Attack on Dol Guldur

The Dark Lord of Mordor has declared war across Middle-earth. His Nazgûl lead the Morgul host against Minas Tirith in the south, while Easterlings lay siege to Erebor in the north. And in a move long-prepared, the armies of Dol Guldur cross the Anduin to assault Lórien…

I have been playing a lot of Ares Games’ War of the Ring with my partner lately—and as a lifetime Free Peoples player, the intro text for this quest is all too familiar! One of the things I like about that particular board game is how well it demonstrates the “wide view” of the war. Because the narrative of The Lord of the Rings books focuses primarily on the exploits of the characters who composed the Fellowship of the Ring it can be easy to forget that Sauron’s war touched more than just Rohan and Gondor. Indeed, all the Free Peoples East of the Misty Mountains felt the burning gaze of the lidless eye. Attack on Dol Guldur is set during one of these battles less touched upon by Tolkien’s story directly, and—like War of the Ring—offers an interesting window into the wider war that waged across Middle Earth.

The Tower will Fall

Attack on Dol Guldur can be played in either Standard Mode or—if you have three copies of the quest and three or more players—Epic Multiplayer Mode. Unlike its predecessor, The Siege of Annúminas, this quest plays very similarly in both modes. You’ll use all the different quest stages in either mode, and it’s really just a question of how many players you’re working together with as you push towards victory. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on Standard Mode, since that’s how I played it.

Like the Saga quests, Attack on Dol Guldur draws its inspiration directly from events that occur in the text of The Lord of the Rings. Here’s everything that Tolkien wrote (in the appendices) about the battles between Lórien and Dol Guldur:

“Three times Lórien had been assailed from Dol Guldur, but besides the valour of the elven people of that land, the power that dwelt there was too great for any to overcome, unless Sauron had come there himself. Though grievous harm was done to the fair woods on the borders, the assaults were driven back; and when the Shadow passed, Celeborn came forth and led the host of Lórien over Anduin in many boats. They took Dol Guldur, and Galadriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed.”

Appendix B, The Return of the King

This quest takes what little description Tolkien gives and brings it to life beautifully. Stage 1 represents the three assaults of Dol Guldur upon Lórien. It collects a resource token at the end of each round, and the players automatically advance to Stage 2 once it has collected 3 tokens. At the end of each round, all progress on the main quest is moved over to the Power of Lórien Objective, which waits in the Staging Area (and doesn’t do anything until later). You also have the option of raising your threat by 1 to give everyone a free resource and a card draw—a rare instance of the quest intentionally giving you some time to build up for the battle to come!

Stage 2 is liminal, representing the elves crossing over the Anduin. During this stage, if you made at least 10 progress during Stage 1, you get to take control of the Host of Lórien Objective-Ally, a powerful 3 / 3 / 3 / 6 Ally with Ranged and Sentinel which does not exhaust to quest. If you made 30 progress (a monumental feat, to be sure) then you get to take control of Power of Lórien itself, which allows you to cancel one encounter card wholesale!

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Then you’re immediately moved along to Stage 3, which represents your attack on the Hill of Dark Sorcery itself. There are 4 different versions of Stage 3, each representing a different part of the battle: The Siege of Dol Guldur, The Tower of Sorcery, Battle Under the Trees, and Dungeons of the Necromancer. You get to choose which of these four versions of the stage you want to focus on for any given round, but you must always choose a different Stage 3 to switch to at the end of the round. There are four parts to each of these stages:

1. A Unique boss Enemy with the Lieutenant trait which starts in the Staging Area and gets -1 engagement cost for each progress you place on the main quest.
2. A collection of nasty Locations with the Dol Guldur trait which can only be made active while you’re at the appropriate stage.
3. A negative effect which triggers if you fail to keep at least 5 progress on the quest by the end of the round.
4. A positive effect which triggers if you manage to keep at least 10 progress on the quest by the end of the round.

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When the quest first came out, I posted a very detailed spoiler article for it with details on each of the differences between the stages, as well as an analysis of the sorts of encounter cards you might square off against. Rather than repeat myself here, feel free to check out that other article if you want a refresher on the nitty-gritty.

The goal of the quest is to bring Dol Guldur’s city strength to zero by clearing Locations and Enemies with a Siege value in the lower-right corner of the card. Then, you must defeat one of the Lieutenant Enemies (which is Indestructible as long as Dol Guldur still has health remaining) to finally bring down the tower and win the war.

