On 05/06/2017 at 6:40 AM, TwiceBornh said:

Alex... why haven't you been playing lately?

Getting stomped by Siege of Cair Andros?

We're all dying for an update.

Real life being busy.

Went away and took games but didn't get to a LotR game. Watched a lot of TV, played some D&D boardgame and Marvel Legendary.

This weekend is Descent2 and my new DungeonQuest, but if I have more time I will have another pop at Into Ithilien and write up.

I really appreciate the interest in my writings thank you I'll play more soon, just get so busy.

EDIT: on checking, before I went away I did get another Ithilien game in but it looks like my write up didn't post, but I did type it. Essentially I got stuffed in stage 2 by the blocking wargs chain-surging and ending in the Mumak, disaster. Wasn't doing too bad until that point. It all just went bang really quickly. Masacre!

On 6/8/2017 at 1:07 AM, alexbobspoons said:

EDIT: on checking, before I went away I did get another Ithilien game in but it looks like my write up didn't post, but I did type it. Essentially I got stuffed in stage 2 by the blocking wargs chain-surging and ending in the Mumak, disaster. Wasn't doing too bad until that point. It all just went bang really quickly. Masacre!

Wargs surging can be devastating. I already loose on turn one with three of this in a row. I just loose my ally that I just pay and one hero O_o. I don't know if the problem is still printed in recent version but beware: wargs surging is no longer get shuffled back in the encounter deck. Mumak is also really difficult. I try to avoid them of just calculate for block but almost never kill one in solo mode, 4 turns is too long.

Good luck for your next try!

Another game at Into Ithilien.

Same deck.

Started slowly, had a bit of a clogged staging area but managed to get through bit by bit. Gimli was fully wounded but Glorfindel got light of valinor. A sneak attack Gandalf helped. Was a slow slog and the round that I completed stage1 Celador died, so my first go at the standard stage2.

This also was a long slog as I had been aiming for using willpower and so the siege keyword was a pain. I had 3 Elronds Council in hand but didnt want to lower threat without using the willpower gain.

I slogged through, playing a standard Gandalf to boost defense as I was low on defense, but Defender of Ramas came to my aid as a solid 4. Nasty Morgul Spider attacked but I defended with Gondorian Spearman and quick-strike with Gimli to dispatch it. I just missed out with 8 progress but the followig turn the encounter card was a location so managed to get to stage 4, though I had Southron Company engaged.

Right!! Willpower now huh. My threat was 36 so only 1 away from siege but I played all 3 Ellronds Councils for a 3WP gain and a threat lower of total 9 haha.

I then played out another Gandalf onto the table, exhaused Faramir for his WP bonus and then quested with everybody. My total WP was about 21 and so it handled the 1 threat of another Southron Company and blitzed the 15 progress needed to win HAHA! Victory!

So thats 2 wins against Into Ithilien out of 3 games thats a pretty healthy score. Quite pleased with my deck. However I didnt see a single Blocking Warg or the Mumak so again I was lucky on the card draw.

I think now I will grit my teeth and the next game will be the Siege of Cair Andros. Bit concerned I will be stuck on this for ages until I can get onto other quests, we will see. I will keep the same deck for the first test of it though and see what happens

Wow man, 2/3, good for you.

I think I struggled a lot more due to reshuffling surging Blocking Wargs back into the deck (anyone know when that was first errataed?).

Although Siege of Cair Andros is hard, it was one of my favourite quests of the deluxe + cycle. Truly epic quest.

1 hour ago, TwiceBornh said:

Wow man, 2/3, good for you.

I think I struggled a lot more due to reshuffling surging Blocking Wargs back into the deck (anyone know when that was first errataed?).

Although Siege of Cair Andros is hard, it was one of my favourite quests of the deluxe + cycle. Truly epic quest.

My game 2 featured Wargs and it just smashed me to bits. The first game I only had 1 and the current game was zero. So I do think lucky draws really!

Worried about being stuck on Siege and not enjoying it. Pelargir was so hard for me I started to not enjoy as much, I hope Siege isnt the same.

I can't really say no worries, but Cair Andros is a much more predictable quest and in my opinion limits the decks that match up well against it much more than Pelagir does. For me that makes the quest less fun and interessting than Pelagir, which I played many times more than Cair Andros. But it also means that it isn't that hard to come up with a decent deck to grind out a win.

