Tips and Strategies

By Vince79, in The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

I haven't seen a thread like this, so I thought I would start one. Most of us have had time to play a campaign or more by now, so:

What kind of suggestions or advice do have about playing a winning game?

What sorts of strategies or tactics do you use?

I'd start, but I was 4-8 in my campaign, so I think I'll take the listening role for now.

Your number one priority should be to keep threat as low as possible. That means busting threat tokens, exploring tiles pronto, and making sure you don’t reveal a bunch more tiles at the very end of your turn.

Your second priority goes for every game ever. Maximize your actions. You need to be able to accomplish everything you want with a minimal amount of actions spent on movement. That means two things: sprint, sprint, sprint and be smart with your movement actions. Keep backtracking to a minimum.

Third thing would be to make sure your final objective is in sight before you start farming lore from search tokens. A won adventure is essentially a loss if you received no lore, since that’s what will help you (along with XP) actually defeat the final adventure and win the campaign. That said, give yourself an out, because 10 lore and a won adventure is still better than 15 lore and a loss.

Lastly, your goal for every adventure before the finale should be to win the adventure one threat away from death, giving you the maximum amount of time to collect Lore. Your goal for every “all-or-nothing” adventure (the ones that end the campaign in failure if you lose. This includes the last one.) is to simply give yourself the best chance possible to complete the adventure. What good is lore to dead heroes.

I agree sprinting should be valued. Actually, I think you should keep cards for all the skills - Rest, Guard, Strike, Sprint. It may be that the Aragorn/Legolas Captain//Hunter combination I was using featured less sprinting than Pathfinder though.

The other problem I had with hitting up search tokens is I didn't seem to investigate the right ones. I mean most of them are useful, but I missed out on a lot of the bigger prizes it seems. My impression is that it isn't blind luck, there's some logic to which ones you should choose to check.

One thing I noticed about the Battleboard vs the Journey Map, the rules for "nearby" are different. So I was able to stand one space away with Legolas shooting enemies and they couldn't counterattack, because they're not considered nearby on the Battleboard. Whereas they would be on the journey map.

1 hour ago, Vince79 said:

One thing I noticed about the Battleboard vs the Journey Map, the rules for "nearby" are different. So I was able to stand one space away with Legolas shooting enemies and they couldn't counterattack, because they're not considered nearby on the Battleboard. Whereas they would be on the journey map.

So on the Battleboard nobody is nearby? I’ve read the rules again and nearby is only valid on the journey map?

2 hours ago, wernerkellens said:

One thing I noticed about the Battleboard vs the Journey Map, the rules for "nearby" are different. So I was able to stand one space away with Legolas shooting enemies and they couldn't counterattack, because  they're not considered nearby on the Battleboard. Whereas they would be on the journey map. 

This is news to me, could this be clarified please ?

10 hours ago, wernerkellens said:

So on the Battleboard nobody is nearby? I’ve read the rules again and nearby is only valid on the journey map?

The rules reference entry for Nearby use the term "game map" because it applies to both journey and battle maps.

@Vince79 , are you able to clarify what you meant?

13 hours ago, Vince79 said:

One thing I noticed about the Battleboard vs the Journey Map, the rules for "nearby" are different. So I was able to stand one space away with Legolas shooting enemies and they couldn't counterattack, because they're not considered nearby on the Battleboard. Whereas they would be on the journey map.

The rules for nearby are the same on Battle Maps and Journey Maps. Whichever map you're on, nearby enemies never counterattack unless they're in the same space as the attacking hero (or if they're ranged).

16 hours ago, Vince79 said:

The other problem I had with hitting up search tokens is I didn't se  em to investigate the right ones.

Yeaaah, I've gotta ask, does anyone else feel like they practically never have the opportunity to get items as loot?

I even saw it in one of the demo games I played, but I haven't seen it since. :( There's a lot of cards in the box that I still haven't seen, and it's a little disappointing. Maybe I'm just too quick to reach the end, not wanting to risk losing for a couple more lore/etc.

ALSO a touch off of that topic, but this board isn't active enough to post it in a different thread: the Tier 3 ranged Dagger almost doesn't seem worth it. Losing a fear and damage just to alway be able to attack at range... is a lot. Maybe it wouldn't be so scary if I were using it on a Burglar instead of a Pathfinder, but. Still.

6 hours ago, Uninvited Guest said:

The rules reference entry for Nearby use the term "game map" because it applies to both journey and battle maps.

@Vince79 , are you able to clarify what you meant?

Sorry, I shouldn't have used the word "Nearby", but what I said about counterattacking stands. I was actually thinking about "Adjacency" and "Range". If you look up "Range" on pg. 21 in the Rules Reference book, it says:

"A hero and enemy group are in range of each other if they occupy the same space".

"During an adventure on a journey map , a hero and enemy group are in range of each other if they occupty the same space or if they are in spaces adjacent to each other".

To counterattack, the enemy has to be in range of the hero. So on a battle map, unless the enemy has a ranged weapon, a hero with a ranged weapon can fire on the enemy from an adjacent space without fear of counterattack.

2 hours ago, Vince79 said:

So on a battle map, unless the enemy has a ranged weapon, a hero with a ranged weapon can fire on the enemy from an adjacent space without fear of counterattack.

True! That also applies on Journey Maps.

22 minutes ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

True! That also applies on Journey Maps.

Hmm, I was thinking it only applied on Battle Maps because of the second quote I gave. But I guess you could read that as only applying to enemies with ranged weapons. Even better! It seems like I always end up making it harder for myself than necessary.