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Hi everyone, my name is Ira Fey and a few people asked for some strategy videos. So I thought I'd devote a video to the strategy of attacking Dew and that's an acronym that stands for Dale, Erebor, and Woodland Realm. And it's very relevant because it's worth five victory points. Dale's worth one, Erebor's worth two, and Woodland Realm is worth two. And it's often a strong strategy for Shadow to attack this area because these are three different factions of the game and therefore if you put one at war you might not automatically put the other at war.
So they can't necessarily support each other in the same way compared to when you attack Gondor if you attack Minas Tirith then Dol Amroth will be at war and you'll likely be able to defend one of these two strongholds. But just because you put Woodland Realm to war doesn't mean you put Erebor at war. So I just thought I'd go over some relevant cards and relevant strategies. So the basic idea, there are a couple of ways to do it. One way is you muster a little bit in Dol Guldur and then you just move this army up to here three moves and then you besiege Woodland Realm.
This is a relatively small army but it's a good way of getting the elves to war early if you want to be able to bring in the Witch King. So that's okay, you can often maybe even devote one muster to it, get an extra elite, and if they don't manage to reinforce Woodland Realm then this force can certainly take that force, reasonably likely. That's an okay way of doing it but then you'll probably need to bring in more units, almost certainly we'll need to bring in more units to take out these other, certainly Erebor and maybe even Dale depending on the status of the dwarves.
So another way of doing it, it takes a little longer but allows you to bring a larger force in. So that way typically involves bringing this army from Ber'dur down to Gorgroth and then up to Mor'nan and then from there you march all the way up to get to Old Forest Road and then besiege Woodland Realm. So that's quite a lot of movement and it'll probably take you two or three turns of the game but the issue is it's relatively difficult for the free people to defend against this. It requires at minimum four musters of the elves to start to put an extra unit in Woodland Realm.
So that's why even though it does take you a while, it can still be an effective attack even if they see it coming. So I wanted to cover a few cards from Shadow that I find relevant. So some early muster cards like Pits of Mordor allows you to put some units in Dol Guldur or Mount Gundabad if you want to march these units in. Similarly orcs multiplying again allows you to get three here and three there. So those are two early muster cards for Sauron.
Another two good muster cards for the Saurons and Easterlings are Many Kings to the Service of Mordor that allows you to put two here and two here and then you have a total of ten units that will combined allow you to take Erebor out pretty reliably. And also Horde from the East. This lets you put five units into East Rune. You can merge this army and now you have nine units. So those are those tend to be some of your most relevant mustering. I included there. There are a bunch of sort of in the field mustering units.
I included particularly half orcs and goblins because it includes an Isengard unit which is otherwise quite difficult to get up here but it allows you to turn on cards like Fighting Uruk-hai or any of the combat cards that involve like Devilry of Orthanc and allows you to use those sorts of combat cards. So this is a good one to think about though this is pretty much always a good card anywhere you're going to attack. So the other cards that I wanted to call out here are some of the movement cards. So this does require quite a few movements. So anything any card that lets you move using a Palantir is useful.
Now the shadow is moving requires all the nations to be at war so you might not have that early game when you're executing this movement but depending on your muster situation you might and it can still be it can still be useful if you've gotten close or if these armies aren't quite merged up yet it can still be it can still be a useful card to have and similarly ring wraiths are abroad it's always a good card but it is relevant here because you're tending to execute a lot of movements and so extra cards that give you movement might lead you to go for this path.
Okay the other cards I wanted to call out were two combat effects obviously there are a variety of good combat effects but these Muma kill combat effects are very powerful so plus one with no drawback just to your combat role and then if you do more hits than them then you get an extra hit on top of that.