To me Cair Andros in more difficult and specific since siege is often more difficult to achieve that quest in battle or with will. Plus I have hard time at the beginning to figure what are the best options between save the locations or let a lot of attack undefended. But it is in the same difficult range than into Ithilien (probably a little bit easier) so you can beat it ;).

So first go at Siege, lost massively. To be honest also did not enjoy it. That's not to say I won't enjoy it with a better deck, but with this feel no fun at all, very disappointed.

At no point ever did I have enough defense to beat the threat in the staging area, so that mounted.

Trying to quest to reduce the questing failure meant I didn't have enough defenders to core with the encounter decks monsters which were a LOT. So I took combat damage or lost allies every turn.

There was never anybody left to actually make a meaningful attack on the monsters, so they built up in the engagement area until they killed everyone.

While I could have played it differently, I never felt a different play would have worked. Every turn felt doomed and that I had no good option. I was just wasting time until defeat.

It wasn't fun because I never felt I had tactical options, I felt I was losing with no effective plays available at any point for the whole game. Can't say this scenario felt well designed as it felt futile while other losing scenarios have still felt fun with a chance, I never felt I had a chance.

This may be a different story with a specific designed deck, time will tell.

I feel I need a deck with heavy defense because without that I had nothing.

Big on tactics, maybe leadership.

Full de c know redesign is in order. Very combat/defense orientated, which obviously fits the theme.

Will a tailored deck make this scenario fun? Dunno yet. Am I capable of designing something to cope with it? Dunno that either.

Your speech don't seem to fit with with this scenario. What don't you let undefended attack and go to stage 2 so you can now quest with will and keep strong defender/attacker to fight? It probably wasn't enought (since you reveal 2 cards per turn at stage 2) but can be your only way left when you are on the way to loose everything.

1 hour ago, Rouxxor said:

Your speech don't seem to fit with with this scenario. What don't you let undefended attack and go to stage 2 so you can now quest with will and keep strong defender/attacker to fight? It probably wasn't enought (since you reveal 2 cards per turn at stage 2) but can be your only way left when you are on the way to loose everything.

IF I understood it correctly, he wasn't able to finish stage 1 or make progress at any time, so it didn't matter if or which locations were destroyed. But it's indeed a viable strategy to not even try to save the locations and use their "hitpoints" as a buffer to set up for all 5 stages.

I had the most success myself with a mono tactics deck that features close to zero willpower. Only important thing is to get stage two out of the game as there's no way to win willpower questing against two cards per turn. If you draw enough eagles, defenders of rammas it's possible to handle combat and clear the locations.

Don't be to frustrated I don't think anyone ever was able to come close to beating this quest when going in blind with a non-specific deck. The encounter deck and quest design just punish various things way to hard...

If there is no more battleground location in play you go immediately to the stage 2, that why I say you can let attack undefended if defense is too hard to manage at the moment. You will have to face defense later so this is not perfect at all but can still delay defeat and may be within this two turns a miracle can happens :).

Here's a strategy guide that was pretty effective for me when playing this quest in Minimum Purchase mode: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/5593/minimum-purchase-the-siege-of-cair-andros-1.0

I too found that the best deck for this scenario is mono tactics with heavy defence. There are couple of cards that punish you for having multiple spheres and tactics has a lot of defence to take care of questing. I think it's best to just don't care about willpower when building you deck. You only need it at stage 2, so if you can clear the first location the scenario isn't that hard. Boromir, Beregond, Gimli, Beorn are all good against this quest, and of course a lot of eagles/defenders of rammas, who siege quest for 4 while costing only 2

Just to add, I didn't get any progress on the quest card and the final battleground location was still in play when i died, thus was on stage 1 the whole time.

Taking undefended would indeed have advanced me but seeing as I did this blind I wasnt taking tactical decisions I was playing to test the scenario and be surprised by its contents. So not seeing what other stages have means I wasnt able to plan for them. I had/have no idea what later stages need in terms of questing/siege/battle. Paying it blind you just try to do the best you can on what the stage card says.

Thanks for all the advice and ideas folks

10 hours ago, Seastan said:

Here's a strategy guide that was pretty effective for me when playing this quest in Minimum Purchase mode: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/5593/minimum-purchase-the-siege-of-cair-andros-1.0

Excellent deck and article.

Curious why envoy of pelargir? Seems 2 cost to gain 1 back. So is it simply a 1 cost chump block?

It is a very useful cards when it can also quest and reorganize resource among heroes. Since it can't be any of this I don't get either the point. Good luck for you're next try. This deluxe box make me totally rethink my way to build decks (since I always build my deck to beat all the scenario it is very hard to manage those one).

