Hey guys,

I've actually owned the core set for a long time (like over a year) but was so frustrated with how hard I thought the core quests were solo that I had let the game collect some dust. I also made the apparent mistake of buying the Heirs of Numenor expansion cause I wanted Gondor cards, and found those quests nearly impossible with my card pool!

But, after reading on Tales from the Cards on how to buy I bought all the APs of the first cycle in order, and started really just crashing against the core quests to get a hang of everything. Even got my partner into it so I could play with another player, and we played the Mirkwood quest (albeit without the Shadow effects), so that I could teach her the basic rules and steps, etc. We breezed through the quest pretty easily. But tonight we'll play it again with the Shadow effects, so that now she's introduced to all the terrible ways the encounter deck can really ruin your day

But, after that, we will try Journey Down the Anduin. I know the Hill Troll is kind of notoriously difficult, and I've read this quest can be pretty difficult. I want for us both to use all the spheres in the core decks eventually, rotating through them, but we played with Leadership (me) and Lore (her). Should we stick to those spheres for Anduin, or would two others be more suited for its challenges?

Really happy to finally feel comfortable with the rules and ins-and-outs of gameplay. Looking forward to custom-building decks as we move ahead in the Adventure Packs. She's not really a deck-builder, but maybe I can coach her into contributing some on that end instead of building one for her.\

Anyway, wanted to make an account and say hello!

Welcome to the game! Leadership and lore might work for Journey Along the Anduin. Lore has the Forest Snare, which is great for the troll. Tactics also has Gimli (he can block once, then start attacking for 6) and Feint, which are both good against the troll. Give it a try or two, but don't be afraid to try different decks or build 2-sphere decks.

Welcome to the game! Leadership and lore might work for Journey Along the Anduin. Lore has the Forest Snare, which is great for the troll. Tactics also has Gimli (he can block once, then start attacking for 6) and Feint, which are both good against the troll. Give it a try or two, but don't be afraid to try different decks or build 2-sphere decks.

Thanks! Yeah, in the 2 games we played in Mirkwood, she drew a forest snare in her opening hand both times. I don't think she/I are ready to start trying out two-or-three sphere decks just yet. But we'll see how it goes!

Welcome to the game. Here are a few strategies that may help.

First when you play solo. Some play what we call "2 handed". I play this way a lot when I play solo. Basically, you are playing 2 decks as 1 player controlling both of the decks. It is hard with just a core set, and even with a few APs, to handling everything the encounter deck throws at you. using 2 decks will help a lot. Each deck would have its roll. Generally 1 for combat and 1 for questing.

I also like to split the 4 spheres for between the two decks instead of trying to share because of the limited card pool. I would use tactics and lore for 1 deck for example. And spirit leadership in the other.

And finally, if you are buying only a few AP. I would suggest buying the AP "The Stewards Fear". This expansion pack basically has a pre-made deck in it ready to go for a mono leadership deck using the trait "Outlands" You will get a lot of bang for you buck

Hope that helps. Keep us updated on your progress!

Welcome to the game. Here are a few strategies that may help.

First when you play solo. Some play what we call "2 handed". I play this way a lot when I play solo. Basically, you are playing 2 decks as 1 player controlling both of the decks. It is hard with just a core set, and even with a few APs, to handling everything the encounter deck throws at you. using 2 decks will help a lot. Each deck would have its roll. Generally 1 for combat and 1 for questing.

I also like to split the 4 spheres for between the two decks instead of trying to share because of the limited card pool. I would use tactics leadership and lore for 1 deck for example. And spirit leadership in the other.

And finally, if you are buying only a few AP. I would suggest buying the AP "The Stewards Fear". This expansion pack basically has a pre-made deck in it ready to go for a mono leadership deck using the trait "Outlands" You will get a lot of bang for you buck

Hope that helps. Keep us updated on your progress!

Yeah, I think now that I have her in on the game, I may not play solo *that* much anymore, but this was going to be my plan after seeing how much better it is to play with 2 people. If you play 2-handed, do you count each deck as a "player" in terms of first player, and staging?

I do own the Steward's Fear! I bought it at the same time I did Heirs of Numenor. I also already bought and have all the APs from the first cycle, just haven't used them yet, as I wanted to get a good amount of plays with the core set quests with my partner, prior to us going into those APs.

If you play 2-handed, do you count each deck as a "player" in terms of first player, and staging?

Yea, you just pretend to be two people so handle any game mechanics as if there are 2 players. I suggest pretending to be two people who get along, otherwise it could make things awkward.

Hey so just wanted to say that we ran Journey Down the Anduin tonight. She used the Tactics deck and I used Spirit, since we hadn't used either of those. Also, I had read a little bit about dealing with the Hill Troll and my partner said she liked combat so Tactics was definitely up her alley.

