Hi,

First of all thank you all for all advises I had read in this forum. I was look pretty long for a solo board game. After many final decisions I found that LoTR LCG suits me at best even that it is my first card game and second board game. I even didnt know what LCG means.

While I wait for my order which unfortunately was delayed for a week I took opportunity to get familiar with this forum, BGG resource and other links mainly proposed here. But I never look into sites which shows how cards look like or any deck building tips. I wanted to start by my self.

I ordered Core Set + hunt for Gollum + dead marshes + two first saga expansion [not Hobbit]. Yes it was all bet. Succesful.

Easy i thought after reading scenario reviews for Core Set (no spoilers ofcourse), I decided that I will build Hobbit deck and I will not use prebuilt one. After recieving my order, I built Deck which I named Old man guide newbie". So Bilbo Bagins, Pippin and Merry.

No spoilers also...

I was pretty sure it will not take time to finish first scenario if everywhere it is noted as easiest one. It took me 4hours But I won. I finished it after 18 rounds have 38 threat points I took all my cards and only one left on adventure pile. (sry im using polish version, not sure right now how it is named in english). As many mentioned Gandalf was executioner of scenario.

My deck wasnt sucessful. I have too much cards on the hand. To low on resources. And most frustrating was lack of willpower to adventure thru the lands. In many rounds i was equal to staging cards.

But all Heroes return to homes healthy. So there is room for improvment.

So once again thank you for your community and Regards. I'm really happy I got this game.

Its a fantastic game and is very hard at first with core box adventures, but after a lot of failure the knowledge of decks and cards gets easier and it all gets much better. Dont give up if/when it gets really hard as things do get better

Welcome to LOTR LCG, one of (if not THE) best solo gaming experiences out there!

Also remember : with this game, which is fantastic, you'll learn how to loose...

Play with Éowyn. The only way you can fail questing with her is the stupid Orcs of Dol Guldur-The Necromancer's Reach combo.

I took second chance today - little adjustment to my deck [still questing is a failure] - won after 8 rounds

Question: If I use Feint - do this enemy Shadow Card effect should be still applied [ex: de-attach item]? In my opinion No, as the attacker do not take attack phase so no revealing shadow card. Today I will look into all FFG erratas and FAQ.

Second question: Have you got some tips how you organize your card in the box? or how you store them on daily basis?

If I remember right, shadow cards are STILL dealt because the enemy has engaged, but the shadow cards are not revealed/played because the enemy doesnt actually attack you. So Feint does get around the shadow effect!! (If Im remembering right without looking things up)

Organizing:

Well I bought a flight case toolbox to organise the cards rather than the main box and then have put all the player cards into coloured deckboxes identifying the sphere, while adventure cards are separated by dividers. It makes a good storage solution for me and holds a lot of cards.

Others have bought specialist inserts, many of which can be seen on boardgamegeek.com which divide up the core set box.

My case is here:

But this image is very early so doesnt show the separate deckboxes containing the sphere cards, just shows the cards separated with dividers. Also I had a lot of scruffy looking packets of card sleeves in there then. I need to take an up to date photo.

The core box inserts are very nice and worth looking at, but dont hold a full playset. Others have also modified art-cases to hold the cards. Lots of onfo on boardgamegeek its worth a google search

Congrats on your win too :)

Remember, some really hard quests are about to hit you, but they do get easier for a bit afterwards, so dont despair once you hit the big losses

If I remember right, shadow cards are STILL dealt because the enemy has engaged, but the shadow cards are not revealed/played because the enemy doesnt actually attack you. So Feint does get around the shadow effect!! (If Im remembering right without looking things up)

Organizing:

Well I bought a flight case toolbox to organise the cards rather than the main box and then have put all the player cards into coloured deckboxes identifying the sphere, while adventure cards are separated by dividers. It makes a good storage solution for me and holds a lot of cards.

Others have bought specialist inserts, many of which can be seen on boardgamegeek.com which divide up the core set box.

My case is here:

But this image is very early so doesnt show the separate deckboxes containing the sphere cards, just shows the cards separated with dividers. Also I had a lot of scruffy looking packets of card sleeves in there then. I need to take an up to date photo.

The core box inserts are very nice and worth looking at, but dont hold a full playset. Others have also modified art-cases to hold the cards. Lots of onfo on boardgamegeek its worth a google search

Congrats on your win too :)

Remember, some really hard quests are about to hit you, but they do get easier for a bit afterwards, so dont despair once you hit the big losses

That looks impressive!! I placed my order on Amazon for the core set today, should be arriving on Friday; can't wait!! Do you guys know where I can find out if certain expansions are going to be reprinted, specifically the Black Riders Saga expansion, and Khazad-dum? I would like to try and play the game in order if possible.