Seastan's deck only draws from core and HN deluxe, so his choices were limited.

16 hours ago, alexbobspoons said:

Excellent deck and article.

Curious why envoy of pelargir? Seems 2 cost to gain 1 back. So is it simply a 1 cost chump block?

The Envoy is a very good ally. For 1 cost you get someone that can quest, attack, or chump-block, and at the same time provide resource smoothing. He appears in many of my decks.

As long as there are no effects in the quest that severely punish you for losing a character, I'd sooner put him in a solo deck than Feint (why not both?).

5 hours ago, Seastan said:

The Envoy is a very good ally. For 1 cost you get someone that can quest, attack, or chump-block, and at the same time provide resource smoothing. He appears in many of my decks.

As long as there are no effects in the quest that severely punish you for losing a character, I'd sooner put him in a solo deck than Feint (why not both?).

Thats a great point thank you. Feint is one use and gone so Envoy as a blocker is just as good yet has the option of those other aspects, very good point thanks.

On 6/20/2017 at 3:47 PM, Seastan said:

The Envoy is a very good ally. For 1 cost you get someone that can quest, attack, or chump-block, and at the same time provide resource smoothing. He appears in many of my decks.

As long as there are no effects in the quest that severely punish you for losing a character, I'd sooner put him in a solo deck than Feint (why not both?).

In this scenario it can't quest most of the time nor resource smoothing :/. This aside it is also the ally I play the most (and may be 2 times more than the second one). But I recommend to play them both because blocking with an ally can damage a lot battlefield location in play because of the shadow cards. You want to use it to attack.

So I designed a deck based HEAVILLY on Seastans build (having read the article with great interest, I then find that despite what Yoda says, it's really difficult to unlearn what you have learned..)

Gave it a go.

First two turns encounter cards were masters malice, ouch!!!

Didn't do to badly but I suffered from shadow-card-stacking making some enemies hit for about 10.. deal another shadow, deal two more shadows etc..

And eventually lost. Fairly uneventful other than just continued slog.

I did enjoy it though, was a much better shot at the scenario.

4 minutes ago, alexbobspoons said:

So I designed a deck based HEAVILLY on Seastans build (having read the article with great interest, I then find that despite what Yoda says, it's really difficult to unlearn what you have learned..)

Gave it a go.

First two turns encounter cards were masters malice, ouch!!!

Didn't do to badly but I suffered from shadow-card-stacking making some enemies hit for about 10.. deal another shadow, deal two more shadows etc..

And eventually lost. Fairly uneventful other than just continued slog.

I did enjoy it though, was a much better shot at the scenario.

If you're interested, I just posted a playthrough on my channel using that deck: https://youtu.be/POCmdQfubI8

Spoiler: I lose a lot at first. So keep at it!

Oh for goodness sake.

Just started a game. Turn 1 the encounter card was an enemy who engaged and ended up surging 5 shadow cards, Banks and Approach already done and gone

Thats just ridiculous no chance I am coming back from this and I havent even done anything yet.

Frustrated already to say the least.

I found with this quest I lost a lot in the first couple turns (counting losing the Banks as a loss), but if I made it past those turns I had a decent shot at winning. It can be frustrating, but at least you don't have to keep devoting an hour to the game only to lose at the end.

I tend to carry on with the game regardless, so this lasted 30mins before I finally went down but in honesty I felt I was wasting my time all the play. Did not enjoy it, which is not a nice feeling with this game. Right now feeling very frustrated at how a mechanic can do that without much bad-choice from me, Putting the game away for the night after only one play.

Got to say, overall not impressed with the HoN deluxe box. Its difficulty is above that I would expect from a standard game and if I had been buying progressively on-release this may well have finished my involvement with the game. As it is, I know good stuff is ahead, but not happy with my play at the moment.

Peril in Pelargir was on the whole not great fun, possibly my worse quest to-date. Into Ithilien I surprisingly didnt mind but I can see where it frustrates. Siege is just frustrating.

Im sure that "IF" I master this quest it will all be a different story, but right now its really hard to get enthusiasm to play it hate to be a downer but as a non-expert player this box really is a disappointment. Its the kind of difficulty Id expect from a hard-mode (Nightmare?) not a standard off the shelf game.

Feels like a waste of time this evening. When I started the game at core, losing was still huge fun for the enjoyment of the game. This quest, losing isnt fun its frustrating. For me presonally, bad design

Ranting as frustrated.