The total immunity to player cards is a bit of a bore now. It would be nice to have no attachments and make his attacks impossible to stop, but by making him immune to players cards otherwise, as a design feature, it negates clever tricks that reduce his armour, but doesn't do anything about weapons etc that bump up attack. So it's a bit of a blunt instrument to achieve what they wanted (which was clearly avoid Hama-lock and/or discarding shadows).

The total immunity to player cards is a bit of a bore now. It would be nice to have no attachments and make his attacks impossible to stop, but by making him immune to players cards otherwise, as a design feature, it negates clever tricks that reduce his armour, but doesn't do anything about weapons etc that bump up attack. So it's a bit of a blunt instrument to achieve what they wanted (which was clearly avoid Hama-lock and/or discarding shadows).

That's very true, it's weird that something like Black Arrow can do massive amounts of damage to the Balrog but things like Rivendell Blade & Sting have no effect on him.

Also what makes it even more crazy is that only the first player can attack him each round.

Anyone else having trouble slaying the Balrog?

I'm playing highly thematic decks and that's the only way i want to play the Saga quests. Needless to say i will not fill my deck with endless amounts of allies to beat the Balrog. I want to play the quest like other quests i don't want to alter my deck to finish the Balrog off. I just can't get around his monstrous defense, it would be no problem at all if he weren't Immune to player card effects, there's just no way that i can get enough attacking power to kill him. He doesn't lose his immunity to card effects when i sacrifice a Hero on the bridge does he?

I'm using Sam, Merry & Pippin for one deck and Aragorn, Legolas & Glorfindel for the other one. Any advice/tips/success-stories would be much appreciated.

This sounds very familiar! I started out with Glorfindel, Aragorn & Gandalf and also was not able to put enough damage on the Balrog. Direct damage effects would have been nice but Caleb ruled that the Balrog does not lose its immunity to player card effects after sacrificing a hero.

After two weeks of trying out different things now and then, I finally had my breakthrough yesterday with Gimli as the main attacker. If you collect 3 copies of Khazad, Khazad! and get a Citadel Plate plus enough damage on him, he is a true killing machine. The successful victory over a Balrog actually made me wonder why some people on this forum think he was outdated and useless. I posted my complete deck here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1256656/mostly-thematic-approach-defeat-balrog (there are some allies in it that make it somewhat unthematic but they are not meant to participate in combat, so maybe you will be fine with that as well ).

Anyone else having trouble slaying the Balrog?

I'm playing highly thematic decks and that's the only way i want to play the Saga quests. Needless to say i will not fill my deck with endless amounts of allies to beat the Balrog. I want to play the quest like other quests i don't want to alter my deck to finish the Balrog off. I just can't get around his monstrous defense, it would be no problem at all if he weren't Immune to player card effects, there's just no way that i can get enough attacking power to kill him. He doesn't lose his immunity to card effects when i sacrifice a Hero on the bridge does he?

I'm using Sam, Merry & Pippin for one deck and Aragorn, Legolas & Glorfindel for the other one. Any advice/tips/success-stories would be much appreciated.

This sounds very familiar! I started out with Glorfindel, Aragorn & Gandalf and also was not able to put enough damage on the Balrog. Direct damage effects would have been nice but Caleb ruled that the Balrog does not lose its immunity to player card effects after sacrificing a hero.

After two weeks of trying out different things now and then, I finally had my breakthrough yesterday with Gimli as the main attacker. If you collect 3 copies of Khazad, Khazad! and get a Citadel Plate plus enough damage on him, he is a true killing machine. The successful victory over a Balrog actually made me wonder why some people on this forum think he was outdated and useless. I posted my complete deck here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1256656/mostly-thematic-approach-defeat-balrog (there are some allies in it that make it somewhat unthematic but they are not meant to participate in combat, so maybe you will be fine with that as well ).

Gimil is still a great choice if you really just need to hulk someone up to take on a big baddie. He's also great against Smaug, for example.

My Road has finally Darkened

I did a Gandalf-Beregond-Legolas Eagles deck and was able to get enough hit points to kill the Balrog but lost because of threat!

