Ladies of Middle Earth are Triumphant! And Dead.

Relations are currently strained between Lothlorien and Mirkwood as a mission escorting a captive to the latter elven realm (at the behest of the wizard Mithrandir) led to the death of the Lady Galadriel by Gollum-bite. And this after the mission’s success was just barely ensured by the second valiant sacrifice of Caldara to summon forth warriors capable of fighting the deadly spider which beset them. A source close to the Steward of Gondor had this to say: “Caldara? Who the hell is Caldara?” Theoden, King of Rohan, declined to comment on whether or not the lady Eowyn will be punished for stealing his sword and using it to kill spiders.

So yes, I took a Caldara/Galadriel/Eowyn deck against Nightmare Return to Mirkwood and won with two dead heroes. There may have been soe misplays along the way, there was certainly some luck involved (such as not seeing Gollum’s Bite until the final staging when it didn’t matter any more), and I’m still not 100% whether you can choose to resolve the topmost tantrum in the discard pile when there aren’t any tantrums in the discard pile yet, though I’m not sure the extra hero exhaust in those early rounds would have made any difference in the long run since I did have some spare progress which could have equated to me still passing quest stages at the same rate while exhausting Caldara instead of questing with her. I played it the easier way because I didn’t honestly think I had much chance of winning regardless.