Anyone currently playing this, or tried to play, solo, without using alternate variant rules or at least a bare minimum of them? How is it?

I play all sorts of wargames solo, and other unlikely games such as Blood Bowl, as my group tends to like just the shorter, lighter games. Would like to have a good Tolkien-based game in my collection, and playing MEQ or some such solo may be my best bet.

Torbal said:

I think it works with minimal adjustments. The two potential problems are:

1. Secret missions for Heroes & Sauron

2. Playing combat cards simultaneously

When preparing for our first real game I made several solo test runs. If you concentrate on trying to make the optimal choice based on the information available to one side, you're mostly fine. You're missing out on any possibility to bluff, naturally.

To deal with problem #1 I've seen an interesting solution: Draw two missions for each of both sides and only look at them after the game is finished.

To deal with problem #2 you could draw cards randomly for one side, alternating sides until one side is exhausted or defeated.

I love Tolkien, and I love adventure games and I love playing lots of games solo.

I played this game two-player one night and I really did not care for it. I hated the card-combat and that alone would make it very hard to solo. It looked like it has ZERO solo potential to me.

You might want to find the 1990s CCG by ICE. It's called Middle-Earth and can be played solo with no adjustments!

Have that CCG, including two books put out to support the game, but never got into it very much didn't like the movement mechanics, for one. But I did manage to snag two copies of "The One Ring" with less than $30 spent on the cards!

I know you want this to be Runebound set in Middle-Earth but it is not.

You could solo War of the Ring much easier than this. Have you tried it? Besides playing against yourself, here are some Solitaire/co-op rules...

thomas.unicyclist.com/playtest.html

Not saying this is a bad game, it is not what you would think by the title though. And I don't think it would make a good solo game at all.

Also, there is a new Hobbit boardgame getting developed in the UK and will almost certainly be published by FFG as well. There are no details on it yet.

This is not a good idea to play this solo. I don't even know how could You do it. Those secret missions and playing against each other. You can't really be Saouron and the Heroes in one person.

If You really whant a game set in Tolkiens World You should try somethign different like - Lord of The Rings: board game or War of The Ring.

Middle Earth Quest is just not the same as Runebound, it would be really hard to play alone this game.

Frog said:

Sorry, your psychic powers are off on that one. I have Runebound, wouldn't need another version with a different setting. Just hadn't heard a whole lot about MEQ being solo-able, hence my question.

Thanks for all the replies, though, they all help!

Can some of you try this solo method and report back your findings? I might be interested in this game if I can find good solo rules. These ideas sound like they might work...

www.geekdo.com/thread/501936/middle-earth-quest-diceless-solitaire-variant