Yes they both were at the same time and I realized that was an error last night after I posted this. We used Gandalf to lower threat which didn't change anything, and his extra insight actually didn't even help in the quest as we won with 6 extra committing everyone. So it was an error, but we would have won anyway. But good to remember moving forward.

And what about Bilbo? I was thinking ok maybe a new hero will help give us an advantage in Anduin, he seems like a total liability? Would you suggest skipping this cycle and just going straight on to a different expansion/cycle?

I have to admit the Gollum quest was fun, I like how it was all about travelling and picking up these clues and Gollum being elusive and if you lose a clue you have to go back to phase 2, it is very clever and thematic.

Would you suggest skipping this cycle and just going straight on to a different expansion/cycle?

Don't skip. Boromir, Dain, eagles, Gildor Inglorion and Dunedain signals are all decent (or in the case of the first two, utterly insane) cards and all still see some play years later.

Now THAT is cool, now I really understand the importance of deck building and making sure you and your partner compliment each other. So I can even buff up say my partners Gimli with the healing attachment.

So if a character has two restricted attachments they can still have additional non-restricted attachments? Say a total of 3, 2 restricted 1 that isn't?

To add a small addendum to the restricted rule: if you have two restricted attachments on a character, and you attempt to play a 3rd, you can choose to discard one of the first two in order to allow for the new one to attach. (pg 24, core rule book)

Ok so we had another full playthrough tonight and failed on Anduin 3 times. We took a break to play Hunt for Gollum, had a lot of fun on that mission and we beat it by the skin of our teeth basically blitskrieging the last stage with 2 Gandalfs (1 per player) to get just enough. But ya, this game is hard. I was pretty disappointed with the upgrades in HFG to.. kind of makes me not want to bother with the cycles and just buy the big boxes. 2 cycles = 1 big box in price.

I can't figure out if its better to just stick to one sphere with the core deck, or go multi sphere with a full support and full attack deck, or mix and match or what, nothing seemed to work tonight.

HFG has some good cards in it: Dunedain mark, Campfire tales (better with more players), Eagles, Rohan (you need more from other packs tho) Rivendell minstrel & Song of kings.

All of these still hit the table.

Hero Bilbo is too expensive at 9 threat in my book. At the time there was a lot of discussion on who was better Bilbo or Beravor. I'm Beravor all the way.

Anyway, like Shiro I'd also advice you not to skip. The next pack has a great quest, and some good player cards too.

Frodo is a great hero. You'll also get Dunedain warning, eagles & rohan, burning brand & song of wisdom.

Especially burning brand. If you play Lore, slap it on Denethor. You will not be disappointed.

So how's the deck building going?

I actually went back to using the core supplied decks and added in the cards from HFG. HFG seems to easy not sure if I am doing something wrong but with the spirit allies I just destroy all of the locations. Anduin is still really tough, but I've beat it 2 times in a row now, one with 48 and 47 threat and again this morning I 'threated out' on my Spirit deck with on the very last stage but was able to kill the few monsters that spawned with my tactics side. Tactics/Spirit seem so powerful together, I don't see the need to water them down just yet. I also find it very hard to play without the "cancel revealed effects and draw another card" buff from the third hero in the spirit deck, her name escapes me at the moment. I find that the "increase threat by X amount of players not committed to the quest" and :" deal 1 damage to every character when over 35 threat" cards to be the most devastating, so I need to always have her ready as I can't rely on card draw. And the game is always so much more fun when you actually win lol. Especially when they are close games like I've had.

For the record I don't think that playing with one deck is better than split deck, I think the fact I was losing when I split the decks is just a reflection on my lack of knowledge/skill of the game. So playing withe the pre made decks helps me learn which cards are more powerful. For instance, when I first got the Eagles I didn't think they were good at all and didn't use them, now that I have though I could probably never leave them out of my deck! 1 token to basically block any monsters damage besides a Hill Troll or buffed Hydra. I think the next time I split deck I need to try Berevor, she seems so powerful but I always use Glorfindel.

My LGS is out of the next 2 cycle packs, is there a problem with me skipping a few ahead and then going back for those other decks when they get in?

My LGS is out of the next 2 cycle packs, is there a problem with me skipping a few ahead and then going back for those other decks when they get in?

Not really. There's a loose narrative that strings the quests of the cycle together, but actually in HFG the second and third quests feel kind of like side quests, so you could easily skip them for now and play them later as standalone scenarios with almost no change to the experience.

