The Hate for Stone of Erech comes from veteran players who thinks that all new quests should aim to break all your teeth and accept no excuses.

EDIT: Sorry, I'd didn't read your other post, we agree then that PoD are supposed to do their job of being hard. (Basing off previous ones)

I am also on the train of seeing SOE as a very thematic and beautiful quest. Not as hard as the other GenCon PoD quests though.

The thing is that with its mechanics, it's relatively easy to ramp up the difficulty. For instance, changing the need of 4 tokens for each Night card (maybe 1 less) so you can reach Midnight in less than 7 turns.

Or you can make these Night cards more meaningful by giving Encounter Cards some permanent power-ups (like Dusk or Midnight making all Treacheries gain surge/doomed X, or boosting enemies stats).

You can also do that with more Encounter Cards, not a lot of them use the Dusk or Midnight keyword (like Shadow Host Captain).

The point many people are missing with pods are theme. Every pod quest has a strict themde, distinct from any other quest.

MaO is the only quest in the game to contain easterlings. Battle for Lake town has uniqie mechanic of burning and ton of lcations utilizing it. Stone of Erech is one of the two undead infested quests, and the only of all to contain this sort of environment and enemies. No other encounter card set from any currently existing releases would be able to provide base for those quests, like it does for regular APs. That's why those quests are PoDs, not because they need to be extremely difficult.

Maybe, in one saga expansion about the Return of the King, when Aragorn and fellowship want to claim the undead army.

PD: i love SoE, one of my favourite quest (in 4 players really really hard -and funny, 'and crazy'-)

Oh no! I actually liked Stone of Erech! I thought the whole time thing was an interesting mechanic! Though I can't help but agree, MaO is still one of the best quests out there!

Not really sure what I hope to see in the Old Forest. I'm sure they'll do a good job of I it, however it turns out...

I liked Stone of Erech too. Surprised by the dislike toward it, to be honest.

I just like challenge. I find the quests have a secret to them and it's fun finding it out, but once you do it's pretty much shelved. For instance, in BOG if I kill número on first turn it's easy quest. For morgal vale I use beorn and slaughter the two bosses each in the first two turns and just direct damage the boss a few times and it's done.

The really amazing quests are the ones that you can lose consistently even with great deck. Where you need to think through every card in your deck and every decision you make. Like laketown, siege, Massing when it first came out etc. these quest are fun to keep playing and don't force you to dumb down your deck to make it fun.

Stone of erch does not fit this mold. It's a **** easy quest. I beat it first time without serious deck building effort.

I just want them to make the quests harder. It's a shame to do this we now need to buy a quest and then wait for a nightmare pack at a ridiculolous cost to enjoy the quest.

Yes doesn matter how you look on it SOE is a bad quest and im pretty sure sells nymber pretty few.....

I have all Lotr product until now but now I don't wonna buy everything straight away as before. now I will look first on product since quality if some quest is not so good. and SOE very good example. waste of my money....

Agree. Why is stone so expensive??? It's not worth it. Now I am going to wait for these instead of giving my money to FFG to make sure it's not a total crap job effort by them.

Oh no! I actually liked Stone of Erech! I thought the whole time thing was an interesting mechanic! Though I can't help but agree, MaO is still one of the best quests out there!

Not really sure what I hope to see in the Old Forest. I'm sure they'll do a good job of I it, however it turns out...

I liked Stone of Erech too. Surprised by the dislike toward it, to be honest.

I just like challenge. I find the quests have a secret to them and it's fun finding it out, but once you do it's pretty much shelved. For instance, in BOG if I kill número on first turn it's easy quest. For morgal vale I use beorn and slaughter the two bosses each in the first two turns and just direct damage the boss a few times and it's done.

The really amazing quests are the ones that you can lose consistently even with great deck. Where you need to think through every card in your deck and every decision you make. Like laketown, siege, Massing when it first came out etc. these quest are fun to keep playing and don't force you to dumb down your deck to make it fun.

Stone of erch does not fit this mold. It's a **** easy quest. I beat it first time without serious deck building effort.

I just want them to make the quests harder. It's a shame to do this we now need to buy a quest and then wait for a nightmare pack at a ridiculolous cost to enjoy the quest.

That's cool, bro, but do you realize not all the peoples think and feel the same way? So calling a quest "bad" just because it doesn't fits your taste is sort of selfish and ignorant. Just to be clear, this statement is not directly to you, but to all SoE haters out there.

Oh no! I actually liked Stone of Erech! I thought the whole time thing was an interesting mechanic! Though I can't help but agree, MaO is still one of the best quests out there!

Not really sure what I hope to see in the Old Forest. I'm sure they'll do a good job of I it, however it turns out...

I liked Stone of Erech too. Surprised by the dislike toward it, to be honest.

I just like challenge. I find the quests have a secret to them and it's fun finding it out, but once you do it's pretty much shelved. For instance, in BOG if I kill número on first turn it's easy quest. For morgal vale I use beorn and slaughter the two bosses each in the first two turns and just direct damage the boss a few times and it's done.

The really amazing quests are the ones that you can lose consistently even with great deck. Where you need to think through every card in your deck and every decision you make. Like laketown, siege, Massing when it first came out etc. these quest are fun to keep playing and don't force you to dumb down your deck to make it fun.

Stone of erch does not fit this mold. It's a **** easy quest. I beat it first time without serious deck building effort.

I just want them to make the quests harder. It's a shame to do this we now need to buy a quest and then wait for a nightmare pack at a ridiculolous cost to enjoy the quest.

That's cool, bro, but do you realize not all the peoples think and feel the same way? So calling a quest "bad" just because it doesn't fits your taste is sort of selfish and ignorant. Just to be clear, this statement is not directly to you, but to all SoE haters out there.

I don't think it's selfish and ignorant. I am saying for me it's a bad quest and I listed reasons why. If other players like to play lesser decks that are more thematic then that's great for them. Just like a movie critic who dislikes a movie isn't being selfish - I am just giving my opinion that I think is not an isolated one.

You quoted this phrase "Yes doesn matter how you look on it SOE is a bad quest and im pretty sure sells nymber pretty few....." and agreed with it. There is no "for me", there is "no matter how you look on it", which implies all people who like this quest are wrong.