I'm a new player, playing the simplest core game. LoTR is terrific, but one accident of deck deals can make the game kind of boring, I think. How do you people feel about what happens when we keep staging two locations for several turns in a row? Even with many allies in play, almost all have to be committed to break even in the quest phase. And then, having dealt yet ANOTHER pair of locations, I have no enemy to fight in the combat phase (again), making the entrie turn less interesting.

At the moment, I'm on Beorn's path (3B) in Passage through Mirkwood. I can win by putting 10 progress tokens on 3B before Ungoliant's Spawn shows up. But I have FIVE locations in play (down from 6). At best, I am adding one progress token per turn while quickly disposing of those locations (at most, of course, one per turn). I groan every time I stage one or two more locations.

I wish there was a rule to mitigate this kind of buildup. For example: allow at most 4 staged locations. When the fifth shows up, use it to replace the location with the weakest willpower, and draw another staging card.

Comments, please?

Use Northern Tracker and Lorien Guide if you are using only core set cards. If you are going beyond, Rhovanion Outrider from Temple of the Deceived, Map of Rhovanion from The Wilds of Rhovanion, and The Evening Star from The Grey Havens are all going to be useful cards for placing progress on locations through means other than questing successfully (or at least from the difference of Willpower and staging threat.

There are a few quests (Hills of Emyn Mail, for example) that have too many locations for there own good, but for the most part, the only way you’d stage that many is just from bad shuffle. Like Felswrath said, there are lots of cards that help with locations in the staging area to help counter location lock when it does happen.

Thanks for the advice. So far, I've had two bad shuffles in the four games I've played. I hope that's atypical.

I agree too many locations makes the game boring. You want a mix of card types to deal with. The design had improved in that respect over the years and efforts have been taken to make locations more interesting (but location lock is still a big problem: more modern encounter decks combat location control strategies employed by many player decks). Still the core problem is there, so it’s just something you live with. I personally dislike quests that focus more on threat and locations but even I will freely admit that you absolutely want those types of quests in the pool of available scenarios so you have more diversity in available types of challenges.

Yeah, getting too many locations will knock you out of the game. Maybe that's why I tend to favor decks that carry a lot of willpower. Since I've done that, I rarely get location lock, I usually try to tear through them.

The good news is if you move on to the rest of the Mirkwood Cycle, the scenarios get more varied, and there are different sorts of goals to accomplish. So between that and learning to deal with locations, you don't end up having to slog through so many of them.

I'm still thinking about a house rule to make location lock manageable, although I would prefer to play with NO house rules. How about this:

If a player stages a location when there are already four or more locations, then: after dealing with any "when revealed" matter on the new location: the player who drew the location may elect to discard one location from the staging area OR the new location, and increase that player's threat level by the threat amount of the discarded location.

Since I'm proposing a (house) rule change, I should probably post this elsewhere, correct?

As an antidisestablishmentarianist, I'm going to say that you really probably don't need any house rules. Easy mode is a viable alternative if you find that the game is becoming too challenging on regular mode. Are you playing progression style?

I'm not playing progression style. So far, i am not complaining that the game is too challenging; only that, when many locations stage, one after another, the game gets less interesting.

I managed to win the "passage though Mirkwood" with six locations in play, but there were too many turns where I simply had to gamble on using all my strongest forces to avoid a big loss in the quest, and in many of those turns, there were no enemies for combat.

It seems you have not enough willpower on the first turns to clear location as soon as they arrive. In pure solo, you generally get only 0 or 1 location per turn, and you have to clear the active location each turn to travel to the new one.

In multiplayer, you must use cards like northern tracker as you can get more than 1 location per turn.

Playing on normal mode and given the two starting cards (1 enemy, 1 location), the starting encounter deck has 15 enemies, 7 treacheries, and 12 locations. With a single player, there's a 35% chance of one location being revealed, and a 65% chance of no locations being revealed. With two players, there's a 12% chance of 2 locations, a 47% chance of 1 location, and a 41% chance of 0 locations. If you can quest well enough to clear the active location each turn, there's virtually no chance of getting location locked on 1-2 players. If you were questing well, you were very unlucky -- if you weren't questing well, you need to fix that!

If you have 3-4 players there is a much higher chance of 2+ locations per turn, but with that many players you should be packing Northern Tracker in one of your decks.

There are some location-heavy quests where location lock can be a problem for even a single player, but this isn't one of them. Caveat -- if you play in easy mode, the proportion of locations is higher.

Replying to Miceldars: After about round six, I had TWO northern trackers in play. I need a rule qualification: my reading of the rules suggested that in order to discard a location, I must travel to it. Therefore, although I had many locations with lots of tokens on them, I could only get rid of one per turn. I have seen an opinion on the web that locations can be discarded the moment they have enough tokens on them. If that is correct, I would have disposed of four in one turn and won quickly. What's correct? Rule, please?

