Alex,

you started posting of your adventures back on March, 27th. It's nice to see you still have the same enthusiasm and love for the game despite the many plays So happy you're having a great time

Alex,

you started posting of your adventures back on March, 27th. It's nice to see you still have the same enthusiasm and love for the game despite the many plays So happy you're having a great time

Thanks Julia, and you were quite key in originally steering me towards this game so thank you

So over 4 months in and many plays, yet still so early in my progression. Many APs, deluxes, pods, all the sagas and NM quests all still to go at. I am on my 14th different quest so at this rate, lots of time to go before I even start to think about redoing quests

Onwards

Missed out a play.

Last weekend, another go at redhorn and a win, yay. Hard fought again but went to plan.

Just to keep up to my online record, another Redhorn Gate today and spectacular loss. Location lock from almost turn 1, then an orc got buffed by a shadow card to take out Theodred before I had allies into play, followed by a snow warg which had to be defended by gimli, but due to its shadow card it also killed gimli, so then snow warg killing eowyn was unavoidable.

Ouch.

Anyways, on the Road to Rivindell now.

I was happy with my finalised deck against Redhorn, but do find it to be quite a hard encounter for me.

Lets see how the road pans out next time I play.

I was happy with my finalised deck against Redhorn, but do find it to be quite a hard encounter for me.

I haven't ventured that far into Dwarrowdelf / Khazad-dum (7x Into the Pit, 1 each 7th level / FLight from Moria / Redhorn / Rivendell), but I had the impression that quests become longer and generally "more complex" to handle than in the previous AP cycle.

I was happy with my finalised deck against Redhorn, but do find it to be quite a hard encounter for me.

I haven't ventured that far into Dwarrowdelf / Khazad-dum (7x Into the Pit, 1 each 7th level / FLight from Moria / Redhorn / Rivendell), but I had the impression that quests become longer and generally "more complex" to handle than in the previous AP cycle.

Yes it did seem longer, mainly due to victory conditions as well as questing, having to dig out the additional victory point locations from the encounter deck takes time.

For me, i think the difficult aspects were:

1: Snow warg not defended by allies. This killed a lot of heroes. Solution being a healer (didnt always draw) or maybe i shouldve swapped in a good defender like Denethor. Cards such as feint worked well too but not always drawn.

2: Location lock. Lots of high threat locations could creep in. Silution northern tracker and snowborn scout, but didnt always draw.

3: Questing. The lowering of wp in stage three can be hard. Buffing up eowyn by all the usual wp methods seemed best.

4: That warg that jumps back to staging if no shadow effect. So many times did this do damage then jump back before I hit it. My deck just doesnt have any contents to damage staging, so thats a weakness, though the next ap (just git ready for next gane/scenario) contained a nice little tactics card for that, so maybe next scenario will tackle that warg better.

So I did think there were quite a few difficult aspects to Redhorn, but if card draw worked, solutions worked quite well.

Not generally an easy one for me, but I beat it enough to be happy to move on now

I totally see the darn warg with no shadows moving back to staging after resolving the attack. It's... tedious. Technically, you can deal with it with Swift Strike (2 damages done upon declaring defending character) possibly paired up with a Gondorian Spearman as defender so that you instantly kill the beast as he tries to attack you, but agreed, it's not said you have the cards available (in your hand / in the deck). Another solution could be direct damage into the staging area (Dunhere for instance). Depends on how your deck is built. But agreed, if you don't have any of these (or similar) solutions available, is a total pain in the (staging) area...

So three gors at Road to Rivindell today.

Go1

Success

Pretty easy, went amazing and left me thinking is it really that easy after redhorn gate and with no deck tweak.

Go2

Loss

Hard fought. Wargs game me trouble and the birdys stopping cancels were problrmatic. Ended up too much enemy engagement to defend and attack.

Go3

Huh!!!

I was doing pretty well and then shadow effect of "sleeping sentry" killed every hero and ally in one card reveal thus end of game. Wft!!! Ridiculously powerfull shadow card (see my post in rules section) seemed daft my entire play area was discarded in one card turn. Without shadow cancelling or scrying this is just so defeating.

Anyways, 1 win 2 loss do far.

So i tweaked my deck to contain a full 3 hasty strokes to cancel shadow cards and decided to mulligan if starting hand doesnt feature them.

Go1:

Going really well.. then i draw the nasty bird which surges into another nasty bird which surges into a goblin, eek.