The narrative part of the game gets better starting with the Heirs of Numenor + Against the Shadow cycle; up to that point you can pretty much play quests as independent entities without really changing the experience.

Would you suggest skipping this cycle and just going straight on to a different expansion/cycle?

Don't skip. Boromir, Dain, eagles, Gildor Inglorion and Dunedain signals are all decent (or in the case of the first two, utterly insane) cards and all still see some play years later.

Also, A Burning Brand!

The narrative part of the game gets better starting with the Heirs of Numenor + Against the Shadow cycle; up to that point you can pretty much play quests as independent entities without really changing the experience.

Even then it's still totally reasonable to play the quests without being too bothered about the ongoing story. It's just that if you are paying attention to the story, from that point it's a better story.

I picked up Dead Marshes tonight and played through the mission, very fun. I think I got pretty lucky with how things worked out for me but I can definitely see this being a frustrating mission as that elusive Gollum keeps slipping away. Off the bat I got dealt two Sneak Attacks and Gandalf in my mulligan deal, so I knew things wouldn't be to bad at the start. I knew the Hill Troll was in this deck so my odds of seeing him were good.

I am not getting advanced enough yet to post my whole build, but I am getting there, lol. The heroes I took were Theodred, Boromir (he is a beast) and Thalin in my tactics/leader deck and my Eowyn, Dunhere and Beravor in my spirit/knowledge deck. I worked on getting a few allies up off the bat to help me with questing and enemies. This is definitely a light enemy deck, I didn't end up taking a lot of damage (But did run in that cave troll!) I used Gandalf on both decks (separate rounds!) to keep my threat down and build up the troops before engaging the troll. I pulled a Hydra (40 threat I forget the real name) at the same time but I was able to pick him off a round at a time in the staging are with Dunhere (gave him Dunedain mark, great upgrade from HFG). I eventually took on the Hill Troll with Boromir taking me to one health, then I took him down 4. Next round I sneak attack with Gandalf to finish off the troll before he can hit anyone, but I also healed Boromir to full from the knowledge side.

The rest of the mission was pretty easy going. Not a lot of enemies were faced, I got lucky with a bunch of them showing up in the escape tests. I put steward of Gondor on Beravor and just kept exhausting her each turn to draw cards then churned out allies like you wouldn't believe. One thing I thought I should check, is there a limit to the number of allies you can have at one time? Like I don't see that symbol on the tracker or scout, but it is on Elfhelm (which makes sense as you could chain lower threat I guess). By the time this mission was over my threat was just hovering around 40 and I had a staggering amount of allies to make sure I actually caught Gollum. He did escape me once, which put me back to the drawing board, but I was smart this time and I dragged my feet to build up my troops. I kept the first stage right around 9, 10, 11 travel tokens making sure not to commit to much (even took a few threat guessing low) and not kill with Boromir who had the dagger that gives tokens. Then Gollum finally appeared again and I committed, I engaged an enemy that also flipped from the deck, killed him with Boromir giving me the 1 token I needed to advance stages. Then I blew through the quest phase and committed a staggering 14 willpower for the escape check on a Gollum with 0 tokens Not even sure if I had to draw a card? But I did anyway. In fact I drew 4 for fun and still won handily.

Granted I played this right, I had a lot more enjoyable experience with my mixed sphere decks than Anduin, this was much less frustrating. I understand that Anduin has a lot more enemies, maybe that is my problem. The escape tests were tough as you are constantly losing people, so I figured out fast that allies with willpower are very key in this one. But very thematic, you track him through the marshes which takes a lot of tokens and it should, then you finally get him cornered, a short distance to travel to close the gap but one last test... oh no you failed, now he runs away again and you have to go looking for him, stumbling through these locations and fighting the monsters you run into on your way (were there Hill Trolls in the marshes though? ) Very neat and immersive.

Overall I think this deck is quite useful. Boromir alone is worth buying, that paired with the thematic quest makes me happy I got it. Again I found the booster cards a little under whelming, but I think they need to just grow on my like the last deck did. I see now how these are quite specialized towards building certain decks, like healing Silvans or We Do Not Sleep letting you use all of your Rohans to quest without exhausting. Elfhlem seems to be the most interesting, I didn't get a chance to use him this quest and he is pricey, but being able to curb the damage of that pesky raise your threat for each character seems tempting, especially with great stats. I really like the Eagles card as well, just a cheap hit and run tactic again that is very thematic. The songs I am still trying to figure out, but I am starting to see their merit. There were a couple times that being able to pool resources would have been very useful, so being able to attach a sphere to a character would come in handy. So many choices! And i'm not even 5% through this yet, lol!