If you're looking for a thematic way to do heavy damage to the Balrog, I gave it my first try with my two handed decks consisting of Sam/Merry/Pippin (Sp) with Gandalf and Boromir allies and Legolas/Gimli/Aragorn (Lo). I dropped a keeping count on Legolas in the beginning and he was able to build up 7 counters by the time the Balrog showed up. By that point Gimli had taken 4 damage, picked up a Dwarven Axe, and got a second copy of keeping count, so he was swinging for 15 attack! Unfortunately I was still on quest stage 3, so I didn't have an opportunity to push the Balrog into the pit and he eventually overwhelmed my defenses.

Just wondering, if I sacrifice hero Gandalf to make the Balrog lose all of his keywords, can I then sneak attack with ally Gandalf to place damage on the Balrog and kill him that way? Would be a really cool and thematic option.

Yes you can! The hero is not added to the "Fallen Heroes" list until the scenario is won, so once hero Gandalf is out of play there is nothing stopping you from putting the ally version in.

I thought the Balrog only looses his indestructible keyword after you explore the bridge, but that he is still immune against player card effects...?!?

ETA: Just read the thread a bit further and realized that Caleb already confirmed that it's not possible.

After dozen or so attempts I finally defeated (solo) the Balrog with a Celeborn/Loragorn/Gandalf deck, containing almost every leadership and lore silvan ally. The main problem is to get enough ATT to kill the Balrog, and the quickly rising threat (with no threat reducing card inmy hand) prevents me from using Frodos ability too often. One of my favourite combos currently is O Lórien/Galadhrim Minstrel/ Tree People. It helps you to get out tons of allies and to let you use the Minstrels effect multiple times. You can also play Feigned Voices to take Naith Scout back to your hand to use her awesome combo eith Celeborn over and over.

However, most of the time the Balrog finds me too early, and then the loss of allies plus the burden cards quckly kill my fellowship.

The Road Darkens came to my mailbox last week and here are my initial thoughts after my only play so far.

I made a Gandalf-Elrong-Spiritfindel deck and decided to take it on a spin through "The Ring Goes South" scenario. Thematically speaking, it was a bit of "alternative history", but still I was rather content with the deck. If there is anyone who should have been included in the Fellowship it was definitely Glorfindel, so I made up for that mistake. And active support of Elrond is also perfectly within theme. A bit of a Tolkien sandbox is what I look for in this game anyway, so as long as the consistency of the universum was preserved, I was happy.

Mechanically the main attraction and focus of my deck was to have fun with sneaking many allies into play through Vilya and Gandalf's abilities, and to see those new Gandalf toys in action. And Glorfindel (of the Spirit persuasion) was invited to the party for his low threat, as usual.

TRGS scenario is a classic one. You need to quest quite a bit plus there is some fighting with challenging, but not too nasty enemies. You get a feeling of a perilous journey, which is your typical LotR LCG experience, but it manages to feel fresh without relying on weird gimmicks or fiddly bookkeeping chores. And the scenario's finale is a nice small twist involving the Watcher residing in the lake at the Durin's Door. All in all nicely done, logical, and works both thematically and mechanically. I would say it is a well balanced adventure. I see myself coming back to it.

I beat "The Ring Goes South" on my first try, but I believe I was very lucky with drawing encounter cards. I was also fortunate enough to beat down my threat a lot during initial rounds, and then keep drawing mostly enemies. I could then pick the bad guys one by one. But what was more important, I managed to avoid amassing negative effects on the locations. So perhaps the most cruel effects just either did not come off during my game or were not that harmful in the long run.

Even though my particular play was rather easy, the scenario can potentially be much nastier. It seems that it is a lot more difficult in multiplayer. The encounter card effects seem to be designed to stack up, so my bet it is that going two-handed makes for a different experience. Still, it does seem beatable, but I cannot really say more as a solo player.

I had lots of fun. Cannot wait to replay and go through the other two quests from the box.

Had my first attempts yesterday, played only the ring goes south.

First attempt was with Gandalf, Pippin (Lo) and Fatty with a pretty much thematic deck. Unfortunatelly failed cause , as I did not look the encounter cards before playing, I cruised untill stage 4 where I could not damage the Watcher enough even to free Frodo, thus lost out of threat eventually.

Then I changed my deck a bit with a Gandalf, Pippin (Lo) and Merry deck. Again it was very thematic (with Pippes for everyone and allys from the book again). There with the help of Boromir ally, I managed to beat it with not so much of difficulty.