Those birdies stop my hasty stroke so need to get rid of them.. goblin engages and i selectively engage a birdy. Wouldnt you know it, i draw the nasty shadow card and am not allowed to play my cancel card so Arwen and others dead game over again.

Go2:

Hard fought victory. Ending threat 43 so didnt have much time left. Deck worked as designed though so was happy.

Another go, a win again.

That lazy sentry still managed to cause the death of eowyn but I had two gandalfs and a sneak attack plus plenty resource so next three turns still quested well with gandalfs. Without those, eowyn going may have sunk the ship.

Enjoying this scenario lots. Every time is a challenge but now ive tweaked my deck its still comfortably beatable, so this scenario/deck combo feels well balanced now and the outcome is more on the play of the cards (plus luck)

Dont want to move on from this scenario yet, possibly my favourite since hunt for gollum (which i really enjoyed)

So two games today.

Game1 Rivendell again, lost on last turn. I had everything lined up to quest my last points next turn and a shadow card killed Arwen, whoops.

Moved on to Watcher in the Water. Wow thats hard without a dedicated deck.

Difficult combat and I bust threat.

Need to have another play before deciding on a deck build but right now im thinking lots of tactics combat, plus lore healing, plus spirit threat reduction and questing. Celebrians stone, steward gondor, sneak attack would all be nice too so may need to splash those in, so if i go for this build it will be my first non-splashed Lore build since core-set.

Another defeat with current deck then some deck designing

That's so weird. When I lose, I always seem to lose on the last turn too (at least when I'm playing solo).

That's so weird. When I lose, I always seem to lose on the last turn too (at least when I'm playing solo).

Ok so I played my next game on watcher and got smashed, so decided to deck design.

I made the decision that questing didnt seem as crucial here, so shock horror for the first time I benched Eowyn.

I went Gimli (attack), Gloin (cheap leadership with WP and resource) and Denethor (defense mainly).

Tactics i stacked for combat and allies. Mainly boosting gimli. Lore i went for healing and forest snares, Leadership I went for buffs like celebrians stone, steward gondor as well as sneak attacks and some chump block allies. I then added a couple of songs to splash spirit with an unexpected courage and three galadhrims greetings.

I then played a game.

To be honest, it didnt actually go as smooth as i had hoped and felt disasterous at first, but then it pulled back a bit and although I did still lose, it felt like I had done ok. I lost in second/final phase with six damage on the watcher who was also forest snared, so it felt like i had time to resolve things, BUT Gimli had not gained any buffing, no armour, no weapons, so doing enough damage to the watcher was going to be difficult with his regen, so i played for time hoping to buff Gimli but in the process got overwhelmed with normal enemies and lost the game.

I think if I had got the watcher snared quicker, i wouldnt have lost as many chumps and then they would have handled the normal enemies, but thats the way the draw went.

So it was a loss, but ended well even if started slowly.

I am not yet sure if this deck will work ok. I fear I could get some location lock due to losing eowyn, northern tracker and lorien guide, just not sure yet. Part of me thinks benching leadership could be wiser than benching spirit. I really cannot think my head around a mono or dual sphere for this so sticking with tri plus splash.

So I think another go or two to decide if the deck works, needs tweaking, or a redesign.

Will see how it goes.

Difficult quest for me this one so far.

The key to the quest is to skry heavily and see what is coming so you can plan properly. Also, the son of a nor or whatever, the Dunedain that pulls an enemy, can be used on the watcher to bring him down and snare him. It is a quest that is hard until you Crack it, then it's super easy. It is a fun quest though.

Every time I beat Watcher in the Water was by racing through the Gates of Durin without killing the Watcher. Denethor/Unexpected Courage and other scrying cards are very helpful for that!

I had another go today, had the watcher snared but was waiting for citadel plate to come out of my deck to buff Gimli to kill it, waited too long and ended up overwhelmed by tentacles. Felt like I didnt do too badly though, if Gimli had been buffed I think I might have got it.

Scrying to beat the door/gate spell... didnt think of that! Must make that aspect so easy wow. Skry to see the letter of the card and discard to suit. Wow easy solution.

Next go I will see how I am doing by stage two before deciding if Gimli can kill watcher or if to skry for victory, cheers.

I was wondering why you were so determined to kill the Watcher. I have never bothered to try. :-)

Come on, have a go. If you think you're hard enough...

