As per the title, still waiting for my copy so interested in peoples thoughts.

It is great fun and I would already consider it one of my top 5 board games. We are playing it 2 player - beravor and gimli - and it works so much better than Mansions of Madness in comparison. Scales seemingly well with all player counts and even with only 2 players I get the feeling that we can really cooperate and help each other with our heroes cards. I also enjoy the diceless system, because you can really prepare for some tests and sometimes you just know that you shouldn't even try something. The campaign style also helps a lot to negate the frustration we often felt after playing a coop game for a long time and loose. Even if you loose a chapter you'll earn XP/lore and you maybe spend too much time on a side quest but earned a trinket or title instead. The game is also quite easy to teach on the fly and the difficulty seems to be nicely balanced but maybe I'm just relieved to play something a bit more relaxing after Arkham Horror LCG all the time

I just lovit! App works fine and gameplay is so exciting.

I love it, just scheduled a recurring two week event with my local boardgame group

Yes, got to agree - one of the best board games i've played in a long time. I've played the first two scenarios through solo but will be bringing it to my boardgame group next weekend. Really looking forward to it!

After a few days this is my favorite board game and surely my fave to solo/coop with. I've played 7 scenarios and am loving the streamlined yet elegant mechanics. There are some real interesting choices in there, and I feel some of the early reviews complaining about simplicity might be overlooking some of the preparation/milling choices.

This is also the first FFG game where I am not groaning at the prospect of expansions. I want to be firehosed with heroes and campaigns!

We have only gotten to play a single game so far. Unfortunately we were operating in far from ideal conditions. There were a lot of distractions so a single scenario with three people ended up taking about four hours (about four times as long as it should have). We probably would have been better off waiting until we could play an uninterrupted game. Still for all the handicaps we had to content with I see great promise in the game. I will hopefully be able to play a solo game later this week, but right now I am painting the miniatures.

My wife and I played the first chapter and she was really into it almost immediately. It took a while for her to get into LOTR LCG cause she's not much of a deck builder.

We spent too long on side quests and stuff and failed to track the thieves quickly 😅 . I just had to ride a barrel with those kids!

We'll play the next chapter this afternoon, probably. I spent yesterday painting Aragorn and Legolas 😁

Finished 2 scenarios so far and really like it. Compared to Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, we prefer the slight deck-building/deck-cycling mechanic vs. dice, the threat bar vs. the vague, mostly hidden timer element from Mansions of Madness, and the fact that the scenarios are all a part of a larger campaign.

The one thing I don't like about the game are the tiny cards and even smaller print. This will be less an issue as we get more familiar with the cards, but right now we're consulting them pretty frequently and reading the fine print is a pain. Also, at a quick glance the icons for character stats (Agility, Wit, etc.) mostly look like tiny circles on the skill cards. Might stands out as it's a horn, but the other 4 need a closer look to see if it's the Agility "swirl", the different looking Spirit "swirl" , etc.

I just finished the campaign solo with Bilbo and Beravor. It might be the best dungeon crawler I've ever played. FFG combined the skill card/damage deck of Gloomhaven and the campaign/app integration of their previous titles and it's a wonderful mix.

My only quibbles are the mini cards, the boring enemies, and the campaign just sorta ends, not much of an epilogue.

I am in solo, learn to play tour at shapter 4. Easy Wins so far. I am sure that we should play this in hard mode, when we start playing this with other croup, unless the 4 to 5 player is more difficult than the 2 player game. But because I am playing now normal difficulty, it is too early to say if this game is too easy. The lost inspiration From exploration and harder enemies can swing the balance other way around easily! But have to test that next.

so far I have like the game a lot! I like multiclassing already, the story is fine. Typical Ffg stuff. Not Tolkien epic, but there Are not Many other Tolkien Epic writers. Maybe Martin at this moment... So not Great, but ok for Gaming stuff!

the Gaming system is nice. I have allready find two trinkets and have upgraded armors and trinkets allready and that is cool feature! The card system is good. Not sure though that the XP card system. It is so easy to abuse... I would like there more limited pool for each level like in Gloomhaven so that you Also have to have those ”bad cards” in you deck, instead of hunting only for those success cards. Now I can see in long run very similar dexks, because success cards Are just better that non succes or maybe success cards in general. So a card pool where when you get level 2 you have tho chose one from 3 cost cards and keep it. And when you get level 3 you have to take one card From 4 to 5 cost cards and so on... but the card mechanics itself is very good while playing, not so good when upgrading.

Playing solo with Gimli and Beravor to get the rules down before I introduce the game to my wife. I've played the first scenario and am enjoying it so far.

We love the game!! I predict this will be game of the year! I have been playing with my girlfriend two characters Legolas and Bilbo, great fun. At first the game was very hard because we were playing it wrong ;( once you understand the game it is better but still challenging. Make sure you explore areas right away and kill enemies as quick as possible. We are on 5th adventure and have failed two of them but still enjoying the campaign. we keep an eye on the threat meter and complete as much of the adventure as possible. We under estimated threat progression on the 4th adventure and failed because we thought we had one more turn!!

A few things to remember: you can move up 2 spaces this is one action- so move one space attack and move one more space. you get two actions each turn and you can do any action twice-- move twice for 4 spaces, two attacks ect… Understand when and how monsters move and attack. Plan your turn and coordinate with other players for maximum use of actions.

Also playing solo with two characters and seeing very good replayablity over all the story is the same but side quests, items , titles are different so doesn't seem dull.

I own over 150 board games and I put Journeys in Middle Earth as Number One! (granted I am a huge Tolkien fan) Very excited for more content and the future potential of this game!

