11 minutes ago, Alonewolf87 said:

Is it a yes or a no for the kind of deck? How about Arwen, Cirdan and LeAragorn as heroes for example? For a pure Noldor one I could go with Arwen Cirdan and Galdor.

Can you try the exact hero lineup jost for the kicks?

22 minutes ago, John Constantine said:

Can you try the exact hero lineup jost for the kicks?

Can you give me directly your deck list (if you still have it) so we avoid any further back and forth?

EDIT: btw what is the theme for a Cirdan Arwen Grima deck?

Anyway I was trying to prove that with some good deckbuilding and piloting skill you can pick almost any theme in the game and make a passable deck which will win a good ratio of the quest. Do you want me instead to take your deck (which might have some deckbuilding issues) and prove that I can (or possibly not) win even with it? Cause they are quite two different things and I don't see how the second one pertains to this topic.

2 minutes ago, Alonewolf87 said:

Can you give me directly your deck list (if you still have it) so we avoid any further back and forth?

Anyway I was trying to prove that with some good deckbuilding and piloting skill you can pick almost any theme in the game and make a passable deck which will win a good ratio of the quest. Do you want me instead to take your deck (which might have some deckbuilding issues) and prove that I can (or possibly not) win even with it? Cause they are quite two different things and I don't see how the second one pertains to this topic.

I unfortunately don't have it any longer. I remember it having Fair and Perilous and Elven event that draw a card from the discard pile and returns to the hand. I think it also had the lute that returns card to hand after discarding it. Hope that helps.

Well, the themes you were trying to pick weren't the one my deck was having, so if your point was to pick any theme at all - why would you ask for my deck? And if you wanted to pick my deck's theme, why would you want to play something different? I'm quite confused with what you're trying to achieve here, but tell you what. If you have time and interest, do one with my hero lineup, and one with the dunedain noldor theme you initially wanted.

6 minutes ago, John Constantine said:

Well, the themes you were trying to pick weren't the one my deck was having, so if your point was to pick any theme at all - why would you ask for my deck? And if you wanted to pick my deck's theme, why would you want to play something different? I'm quite confused with what you're trying to achieve here, but tell you what. If you have time and interest, do one with my hero lineup, and one with the dunedain noldor theme you initially wanted.

I am trying to see if some practical test can get you to change your mind. You were lamenting how it's not possibile for someone to pick a theme and make a deck able to win a good portion of the quests. You were told that it could be a matter of good deckbuilding and piloting skill but you insisted that it was more about the game forcing you to play "the usual OP stuff" to succeed. What I am trying to accomplish here is take a theme you might like to see played (that's why I was asking about your deck), make myself a deck around that same deck and play it against some of the quest you deem difficult, to see where the "problem" actually lies.

1 minute ago, Alonewolf87 said:

I am trying to see if some practical test can get you to change your mind. You were lamenting how it's not possibile for someone to pick a theme and make a deck able to win a good portion of the quests. You were told that it could be a matter of good deckbuilding and piloting skill but you insisted that it was more about the game forcing you to play "the usual OP stuff" to succeed. What I am trying to accomplish here is take a theme you might like to see played (that's why I was asking about your deck), make myself a deck around that same deck and play it against some of the quest you deem difficult to see where the "problem" actually lies.

Then what is the issue in taking my hero lineup? Like, you're free to include anything into the deck itself, including the stuff I physically don't own.

2 minutes ago, John Constantine said:

Then what is the issue in taking my hero lineup? Like, you're free to include anything into the deck itself, including the stuff I physically don't own.

Because choosing a synergic trio of heroes is one of the key aspects of good deckbuilding and Grima is kinda the odd man out in that deck (both thematically and mechanically).

12 minutes ago, Alonewolf87 said:

Because choosing a synergic trio of heroes is one of the key aspects of good deckbuilding and Grima is kinda the odd man out in that deck (both thematically and mechanically).

