I have been playing Nightmare pretty much exclusively (apart from when on my uTube channel) and I was wondering if anyone else is playing what I call a "Nightmare Cycle".

The only full cycle released yet is Mirkwood.. so lets look at that.

When you put in your nightmare cards it asks you to replace / add a certain amount of cards to original complete encounter deck used for that quest. This is all fine for the Nightmare Core Quests. The thing is that the encounter decks in the Mirkwood Cycle (starting with Hunt for Gollum) use the encounter sets from Core, yet the Mirkwood Cycle Nightmare cards do not also include the added / replaced cards that altered the Core Set's original encounter sets.

For example... Return to Mirkwood uses the "Spiders of Mirkwood" encounter set. This encounter set includes Ungoliant's Spawn (among others) which has a nightmare card from "Passage to Mirkwood: Nightmare" but isn't included in "Return to Mirkwood : Nightmare".

In essence there is another version of Return to Mirkwood that has a nightmare version of Ungoliant's Spawn, Ungoliant Brood, The Spiders Web.. etc etc etc.

So this got me thinking that there is a 3rd set of quests that are an additional difficulty above Nightmare. Where you basically use the deluxe expansion nightmare quests to permanently alter the encounter sets which are again used by the following nightmare quests in that cycle.

Dose anyone else play this way? If so what is your deck lists.. I have been trying to build one but it is sometimes hard to work out which core set nightmare cards go into which core encounter set.

I was going to call this Variant - "Brutal" : Thematic - Normal - Nightmare - Brutal

Anyway, curious to what you guys think or if this has already been done so I can just build the sets the scene has already decided on.

--Tragic

Interesting idea. I actually heard about a guy who bought several core sets just so he could have full encounter decks always built for each quest instead of having to combine multiple encounter sets each time he wanted to play a quest. Last I heard, he was ordering several more core sets so he could have each of the nightmare decks always built too.

Actually I think from begin they will add Ncards to the sets. But instead of ffg make additional cards not for core sets for every quest. Yes this not bad idea but balance can be lost and there will be no possible to win. If you add for example Ungoliant spawn to Dol Guldor or Return to mirkwood Nmode quest there is no chance to win....

no chance at the moment maybe... but as the pool grows and the decks get btter this might be a way to make the game more challenging. The encounter decks are a static power, the player decks get more and more powerful. This might be a way to increase the ecnounter deck power and still use legit FFG cards and not customs.

no chance at the moment maybe... but as the pool grows and the decks get btter this might be a way to make the game more challenging. The encounter decks are a static power, the player decks get more and more powerful. This might be a way to increase the ecnounter deck power and still use legit FFG cards and not customs.

Yes sure. In this case is difficult not agree with you.