At Christmas I am going to visit my best friend and I plan to teach this game to him (and possibly his wife, too). I have already taught my siblings how to play it, but I want to do it differently this time. I let my sister play the leadership and lore starter decks on her first two times against Passage through Mirkwood and then let her build a deck from both spheres against Journey along the Anduin, while I was playing tactics and spirit.My brother got a progression style dwarf deck up to Khazad-dûm and then we won against the first three Dwarrowdelf quests. But as my collection now goes up to Crossings of Poros and potentially Roam across Rhovanion, i want to give my friend a proper deck and I have not really an idea what type of deck would be best for a beginner. I built a tactics/spirit deck with clearly recogniseable roles for the heroes and filled it with an assortment of other cards for questing, attacking and card draw:

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/10648/men-of-middle-earth-1.0

This deck is designed for multiplayer with ranged and sentinel, but I got an easy win against Intruders in Chetwood solo. While I could build a leadership/lore deck to go along with the first one, I had to wonder if this is the right way to go. My friend has never read the books and thus has no idea, who Beregond is, and probably Bard as well.

Would it be wiser to build a deck that uses better known heroes from the movies for a beginner without knowledge of the books? Should I use the deck above or rather go look for a tribal deck and if yes, which race would be best (my guess would be dwarves)? How do you teach the game to new players?

And as I have never played this game with three players before: What do I need to consider when building a third deck (more combat, questing power, healing, encounter control etc.)?

I have personally plaeyd many four players games. I would recommended that three decks out of 4 would handle treachery cards because They can cause havok. The fourth should fokus what ever is needed in the spesific quest.

for three player I would say to build

leadership spirit

tactic spirit

lore spirit

Decks. You can newer have too much treachery cancelation cards

4 hours ago, Hannibal_pjv said:

I have personally plaeyd many four players games. I would recommended that three decks out of 4 would handle treachery cards because They can cause havok. The fourth should fokus what ever is needed in the spesific quest.

for three player I would say to build

leadership spirit

tactic spirit

lore spirit

Decks. You can newer have too much treachery cancelation cards

So I guess Eleanor just booked spot in one of the decks .

I would prioritize more well-know heroes if you want your new player to be interested. Don’t worry about that when including Eleanor, though.

In a three player game I want a combat deck, a questing deck, and then a support deck with healing, card draw, extra cancellation, etc. It should also be able to contribute to the quest somewhat and handle a couple enemies. Four player I would take two full questing decks (one geared slightly more towards support) , a combat deck, and then a support deck (that can also hep with combat.

Also thematic decks Are always fun to play, so try to make a story/backround to each deck. Why They Are together, what is their common history etc... Yes I am roleplayer