Hi.

As mentioned elsewhere, I've just started to try deck-building with the core set. Dual-sphere is logical with only the core cards, and looking at the ones available it seems to me that the best way forward (at least to start with) is to have a single Spirit hero, and two Leadership, one of whom is Aragorn. This allows the use of Celebrían's Stone ("If attached to Aragorn he gains Spirit") - giving the opportunity to double-up my Spirit resources.

Firstly, does this make sense as a tactic?

Secondly, without similar cards in the core set, would there be much to gain in trying other spheres instead? Of course I'll try eventually, but for a first attempt at deck-building...

As an aside, I may have to invest in the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle just to get similar "resource smoothing" cards. Are these ones that generally make it into most peoples multi-sphere decks?

Yes that would work quite well. Let me know if you want me to build you a draft of a deck like that. And yes, Spirit/Lore, Leadership/Lore, amd Tactics/Spirit are all workable combinations (again, I can give you some examples if you like, but how many core sets do you own?).

That’s definitely a good tactic. Aragorn is very good to resource smooth. When it comes to multi sphere I think there’s a lot of different ways to go about it.

In addition to finding ways to have one hero cover multi spheres, most people tend to

1) keep your costs very low, in particular with the off sphere

2) include neutral cost cards like Gandalf which will soak up unused resources in what you aren’t using

in the end I think it will depend more on your card/sphere split and your card/cost ratio.

I only have one core set, I decided not to spend additional cash until I got to grips with the game.

As far as looking at other decks... thanks, but I'm specifically not doing that at the moment, instead trying to teach myself before seeing what others have done better than me :).

I like the idea of keeping costs low with the off-sphere... I read on somewhere on BGG about using the almost entire core set of the two-hero sphere, and selecting about half of the other sphere cards.

My main problem with Aragorn is the initial threat cost, but I think he's worth it, especially if Celebrian comes up early.

As I will be playing solo, my approach so far has been to add 3x Gandalf and remove any Ranged that don't have some other benefit (such as simply being good in a fight).

Cheers for the tips - I'll let you know how I get on.

Aragorn is very good and almost always worth the threat cost. As long as you get under 30 you will probably be ok. It sounds like you’ve got a grasp though! ? let us know if you need or want more tips!

Yep, you've got the gist of it. Later there are many more smoothing options but the coreset only has a couple.

So an option with what you've said is Aragorn, Eowyn, and Theodred. That's 29 threat which is ok, and Theodred can give his bonus resource to Eowyn to help you pay for spirit cards. Eowyn also lets you dump any cards you can't / don't want to play and get some benefit, which is something I always like to be able to do.

Those are precisely the heroes I settled on, although I picked Eowyn primarily due to her already-high willpower.

When I've played with the single-sphere decks, I sometimes found myself in a rut with too much in the staging area and no way to progress - partly due to Enchanted Stream being the active location (players cannot draw any cards). That's a sure-fire way to quickly lose the game, it seems. With Eowyn on my side that should be a sure-fire way to slowly lose

So with my first attempt at deck-building, I tried an "easy" game of Passage Through Mirkwood (no shadow cards, no "gold" cards) - partly to work out what cards I thought didn't work in-play, and partly because I've yet to win a game (cry cry)... until now! Managed my first win. Yay me! I realise to most people Passage Through Mirkwood is easy, but I'm new to this kind of game, so I consider it a good result - I completely forgot to keep track of how many rounds were played, so no idea what score I got.

I did get a little scuppered when Eowyn died, but it looks like most of the healing cards are in Lore, so I may investigate that sphere a little more. Luckily my plan of using Celebrían's Stone worked in my favour, as it came up just before she lost her 3 health, so I could still use the Spirit cards with Aragorn's resources. I also lucked out when the wife picked what seems like the easier of stage 3 cards in that scenario.

After a play-through there are a couple cards I've decided to remove from the deck, but it seemed to go quite well.

I'll try again with shadow cards and the gold cards in the encounter deck when I next get a chance to play.

Cheers!

Adding shadow cards, bring Hasty Stroke