I was wondering why you were so determined to kill the Watcher. I have never bothered to try. :-)

Because i hadnt thought of scrying to get through the doors until you mentioned it and without scrying had thought the doors would take forever, so designed my deck with an aim to kill the watcher instead. So as I dont plan to change the deck, if I get to stage 2 and Gimli is buffed up and I have forest snare in hand, then just to use the deck as-designed i will kill the watcher rather than scrying

I have a slight worry that the scrying idea has instantly turned a very hard challenging quest into a very easy one. The scrying seems so obvious now.

Another newbie here. Originally I played the first LotR ccg ME:TW if anyone remembers, which was quite alike this one. As I loved that one I jumped right into this A core box later I´m trying out the various decks against the Mirkwood quest. I only pity that the game doesn´t have a tournament scene as I like travelling somewhere and meeting fellow enthusiasts to a good game!

Thanks for your post Scactha and welcome to possibly my favourite game in many many years, it truly is excellent.

I myself am playing progressive, using only the cards for each scenario/adventure that were available at the time as well as going through in order of release/publication, so I imagine this thread gives quite a newbie perspective from my first days of passage through mirkwood with zero deckbuilding skills, to my present point part-way through Dwarrowdelf (still with no deck building skills haha!)

I would say that if you do not want spoilers, or my own solutions to how I tackled quests, then only read up to your last quest, but if you want ideas for quests then do feel free to read on. It now feels like a bit of a diary of my journey which is why I keep updating it

My first couple of posts have my take on the mirkwood quest with core decks, though I would say do not worry about losing. The initial core decks tend to be very weak until you start combining them into dual-sphere or tri-sphere and then they get stronger still when your card pool expands. But at first with core-only premade decks, they really are weak and certainly most people get smashed to bits once they try "Journey Down The Anduin" and tend not to even get a few turns into "Escape From Dol Guldur" as it is so so so hard with core decks especially solo.

I myself found the Mirkwood-Cycle adventures that followed through the adventure packs of the first cycle were better balanced quests than in the core set, so if you get beat a lot, do not be discouraged

There are some great guides on websites out there too.

Great to have you in the game and best of luck with your questing. Hope you enjoy it

Cheers

Alex

So, some old friends and I tested it again yesterday. We´ve played games for 20+ years together. We played the started decks; Tactics, Lore and Leadership blowing through Mirkwood. Next we took on the banks of Anduin and quested cautiously resulting in us being swamped in Trolls and other nasties. We reset and switched Lore for Spirit. This time it worked well and we blew the stages 1 and 2, but at the 3rd we got a massive surge of shadow cards leaving us bruised and unable to quest well enough to keep Threat at bay. With one round available before succumbing to threat to solve it the Leadership deck whizzed out Gandalf who nuked the last troll for it´s final HP! *phew*

Observations:

• More players scaled to the detriment of the Shadow. One more card drawn vs the versatility of the three extra heroes and their deck didn´t match well.
• Tactics was fun. Especially Legolas! Weedy goblin shows: Legolas pre emptive strikes before they attack and we get Progress to boot? Loved it and want to play a Silvan theme now
• Spirit is neat in controlling engnagements. Better Dodge whoever you don´t want to fight atm. Like that too.
• Leadership felt like the "bank". "Anyone need Resources?"
• There are a million ways to strategize out of the Core set. Our main problem was deciding who would get to do something that someone else could handle. Best economy rules. Good design by FFG.
• The lack of comptitive aspect... That´s a pity since the drama the game captures is a tad diluted as no one wins or loses really.

If you have Khazad-dum you can add Narvi's belt to Gloin, with his damage=resources he can give jumpstart, or even be nice resource generator, provided with healing.

I decided against Jarvis belt as it costs 2 leadership resource while the song of travel costs 1 neutral and its mainly spirit I needed.

Anyways

1 game today.... disaster.

Setup I draw a tentacle (4 attack) and turn 1 I draw a treachery. But as the tentacle attacks, it's shadow card (warg) adds +1attack so it is attacking for 5 and it has an effect saying discard an encounter card etc which results in the attack being undefended.

So, turn 1 I do not have the cards or resource to stop this and I take an underfunded attack5 thus one hero dead on turn 1 nothing I can do about it.

After that it was just a downward spiral until threat bust. Couldn't attack/defend/quest with 2 hero's and zero allies, so questing slipped and threat bust.

Bad first turn/draw

Better luck next time.