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Whether you’re playing in Standard or Epic Mulitiplayer mode, this quest is tough as nails. At time of writing, it has a user-voted difficulty score of 9.6 on the Quest Companion—right up there with such infamous company as The Battle of Carn Dûm and The Mountain of Fire. I’m going to need to bring a special deck if I ever hope to be able to best this one. Fortunately, I managed to find something that qualifies in more ways than one.

Deck: Terrible as the Morning

“You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

Galadriel, The Mirror of Galadriel, The Fellowship of the Ring

Theme: Galadriel accepts the One Ring

Hero (1)
Galadriel (Celebrimbor’s Secret)

Contract (0)
1x The Grey Wanderer (Challenge of the Wainriders)

Ally (25)
1x Arwen Undómiel (The Watcher in the Water)
3x Galadhrim Weaver (The Treachery of Rhudaur)
3x Galadriel’s Handmaiden (Celebrimbor’s Secret)
1x Galdor of the Havens (The Treachery of Rhudaur)
1x Gildor Inglorion (The Hills of Emyn Muil)
2x Glorfindel (Flight of the Stormcaller)
1x Henamarth Riversong (Core Set)
1x Lindir (The Battle of Carn Dûm)
3x Lórien Guide (Core Set)
3x Marksman of Lórien (The Drowned Ruins)
3x Silvan Refugee (The Drúadan Forest)
3x Wandering Exile (Under the Ash Mountains)

Attachment (15)
1x Magic Ring (The Crossings of Poros)
3x Mirror of Galadriel (Celebrimbor’s Secret)
1x Nenya (Celebrimbor’s Secret)
3x Resourceful (The Watcher in the Water)
3x Ring of Barahir (The Steward’s Fear)
1x Silver Circlet (Wrath and Ruin)
1x Stone of Elostirion (Under the Ash Mountains)
1x The One Ring (A Shadow in the East)
1x Well Preserved (Under the Ash Mountains)

Event (10)
3x Elrond’s Counsel (The Watcher in the Water)
2x Hasty Stroke (Core Set)
2x The Master Ring (A Shadow in the East)
3x Timely Aid (The Redhorn Gate)

1 Hero, 50 Cards

Check out this deck’s description on RingsDB for info on how to play it.

Inspiration

My initial plan was to put together more of a standard Silvan deck to try to beat this one. You know, Galadriel, Celeborn, and someone else. Maybe Thranduil. Something like that. I tried a couple of different combinations, and a few of them worked okay—but none of them were really popping for me. Plus, they all ended up feeling like worse versions of my favorite deck, which just so happens to already be a Silvan deck which I built for this blog. I didn’t want to rehash something I had already done, especially if I had done it better elsewhere, so I went back to the drawing board.

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One of the things that always stuck out to me in Tolkien’s recounting of the attack on Dol Guldur is the fact that Galadriel was apparently the one who “threw down its walls and laid bare its pits”. I don’t know if it’s exactly what the Professor was trying to convey, but I imagine Galadriel marching up to the Tower herself, dress billowing in the moonlight, and using elven magic (possibly aided by her ring, Nenya) to tear it down in a moment of righteous fury. It’s all very badass when I picture it.

I wanted to build a deck that could help me capture that imagery—something focused on Galadriel specifically, so I started thinking about what a Grey Wanderer / Galadriel deck might look like.

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I remembered seeing a really neat deck by Some Sort called All Shall Love Me and Despair!, which uses a series of interlocking combos. The key pieces are Ring of Barahir to give Galadriel a ton of extra hit points and Well-Preserved which allows her to fully heal every round, meaning that she can take a large undefended attack each round with little to no risk or consequence. There are tons of Artifact Attachments that Galadriel can use effectively, and with a Ring of Barahir attached she gets +1 hit point for each one. Thematically, the deck explores what would have happened if Galadriel had taken the ring when Frodo had offered it to her in Lórien.

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I thought this deck was compelling, and, as I found myself needing a Galadriel-centered deck to help me take down a tough quest, I thought I’d try putting my own spin on it. So, I imagined Galadriel leading an army of elves across Middle Earth, a magic ring on each hand. A beautiful and terrible queen, with a glint in her eye as she calmly drives the terrified enemy forces before her.

Thematic Concessions

As a “what-if” scenario, I feel comfortable giving myself a little bit of wiggle room when it comes to theming here. I decided I’d be happy using both Silvan and Noldor elves, for instance, because I can imagine her bringing together all sorts of different elves to rally to her cause. I decided to avoid any elves whose names explicitly mentioned “Rivendell”, just so the deck stayed thematically leaning more towards Galadriel’s neck of the woods.

