I am pretty new to the game and had a question on playing multiple scenarios in one go. If one is doing this for an ‘expert game’, the rules state to play with the same combo of players, heroes and decks. On ‘nightmare level’, the rules say to not reset threat, hit points or player decks. I take this to mean that you do reset threat, player decks and hit points between scenarios on an ‘expert game’, but how far does this reset go? Does one take all of the played cards and cards in hand, as well as the discard pile, and shuffle them back into the player deck to reset it? Do treachery attachments placed on a hero get discarded after the scenario they are from is concluded? Are resources kept or reset as if beginning a totally new game?

Thank you are any insight on this.

Welcome to the game!! good questions... I never really liked the rules for expert and nightmare levels for the game because they are quite difficult. For both of them you would shuffle all the encounter cards back into their deck, including any that are attached to your characters, especially since the encounter deck changes for each quest. For expert level would also take up all of your player cards (in your hand, discarded, attached to characters or in play) and shuffle them all up restarting your deck. You would also lose all resources. So all that stays the same for expert game is using the same heroes but the decks are fully reset for each quest. The difficulty with this then is having a deck that can complete multiple quests without adjusting it which is quite difficult unless you have most of the expansions for the game.

For the nightmare it becomes especially difficult because you don't reset your threat or damage or your deck meaning characters remain wounded, events are used up and your threat is probably quite high but you do keep allies, attachments and all your resources which could be beneficial...

There is a variant rule that I made up when I want to play several quests in a row. What's nice about doing this is that you don't have to deck build as often and allies and attachments stay with you making a longer more real story that spans several quests. What I do is similar to the nightmare level: I don't reset my damage, player cards or resource tokens. The key difference is I reduce my threat at the begging of a new quest equal to the quest difficulty. For example I just completed Passage Through Mirkwood so I reduce my threat by 4 as I begin Journey Down the Anduin and after that before I begin Escape From Dol Guldur I reduce my threat by 7. This makes an enjoyable play experience where you don't have to spend time resetting your deck each time and you keep awesome allies and attachments but you also don't just die from threat because you reduce it a little for each quest. But it is still challenging because you need to keep people alive and healed, use your events wisely and still manage your threat for the long run.

Hope that helps!! Ultimately do what you enjoy and if you are losing too badly make some house rules to help yourself out and have fun!

Thank you so much for the clarification.

I like your variant rule; it sounds like it would be very helpful in trying to transition from expert to nightmare without getting totally frustrated. My husband and I play tons of different games and have house rules for many of them, but we usually establish those after learning the way a game is supposed to be played. That way we have a better grasp of the mechanics and our house rules don’t change the game too much. Nice to know we aren’t the only ones that sometimes twist things a bit to make a game less frustrating or more challenging.

Yes, you're very welcome!