OK, The Line Unbroken returns to standard difficulty for the Sands of Harad deluxe expansion. There’s a lot of interesting things to be said about this box, and the first quest I’m tackling in this post is a great one which I’ve used a fair bit for deck testing. Let’s get into it.
So as usual for deluxe expansions I’m going to divide up interesting subjects between the blog posts for the three quests. For this one I want to start by talking about the story. Sands of Harad was very interesting in story terms for a couple of reasons.
Firstly of course is the fact that every cycle transition since Heirs of Numenor has involved things being wrapped up and our non-specific group of heroes moving on to a different part of Middle Earth where the next cycle will begin. In this case though, the new deluxe begins right where the previous cycle ended, in Umbar. We defeated the villain, but we’re now stranded in his country surrounded by enemies with no easy escape route. This makes for a much stronger story link between cycles, which will then be followed through further into Wilds of Rhovanion through Kahliel’s tribe of Haradrim – which is the second interesting thing in the story of this deluxe expansion.
Examining Tolkien’s work with an eye towards possible racism is complicated. It is noticeable that a lot of the time moral character seems to be implicitly tied to how far west you come from, and it is a simple fact that the dark-skinned Haradrim only appear as part of Sauron’s armies. On the other hand, reading supplemental materials it’s easy to see how the Haradrim may have had legitimate ancestral grievances relating to past Numenorean imperialism which may have made them more susceptible to Sauron’s deceits, and of course there’s the passage in The Two Towers when Sam sees a dead man of Harad: “He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.” It’s not much, but it’s there, and regardless of how you view it in the context of the original work, it certainly left things open enough for the designers of this game to spin a whole cycle’s story around a virtuous tribe of Haradrim wishing to escape the thrall of Sauron – continuing the trend which was started with making Na’asiyah a hero and exploring the nuance in the central conflict of Lord of the Rings.
Let’s move on to the quest I’m tackling – Escape from Umbar. I mentioned above that I’ve used this quest a fair amount for deck testing, and that’s because it’s just a fairly well-rounded challenge with no odd quest gimmicks which would invalidate deck choices. The one significant mechanic to bear in mind is the requirement to get progress onto the main quest both to avoid some negative effects on the enemies but also because if you don’t you immediately lose the game. And it’s important to be aware that each player starts out engaged with an enemy. Outside of those though it’s all pretty standard, which means I don’t have much guidance for how to build my decks.
On the other hand, however, I do have a bunch of new player cards to play around with, and some old ones I haven’t used yet. Of course the new Gimli and Legolas are mandated by my standard rules, but they each have a couple of companion cards in the box as well, and building around them can lead me to more ideas.
Borrowed Horses
Heroes:
Gimli (Ld)
Legolas (Sp)
Elfhelm
Allies (9):
Gandalf (Core) x3
Erebor Guard x3
Westfold Horse-breeder x3
Attachments (22):
King Under the Mountain x3
Armoured Destrier x3
Dwarven Shield x3
Ranger Provisions x3
Light of Valinor x3
Mirkwood Long-knife x3
Snowmane x2
Windfola x2
Events (18):
A Test of Will x3
Well Warned x3
Sneak Attack x3
Terrible to Behold x3
Unlikely Friendship x3
Hidden Cache x3
Side-quests (1):
Gather Information x1
Thoughts: If I recall correctly, this hero lineup was the first deck I tried to build with this Legolas/Gimli, but I never finished it for some reason. It makes sense though, as they’re both in the right sphere to get a useful benefit from Elfhelm’s Mount bonuses.
Working with Elfhelm and Mounts, plus the innate readying of Gimli and Legolas, it makes sense to put more focus on powering up heroes rather than amassing an army of allies, so we just have Horse-breeders to fetch the Mounts, Core Gandalf because of course we have Sneak Attack Gandalf, and Erebor Guards as some additional backup defenders.
In attachments, Steward of Gondor is conspicuously absent, because I didn’t feel like I really needed it, and I like to work without it sometimes. The resource generation I do have is Ranger Provisions, which has the handy positive of being able to apply to either deck as needed (possibly requiring me to wait a round). King Under the Mountain of course is great draw. I’m including the Dwarven Shield and Mirkwood Long-knife which were also released in this deluxe as boosts for Gimli and Legolas as well as the Mounts. Also conspicuously absent is Unexpected Courage, because again I felt I didn’t need it and could manage with the more specific action advantage I did have from Legolas/Gimli/Light of Valinor/Snowmane/Destriers.