Incidentally, I have tried to find a good rules FAQ that would mention clarifications like this. The only rule pages I have found on the web deal with ALL the expansions and are full of detail that makes no sense to me (yet). Can anyone suggest a rules FAQ suitable for a newbie?

Thanks.

Oh! That would explain it. Yes, the minute a location has enough progress on it, it is explored and discarded; no matter whether it's in the staging area or active. That's what makes cards like Northern Tracker so good!

I always use the Official FAQ and Rules Reference here: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/2e/31/2e3129b3-dc51-4c27-81ed-6a72f13e82f3/lotr_faq_19.pdf and here: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/90/19/90191e4e-a341-4379-b398-5963b7a87ebf/mec01_online_only_rules_reference_for_website.pdf

I don't know if they're suitable for newer players though.

Great! Wonderful. Thanks.

11 hours ago, UnderSnail said:

my  reading of the rules suggested that in order to discard a location, I must travel to it.      

When I first started last year I was of the same opinion and wondered how I would ever overcome locations! I think that is because the Learn to Play guide refers to explored locations as being the active location (pages 12 and 14). However, page 8 of the Rules Reference states:

Explored
If the number of progress tokens on a location is equal to or greater than its quest points, that location is considered explored and is placed in the discard pile.
◊ Placing a location in the discard pile by exploring it is not the same as discarding it.
◊ If the active location becomes explored during quest resolution, place any remaining progress tokens on to the current quest.

Bolded for emphasis - a location does not have to be the active location to be explored.

Hope that helps.

From what I'm seeing of this conversation and my own playgroup's experience I'm getting the notion that Northern Tracker, Asfaloth, The Evening Star and other such cards are almost auto includes especially for multi-player. Would that be a fair assumption? We're trying to play To Catch an Orc from Voice of Isengard with three players and we keep getting location locked in the staging area even using Legolas and basically passing a location every quest phase and generally one in the combat phase. Of course, Asfaloth and things like that won't work on locations in the staging area if Broken Lands is in there.

We're getting frustrated with locations. We all love the game and can handle enemies and even the hated treacheries but locations are tough.

38 minutes ago, alcuin18 said:

From what I'm seeing of this conversation and my own playgroup's experience I'm getting the notion that Northern Tracker, Asfaloth, The Evening Star and other such cards are almost auto includes especially for multi-player. Would that be a fair assumption? We're trying to play To Catch an Orc from Voice of Isengard with three players and we keep getting location locked in the staging area even using Legolas and basically passing a location every quest phase and generally one in the combat phase. Of course, Asfaloth and things like that won't work on locations in the staging area if Broken Lands is in there.

We're getting frustrated with locations. We all love the game and can handle enemies and even the hated treacheries but locations are tough.

One option might be to run Thror's Key, in order to blank the text box of Broken Lands so that things like Northern Tracker and Asfaloth can clear them. For that quest in particular, the side quest Explore Secret Ways might be valuable, because it can be so difficult with Broken Lands there. Mariner's Compass is another option to control Broken Lands - shuffle it away and replace it with a location in the top 5 of the encounter deck. Another important means of location control in quests where clearing out the locations is difficult/impossible/undesirable is Sulien - her response reduces the threat of all locations by 1, making it much easier to deal with location lock.

But yes, To Catch an Orc in multiplayer is fiendishly difficult, and the location lock is the hardest part. Good luck. Hope some of these ideas help; building a deck completely built around location management that also has tech that can handle broken lands will likely be important.

Thanks for the advice! We've definitely tried some of those and they do help. We're still running into problems though. For instance, we just lost twice in a row to The Three Trials not because of the Guardians or treacheries but location lock. When three consecutive locations are revealed from the encounter deck it just makes it hard keep going in a quest especially when all of them have so many quest points. We're going to keep trying but it seems like in multiplayer that one deck must be almost exclusively dedicated to location control.

All that said, we love the game and are not going to give up!

51 minutes ago, alcuin18 said:

Thanks for the advice! We've definitely tried some of those and they do help. We're still running into problems though. For instance, we just lost twice in a row to The Three Trials not because of the Guardians or treacheries but location lock. When three consecutive locations are revealed from the encounter deck it just makes it hard keep going in a quest especially when all of them have so many quest points. We're going to keep trying but it seems like in multiplayer that one deck must be almost exclusively dedicated to location control.

All that said, we love the game and are not going to give up!

I'd say that you don't need a dedicated location control deck, but you do need a plan to deal with locations. You can spread the location management across different decks, you can focus it in a single deck. Or you can focus on ramping up your willpower so fast that the locations can't keep up. But you need some sort of plan.

Staying on the theme of locations, one more question. Which cycle has the least amount of location lock potential? Also, which cycle is the best overall for multiplayer? That was two questions... 😉

I haven't played the more recent cycles, but from what I've heard, Dream-chaser offers the least location lock.

Of course, you'll rarely reveal a location in Heirs of Numenor, but only because the deck is chock-full of game-ending enemies and treacheries!