Is he dough? Handing out resource advantage for any color in exchange for threat while paired up with heroes from the sphere that deals most easily with the threat and kinda lacks any good resource acquisition tools is not atleast decent mechanical synergy to you? Combined with Arwen, it's 5 resources per turn with 0 setup, in a deck with no leadership whatsoever.

16 minutes ago, John Constantine said:

Is he dough? Handing out resource advantage for any color in exchange for threat while paired up with heroes from the sphere that deals most easily with the threat and are kinda lacks any good resource acquisition tools is not atleast decent mechanical synergy to you? Combined with Arwen, it's 5 resources per turn with 0 setup, in a deck with no leadership whatsoever.

Sure you can make use of it, but I would still prefer to be able to have a Lore hero which I can target with Arwen's ability and not have to dedicate more deck space to counteract its threat rise. Moreover the Noldor theme has a few "play from the discard pile" effects which Grima cannot help with, also Galdor second ability would probably be of much more use in a Noldor deck which uses cards in hand as fuel than Grima Doomed discount. Still let's go with your choice.

Here is an example deck I made up on the spot, with cards up to the Dreamchaser cicle, would you think it's a good indicator to take and try out against some quests?

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/15033/testingdeck-1.0

I have been out of it for a pretty long time, but I don't really predict success for this deck in those scenarios at the very least. But don't let that stop you.

14 minutes ago, John Constantine said:

I have been out of it for a pretty long time, but I don't really predict success for this deck in those scenarios at the very least. But don't let that stop you.

Before a spend a couple of nights on this task some questions:

1) do you want a detailed run-up of every game or will you trust in my honesty in reporting the wins/losses?

2) If I manage to use this deck successfully will you take it as a sign that perhaps part of the problem might reside in your deck piloting skills?

3) Will the three quest from The Grey Havens box be enough or should I play the whole Dreamchaser cycle also?

2 minutes ago, Alonewolf87 said:

Before a spend a couple of nights on this task some questions:

1) do you want a detailed run-up of every game or will you trust in my honesty in reporting the wins/losses?

2) If I manage to use this deck successfully will you take it as a sign that perhaps part of the problem might reside in your deck piloting skills?

3) Will the three quest from The Grey Havens box be enough or should I play the whole Dreamchaser cycle also?

I'm gonna trust you on this, but if is not too much trouble, a few highlights of the game would be great.

I might

I don't have any aps from the cycle, but don't let that stop you from playing the game if you really want to.

Just now, John Constantine said:

I'm gonna trust you on this, but if is not too much trouble, a few highlights of the game would be great.

I might

I don't have any aps from the cycle, but don't let that stop you from playing the game if you really want to.

Ok I will let you know in a few days how things have gone.

Checking ringsdb, I see that lineup was used once already, by Drainu in the second solo league (October 2018). His version of the deck has only 2 copies of Jubyar that was released after Dreamchaser (though Jubayr is admittedly awesome), and it does use 2 copies of U.C. and 3 copies of Test of Will and Galadhrim's Greetings.

Looking back at the results, the three quests were Voyage Across Beleagar (Deluxe), Flight of the Stormcaller (AP #1) and Temple of the Deceived (AP #3). Drainu defeated all three quests on the first try -- that was good for sixth place that month, because six different players defeated all three quests on the first try and all used less cards outside a single Core + Dreamchaser cycle than he did. Three players defeated all three quests on the first try using *only* cards from a single core + Dreamchaser cycle, and that month shows why the solo league has such a long list of tiebreakers! I'll grant that these aren't the three hardest quests in the cycle (Raid on Grey Havens is probably the toughest for a solo deck), Temple in Deceived in particular should be routinely beatable if you take your time and aren't overly reliant on 1-hp allies. But both Voyage and Stormcaller certainly have some challenge to them. Still, in the solo league 6/9 defeated Voyage first try (2 of the other 3 used 1 token), 7/9 defeated Stormcaller first try (the other two used 1 token), and 8/8 defeated Temple of Decieved first try.