I found it odd that this quest has a difficulty rating of 5, and HFG is 4.. and Anduin is 4. I would rank it Anduin: 5, Dead Marshes: 4, HFG 3.

Don't pay any attention to difficulty ratings. They almost never represent the actual deal. One of the hardest quests in the game is marked by a flimsy rating.

Yeah, the "official" ratings of the quests aren't consistent, and sometimes, you bring a deck that just has the tools to turn a rough scenario into an easy one.

There's no limit on the number of allies you can get. Just the uniqueness rule.

So I went to RingsDB and put my decks on there for feedback. These are the decks I used to beat Dead Marshes and have tried Anduin but lost with. I've tried a few variations of heroes and cards but the majority are the same (since my choices are so limited with just core + HFG + Dead Marshes).

My Spirit/Lore deck:

http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/23681

My tactics/leadership deck:

http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/23688

Basically I just try to get as many allies going as I can while keeping my threat below 30 for the Hill Troll and 35 overall. As I get the resources I throw out attachments, making ones like Steward of Gondor or Mark of Dunedain priority. I like to get a Mark on Dunhere so he can hit enemies for 4 in the staging area (pesky Goblin Archers in Anduin).

Don't pay any attention to difficulty ratings. They almost never represent the actual deal. One of the hardest quests in the game is marked by a flimsy rating.

Which one are you thinking in here? "Into Ithilien" ranked with a 4?

So I went to RingsDB and put my decks on there for feedback. These are the decks I used to beat Dead Marshes and have tried Anduin but lost with. I've tried a few variations of heroes and cards but the majority are the same (since my choices are so limited with just core + HFG + Dead Marshes).

My Spirit/Lore deck:

http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/23681

My tactics/leadership deck:

http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/23688

Basically I just try to get as many allies going as I can while keeping my threat below 30 for the Hill Troll and 35 overall. As I get the resources I throw out attachments, making ones like Steward of Gondor or Mark of Dunedain priority. I like to get a Mark on Dunhere so he can hit enemies for 4 in the staging area (pesky Goblin Archers in Anduin).

I can't view your decks, It says: "You are not allowed to view this deck. To get access, you can ask the deck owner to enable "Share my decks" on their account."

Oh sorry should be fixed now.

Some things I would do:

1. Cut down to 50 cards. For example: Tactics/Leadership take out: Grim Ressolve, Brok Ironfist, Long Beard Orc slayer, 2x Ever vigilant, Swift Strike, 3x Snowborn Scout and ADD one Gandalf from the other deck (to increase the Chance of sneak attack + Gandalf) and in Spirit/lore: 2x Power of the earth, Fortune or Fate (you shouldn't Need it), Beorn's hospitality (shouldn't Need that as well) add 2x Westfold horse-breaker.

2. Both decks have more Cards and Overall cost in the sphere where only 1 hero is represented. You might want to redesign the hero line-up.

Thanks for the tips I'll try that out. My friend came over to play again today and we beat Anduin (finally) and Dead Marshes. Anduin was a tough battle but it was our 6th or 7th try so we got it down now. Dead Marshes was tough but we went all in at the end and won the escape test by 1 to get Gollum. Then we tried the third quest in the core snd got smoked. We didn't even get one progress token lol, ended up with 8 locations in the staging area just pummelling us. Really needed to draw a tracker but it didn't happen. Next time maybe, but we might not try that one for a little while lol.

Alright so I've played Dol Guldur 3 times over the past few days and beat it twice. I was using very similar decks to what I posted before, but I did trim them down. The spirit/lore deck is down to 40 cards, nice and tight, and the tactics/leader deck is down to 51 shedding a lot of the high cost units.

One thing I learned from reading Beorn's Path is that it is ok to take a risk on shadow cards when it can put you a big step forward in the game. Before I was obsessed with making sure I blocked every attack, but that just led to me being either swarmed by enemies or not making quest progress. It seems better to get offensive than defensive, which as a guy who has played a lot of sports this makes a lot of sense to me.