If I remember right, shadow cards are STILL dealt because the enemy has engaged, but the shadow cards are not revealed/played because the enemy doesnt actually attack you. So Feint does get around the shadow effect!! (If Im remembering right without looking things up)

Organizing:

Well I bought a flight case toolbox to organise the cards rather than the main box and then have put all the player cards into coloured deckboxes identifying the sphere, while adventure cards are separated by dividers. It makes a good storage solution for me and holds a lot of cards.

Others have bought specialist inserts, many of which can be seen on boardgamegeek.com which divide up the core set box.

My case is here:

But this image is very early so doesnt show the separate deckboxes containing the sphere cards, just shows the cards separated with dividers. Also I had a lot of scruffy looking packets of card sleeves in there then. I need to take an up to date photo.

The core box inserts are very nice and worth looking at, but dont hold a full playset. Others have also modified art-cases to hold the cards. Lots of onfo on boardgamegeek its worth a google search

Congrats on your win too :)

Remember, some really hard quests are about to hit you, but they do get easier for a bit afterwards, so dont despair once you hit the big losses

That looks impressive!! I placed my order on Amazon for the core set today, should be arriving on Friday; can't wait!! Do you guys know where I can find out if certain expansions are going to be reprinted, specifically the Black Riders Saga expansion, and Khazad-dum? I would like to try and play the game in order if possible.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/upcoming/

Right there and Black Riders / Khazad-dum are "at the printer" so should be out again relatively soon again.

If I remember right, shadow cards are STILL dealt because the enemy has engaged, but the shadow cards are not revealed/played because the enemy doesnt actually attack you. So Feint does get around the shadow effect!! (If Im remembering right without looking things up)

Organizing:

Well I bought a flight case toolbox to organise the cards rather than the main box and then have put all the player cards into coloured deckboxes identifying the sphere, while adventure cards are separated by dividers. It makes a good storage solution for me and holds a lot of cards.

Others have bought specialist inserts, many of which can be seen on boardgamegeek.com which divide up the core set box.

My case is here:

But this image is very early so doesnt show the separate deckboxes containing the sphere cards, just shows the cards separated with dividers. Also I had a lot of scruffy looking packets of card sleeves in there then. I need to take an up to date photo.

The core box inserts are very nice and worth looking at, but dont hold a full playset. Others have also modified art-cases to hold the cards. Lots of onfo on boardgamegeek its worth a google search

Congrats on your win too :)

Remember, some really hard quests are about to hit you, but they do get easier for a bit afterwards, so dont despair once you hit the big losses

That looks impressive!! I placed my order on Amazon for the core set today, should be arriving on Friday; can't wait!! Do you guys know where I can find out if certain expansions are going to be reprinted, specifically the Black Riders Saga expansion, and Khazad-dum? I would like to try and play the game in order if possible.

Thanks its even better now as the Ultimate Guard Deckboxes fit perfectly between my dividers and separate off the player sphere cards but are colour coded so it looks great. However some of the ones on BGG are true beauty.

See this:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1076581/love-gaming-lord-rings-lcg-playmat-and-storage-sol

Thanks for the info! Hope it doesn't take too long. My core set shipped, I should have it by tonight !!! Im going to stop by my local game shop later and pick up some sleeves, maybe an adventure pack too. Any suggestions?

Just the usual advice: Treat every cycle as a unit, so buy at least all the cards in each before you consider another out of sequence cycle. Mirkwood, Dwarrowdelf and Ring-maker are all reasonable, while The Lost Realm and its cycle ramps up the overall difficulty something awful. But by then, if bought in order, your collection should have decent cards to attempt the scenarios.

I recommend starting with Mirkwood since there are so many good utility cards, and the quests are actually possible with that card pool

I would also start with Mirkwood, thats what I did.

The Mirkwood quests are almost geared towards a kind of tutorial on deck building as they each tackle different aspects, One is high combat, another is escort and healing, another is handling locations etc so it really teaches you which kind of cards work well for different ingame situations.