Grima/Cirdan/Arwen isn't a very thematic lineup, but my deck that month was A Stereotypical Non-Erestor Noldor deck. My Stereotypical decks are created by analyzing the most common deck lineup for a particular archtype, and then the most commonly used cards with that lineup -- and having created those decks for a lot of stereotypical decks, I can tell you the most popular lineups are invariably thematic and the resulting deck is certainly not optimal! It defeated all three quests, first try, and had not played the deck at all prior to the solo league (though I had played several of the heroes and many of the cards previously).

That's solo. My son and I used my Dori, Side-Quests and LeEomer fellowship against GH/Dreamchaser, it defeated all quests but Raid and Storm over Cobas Haven on the first try, taking two or three tries (can't remember exactly) for those two. We originally tried my Dori meets Spirit Pippin fellowship -- that didn't go nearly so well and we abandoned the attempt.

Solo league returned to Dreamchaser a couple times since then.

In July 2019 we took on Fate of Numenor, Raid on Grey Havens, and Temple of Deceived (again). My deck was an ally-light experimental Elfhelm/Grimbeorn/SpMerry deck that was light on allies -- not exactly a top-tier deck.

3/4 players defeated Fate on first try (I was the lone exception and took one token -- Ruins of Ages Past did me in)

1/5 players defeated Raid on first try (the other four took 2-3 tokens)

3/4 players defeated Temple on first try (the exception took one token)

In December 2019 we returned again, playing Voyage again, Flight again, and Storm over Cobas Haven. This time I used the Erestor version of the stereotypical Noldor deck.

2/4 defeated Voyage first try (the other two took 1 token, one was me)

3/4 defeated Stormcaller first try (I was the exception, and took 1 token)

1/4 defeated Cobas Haven first try (wasn't me).

A token is a card or resource used-pre game, Easy mode's extra resource per hero could be done with 3 tokens, but except for Raid and Cobas Haven virtually no one used more than one in any of the three leagues.

There's some brutal quests out there, but in my experience *most* non-POD quests are not. I haven't played nightmare.

@John Constantine I took advantage of lunch break to play Voyage Across Belegaer and it went quite smoothly with an easy win. I also wrote down a playthrough of the game if you are interested in reading it.

Some interesting thoughts here. Let me pitch in on the design aspect. I think you got some interesting subjects here. However, what you see as 'bad' design I see as design decisions with far reaching consequences.

1. Locations for multiplayer

This has been a point of discussion since the day of the core box I think. In multiplayer locations work differently then solo because in solo you can (eventually) get rid of all of them, while multiplayer requires questing over them. I'm not sure if this is nessecarily bad. In a way, this is the only way for the encounter deck to 'build up a board state'. But I don't play enough multiplayer to form a good opinion on this subject.

2. Doomed/ Encounter Card Design

Let's discuss the two mechanics eluded here: Heroes that scale with playercount and encounter cards that scale with player cards. I think there is enough room in this game for heroes that work best at certain player counts. Grima is obviously worse the more players you get. Thalin, Argalat, Faramir (lore), Merry (spirit) are examples of heroes that work much worse with less players. I think this is ok even if that means some heroes I will rarely if ever play with. And I think it's a thematic win that Grima can only trick so many people before they kick him out. I wouldn't put any of them in the Core set though (looking at you Thalin).

The other mechanics is encounter card scaling. Wether it's Doomed, Necromancers reach or the infamous Southeron Support there are a lot of cards that put the hurt on high player groups.

- But is it actually bad if quests don't scale well? Imagine a cycle with two quests. The first has a difficulty for solo players of 4/10 and the second 8/10. What if for multiplayer the first quests is 8/10 and the second 4/10. This means both quests don't scale well, but is this actually bad? You get the same difficulty over the entire cycle. Changing the player count may actually make the quests feel 'fresh' as you need to take completely different challenges into account. I would argue bad scaling isn't necessarily bad design.

