Hi,

I have finished recently The Ring-Maker cycle. It was a blast, I had a great time, finally finished my first Silvan deck (it is so much fun to put in and out of play allies) and came to conclussion that with my cardpool I am able to build multiple powerful decks (not all of them and not the most powerful but enough to try have a fun). So right now I am more interested in quests than player cards in AP. On the other hand, there is still a lot of quests that I have played only couple of times (for an instance I have re-discovered Journey down the Anduin last week). I tend to go through the whole cycle but with the AP availability problems and quite wide range of quests I am no longer sure if it brings the most fun (I am really suprised how much fun and tensed was Journey down the Anduin).

Anyway, this makes me thinking: what is your quest suite? Let's say that you got one day extra for playing LotR or you have a new deck that you want to give a testdrive - how do you choose quests to play? Do you have your favourite quests? Are you looking for a challenge, randomness or any other flavour? Are building a narrative? Are you going through the whole cycle? What is your way of playing?

People tend to like scenarios with a static setup when they test new decks. Passage through Mirkwood is static but too easy for most peoples' tastes (although, beware some of the cards in that deck, easy or no). Escape from Umbar is one that has been coming up as a 'test quest' more recently. A lot of people use Journey Down the Anduin, which is not a static setup because it has a random reveal, but otherwise you know exactly what hurdle you're going to have to get over on that first quest card.

I usually build decks 2-handed. Sometimes I will want to just pilot one deck, so I "pretend" to have a 2nd deck. I'll pull up a quest and my to-be-tested player deck in OCTGN. Then I will pretend that I have a 2nd deck which functions well. I'll be revealing 2 cards each round, and if my "pretend" deck is a combat deck, it's going to take 1 or 2 enemies and deal with them each round. If the "pretend" deck is a quest deck, it's going to start with 7 willpower and increase that over several rounds, but it's not going to take any enemies (unless forced for some reason). Anyway, just something I do when I'm trying to test a deck built for 2-player, but don't have the time or patience to actually pilot 2 decks on my own.

8 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

I usually   build decks 2-handed. Sometimes I will want to just pilot one deck, so I "pretend" to have a 2nd deck. I'll pull up a quest and my to-be-tested player deck in OCTGN. Then I will pretend that I have a 2nd deck which functions well. I'll be revealing 2 cards each round, and if my "pretend" deck is a combat deck, it's going to take 1  or 2 enemies and deal with them each round. If the "pretend" deck is a quest deck, it's going to start with 7 willpower and increase that over several rounds, but it's not going to take any enemies (unless forced for some reason). Anyway, just something I do when I'm trying to test a deck built for 2-player, but d  on't have the time or patience to actually pilot 2 decks on my own.  

What an interesting idea! Never thought of that. I may try that for fun sometime.

I have 3-4 go to testing quests. Ever one to two quests I mix in something newer or that I haven’t played for awhile. Sometimes I just pick based on what people are talking about.

It will be particular for me. If we add for each scenario normal and nightmare games I have play almost all the scenario more than 10 times each. there is few scenario that I play less than 10 times.

Since I'm obsessed by the efficiency of my decks my gauntlet is composed by the hardest scenario of the games classed by difficulty. So I try to estimate how good the deck(s) is(are), play a scenario according and try to make the deck better so he can be played against scenario that are above in the last.

With my solo decks I may try, sometime, to play each of them (around 20) against a specific scenario. But I often get bored after the 7 or 8 firsts. And sometime I try a cycle with a new deck.

@GrandSpleen Those are interesting ideas, I have never taken into account the setup (and I spotted that Escape from Umbar often comes up as a testing quest).

Let me ask a follow up question: which quest(s) hit your table most often? I am wondering what people enjoy the most and looking for any suggestions about cool quests (I recently bought first nightmare for Elrond's order Hunt for Gollum and it was better than I expected [Hunt for Gollum has very bad press]).

Hunt for Gollum and Return to Mirkwood (normal and nightmare) are two of my favourites both to take new decks against and when I don't feel like playing through a whole cycle. Wastes of Eriador for its epic feel and great day/night mechanic has to be among my top quests. And The Steward's Fear hits the tables a lot, as it's a fun one with variable endings and most decks can handle it. I suppose the quests that see the most play are the ones that don't require too much specialised deckbuilding; I usually like to create a deck/s that can go up against a cycle or a series of quests without too much adjustment. Other quests I'd recommend for interesting features or just general enjoyment would be Murder at the Prancing Pony, Flight of the Stormcaller, Across the Ettenmoors (nightmare), Raid on the Grey Havens, and The Ruins of Belegost.

Usually I boot up OCTGN and scroll through the list of available quests until one catches my attention. If I want to test a new deck the above mentioned quests (Anduin, Escape from Umbar, Steward's Fear, Wastes) are often the ones I go for.

If I am confident with the design I use a random number generator to pick a quest for me (OCTGN has a number for every quest). This way I don't always skip quests I don't like (Rosgobel, flight of the stormcaller...). Of course I give myself the "right to rerole" the quest if e.g. stuff like cair andros comes up, while I bring my three-sphere-no-tactics-hobbit deck.