18 minutes ago, Sealord said:

Make sure you explore areas right away and kill enemies as quick as possible.

Can you do both well at once?

I would also add a strategy that has worked well for me: attack the enemy with one action, then they will counterattack unless stunned. After this attack, they will not attack again in the shadow phase so use this opportunity to get closer to other characters that may grant a "bonus" by being nearby.

I used Legolas with keen eye to one shot most enemies from distance, then move two spaces. When I could I use his base ability to spend one inspiration to move one additional space. The "Explore" is not an action --- it is automatic when entering a tile with explore token. Sometimes two tiles can be explored this way.

Me and my family (wife plus two kids) absolutely love this game - no other boardgame so far hooked us so much (and we play a lot). This is really great design - thematically and mechanically. Very immersive and engaging gameplay. Some chapters (scenarios) in a campaign are more adventure/exploration oriented, some tactical/combat and there is even a place for detective scenario! Great variety and endless possibilities for future addons. App is working like a charm and the only limit here is the imagination of designers. Can’t wait for expansions.

The fail forward aspect is frustrating me because when we lose a chapter (lost 2/3 so far) my nature is to go back and replay it and try to succeed, and we can't do that without starting the whole campaign over again.

I love the mechanics and such, but right now am just very frustrated. Exploring everything ASAP sounds good until you reveal a ton of new tiles, threat tokens, and enemies at once in a certain chapter...

You shouldn't be frustrated by that, it just makes a second playthrough way more fun. And it also makes your decisions way more important. I mean your team can still win the whole campaign and it would feel that much better if you'd have such a comeback. And you still get 3XP for loosing so it's not that bad. I'm sure you got some lore, titles or trinkets instead. Those are sometimes worth more than a win.

Surprisingly we (2 player campaign) have won all our 6 chapters until now, but it often was quite close. Beravor has many cards with sprint so she can reduce the thread of unexplored tiles way faster, but you need a damage dealer in your team as well. I find it also quite important to change your roles quite often to adapt to the next scenario. So when i knew there was a battle map coming i switched to the hunter role for one chapter as example.

Without hopefully spoiling too much,
I'm surprised that after chapter 6 the campaign is even deviding into 2 seperate paths. That came by surprise but it makes the replay value even better.

8 hours ago, AJankowski said:

You shouldn't be frustrated by that, it just makes a second playthrough way more fun. And it also makes your decisions way more important. I mean your team can still win the whole campaign and it would feel that much better if you'd have such a comeback. And you still get 3XP for loosing so it's not that bad. I'm sure you got some lore, titles or trinkets instead. Those are sometimes worth more than a win.

Surprisingly we (2 player campaign) have won all our 6 chapters until now, but it often was quite close. Beravor has many cards with sprint so she can reduce the thread of unexplored tiles way faster, but you need a damage dealer in your team as well. I find it also quite important to change your roles quite often to adapt to the next scenario. So when i knew there was a battle map coming i switched to the hunter role for one chapter as example.

Without hopefully spoiling too much,
I'm surprised that after chapter 6 the campaign is even deviding into 2 seperate paths. That came by surprise but it makes the replay value even better.

This is a fair point. And no we actually haven't gotten any trinkets or titles yet lol

Can you freely switch roles like that? and how do you do that? I keep the rules reference open but it would've been very helpful for the app to have pop-up tips and guidance on how to navigate each screen and all of the available options there, on your first time encountering those screens. That and the lack of tracking the heroes' locations on the app are my only app-related complaints.

6 minutes ago, manoftomorrow010 said:

This is a fair point. And no we actually haven't gotten any trinkets or titles yet lol

Can you freely switch roles like that? and how do you do that? I keep the rules reference open but it would've been very helpful for the app to have pop-up tips and guidance on how to navigate each screen and all of the available options there, on your first time encountering those screens. That and the lack of tracking the heroes' locations on the app are my only app-related complaints.

The app asks you what role everyone is taking on right before every mission starts. You keep any cards from your previous roles that you bought with XP

2 minutes ago, Caldias said:

The app asks you what role everyone is taking on right before every mission starts. You keep any cards from your previous roles that you bought with XP

It definitely has not prompted me to select a role after the very beginning of the whole campaign. So far, the campfire screen shows between adventures and only shows both of our characters, and clicking on them brings up the role-specific cards you can purchase with XP.

I haven't seen anything that prompts us or asks whether we want to switch roles.

This is what I meant by a lack of prompts or guidance on how to use the app. I will have to check that next time we play

It looks pretty clear to me. This is right before the second mission:

Just now, Caldias said:

It looks pretty clear to me. This is right before the second mission:

Hm don't recall ever seeing that top banner lol thanks

This is my first board game of this type I bought and I really like it a lot. (very much hooked at the moment..) I've played a lot of "MERP" roleplaying (combined with Mithril  miniatures ) and the "Middle Earth The Wizards" card game and " Journeys in Middle-earth " feels like a nice combination of these games. Role playing with a game master (the App.), cards, maps and miniatures. One game to rule them all. Although I find my solo, two hero, campaign very hard I do not really bother about it and I like to figure out how everything works and sort out tactics. The manuals are very good (of course always a lot of questions in the beginning) and the gamemaster app is beautiful. On my 10 inch Windows tablet it runs super smooth. The music, that sometimes reminds me of 70's electronic music, and the sounds are great. I also like the possibilities to switch roles and gather special skill cards of these roles that the hero keeps during the campaign. Looking at Sorastro's Paintings video, I even thinking to paint the miniatures.. Anyway I have a lots of fun with this game ! Great job people !!