Hey folks, I am thinking about to sneak peek into Print on Demand and/or Nightmare quests. So I wonder which packs to buy as a good start. Any thoughts are welcome! Is there a buying guide for those missions around somewhere?

I would call me a casual player (e.g. never tried Shadow and Flame without a cheesy Galadriel-hero-deck), but owning most of the "regular" missions. I tend to be more interessted in missions wich adds some "extra" to the usual game mechanics (like Encounter at Amon Din or Helm's Deep). So which quests to buy?

Questions which boggle my mind:

Roughly, at which dificulty level the nightmare missions start?

Are the regular easier missions also the easier nightmare missions?

Will the nightmare mode only add some extra difficulty (e.g. in terms of enemy hit points) or modify the quest mechanics, too?

Thanks in advance!

https://talesfromthecards.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/nightmare-buying-guide/

I think the criterion Ian is using to assess Nightmare Quest are exactly what you're looking for. His words:

* Challenge: How difficult is the quest? Keep in mind that this is a relative scale, so a rating of 1, for example, doesn’t mean that a quest is a cakewalk. Rather, it means that it is less difficult than other Nightmare quests.

* Theme Improvement: Just like it sounds, this rating assesses how much the Nightmare version improves the general theme and “feeling” of the quest.

* Gameplay Improvement: How much does the Nightmare version improve the way the quest plays? This deals with game balance, fixes to mechanics, etc.

* Fun Factor: How fun is the Nightmare version of the quest? This takes into account the balance between frustration/challenge and the likelihood that players will want to repeatedly pull this Nightmare scenario out of the box again and again.

I own all nightmare up to date except for Voice of Isengard and have played most of them at least a few times (a couple I have not yet touched however). Honestly they are very varied. Some of the time the easier missions have easier nightmare versions than other quests but sometimes this is the opposite, Encounter at Amon Din for example is one of the easiest quests in the game (and one of my favorites) so I was very excited to get the Nightmare version. It is insane... easily one of the hardest quests out there, I played it two or three times and was blown away by how brutal it was and have not yet tried it again. Druadan Forest similarly is very hard in Nightmare mode and has a very different and unique feel to the original quest and really any quest (mainly that you do not gain resources each turn and instead start with many and must ration them out throughout the quest) but I find the original not so hard at all (others will disagree with this but I find that with enough healing and 2 or less players it is not so bad at all unless you get super unlucky reveals). The opposite can also be true.

It is hard to say what difficulty they start at but if you can regularly play and often beat quests like Morgul Vale, Shadow and Flame, Into Ithilien or even really Nin-in-Eilph, To Catch an Orc or some of the harder Hobbit Saga quests then many of the nightmare quests should definitely be very doable and fun for you. Most of them are in fact easier than some of these quests I have listed especially the earlier Shadows of Mirkwood nightmare quests and even some of the Dwarrowdelf ones. If anything the early Nightmare quests just bring older quests up to a similar difficulty level to say The Ring Maker Cycle quests or The Lost Realm quests. This is awesome for those of us who use power decks and the entire player cardpool but still enjoy older quests. Playing the nightmare version means there is still a bit of a challenge and chance to lose and you will not just steamroll the scenario in a few turns.

I find almost every nightmare quest adds at least a bit of extra mechanics, flavour and variety to the original and I can't think of any that simply give you enemies with higher hitpoints and attack or locations with more quest points. For sure they do this but they always add some extra element of gameplay or theme to the quest and sometimes even introduce a whole new take on the main mechanic of the quest or even introduce a new one! Some completely revitalize old slightly boring quests and make them far better, more challenging and far more replayable. A few of the nightmare quests that do this the best I would say are Journey Down the Anduin, Into the Pit, The Seventh Level, Road to Rivendell, The Hunt for Gollum and The Stewards Fear. There are very few that I dislike or think do not really add much to the quest. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are the Hobbit Saga Nightmare Quests but I am biased because I HATE the Hobbit Saga quests to begin with.

There indeed is a guide that will present you with far better and more detailed information than my little rant but I hope that I helped a bit!: https://talesfromthecards.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/nightmare-buying-guide/

EDIT: Banania beat me to it!

If you were only going to get a few nightmare quests to try it out and see if its for you but also don't want any that are overly hard I would recommend Khazad-Dum (maybe skip Flight from Moria as this one is pretty **** hard), Road to Rivendell, the Stewards Fear and Journey Down the Anduin first.