So these are just these are just very powerful combat effects and if you manage to get the south rons and easterlings up to Erebor you probably have drawn one of these by that point in the game it's a good it's a good combat effect to to be aware of obviously that's also useful down south if you play Corsairs of Umbar these guys are coming in that's a that's a useful thing to keep in mind. Obviously the extra movement is quite good too if you need it in a pinch to reinforce something from from these sort of mustering points into here it can be a potentially useful reinforcement.
So the the basic idea for shadow is pretty straightforward go after the woodland realm then generally don't provoke Dale yet go after Erebor and then once all of these are besieged then attack Dale in the end so that's how you're going to get your last last victory points.
Putting the door putting the elves to war obviously will allow free to reinforce the other elven strongholds so it's possible that while you're executing these five or six half movements you can also be executing like one two maybe something like this three four and you can get sorry this would also go into and now if they if three people have not mustered the elves at all you can besiege two elven strongholds before they manage to muster in extra elves. This doesn't always happen but it's something that you can plan for if you're going through all of these extra half movements.
Usually you don't have a shortage of useful things to do with half movements these armies can can move in to here and you can either get them to umbar west or on door those are good options and these armies can start getting into position as well. So you're going to put you're going to attack the woodland realm then after that you're going to get Erebor under siege and then after that Dale.
The reason why you're not going to attack Dale first probably is because you don't want to put the north to war and you don't want to give these units a chance to retreat into the stronghold where they will do a lot more damage and be a lot peskier. So if of course the north is at war then you certainly want to take out these locations.
One thing to consider is how to deal with this unit in Carrick if the north is nowhere close to war and you want to just take out woodland realm great go ahead and if the north is still not close to war go ahead leave one unit maybe behind in woodland realm and continue on to Erebor hopefully merging in this army and then eventually take out Dale and then this one army yeah they'll eventually be at war but they'll it'll be too far away for them to do much.
So that's something to consider if it turns out it looks like the north is getting towards war you might want to deal with this army sooner rather than later by ideally attacking from Old Forest Road. This is also a potential way to get the Witch King in early if the elves are no no nowhere close to war but free people have been mustering the north then it can be useful early game to just take out these two settlements both Carrick and Dale early on so that there's no more there's no more mustering up north but the north is at war and then you can bring in the Witch King.
So those are some ideas for shadow let's talk a little bit about free and what they can do so one of the reasons why this attack is powerful not only is it five points but these armies are not coordinated and it's hard to reinforce but there are a few cards that can help you. Thranduil's archers obviously is great it's a it's a card that just puts an extra elite into woodland realm that can make a big difference.
Another card that's useful obviously King Brandsman puts two units here and if you get that early then you can reinforce you can put some armies into Old Forest Road and make it harder for shadow to crash through and I'll talk more about that in a second. I'm going to move this army here so if I had two more armies in Dale I could put two in Old Forest Road possibly even bring in the army unit from Carrick and then they'll have a tough choice about about where to attack.
And then of course Dane Ironfoot's guard so Dane Ironfoot's guard just puts an extra elite and leader into Erebor so all three of these cards are definitely cards that you want to play if they're going anywhere near do.
And let's talk a little bit about so I didn't really mention Grimborn so Grimborn is good but it's much harder to get that elite all the way into woodland realm to really do a good job defending and I like the scouts because if I get a unit here the free people have three scouts in their deck and the shadow only has two Swarms of Bats so you're more likely to have scouts than they're likely to have Swarm of Bats and so if you can get a single unit northern unit into Old Forest Road then when they attack into Old Forest Road and you have scouts you can retreat into Woodland Realm even if the north is not yet at war.
So the retreating rules say you can enter a new territory you can cross a territory boundary even if you're not at war if you're retreating. So that's a very relevant rule for dealing with the north and how to get the north involved in the fight. Typically Shadow will not choose to attack them but if you put them in the way then they will.
So that's why on the surface King Bransman doesn't really help because why are they going to attack Dale anyway but you can put an extra unit probably two units one from Carrick one from one from Dale you'll have two here and two here and they'll have a choice between attacking either one but hopefully you can then get two units into these strongholds.