- Is scaling on cards even necessary? Short answer: yes. The more players, the more sphere's on the table. Players are better able to make up for other player's weaknesses. If a player get's overwhelmed, the others can help him/her catch their breath for a while. Beregond can defend a tough enemy every round instead of just standing there if no enemy is revealed. If all encounter cards effected only 1 player (like most enemies) the players would quickly outpace the encounter deck.

- What about 'bad' scaling, aka Escape from Dol Guldur? Bad is subjective. EfDG is stupidly hard for solo. I don't play this scenario almost ever. And yet, I can't say it's bad by default. There are players out there who revel in the challenge of beating the unbeatable solo quest. There are players who tried specific decks to mitigate the effects. And these players are having fun with this quest existing. And for people with an one-deck-to-rule-them-all will probably like the idea that their deck cannot beat all quests (easily) and therefore could be improved upon with new cards on new releases. I think 'badly' scaled quests like EfDG has a very important place in the game and the game would be a lot poorer for a lot of people if this quest didn't exist. Like Thalin I wouldn't have put in in the Core set, but whatever.

Now I too, will sometimes be frustrated because I *know* that the quest that is beating me over and over again would be much easier with more players (King's quest most recently). It is a very emotional response actually and interesting to research. You probably feel the same when a quest clearly prefers one sphere over others.

4. Enemy Design

The underlying issue you raise here is that combat is to binairy: you block and live or you block and die. This is a consequence of Defense being relatively more important than HP. In the digital game, defense can be at best 1. There it's all about HP. In the physical game Beregond CAN defend for 4 from turn 1, so there have to be enemies that can overcome it or the game is going to be very stale for Beregond players. I feel like the current card pool has enough defense options. A more HP based approach would be interesting. Not sure if it would be better, but fun to think about indeed.

The rest of the points you make here are more about the game being to hard, which don't have much to do with the ebove mechanic so I won't comment on it here.

5. Bad starting conditions

You call it bad starting conditions, but the real mechanical principle here is power growth. In Magic/Hearthstone, both players increase their resource intake over time. This makes their power grow exponentially. Not only do you build your board state, but each turn you can play more (powerful) cards then the turn before. This works as an automatic come-back system for both players. If you have bad 1 cost cards, you can make up for it in turn 4 with a powerful 4 cost card. In LotR there is a linear resources system. You gain 3 resources every turn. This means that if you start losing, your board state will suffer and your disadventage starts snowballing or the other way around. This means: no automatic come back system. In fact, LotR has very few come back systems. The first few turns are absolutely essential.

I'm not sure if this is a case of 'could have done better'. Needless to say, an exponential resource version of this game would have been interesting. It also should have a way for the encounter deck to grow exponentially. I have thought about how this could work many times. It is no easy design change I can tell you! It definately wouldn't be the same game we now all know and love.

6. Insane difficulty on normal

Instead of talking about difficulty, which often ends in unpleasant discussions, I prefer talking about different people want different things from this game. Difficulty is one obvious thing. And I think we can all agree that multiple difficulty levels should have been part of the Core set design. But there is more. But often we, the players, have trouble imagining that things we don't like, actually exist for other players. For example you made a lot of really cool and interesting redesigns of old cards that where too weak to play in the modern cardpool. Your redesigns made all of them playable. Yet, for me, I WANT bad player cards. Or rather: I want cards that make me think "how can I build a deck that uses this card succesfully?". Bad cards are design challenges for me. And if I build a deck that makes such a cards work, I am really proud of it. If that card wasn't as bad initially, I wouldn't be so proud. And going a step further: the game also needs bad cards that don't work for the same reason. I see the design challenge, try it, and fail. But then I know why I failed and with every new card release I'm hoping for cards that can help me make that bad card work. It is a large part of the excitement of new cards for me. Palantir was such a card, I failed at building a deck with it, and every time a card comes out that might make it work, I get excited. Cards that are uninteresting to you, are fundamental to my enjoyment of the game. And the opposite is also true.

Whenever you think a card is badly designed, chances are they are perfectly designed for somebody else.