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There’s one card in the deck that I have a little trouble figuring out how it thematically fits, however: Ring of Barahir. It’s obviously a key part of the deck’s core combo, so I had to keep it. But it’s a little trickier to figure out its narrative tie-in. During the War of the Ring, the Ring of Barahir was in Arwen’s possession, having been given to her by Aragorn as a sign of their betrothal. I did include Arwen among the elven host in my deck, so perhaps that is the only connection I need?

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But I have always associated the ring more with Aragorn—and the proof of his lineage—than with the elves. That is perhaps unfair, however, for the ring was originally crafted by elves in Valinor and was given to Barahir (Aragorn’s ancient ancestor) by the elven-king Finrod Felegund as a symbol of eternal friendship between their two houses. Herein, perhaps, lies a stronger tie to Galadriel, since Finrod was Galadriel’s brother—so in a sense, she has some claim to the heirloom as well!

It’s tenuous, to be sure. But since there’s no way around using the card, it will have to be enough for me to make my peace with it.

The play’s the thing

Win ratio: 4 / 4

Normally I play five games before calling it quits, but I found the relative complexity of this quest to cause the games to run longer than usual, and all four of my first games played out about the same—so I decided to call it after four. The large number of powerful enemies and combat-related effects can make it seem like combat prowess is the most important attribute for a deck to have when trying to beat Attack on Dol Guldur, but it turns out that the key to consistent victory is good willpower output. The quest feels entirely different when you’re in control of your questing game versus when you’re coming up a little short.

In all four games, I was able to acquire the Host of Lórien during Stage 2, which helped to set me up for success in the later phases. (The 30 progress required to take control of Power of Lórien was always far out of reach, however.) Even more importantly, being able to consistently place 5 progress on the Stage 3 Quests meant I only ever had to suffer one “bad effect” per round—greatly reducing the chance that things would spiral out of control. After 2-3 rounds at Stage 3, I was also able to place at least 10 progress on the main quest, meaning I was netting some positive effect each round as well.

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The MVP card in each of these games was Silvan Refugee. It’s hard to beat 2-willpower for 1 resource in a quest that demands fast willpower generation! They would inevitably get discarded mid-game by the Forced effect on Dungeons of the Necromancer—which was always a setback—but they did so much good work helping me build my board state before that happened that I was able to right the ship again in a turn or two. I often chose the Dungeons as my quest when I had the option to do so, just so I could control my destiny a bit and prevent its Forced effect from sending my Refugees to the discard pile for one more turn.

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Because the boss enemies get an extra attack at the start of the round once Dol Guldur reaches 5 or fewer remaining hit points, I was careful not to let it drop too low until I had a nice strong board state built up. In two games, I intentionally under-quested against The Siege of Dol Guldur just so I could bump up the city’s strength while still allowing me to safely clear Siege Locations and Enemies. Once I was ready, however, I would use the positive effect on The Siege of Dol Guldur to drop the city’s strength by a little extra, clear a Location or an Enemy or two, and generally kill the boss by the end of the round. This meant the Bane of Amon Lanc was usually my final Lieutenant of choice.

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I managed to get a 100%-win rate against Attack on Dol Guldur, but that doesn’t mean that these were easy games. In each one, a stray enemy engagement or extra attack could cause a major setback that would take time to recover from, and despite my ability to put out large willpower numbers questing was sometimes a serious concern. But if I was building a positive board state and the Shadow Effects weren’t too unkind to me, I was able to find my footing and bring down the Tower of Dark Sorcery.

Final thoughts

My first several attempts against this quest weren’t nearly so successful. My first instinct was to use more well-rounded decks (rather than having a focus on willpower) and even though they were able to limp along for quite a while, some failed quest stages or randomly selected Stage 3 Forced effects would inevitably pick away at my fragile board state and set me two steps backwards. Sometimes I could still pull out a win, sometimes it was just a merciless slog followed by a slow and painful death. The push-and-pull felt endless, and often frustrating.

But once I finally switched to a quest-heavy deck instead, everything clicked into place. The quest was handing me as many gifts as punishments, and I was able to build a slow and steady ramp towards victory. The difference was night-and-day!

So, I’m left feeling rather ambivalent about this one. It was a neat puzzle to figure out, but all those nigh-endless games spent not-quite losing soured me on it a bit. I think this is one of those quests that’s best in small doses—I should bring it out, give it a try or two, and then put it away again. It tends to lose its shine a little with repeated plays.

But hey, I was able to give a badass Galadriel Grey Wanderer deck a successful spin, so that’s a win in and of itself!

The next stop on my journey will be the Nightmare Grey Havens / Dreamchaser cycle! I’m very much looking forward to revisiting some of my favorite quests again in Nightmare mode.