So scouts the reason why I would not play Grimbjorn for the card effect even though it's nice to have more units here is because I would I would worry about not having the scouts to retreat the army in and it's possible they can still get three hits and end up attack and end up destroying it or even if they don't they don't have to press so they could spend an extra attack to make sure they eliminate that unit if I don't have scouts.
Now if I had a second scouts so Spirit of Mordor or the Red Arrow then I would very much enjoy playing Grimbjorn move them to Old Forest Road and then retreat in an elite and a regular or a lead a regular and a leader and Shadow certainly would not be expecting that because I would have had two scouts fairly early on in the game so that that could be that could be great.
All right so I included also the power of Bombadil the power of Tom Bombadil in the cards that free people should consider as part of the defense for the north and that is because for do because that can help get the north to war and if you can get the north to war before this these armies crashing here then you can you can defend either Woodland Realm or Erebor and you can just generally cost shadow more actions it just it just will take them longer to deal to deal with this area and if they're not careful you can get you can just move army units in.
So that's that's something to think about obviously getting the dwarves to war can be useful and that's why I included the Book of Marsable and getting the elves to war can be useful too so anytime you can get these to war then you know that's good it can help defend it can help defend these units but you have to be careful because it's a little bit of a double-edged sword because if you do it too soon then they can get the Witch King into play very quickly and so it's it's a tricky choice I don't think there are any very clear clear-cut answers but it's something to keep in mind so you're going to try and judge how quickly are they arriving and can I muster before they arrive because even a single extra elite or even a regular in a leader can make these strongholds much harder to take and much more costly and yes eventually they'll be able to take them but really the goal is you want to you want to try and defend it and make it make it challenging and difficult so I also included fearfire foes for the same reason to to be able to put the north to war quickly.
One other card that I wanted to mention I don't know why fair mirrors rangers is there that should that is not relevant there and back again so normally you know we're going to keep companions in the fellowship in general to defend against corruption but if you see there there and back again in your hand and you still have Gandalf so you might get to cycle a character card then it might be worth it to play there and back again and put Legolas or Gimli into the woodland realm and typically we would pick Legolas because Legolas has the ability to muster the elves with any die so if the elves are already at war then go ahead and take Gimli because Gimli can go to Erebor and and do that same effect but there is a card book of marsable that puts dwarves instantly at war and there's no such card for the elves so it might be more useful to bring Legolas typically into woodland realm.
Okay and you would need to play there and back again you would need four fellowship movement so if you have four movement then that gets you to one two three four to old forward and then two more for a Gimli or Legolas level plus one more from the card can get you into woodland realm so it's not that hard to play it relatively early in the game it wouldn't be uncommon to have that by by turn two or three to have four movement and if you're in dimmeral dale because you've gone through Moria you need one two three four you're gonna need one extra movement from dimmeral dale to get up there but but that's not that's not unreasonable that's pretty doable so it gets you three musters effectively three musters for the cost of a card and a companion which i don't know maybe sometimes that's good but sometimes it's not so there are no clear cut answers but but these are cards to to be thinking about when you want to try and defend do and obviously having a companion like Legolas or Gimli up there does make a difference they're good fighters they activate a bunch of combat cards and they just help survivability of those of those strongholds the last thing i'll mention which should be pretty obvious but is worth being very clear about is getting this unit from iron hills into Erebor is certainly important you don't want this army unit to be left out the difference between three units or four units in there is is non-trivial that can really make a big difference both in the amount of damage that you can output and in how long it just how long you can survive so make sure you get that unit into Erebor with half an army movement before before shadow arrives so that's a quick introduction to the do the do strategy i welcome additional comments and if you have any suggestions for how to play this or other thoughts i really welcome them and if you have suggestions for game logs or other strategy tips that you'd like me to do feel free to leave it in the comments thanks so much.
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