Hey everyone,

I've only played the core game about six or seven times now. The first three or four times I was playing it wrong and actually making it harder on myself, but the other day, I got to the point where my only goal was to defeat the Ungoliant's Spawn.

My question is, once the Spawn is out and about in the final stage of that quest, do you still need to continue questing, even though you aren't trying to acquire progress tokens? I decided the answer was "Yes," because it didn't say otherwise. If I didn't have to quest keep my threat level from increasing, I would have actually won the game for the first time; as it was, fighting the thing and doing the questing made me lose for the six or seventh time in a row.

Read the bold text on the quest card.

What heroes are you using?

If you are falling with whatever you have, I might try Aragorn, eowyn and denethor. I managed to beat dol guldur with those three

Sauron: I've been using the pre-made decks--the closest I've gotten is with Beravor, Denethor, and Glorfindel; I'm hoping to play around with custom decks some time in the near future. Thanks for the suggested deck.

MyNeighbour, the bold text states: "The players must find and defeat Ungoliant's Spawn to win this game." It still seems rather ambiguous to me regarding whether you should ignore the quest phase or not.

You never stop doing any certain part of the game unless it specifically tells you to. So, for this quest, you would continue questing even though the quest card requires no progress. The progress would simply be placed on the quest card and basically ignored. The only win condition of that quest card is to defeat Ungoliant's Spawn, so if you were able to defeat it, you would immediately win.

The go to motto in this game is: When you're confused about something, always take the worst option, as that's the one that will probably be correct.

Just keep trying with the starter decks. You'll eventually get it. It really helps once you start getting the expansions though.

Hope that helped!

Casaubon, Don't go with the ready made decks. You can't get the perfect variety and you also can't access all the good cards in different spheres. for instance, without leadership, you can't access steward of Gondor, and Celabrain's stone, two of the best cards in the game. Tactics has horn of Gondor, and feint, lore has Henarmarth Riversong and Erabor Hammersmith, and spirit has test of will and Northern Tracker. My point is that all the spheres have their purpose, and complement each other. Thats not to say you should ALWAYS use three sphere decks, but the more spheres you can access, the better.

Casaubron,

As others have said, you were correct to keep questing every round, even during the final stage.

The only starter deck with which I managed to regularly beat Passage Through Mirkwood solo was the Leadership deck. It's ridiculously difficult with the other decks (I think I succeeded once with the pre-made Spirit deck).

I agree with Sauron -- if/when you are ready to make a tri-sphere deck, Aragorn/Denethor/Eowyn are your best bet for beating Passage Through Mirkwood and Escape from Dol Guldur… their starting threat is unfortunately too high vs. Journey Down the Anduin, though (Eowyn, Dunhere, Denethor makes a good alternative bi-sphere deck).

Yeah, I guess go with these guys. It's been a long time since I first played the game with just the core, and I can't remember how I beat the quests. Looking back at the starter decks, I can see how it would be difficult.

Based on incomplete information in the OP, I wonder if incomplete advice is being given here.

Yes, regardless of situations (unless a card dictates otherwise) you have to proceed through the phases of a round, but a player does not need to commit any characters to the quest during the quest phase.

If your threat level was not in danger of hitting 50 (and you could absorb the threat increase from failing at questing that round) you could have chosen not to commit any characters to the quest in order to mass-attack the Ungoliant Spawn (assuming that's what you meant by being close to finishing it off).

Just wanted to say thanks for all of your replies--I was mostly offline for the holidays and didn't have a chance to read all of these until today, but they were very helpful. I'm actually glad to hear that custom deckbuilding is the best option, because for me, that's probably the most enjoyable part of these sorts of CCGs.