I would love so much to have a menu of preconstructed progression style decks to choose from for a given quest. We have pretty much everything up to Haradrim and we enjoy playing the game but the deck building part just takes too much time and dedication that we just play something else even though we keep wanting to come back to it.

Yeah, that would be awesome!

I've been playing deck builders recently (Dominion, Quest for El Dorado), and I have come to realise that I am pretty horrible at choosing cards!

In a game as hard as LotR LCG, I'd love for someone else to do the building so that I can focus on what I think is the fun part, the playing.

For now we're following The Line Unbroken progression series at https://wardenofarnor.wordpress.com/the-line-unbroken/ which is pretty close to what we're after in that it follows a progression style (using cards up to and including the current mission) and seeks to highlight cards from the scenario pack you're playing. That means that you get exposed to a whole lot of thematic cards that you wouldn't find in a more hardcore competitive deck, but with choices made to deal with the specific challenges of that quest. So you don't have a lot of overpowered general use combos, but tools appropriate for the job, making the quest a challenge but doable.

It comes with lists for 2 players which is ideal for us, and works well if you want to solo two-handed. The only issue for us is that while the progression style limits the card pool (a good thing in my opinion) it has no limitations on the number of copies of cards in the pool. In some cases that means there might be two full sets of cards that are 1-offs in the core set, so if you want to use actual cards you'd need 6 core sets! We've only got 2 core sets, so I've printed up a bunch of proxies to fill the gaps. We're 2/3rds of the way through the Mirkwood Cycle, so my assumption is that the number of proxies required will drop as the card pool increases.

But we're actually playing again, which is the main thing!

The other thing is, if we manage to play long enough, we'll get familiar with staple cards which are often or always included for particular challenges and eventually will have an understanding of how particular cards and combos deal with those challenges and give us the confidence to start tinkering with the decks provided and tune them to our own preferences. This is stuff that only comes with experience, it's just that getting the experience is difficult when dealing with a daunting monster like LoTR!

Thanks for posting that. It looks promising!

Even though I buy all the cards, I play on OCTGN, so 6 [virtual] core sets is no problem!

A couple questions based on what you've seen before:

1) How often do they use decks which have the players sharing [non-neutral] spheres (for example, each player using Spirit cards)?

I've always given 2 spheres (usually Leadership and Lore) to player A and the other 2 (Tactics and Spirit) to player B. I got into that habit because I original played the physical version with just one core set, and we pretty much *had* to give each player separate spheres. I wonder if that's a bad habit. Seeing how The Line Unbroken addresses that issue could be revelatory!

2) How far did you get before starting over with The Line Unbroken?

Please keep us updating on your process!

1. From what I've seen they are mostly split 2/2 though occasionally you'll see one deck that's mono or close to it, and sometimes a sphere is splashed across both players. That said we've just gotten started with Line Unbroken so haven't looked too far ahead to see what's in store.

2. Prior to starting it we played through the core set and played up to Conflict at the Carrock, then after getting smashed by the trolls a few times we switched over to The Hobbit and finished that.

I've been playing through The Grey Havens and Dream-Chaser cycle, and now through the Sands of Harad using the same heroes throughout, aiming for semi-thematic progression style. Both decks are Lore/Spirit only.

I've founded these hero combos to be really effective:

Deck 1:

Aragorn (Lore)

Beravor (Lore)

Glorfindel (Spirit)

Starting threat: 27

Deck 2:

Eleanor (Spirit)

Idraen (Spirit)

Faramir (Lore)

Starting threat: 29

Each deck usually contains A Test of Will x3, Envoy of Pelargir x3, and Lembas x3 (the latter being put into play by Deck 2 via Elf-Friend). I have occasionally made use of Resourceful for resource acceleration, but I've mostly relied on the Envoys of Pelargir and Songs of Wisdom/Travel for resource smoothing, and have found that's generally all I need.

I haven't used Gandalf at all until reaching The Long Arm of Mordor (quest 3 in the Sands of Harad), where I've found OH&UH Gandalf to be almost essential.