In events, Test of Will and Sneak Attack need no explanation. Well Warned and Unlikely Friendship are of course new events designed in part to work with the Legolas/Gimli combo and they’re both useful effects to get for free. Hidden Cache works nicely with King Under the Mountain and the Erebor Guards. Terrible to Behold is more of an oddity, but Gimli can trigger it and I may be able to work with returning enemies to the staging area for reasons you’ll see in the second deck.
Gather Information is perhaps a surprise given the pressure to always have progress on the main quest, but in my experience once you have some progress you can afford to take a little time out to do side-quests if you want.
Scavenging behind enemy lines
Heroes:
Argalad
Eowyn (Ta)
Hama
Allies (15):
Longbeard Sentry x3
Master of the Forge x3
Warden of Healing x3
Ered Nimrais Prospector x3
Galadhrim Minstrel x3
Attachments (15):
Asfaloth x3
Arod x3
Rohan Warhorse x3
Secret Vigil x3
Song of Battle x2
Firefoot x1
Events (17):
Daeron’s Runes x3
Feint x3
Charge of the Rohirrim x3
Forth Eorlingas! x3
Hidden Cache x3
Hour of Wrath x2
Side-quests (3):
The Storm Comes x3
Thoughts: Argalad is a favourite of mine, and loading him up with Light of Valinor and Mirkwood Long-knives makes a lot of sense, so that’s what I plan to do here. Hama I’ve been wanting to revisit for a while to see if I still like him post-errata and this seemed like a decent context to try it out. With the other five heroes decided, I was a little concerned about my starting willpower, since of course that’s a significant concern in this quest, so Eowyn was the obvious choice to alleviate that concern.
I’m just going to skip ahead to the side-quests first and note that while I could possibly have managed just as well with just A Good Harvest, I figured I’d use the new side-quest The Storm Comes instead. It means I could be a bit less worried about sphere balance with regards to my ally selection at least.
The allies apart from the standard Wardens of Healing are all about filtering the deck – on one hand fetching attachments and events, and on the other discarding cards from the deck to dig further down it. The Prospector of course can shuffle a card back in immediately afterwards, but the Sentry is purely to dump things into the discard pile (and get a benefit out of it). The way I always liked to play Hama pre-errata was to have a kind of toolkit of events I could recur. With the limit imposed by the errata instead of recurring events I’ve already played the idea is to use these mining effects to dump events into the discard pile faster than I could draw them and then pick things out with Hama to prepare for the key moments when I may want those cards.
On attachments, Secret Vigils keep threat under control which may be a slight concern – it’s worth noting that my hero choices also took into account enemy engagement costs as I don’t want to get rushed by too many enemies early on before I’m ready for them. Songs of Battle I put in initially when I had less Lore cards in the deck and was worried Argalad’s resources wouldn’t be very useful – that’s no longer an issue, but they work to get the Elfhelm attack bonus on Legolas and Argalad so I kept a couple of copies. And otherwise we just have the Mounts.
Finally, events. Daeron’s Runes and Feint are standard of course. Hidden Cache works with the Prospectors and Sentries and can help smooth out the resources. And then we have my chosen Hama toolkit. Charge of the Rohirrim obviously fits in very nicely with focusing my strategy around Elfhelm; Forth Eorlingas! allows me to skip defences against some enemies and potentially synergises with the points of direct damage from Argalad; and Hour of Wrath can be great for a big table clearing combat phase, possibly when I trigger Eowyn’s once per game +9 attack. Forth Eorlingas! is the reason why I’m more concerned about keeping my threat down with Secret Vigils than I otherwise might be, and also the reason why I figured Terrible to Behold would be a decent fit in the first deck.
https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/9294/thelineunbroken-escapefromumbar
https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/16916/thelineunbroken-escapefromumbardeck1-1.0
https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/16917/thelineunbroken-escapefromumbardeck2-1.0
Warden of Arnor 