I found that usually I tried a quest and failed miserably, but after playing a few times I realised what was causing me to fail and then looked in my collection for cards that would counter that, then beating the quest felt great and an achievement in deck building

Also, the first Mirkwood Quest (Hunt For Gollum) I really enjoyed because while it is a very simple quest, it was so welcome after how hard Journey Down The Anduin and also the horriffic Escape From Dol Guldur had been in the core set. Hunt for Gollum basically can be pretty hard if you make wrong choices but not too hard at all (almost easy) if you make the right choices, so it felt like a comfortable play after the previous difficulty. I played HFG quite a few times enjoying the variety of the deck play before I moved on to the next pack

Hope you enjoy

Thanks!! So, I guess I should just try and follow along in order according to release. I'll start with HFG. I can already feel my wallet getting lighter . What do you guys think of the Saga expansions? I hope The Black Riders doesn't take too long to become available. It says it's on the printer. Anyone have an idea of how soon I can expect it to be released after that?

The main cycles, sagas and the standalone scenarios are all three different paths. You may try The Hobbit early, but it helps to have a few small expansions first. The later LotR sagas I'm not sure of, but I expect the difficulty with only early cards to be higher. Each saga comes with deck lists (partially?) based on the contents of the box, but they won't necessarily make the scenarios easy.

Standalone scenarios differ. I only have one, which seems doable with relatively few cards. Others I'm certain are made with the card pool at its release in mind (anything with big battles for sure).

You can expect products to spend 4-6 weeks at the printer, then 4-6 weeks on the boat. Once a product arrives at FFG's warehouse it takes roughly 1-2 weeks before all stores have it. US stores may get it earlier, but there's usually a street date they have to follow. So two and a half excruciating months from finished development until a chance at holding it.

Playing in order if release is excellent, i do it. Means you play the scenarios with the cards available when they designed them. Great stuff.

Ive only played 2 hobbit scenarios from sagas so far and tgey are fun but not asvgood as the APs because they are restricted to having to try and recreate the book tales which affects creativity in the quests..... however Black Riders is one if the most well respected sets in the entire game, so it obviously differs.

So much content, so much fun.

I am playing everything in order solo single handed, then ill go back and do it all 2 handed, then ill go back and do it all with theme decks (Rohan, Dwarves, Hobbits, Silvan etc etc)

That should tske me years and years

Got my core set!! Sitting at home reading through the extensive rule book. I wasn't able to get to my local game store. I'm going to wait to play my first game until tomorrow when I can pick up some sleeves, don't want to ruin my new obsession....I mean, investment .

If I remember right, shadow cards are STILL dealt because the enemy has engaged, but the shadow cards are not revealed/played because the enemy doesnt actually attack you. So Feint does get around the shadow effect!! (If Im remembering right without looking things up)

Organizing:

Well I bought a flight case toolbox to organise the cards rather than the main box and then have put all the player cards into coloured deckboxes identifying the sphere, while adventure cards are separated by dividers. It makes a good storage solution for me and holds a lot of cards.

Others have bought specialist inserts, many of which can be seen on boardgamegeek.com which divide up the core set box.

My case is here:

But this image is very early so doesnt show the separate deckboxes containing the sphere cards, just shows the cards separated with dividers. Also I had a lot of scruffy looking packets of card sleeves in there then. I need to take an up to date photo.

The core box inserts are very nice and worth looking at, but dont hold a full playset. Others have also modified art-cases to hold the cards. Lots of onfo on boardgamegeek its worth a google search

Congrats on your win too :)

Remember, some really hard quests are about to hit you, but they do get easier for a bit afterwards, so dont despair once you hit the big losses

Thanks for sharing. What are the dimensions of your box?

Just figured id chime in on storage solutions, I've been just using the core box(es). I recently decided to start from scrath progression series style so Ive completely reorganized my collection. I have 3 core sets, and kept the boxes.

The first box holds the first three cycles perfectly (mirkwood, khazad-dum and against the shadow), including the rules inserts and nightmare decks. It even conbveniently organizes itself into 3 rows, one for each cycle.

The second box has the second 3 cycles. The first row is full (ringmaker) and angmar row is almost full, just missing the nightmares, with lots of room left in the dream-chaser row. But again, just like the first box these three cycles will fit the box snugly.

The final box has my saga stuff, standalone adventures, and bag full of tokens. It is the least full, and I expect to still have room for the tokens when the sage expansions complete.

The new cycle though has me scratching my head though.. actually contemplated buying a fourth core set for the box alone So if I do that, if anyone needs any cards let me know, Id honetly probably just give them away haha

Go7's inserts are good for the big, old core boxes too. Some variants have slots for tokens.

