).

So, this is a very good addition to the game overall, supplying a tough yet fun quest and along with a good assortment of useful new player cards.

Overview
Conflict at the Carrock is the second adventure pack for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and the second 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. In the quest of the previous adventure pack (The Hunt for Gollum) the heroes picked up the trail of Gollum and started to follow it along the Anduin River. In Conflict at the Carrock the larger quest takes a brief pause as the heroes approaches the Carrock, where they need to help the Beornings against a group of trolls.

The hunt for Gollum contains 60 cards and a single-page rulesheet. Many of the cards are for the encounter deck (i.e. enemy, location, treachery, and objective cards), but nearly half of them consist of new player cards (i.e. hero, ally, attachment, and event cards; some for each sphere of influence).

The quest
The quest included in Conflict at the Carrock is quite different from the previous quests (the ones found in the base game and the one in The Hunt for Gollum adventure pack). It is a real hack and slash adventure, although it does call for some planning. It has a nominal difficulty level of 7, yet in this case that does not reveal much at all about the real difficulties of the quest. Unfortunately, it is quite impossible to take on with just 1 player and it is really challenging with 2 players. The trolls are simply too hard to tackle without some additional muscle and the threat level goes through the roof if you do not bring an ample amount of questers. The quest is very straightforward and you will soon find out what you need to do to manage it. I still haven’t been able to break it in solo play, however, so save this one for a group play or you’ll just end up frustrated (alternatively, play with two decks as if there were two players).

The hero
The hero included in Conflict at the Carrock is Frodo Baggins. He has a very useful trait [Response: After Frodo Baggins is damaged, cancel the damage and instead raise your threat by the amount of damage he would have been dealt. (Limit once per phase.)], but it will not do you any good in the “Against the Trolls” quest, in which the threat levels will soar almost whatever you do. Frodo belongs to the sphere of Spirit and is quite cheap (threat cost 7), especially considering his trait.

The new allies, attachments, and events
There are at least two new cards for each sphere of influence. Most of them are somewhat boorish, yet there are some real treats as well. My favorite belongs to Leadership: Dúnedain Warning, an attachment (cost 1) that gives a hero +1 defense (and it can be moved to another hero if you pay 1 resource from the attached hero’s pool). Another attachment, A Burning Brand, belongs to lore (cost 2) and cancels any shadow effect from cards dealt to an enemy that the attached hero (who must belong to Lore) is attacked by. Spirit decks will profit from the ally Éomund (cost 3), who has willpower 2, attack 1, defense 1, and 2 hit points. His game text includes the response “After Eomund leaves play, ready all Rohan characters in play.” This will be great in a Rohan-themed deck and—incidentally—there is also a Spirit attachment, Nor am I a Stranger (cost 1), which gives attached character the Rohan trait. I should mention a Tactics card as well, although the two Tactics cards included in Conflict at the Carrock do not impress me much. One of them is the Beorning Beekeeper ally, which costs a lot to play (cost 4) and does not give you very much to play with (willpower 1, attack 2, defense 1, hit points 3, and a not very great game text), although it adds to the local flair of questing along the Anduin River.

Summary
Conflict at the Carrock contains a few really nice cards and a quite different quest. Each adventure pack has a different focus from the previous, especially when it comes to what it takes to manage the quest included in them. The quest in Conflict at the Carrock is nice and high-paced, but is does not add as much story-wise, nor is it really playable with less than 2 players. Nevertheless, I am not one to say not to the odd hack and slash adventure along the way. I quite enjoyed tackling the grievously hard trolls.