Wow, what a great second breakfast we had yesterday. Unfortunately for the spiders, they did not get any breakfast (let alone second breakfast). Yesterday, we tackled Flies and Spiders, the first quest in the second Hobbit saga box: On the Doorstep. Finally, we won one of these challenges. It felt so good. As usual, I will not go into a lot of detail on our play in this post. If you want that, go ahead and watch the video. I will just be covering some of the highlights here.
We started our quest with a bit of rotten luck, two or three rounds in, we ended up getting a Lazy Lob while we were at the Forest Stream. That poisoned all of our currently questing characters, and as we did not clear the location that round, we were left with very few characters to quest with in the following round. We were able to overcome that difficulty with Caldara being able to pull four allies from my discard for the following round and that gave us enough to power through the stream.
Once we got past the first quest card, I was the first player and had to knock all of my characters unconscious (I also had to remove all of Bilbo’s resources, something I had not realized and had been stacking up extra resources on bilbo for the whole game). The first round by myself, I readied Imrahil for questing, leaving myself vulnerable to attack. Had I pulled an enemy that had 3 or more attack, our game would have ended there. Luckily, I got a treachery that had no effect and we ended up crushing the rest of the quest.
Both of our decks worked quite well for us. My deck did not swarm or utilize pipes as much as it has before (this is the first time that I actually played the deck before the stream), but I got a really good Caldara setup, pulling four allies worth 12 resources total from my discard. I think a bit of the pipe interaction was lost due to not being able to play Bilbo in this quest which I normally would put in this deck. I also was unable to play Jubayr, which is another fun ally to be able to play with Caldara and I normally would have him in this deck as well. Had I looked a little closer at the quest, I probably would have put Power of Orthanc into my deck as well. I did not realize that poison was a condition attachment. Although, we were already having some threat issues so maybe it is better that I didn’t.
Ethan’s deck did surprisingly well. He drew some tough deck restrictions but was able to pull something brilliant out of it. Even though Kahlil was nearly incapacitated the entire game, he still pulled it off. His deck was quite powerful and was pretty good all around. He did not have a ton of attack but still managed to kill spider after spider as he waited for me to finally rejoin him. It may have even been his best Second Breakfast build yet and he figured that it would be one he would save for future plays as well.
Overall, it was a really good game with some really fun and tense moments. The spiders will have to try harder next time. I think this was probably my favorite challenge yet and aside from a few technical difficulties, it went pretty well. As always, I would encourage you to try this challenge for yourself. You can find the deck restrictions down below or in the Youtube video description. I would really like to see some more of the Harad decks. I think it was an interesting combo. If you enjoy Lord of the Rings content and want some more deck inspiration, don’t forget to check out the rest of the Youtube channel where the main show gets posted every Tuesday.
As for how you can best interact with us and Second Breakfast challenges, make sure to check out our Discord server (link below), where we now have an all new Second Breakfast channel. Feel free to post your decks there and share your playthrough experiences with us. We would love to hear from you. Also, make sure to join us on April 24, 4pm Eastern, as we bring you another challenge. This time, we will be going way back in the game’s history and visiting a place that is uncomfortably close to the gates of Mordor. This will be a very special episode as we will be announcing a giveaway. I’ll just say for now that the giveaway will be a product that is now somewhat rare and everyone who owns a core set can use. You don’t want to miss it so make sure to join our livestream for that. See you all in two weeks.
CHALLENGE
Quest: Flies and Spiders
Micah’s deck: Spirit-Pipes-Ally Swarm https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/27355/challenge3spirit-pipes-allyswarm-3.0
Ethan’s deck: Harad-Bond of Friendship-No Events https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/27237/challenge3bondoffriendship-harad-noevents-2.0
LINKS
Discord: https://discord.gg/FwhbTA6jPZ
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CardTalkAnLOTRLCGPodcast
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cardtalk2018
Card Talk: A LOTR LCG Podcast and Blog 