The above statement also holds true for difficulty. Escape from Mount Gram is NOT designed for me, and yet a lot of people enjoy it. I like bashing my head against Carn Dum over and over again with sub-par decks just to get that 1 in a 20 victory. I also like going through relatively easy quests with those same decks. Quests that require specific builds to get reasonable win rates are not really for me (I build mostly all-purpose decks) but as we see in this topic that is exactly how some other people play. It is a testament to the great design of this game that so many different approaches there are to this game. But that also means accepting that your personal approach isn't going to work every time. Sometimes a playercard or a quest just isn't designed for you.

I do however disagree that thematic cards are often bad. I find many thematic decks can work. I have a all-purpose Dúnedain Tactics-Leadership deck that works quite well even though you could argue that such a deck should NOT be played in solo. At the same time, I had to accept that the Dúnedain trap deck, just doesn't work with sailing quests. But the fun I had with other decks against those quests made up for it.

Fate of Numeror is also done (won at the firs try), even though it was a grueling 12 turns. But we all know that the real hard one is coming (Raid on the Grey Havens).

I'm sorry, you're gonna play each scenario only once? That's hardly has a legit statistical sample. I once beat nightmare anduin solo on my first try because I had the mildest encounter draw possible. Thats not saying much.

10 minutes ago, John Constantine said:

I'm sorry, you're gonna play each scenario only once?

I am definitely not doing like back to back play of the same quest when I win to avoid boring myself with the same stuff over and over. I might go over Raid on the Grey Havens a few times before beating it the first time so that's different.

11 minutes ago, John Constantine said:

That's hardly has a legit statistical sample

I was thinking to start with how many tries do I need to get to three victories for each quest, would that be a good statistical sample?

That sounds good.

One thing that would have been nice for this game is if they designed better ways for the player to come back when things go wrong. As has been pointed out in another thread, an early (unplanned) death of a hero usually heralds a loss. I think many players scoop at that point or soon after, thinking, what's the point? On the other hand, I do think the designers have done a good job (and better over time) of allowing the encounter deck to make a comeback from a dominant player board position. That's one of the best aspects of this game, and what keeps it interesting. But the lack of good ways for players to claw back from the brink of destruction is, in my mind, a bit unfortunate. Contrast, for example, to Journeys in Middle Earth, which has a "last stand" mechanic built-in and always active: if a hero is about to die, the player gets an automatic chance to save the hero (it gets progressively less likely the more deaths of the hero). There is no comparable mechanic in LotR LCG.

I love this game, I understand it has to be difficult to allow for a player to look through the encounter deck and then build his own optimal deck to beat it. Even then generally the quests kick ***. However, I do sometimes think that the designers create a thematic encounter deck and then just increase it's power levels and have everything combo perfectly.

I'm not the best tactician, strategist or deck builder. I often grab decks from Rings DB. But it generally takes me over a month of regular repeated plays constantly tweaking or changing decks, seeking advice and help to be able to beat a quest on normal mode with no mistakes. Even switching to easy mode usually is no easier as 1 of each card is taken out making the ratios the same and often leaves in some of the really nasty side quests that now have more chance of coming up.

In my experience watching you tube playthroughs where someone claims they beat such a such quest usually are not perfect games. Mistakes are made, multiple mulligan are made to get the perfect starting hand and scoops and restarts happen and edited out so that the episode you see is the one where it worked (kind of- mistakes happen after all the game is very fiddly in places)

So my point is the original poster has a point... it stops being fun on the 30th play through of a quest... it becomes like a cross word you just cant do... it becomes really irritating.

I'm currently stuck on the city of Ulfast, and I've tried all sorts of decks and tweaks, 2 handed solo, one handed. Contacts, etc. The number of times I've had to scoop because I've either made a mistake or forgotton a trigger or lost a hero early etc are too numerous to count.