The first game we let the Troll smack Gimli, then she ganged up on him and left him with 5 damage. Then the next turn she killed the Troll with Gimli's boosted attack and Legolas.

We got lucky in the final ambush with only like 2 enemies revealed from the encounter deck.

In our second game we just totally called it because in the initial set up we revealed a treachery that added 2 more cards to the deck, one of which had surge, so added 3, then the remaining 1, and the Hill Troll ended up with 11 threat in the staging area, and 3 enemies, including the Goblin Sniper. We decided there was no way to recover from losing that quest by 5, and deal with 3 attacks, plus the Goblin Sniper damage.

So after starting over again, we managed to repeat Gimli's Hill Troll block, but he also had a Citadel Plate first turn, then she hit him for 5 damage. Next turn, she had a Gondorian Spearman and a Quick Strike. I think we resolved this series of events correctly, but I could be wrong...

Combat Phase:

Dealt Shadow to the Troll.

Action to Quick Strike with Gimli for 3 damage (8 total on Troll).

Declare Spearman as defender of Troll attack, response 1 damage on Troll for a total of 9, and he's dead.

So he was discarded without resolving the Shadow effect and he made no attack, correct?

We did wind up having to fight a number of enemies in the 2nd stage, but Legolas with the blade attachment, plus Gimli's high attack value made it easy for me to quest and for her to take down enemies to avoid a giant ambush at the end.

We both felt super confident about how we handled the Troll, and may try JDtA again but with a different sphere combo, going back to our Leadership/Lore combo, or Tactics/Leadership or Lore.

We looked through the Dol Guldur quest cards and holy **** that looks so difficult. We may skip it and run straight to Hunt for Gollum.

Nice work! You resolved the quick strike/spearman situation correctly.

If I were you, I'd play Escape from Dol Guldur once or twice just to see what it is like. Expect to lose. Then move on the Hunt for Gollum or go back and play Journey Down the Anduin some more with different decks. There is so much variability between the player deck itself, what you draw from the deck, and what you draw from the encounter deck. You can play a single quest dozens of times and it will never be the same.

Hey so just wanted to say that we ran Journey Down the Anduin tonight. She used the Tactics deck and I used Spirit, since we hadn't used either of those. Also, I had read a little bit about dealing with the Hill Troll and my partner said she liked combat so Tactics was definitely up her alley.

The first game we let the Troll smack Gimli, then she ganged up on him and left him with 5 damage. Then the next turn she killed the Troll with Gimli's boosted attack and Legolas.

We got lucky in the final ambush with only like 2 enemies revealed from the encounter deck.

In our second game we just totally called it because in the initial set up we revealed a treachery that added 2 more cards to the deck, one of which had surge, so added 3, then the remaining 1, and the Hill Troll ended up with 11 threat in the staging area, and 3 enemies, including the Goblin Sniper. We decided there was no way to recover from losing that quest by 5, and deal with 3 attacks, plus the Goblin Sniper damage.

So after starting over again, we managed to repeat Gimli's Hill Troll block, but he also had a Citadel Plate first turn, then she hit him for 5 damage. Next turn, she had a Gondorian Spearman and a Quick Strike. I think we resolved this series of events correctly, but I could be wrong...

Combat Phase:

Dealt Shadow to the Troll.

Action to Quick Strike with Gimli for 3 damage (8 total on Troll).

Declare Spearman as defender of Troll attack, response 1 damage on Troll for a total of 9, and he's dead.

So he was discarded without resolving the Shadow effect and he made no attack, correct?

We did wind up having to fight a number of enemies in the 2nd stage, but Legolas with the blade attachment, plus Gimli's high attack value made it easy for me to quest and for her to take down enemies to avoid a giant ambush at the end.

We both felt super confident about how we handled the Troll, and may try JDtA again but with a different sphere combo, going back to our Leadership/Lore combo, or Tactics/Leadership or Lore.

We looked through the Dol Guldur quest cards and holy **** that looks so difficult. We may skip it and run straight to Hunt for Gollum.

Good skills. "Escape from Dol Guldor" is terrifyingly hard. I only play solo and have yet to beat it. Now you are in the "Shadows of Mirkwood" cycle, I am sure you will be able to use the Songs to good effect to help your playing partner out and create some great combos. Happy questing!!!

Phew, just wanted to say, after feeling confident with Anduin and Passage Through Mirkwood, we decided to each build dual-sphere decks, but still only from the core set. I have all of the first cycle Adventure Packs, but we are going to add stuff into our decks only as we move to each Pack.

I went with Leadership Aragorn & Theodred with Spirit Eowyn, and she used the Tactics Legolas & Gimli with Lore Denethor. We just combined the core sphere cards up to exactly 50, with both of us having 2 copies of Gandalf. We went through Journey Down the Anduin without much worry, finished in 5 rounds with a score of 124 and 8 victory points. We opted to try out Hunt for Gollum cause all of the Adventure Packs are burning a hole in my pocket, so to speak.

