A Tale of Torture

"There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood. It is clad in a forest of dark fir, where the trees strive one against another and their branches rot and wither. In the midst upon a stony height stands Dol Guldur, where long the hidden Enemy had his dwelling. We fear that now it is inhabitated again, and with power sevenfold." 

    ~ Haldir

    The Fellowship of the Ring

Book II, Chapter VI: Lothlorien

After taking the Fellowship on their perilous yet ultimately victorious Nightmare Journey Along the Anduin, it was time to try out the third and final Nightmare mode enhancement of the core set quests: Escape From Dol Guldur.  I'd like to start out by saying that this particular quest has never been one of my favorites due to its inherently difficult nature.  Now, don't take that the wrong way; I like plenty of this game's exceedingly difficult quests such as Massing at Osgiliath, the Battle of Lake-town, and the Siege of Cair Andros, but for some reason I just don't ever find myself too excited to play this one.  Perhaps it was from the initial scaring and repeated beatings I took during the early days of playing, but I also think that it just has a bit too much going on and sometimes it can be hard to keep track of it all, such as the three different acquired objective card effects, the one ally played per turn, and the forced effects triggering all around.    

Nevertheless, I am a completionist and at just under $6.00, it was a no brainer to add this to my collection anyways.  So, let's get started on some of my experiences with this nightmare enhancement.  Rather than building up a couple new decks to tackle this undoubtedly challenging quest, I decided to just use the same Fellowship heroes that I had been playing Nightmare Journey Along the Anduin with.  This might not have been the best decision when considering what I was going up against, but I mainly wanted to see how the scenario had changed rather than necessarily beating it.  As it played out, Boromir became the prisoner of Dol Guldur, and my other heroes delved into the dark fortress in an attempt to save him.  During setup, one of the new gameplay additions to this quest was encountered.  A new location, the Torture Chamber, came into play as a guarded effect of one of the objective cards, and to trigger its nasty ability, a Catacomb Inspection treachery card also arrived.  This card (which also surged another encounter card) reads "When Revealed: Add 1 resource token to each Dol Guldur location in play." Since the Torture Chamber fit the bill, it gained a resource token and upon a closer look at its text, I learned that "if Torture Chamber has 4 or more resource tokens on it, all "prisoners" were killed, and the players have lost the game."  Well, that could certainly ensure an early game defeat if any more catacomb inspections occurred!  

Luckily, the surging effect did not bring out any more nasty treacheries or resource additions to the Torture Chamber (so Boromir had it easy this time) and I was able to continue on with the first turn.  It didn't take too long for the enemies to pile up on the fortress and begin their onslaught against my weakening heroes.  On the first turn, I took care of a Cavern Guardian and Dungeon Jailor, two of the original enemies to the quest; however, the following turn I encountered two of the new nightmare enemies.  The first one was a Crazed Captive with relatively pathetic stats but a ridiculous forced effect that reads: "If Crazed Captive is defeated, raise each player's threat by 7." So, similar to the Brown Water Rats in the previous nightmare mode quest, this guy probably isn't going anywhere unless each deck wants to sky rocket on the threat meter.  To continue the new mechanic of resource accumulation on Dol Guldur locations, the Torture Master also arrived from the encounter deck to add another resource to each location in play.  This steroid-infused Orc has a very high threat but a weak attack strength; likewise, he was quickly dispatched and soon Boromir was saved and the second phase of the escape quest began.

Everything quickly went downhill from this point on.  A horrific questing phase and some truly nasty encounter cards made both player deck threat meters rise to staggering heights and it wasn't long before one of them reached a concluding level of 50.  So, during this playthrough, I didn't even get a chance to take a crack at the Nazgul of Dol Guldur boss enemy, but his threat definitely contributed to my heroes' downfall.  I must admit, though, that I did enjoy many of the new additions to the quest.  The addition of the Torture Chamber, Torture Master, Catacomb Inspection, and Dark Interrogation make the imprisoned hero theme stand out much more than in the original.

 Yet, many of the same elements that I disliked from the original are still present, such as using your top player card to act as an "Orc Guard" during the final quest phase, Out of the Dungeons.  That always just felt a bit too contrived, and even though it would further increase the difficulty, I wish it would instead read: "Each player must choose an enemy in the encounter deck or discard pile and engage that enemy."  I do plan on revisiting this Nightmare mode quest sometime in the future with a more detailed deck build specifically designed to deal with the ridiculous amounts of threat gain that occur throughout it.  However, even with the Nightmare mode enhancement, Escape From Dol Guldur remains one of the more lackluster quests in my book.

Thanks for reading and leave a comment expressing some of your thoughts on this quest!