Loved the Gandalf hero and his attachments ... needs planning and thinking of next possible moves, but it was really fun, and as always I appreciate the actions-responses that the hobbits provide

Played the Journey through the Dark

Again won on my second attempt with the same deck as on first quest, with Balrog being on stage (did not sucrifice a hero)

Much more difficult than the first one

Maybr in wrong but looks like the second saga box quest looks more easy then Black riders? Maybe couse FFG will release Nightmare pack in the future?

Maybr in wrong but looks like the second saga box quest looks more easy then Black riders? Maybe couse FFG will release Nightmare pack in the future?

Road Darkens is actually much harder, especially the Breaking of the Fellowship. Black Riders was awesome but only A Knife in the Dark was ever troublesome.

I had a much harder time with the Road Darkens quests compared to the Black Riders.

I think Glaurung just wears rose-tinted glasses All the new stuff is "boring and easy" whereas his favorite old ones are pleasantly difficult...

I have an enormously long post I could make here but I'll try to keep it short. Black Riders was a brilliant box, especially if you were trying to play the hobbits solo. Playing solo in The Road Darkens isn't very satisfying because there aren't ally versions of all of the Fellowship members. Playing solo with Tracker's decks for example (Gandalf, Sam & Strider) didn't have the same feel as The Black Riders did at all.

So I finally went two handed in order to add more of the Fellowship and... Holy ****! It's SO much harder two handed. In the Ring Goes South for example it's very easy to keep the board clear so that the forced effects on the locations never really trigger. Playing two handed it's almost impossible. Your hand and board state are under constant "attack" by the locations. It's not because of surge cards at all. (Which is what I thought it was until I played it two handed.)

Anyway, it's a much better experience this way and gets me much closer to that Black Riders feel.

Yeah I played them all two handed and found them a fair bit more difficult than Black Riders. Only A Shadow of the Past ever really gave me much grief, A Knife in the Dark was hard but not that hard for my decks and play style and A Flight to the Ford was always the easiest of the three to me. I don't feel like any of them are too easy though, I feel like they found the perfect difficult with Black Riders.

Although somewhat harder I feel like The Road Darkens was the perfect difficulty as well. I found it especially hard to defeat The Balrog and resurrect the sacrificed hero which took a handful of attempts but was super worth it.

I can definitely imagine all three Road Darkens scenarios are much easier solo. Locations would barely get any damage in the ring goes south, you can escape Journey in the Dark before the Balrog even appears (which doesn't seem doable with 2 or more players unless you run uber/dodgy decks) and for Breaking of the Fellowship if there is only one player you don't get to experience one (or more) player helping from stage 3 and one player trying to beat stage 4. Mechanically they don't seem to work very well solo either, especially Breaking of the Fellowship.

Well to me personally this definitely helps prove my theory that two handed in general is harder than solo. I know many will disagree and this is after all just one saga box but solo is definitely far easier than two handed play for The Road Darkens no doubt about it.

Well to me personally this definitely helps prove my theory that two handed in general is harder than solo. I know many will disagree and this is after all just one saga box but solo is definitely far easier than two handed play for The Road Darkens no doubt about it.

You speak the truth my friend.

I think a lot of folks will agree that 2 players is the 'sweet spot' for this game. Some quests get a lot easier the more players you add (Conflict at the Carrock, A Journey to Rhosgobel), while some get profoundly more challenging (Into Ithilien comes to mind), and some seem to ... break with more players (Steward's Fear you're going to deplete the Underworld deck very quickly with 4 players).

I think the Saga expansion difficulty is very nice... what should be hard, is hard, and what should be less challenging, is so.

I just get myRoad Darkens ad still didn try yet. But im happy to hear im wrong about diffuculty level. Cool!

Still to try Road Darkens two handed, but solo it's pretty easy, as noted above especially because you can avoid nasty effects triggering at all in the first scenario. Could also be that none of the quests, I think, punish you for low threat, so a potent low threat hero team can eat alive these scenarios in solo.

Just wondering, if I sacrifice hero Gandalf to make the Balrog lose all of his keywords, can I then sneak attack with ally Gandalf to place damage on the Balrog and kill him that way? Would be a really cool and thematic option.

No.

"Immune to player cards" is not defined as a keyword.

Think the only defined keyword on Balrog is "indestructable".