We thought this one was really easy, and managed to make it through in five rounds. Our final score was 122, with no victory points. We also worked on our table talk this time around after I read those rules haha we tried to say as little as possible about what we had in our hands and what we planned or hoped to do. She added the Eagle allies from that pack into her deck, and I added the Dunadain Mark.

Then I talked her into just rolling with Escape from Dol Guldur. I had kind of talked up how hard the quest was considered by the stuff I've read so we were pretty nervous haha Also, the first time we play a quest, we don't look at any encounter cards or quest stages beforehand. I like to be surprised by what's coming.

Our captured hero was Legolas, and we never picked up an objective until we were on the verge of completing the present quest stage. Didn't want to hold onto that key or torch and just get swamped by damage and threat.

We had a few moments where we thought the game was gonna be over for us. On stage 2, while questing, a treachery card discarded all event cards in our hands. My entire hand consisted of event cards except one Northern Tracker. She lost stuff like Feint and Blade Mastery. So we both thought, oh crap, we're done for. Then, lo and behold the stupid Hummerhorn entered the staging area. I was at 37 threat and she was at 38. So Legolas was rescued but we had the Hummerhorn and Nazgul waiting for us to reach 40 threat. She was confident with a few allies out and opted to engage the Nazgul immediately. Plus, his 5 threat was not ideal to compete against. She blocked with Gimli, but the stupid Shadow Card was Ungoliant's Spawn, so her threat went up to 42. She managed to deal 7 damage to the Nazgul with her combined attack power.

Then next round, I was resigned to just let Theodred die from the Hummerhorn. She used the Lore ally for me to draw a card. I drew Galadrim's Greeting, lowering her threat back to 36. She finished off the Nazgul by drawing a Quick Strike, great timing! We advanced to the last stage, and I reached 40 threat and due to her having the Torch, she was at 41.

Then it was time to quest. Since Aragorn had Celebrian's Stone, I was questing with a 9 and only Hummerhorn in play so I felt confident I could manage to get us close to the 7 progress needed. The card that entered was an enemy with 2, and I thought, oh crap, one short! But, I suddenly remembered Eowyn's ability, discarded one card for the needed progress and the win!

Our final score was 145, with a dead Jailer for 5 victory points.

We really felt super accomplished and basked in the victory. And, after playing some other card games together that are head-to-head, I think we've found our groove in one that is fun as hell, and provides some cool stories that feel like genuine adventures!

Also, how in the world does the Nazgul not have victory points?! I mean, come on, that's ridiculous lol and I feel like if you control objective cards at the end, they should have like 1 or 2 VPs each. But, any enemy with more than 5 or 6 hit points, should have some Victory Points! We may play with a little house rule to that effect

It's an oddity in some of the earlier quests that some boss enemies don't have victory points, so you can kill them and then have them just come back again. Once time 3 player we killed the Nazgul, then reshuffled the encounter deck and revealed it again the following round so we had to kill it again (which we did, no trouble, because with a couple of cycles of cards added to the pool that Nazgul gets a lot less threatening). In later quests mostly boss enemies have victory points or killing them is actually how you complete the quest or similar.

It's an oddity in some of the earlier quests that some boss enemies don't have victory points, so you can kill them and then have them just come back again. Once time 3 player we killed the Nazgul, then reshuffled the encounter deck and revealed it again the following round so we had to kill it again (which we did, no trouble, because with a couple of cycles of cards added to the pool that Nazgul gets a lot less threatening). In later quests mostly boss enemies have victory points or killing them is actually how you complete the quest or similar.

Oh wow I totally didn't think about reshuffling him in the encounter deck!

Also, when we finished the quest, we were like, "what did we do wrong?" lol Is there any way to lose the objective cards? I know in Hunt for Gollum the objective cards specifically say if you take damage or the hero leaves play, etc., the card returns to the staging area. But nothing like that was present on the Dol Guldur objectives.

As I recall, the only way you can lose the Dol Guldur objectives after you've claimed them is if you get a shadow effect which makes you discard an attachment you control. Then you could choose one of the objectives and it'd go back to the staging area.

I have also just played my very first scenario in the Core Set. I chose my deck to play randomly and pulled the Leadership deck. Probably took longer than I thought it would to play as I was flicking around the rules a lot. I would say the first half went smoothly enough but I took some damage. Finally got the final part and drew Ungoliant Spawn followed a turn later by Hummerhorns when my threat was going to be 40 next turn. I then drew a few locations over next few turns which prevented me from making progress as I could not get past the location I had traveled too. All in all it was fail on my first attempt, I may have got some things wrong but I will re read the rules etc and try again. Maybe it was a combination of cruel cards and inexperience but I enjoyed the experience, learn and try again.