I mostly stick to cardboard boxes of various lengths. A cycle per box, and occasionally I find a better box I can use. I just sleeved up one saga box, and it looks like it'll fit four of those in the BCW 550 boxes I get most easily now.

Ok, cards sleeved up and ready for my first game. Question, the rules say to choose a deck from one sphere of influence plus one of the Gandalf ally cards. This would give me, I believe, 30 cards in my deck. Is this the number I should have? I keep reading that decks supposed to be composed of 50 cards.

Total rookie question, I know .

Those are the intro decks. Good for the first game. If you have more than the core it's easy to reach the 50 cards, but the core has various quantities of each card, so it'll be very streaky. Expansions have 3 of each included card, so you can build more consistent decks then. When you have the entire first cycle you'll have it alright. Two cycles will feel like too much choice

Thank you!! Just got through my first game using the spirit deck. I won, but I think I was using the Lorien Guide incorrectly; don't think I was supposed to be putting progress tokens on the active quest with that card. By the time I figured it out, the game was pretty much over. Anyway, I loved it!! I'm going to pick up the Mirkwood packs through Amazon; local game shop had zilch. Got a lot of catching up to do.

Awesome and well done even if you did make a slight hiccup, we all do when starting (and later too )

Lorien guide is only for locations not active quest, but no matter you had fun

Great that you loved it.

I played Passage through Mirkwood quite a few times to get used to how the game played but also the strengths and weaknesses of each sphere. I didnt manage to beat it with Spirit and NOBODY beats it with just a Tactics sphere.

When you move onto Journey Down the Anduin it gets haaaard and you will have to start considering if you will mix spheres so make a full 50 card deck of two or three spheres to manage to tackle the quests difficulties, this is where you really start to think about deck building closely. Its hard and took me ages to beat but once you have it feels great. Just remember its the fun in the adventure not the win, as this gave makes you lose a lot more often than you win, so you have to enjoy losing.

Escape from Dol Guldur is still today considered one of the hardest quests ever in the game, so by all means play it (The mechanics of finding items, maps etc is all good stuff) but dont expect to win and I wouldnt dwell on it too long.

The MIrkwood cycle is then all kinds of fun. Some people dont like some quests because they focus too much on one aspect, eg Hills Of Emyn Muin is mainly location management, but for me thats an aspect of the tutorial-type nature of that cycle and I loved it. All the Mirkwood cycle quests are doable with an average deck if you give them a few goes and experiment tweaking your deck, so its great fun.

Afterwards, I loved the Dwarrowdelf Cycle, but did find it harder and so some of the quests in that were not QUITE as much fun as Mirkwood, though most people prefer Dwarrowdelf LOL. The first Dwarrowdelf quest smashed me sooooo many times but when I finally hit on a deck that worked, it was like it was a self contained game all in itself. The adventure and my deck were so nicely balanced that you could replay it so many times and it was win/lose on how the deal went and how I chose my plays, which was excellent I replayed it like that many times

So good luck and think of all the excitement to come, healing escort quests, long journeys, big monster fights, castles, forests, dungeons, mines, cities, hunting out spies, murder mysteries, dragons, fortress sieges, covert operations, battlefield assaults, sea journeys and ship battles and so so much more. Each adventure deck being different makes for an almost unlimited amount of variety in the game only limited by the designers imagination.

Great you are loving it, welcome to the experience

Passage through Mirkwood, a.k.a. Stroll through the Scenery, is a good test for your decks when starting out, but there are spheres which struggle with anything alone. I always go for two spheres per deck, although the secondary one might be just a few cards and a hero to support it for particular problems. There's usually more oomph with a bodyguard deck (second hand with mainly Tactics/rangers). Pure hobbit decks may also have better sneakiness options.

Escape from Dol Guldur must have been made during a divorce, or as an alternative to waterboarding.

Dwarrowdelf: There are balrogs. Plural! I think five of the bastards got to Arda back in 0000 or thereabouts. Don't go in alone.

Bring dwarves.

The standalone scenarios are nice for quick play too. Some of them may give a deck which breezed through any of the cycles a bit of a challenge, and you only need your decks and the contents of each. Same with sagas, although there's mixing of encounter sets to do. You just don't use any core encounters.

I finally got the Hobbit saga completed and I like the cards I got. I have 90 new player cards usable for anything, and 8 new heroes. Bilbo is the fifth hero in each set, and only usable with those. Both sets together really make dwarf parties great.