I was using Gimli, Thalin and Theodred and Eowyn, Beravor and Dunhere. Both times I won it was Theodred who got captured and the time I lost it was Eowyn. Honestly, that is my one complaint about this game. The luck factor can sometimes be so bad that you might as well just start over. I never had a shot with Eowyn down and no tracker/steward of gondor to build up my spirit resources. But with Theodred down I wasn't able to play any cards from leadership, but I did however still win almost all of my quests. I think that Tracker is the most broken card for this quest, the mission I lost I had no Eowyn and no tracker and the locations just over whelmed me, same as before. The times I won I got tracker either right off the bat or used Beravor to find it fast and from then on it was easy street, especially after I got my lore healing ally. The one ally per turn for both players does make things a bit tougher, but it just makes it a slow build. I was unlucky to draw the exhausted characters take 1 damage twice in a row and that took Thalin down early, but luckily I had Brok Ironfist waiting in the wings and he stepped in no problem. Steward of Gondor is definitely the most powerful card in the game so far, the extra 2 resources is just out of hand. I can basically play any card I want, even 5 cost cards are no problem.

Both times I won I saved Gandalf and used him twice, one round at a time, to hit the Nazgul taking him down to 1 health left, then I just used Seward of Gondor (Beorn's tip) or swift attack on an injured Gimli with his axe, or the other card that lets me do 2 damage as a defender to finish it off. Worked like a charm. Before I hit 40, and if I was at 40 I would use my spirit card to get back down in threat, I would make sure I had a good run at the quest basically committing every single player I had and discarding two cards. It seems like to win this the key is to move fast. I did not find the objectives to be intimidating at all, without the treachery card that makes you raise threat for exhausted characters I found it a lot easier to keep threat down. The can't attack or defend went on Beravor as she is always either questing or giving cards, the damage went on Dunhere who has 4 and got healed up by the lore ally that heals and the threat one I put on my tactics side which as I said was never really an issue.

So it seems like I might now have a formula that works, after failing a good 5 or 6 times and reading up on Beorn's guide. I didn't find that any of the cards from the cycle packs I bought were a big help either, I think the core is sufficient for beating this with the above strategy. I want to try it again now with different heroes/builds and see how I do. I wonder if I could beat it without Eowyn?

Glad your results improved.

One thing: The mimimum amount of cards for a "legal" deck is 50 cards. So when is said trim down, I ment to 50 cards as both of your decks had more and I found some of them unnessecary. Sorry if my comment wasn't clear enough ​

Are you attacking the Nazgul without engaging him first? That's a no-no unless you have specific cards that let you do it.

I ask because you mention keeping your threat below 40 AFTER you talk about taking him out. If I misunderstood my apologies.

I beat this quest for the first time myself last night after 5-6 failed attempts. Very pleased.

You can optionally engage nazgul even if your threat is below 40, you know.

I used Gandalf to hit him in the staging area which I assume is OK as it just says an enemy 'in play'? Then I did have to engage him to let him impale himself on the gondor spear.

About the deck size, I didn't think it really mattered for casual play?

Strictly speaking there are no rules for constructing "non-tournament" decks, so depending on your point of view you can take that to mean that you are not allowed to use any decks apart from a) the 30-card starter decks and b) 50+ card decks with no more than 3 copies of a card; or that you can make whatever decks you please for "non-tournament" play.

In practice, once you have a card collection of more than the Core Set and a couple of packs, you should try to follow the 50 card rule just because doing anything else will quickly make your deck too efficient. A good way to work out whether you've reached that point is to try to make 50-card decks and ask yourself "Have I put a bad card in this deck?" If the answer is yes, then you don't have enough cards yet and I would advise going under 50. If all 50 cards are at least decent then use the 50-card deck.

I'd use the touchstone for 50-card decks to be this -- if you're asking yourself "what else can I put in this deck to get to 50", don't worry about having a 50-card deck.

Here's how long it took Beorn's Path to get to 50 cards:

Leadership/Lore, core: 40 cards

Spirit/Tactics, core: 40 cards

Leadership/Lore, AP1: 45 cards

Spirit/Tactics, AP1: 43 cards

Leadership/Lore, AP2: 50 cards

Spirit/Tactics, AP6: 50 cards (not improved for AP2-AP5)

The tri-sphere back-to-basics deck (core only) is at 42 cards, and the creator identified 8 different cards that he would *consider* adding to it in AP1-AP6, even using 3x of each (unlikely) wouldn't get to 50 before AP3.

If you are running mono-sphere, I doubt you have enough good cards to get to 50 even with the entire Mirkwood cycle.