Even the one deck to rule them all (on rings db) often fails to win quests for me

So can someone please create a deck dedicated or thematic and play through City of Ulfast true solo without making a mistake on normal mode paying attention to the FAQ and the rules as written. (For example dealing a shadow card for every attack even additional and immediate attacks - some people don't do that due to earlier versions of the FAQ)

Do that, post a write up turn by turn, and a deck list and I'll be very grateful 😊

9 hours ago, Alonewolf87 said:

I am definitely not doing like back to back play of the same quest when I win to avoid boring myself with the same stuff over and over. I might go over Raid on the Grey Havens a few times before beating it the first time so that's different.

I was thinking to start with how many tries do I need to get to three victories for each quest, would that be a good statistical sample?

This is a bit of a digression, but the idea of how many trials are necessary to characterize the performance of a particular deck against a particular quest (assuming player skill is constant in trials) has long interested me, though I remember enough statistics to think the answer is "way more than is practical to do it routinely". For practical reasons I thought that play to 3 wins or 3 losses (so 3-5 trials) would be good enough for guesstimating, though I think the 90% confidence interval for the "true" winning percentage would still be extremely large. (No, I haven't done the actual math, my old college stats book is packed and I was unable to find a handy online calculator that would do all the work for me.)

Any number of trials to three wins would be a different distribution, could be 3-0, could be 3-300 against Escape From Dol Goldur. But the tendency to play to X wins rather than X number of tries is common, I think (for me, generally X is 1). The end result is that my winning percentage against LOTR across all my plays is considerably lower than the average of my winning percentages among all quests. For instance, the first time I played through Against the Shadow cycle, I played Encounter at Amon Din just twice (2-0, once with each deck I was using), and Morgul Vale 27 times (1-26). My overall winning percentage in the cycle was lower than my winning percentage against 8 of 9 quests.

Anyways, in three trials here's the chance that a deck with a given true percentage would go 3-0:

True 0%, 0%

True 10%, 0.1%

True 20%, 0.8%

True 30%, 2.7%

True 40%, 6.4%

True 50%, 12.5%

True 60%, 21.6%

True 70%, 34.3%

True 80%, 51.2%

True 90%, 72.9%

True 100%, 100%

Using 5% as a "rare event" threshold, three successful trials can't statistically distinguish between a 100% true win rate and a 37% true win rate, and an 80% deck is more likely than not to go 3-0 over three trials.

No real point, I just find that stuff interesting :).

44 minutes ago, asgardianphil said:

So my point is the original poster has a point... it stops being fun on the 30th play through of a quest... it becomes like a cross word you just cant do... it becomes really irritating.

This is one situation where I really like Seastan's Grace of the Valar variant that we use in the solo league. By continually increasing the help I get as I lose, I don't have to play an unreasonable number of times to beat the quest and I know eventually I will overcome it. It lets me beat quests with decks that couldn't really beat the quest without an excessive number of tries, even on easy mode.

(Note -- except Escape From Mount Gram, where the tokens do diddly squat when everything you need is captured).

33 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

This is a bit of a digression, but the idea of how many trials are necessary to characterize the performance of a particular deck against a particular quest (assuming player skill is constant in trials) has long interested me, though I remember enough statistics to think the answer is "way more than is practical to do it routinely". For practical reasons I thought that play to 3 wins or 3 losses (so 3-5 trials) would be good enough for guesstimating, though I think the 90% confidence interval for the "true" winning percentage would still be extremely large. (No, I haven't done the actual math, my old college stats book is packed and I was unable to find a handy online calculator that would do all the work for me.)

At least from a frequentist perspective, the Wilson score interval is a good way of estimating the true win % for a given set of circumstances given a number of sample trials (say, 3 wins in 5 tries). There is an online calculator here:

https://epitools.ausvet.com.au/ciproportion

As you mention, one would generally need to play more games than is really practical in order to get the confidence interval down to a "small" range. Of course, one can start bringing in some aspects of human judgement to help assist (perhaps codifiable in a Bayesian framework of some kind). And the assumption of independence of trials is essentially violated if one is counting every trial from, say, playing a quest from a blind start. But in terms of a pure traditional statistics approach, the above calculator is adequate.