This might be a stupid question, as I haven't been playing for that long. But could someone explain the appeal of the Nightmare Decks to me?

It seems to me most of the scenarios are hard enough as it is, without making them more even more difficult.

Is it just looking for a challenge, or is because things get too easy once you've been playing awhile and get your strategies and decks dialed in?

Some scenarios, especially older ones, get thematic upgrades in nightmare mode, bringing their overall design quality and uniqueness closer to the expectations we have with design scenarios.

Sometimes a glaring design flaw in a quest will be fixed with nightmare mode (removing an exploit which allowed an easy win).

Scenarios get more replayability through nightmare mode since new cards are added to the deck.

And finally yes, some players simply find the majority of quests to be too easy, and Nightmare mode brings the challenge level up to satisfy that type of player.

33 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

Some scenarios, especially older ones, get thematic upgrades in nightmare mode, bringing their overall design quality and uniqueness closer to the expectations we have with design scenarios.

Sometimes a glaring design flaw in a quest will be fixed with nightmare mode (removing an exploit which allowed an easy win).

Are you saying that nightmare versions are not necessarily more difficult than the original quests? The term nightmare makes it sound as if they are insanely difficult. Escape from Dol Guldur is difficult enough as it is, especially for solo play. I can't imagine what the nightmare version must be.

I haven't played that many, but I think they are always intended to be harder. On the other hand, a secondary mission of some of them is to enhance the theme of the original --- they do both things at once.

I'm mainly a nightmare player. I agree that nightmare also enhance the theme of the original scenario. It is also supposed to correct the glitches that allow a specific kind of deck to broke the scenario.

The difficulty improvement vary a lot from one scenario to another. Some difficult scenario don't get so upgraded (like battle of carn dum), some get incredibly difficult (escape from dol guldur), some easy scenario became 10 times harder (encounter at amon dun) and some get only a little bit more difficult.

If you think the game is hard enough this is probably not the first thing to buy for you ;). I like to play power deck (not very interested in thematic building), I don't bother to loose 50% of my games so I'm playing only nightmare and more often the harder among the nightmare but it is very specific to me ^^.

I have a blog series in which I am trying to play through all of the Nightmare quests:

https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/thematic-nightmare/

I have long felt that the "Nightmare" moniker is a little misleading. "Revisited" might be a little better. It's true that they are usually more difficult than the original quests, but most of the time it just adds some of that drama of losing back once you have a solid grasp on the quest mechanics and a larger card pool than existed when the quest first came out.

Don't get me wrong, some of them really are worthy of the name, and rocket the difficulty of certain quests to epic-levels. But just as many of them simply take an easier base quest, tighten up the theme, patch an infinite loop or exploit, and bring it up to the level of difficulty of most of our modern quests.

They're definitely not worth picking up over other expansions, and not all of them have a dramatic impact on the way a quest plays out, but in general if I have the Nightmare version of a quest, I usually prefer it to the original. Ian has a Nightmare Buying Guide that I have been slowly updating (though it is still woefully behind the current releases) if you're looking to find out how you can get the most bang for your buck:

https://talesfromthecards.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/nightmare-buying-guide/

I think nightmare versions are maybe more for the long time veterans of the game. For us newer players there’s a lot of material to cover already who needs nightmares haha.

but for the long time veterans it adds to the game and spices things up I imagine.

6 hours ago, Ywingscum said:

I think nightmare versions are maybe more for the long time veterans of the game. For us newer players there’s a lot of material to cover already who needs nightmares haha.

Fair point. I have several of the expansions, but I'm still trying to work my way through with just the Core Set. There's a surprising amount of replay-abillity there. And I still haven't beaten Escape From Dol-Guldor.

One more question, if you please:

Is it necessary to own the original expansion or pack in order to play the nightmare version?

1 hour ago, Vince79 said:

Is it necessary to own the original expansion or pack in order to play the nightmare version?

Yes! You start with the original encounter deck and the nightmare card tells you which cards to take out to make room for the nightmare deck.

20 minutes ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

Yes! You start with the original encounter deck and the nightmare card tells you which cards to take out to make room for the nightmare deck.

Interesting, good thing I asked. I'm missing about half of everything, so they'll have to reprint more of this stuff for me to try them.

I wish they'd make the whole game Print On Demand.

I played up until ring-maker on nightmare and I think that nightmare decks are an awesome product even for those who aren't insanely hardcore- At least for the earlier sets that is since they are relatively low difficulty for the most part, and the nightmare decks generally modernize them and fix overt flaws. Sometimes the flavor is enhanced which is great to see.

Also, specifically with the heirs of Numenor box I felt like the encounters had overpowered cards removed, and creating generally more challenging experiences while smoothing out the blowouts.