What do you think a good winning percentage is in this game? Obviously it varies quite a bit by scenario, the card pool you have, and how you approach building decks. But generally, what's a good winning percentage? Are you hitting that percentage?

I kind of think for a good game, the winning percentage shouldn't fall below 20%. If it does, it becomes annoying, and you're relying too much on a lucky encounter card draw to win. Seems like that would indicate poor game design. Maybe you prefer more of a challenge, I don't know. That's for harder scenarios, once you have them dialed in and know how to approach them. More generally speaking, I think 50% would be a good percentage.

If people are playing progressive and tell me they're winning 80% of their games, I'm not inclined to believe them.

I think you underestimate the ability of the progressive card pool in the hands of experienced and skilled deckbuilders. If you could somehow convince Rouxxor to construct optimal "progression style" decks for each non-nightmare, non-POD scenario and pilot those decks, I'd expect 95%+ rates against the vast majority of quests, and if you allowed him to pilot a pair of optimal decks designed to work together I'd expect 95%+ against all regular quests except Black Gate Opens (unwinnable) and at least a majority of the PoD quests.

My results wouldn't be so high. Xanalor piloting his core-only killer deck blew through KD/Dwarrowdelf without a single loss and also stomped Angmar Awakens hard. An inexperienced player piloting the exact same deck would lose a lot of those quests, I think.

What the optimal win percentage for a co-op game in general is highly subjective. I know a lot of co-op players prefer them to be biased hard and consider anything over 50% win rate to be poor; I actually prefer >50% in co-op games if I "play well" -- in general, I want the game to be tough enough for me to lose if I play badly, but not so tough that I usually lose when I play well. But this is *very* subjective, which is why I consider poor game design in a co-op not to be a too-high or too-low win rate (given competent play), but an inability to *alter* the win-rate to the preferred level.

Back in the day I considered those quests a bit challenging but not oppressive. But back in the day I was running a pre-errata Boromir deck with Loragorn & Spirifindel. My win percentage was well over 50 and certainly once I decoded the quests it was over 75.

I say this only to highlight how things have changed. We can say “playing progressive”, but then does that include the errata that came out many years after the quest?

It’s the curse of the LCG format I’m afraid and there is no perfect answer.

5 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

I'd expect 95%+ rates against the vast majority of quests, and if you allowed him to pilot a pair of optimal decks designed to work together I'd expect 95%+ against all regular quests except Black Gate Opens (unwinnable) and at least a majority of the PoD quests.

19 wins out of 20 games? Not saying it couldn't be done, but I would like to see that. Not sure who Rouxxer is, but does he ever post his decklists or videos of games on YouTube? It just seems like 95% seems awfully high. On some quests if you get the wrong encounter cards come up before you're prepared to handle them it can wreck your game. Or at least that's my experience. But I still consider myself a newb even though I've been playing for over a year and a half.

I prefer to play one handed though, not sure if that makes a difference. If you have two decks seems like there would be a lot more synergy working, so maybe you could get higher percentages. I've always heard that in some scenarios the extra hand was an advantage, but in others it made things more difficult.

Rouxxor post his decklists on ringsdb, and posts here sometimes, he generally doesn't play non-nightmare quests because they are too easy. He posted this in the One Deck and Solo League thread:

"To build general decks indented to beat all scenario edited up to the point they are playing (sometime with an exception like Dol Guldur, but most of the time really for all scenarios). Vilya deck are too powerful for some scenarios and so are not the most interesting to play but since there is many decks that can be builded this way I do like to keep playing the game like this."

I don't think you could get Rouxxor to do the exercise, since I doubt he'd find playing normal quests with an optimal deck interesting. And since English isn't his first language a video wouldn't be in the offing. But I don't think I'm going out on much of a limb. An optimal progression-style Theodred-Beravor-Eowyn deck in the hands of an expert player should beat most quests consistently through Foundations of Stone, and from Shadow and Flame on an optimal Vilya deck should beat practically everything consistently.

It's true that some quests are easier with one deck and some are easier with two, but the level of scaling is not the same. There's no two-player equivalent from Escape From Dol Goldur, a quest that is impossible to win most of the time with a single deck. Quests like Return to Mirkwood that scale against a one-deck player are very challenging to beat; quests like Emyn Muil that scale in favor of a one-deck player tend to be much easier to beat. My Dori fellowships beat *most* quests on the first try, and I wouldn't consider myself an expert player -- and they are very very few quests where the optimal fellowship would include Dori!

xanalor's killer deck, composed only of core cards and *not* optimized for any particular quest, struggled with Escape from Dol Goldur (1/4 with Beravor prisoner) and Return to Mirkwood (2/5), but went 7/8 against the other seven first cycle quests, going 1/2 against JDtA. He then went 11/11 defeating all nine KD/Dwarrowdelf quests. He later played it against the LR/Angmar cycle, going 13/15 in plays against them (2/3 against Intruders in Chetwood and the fearsome Carn Dum), attributing the lone Chetwood loss to a poor decision. So excluding EfDG (very very bad for single decks), Return to Mirkwood (bad for single decks) and Carn Dum (one of the toughest regular quests in the game), that's 29/31 victories against 24 different quests across three cycles with a core-only deck. The killer deck might not do so well against Heirs (hates tri-sphere) and Ringmaker (hates card draw), but it certainly suggests *very high* win percentages are possible against most of the quests. Angmar is widely considered one of the toughest cycles overall in the game.

To add some more data, I played the first two cycles semi-progression (all cards from a cycle added at the start) with two partners and our overall losses were only 2xDol Guldur, 1xReturn to Mirkwood, 1xShadow and Flame, so that is 36/40. We didn't play the scenarios blind, so we knew what to expect, and build decks accordingly. If you play blind, you will probably lose once to many quests early on, unless you have an extremely well-optimised deck, because it's hard to cover all scenarios with one deck early on.

As an alternative data set, I remember playing Angmar Awakened with one partner without significant deck changes and playing the quests blind, and I think we lost 1xWeather Hills, 1xWastes of Eriador, 1xCarn Dum (we lost about half a dozen games where I'd set the encounter deck up wrong too), so you're looking at around 75% playing that way. That feels about right as a target with good decks and a full card pool. Occasionally we encounter a quest that beats us a lot (Fire in the Night is our current nemesis).

I'd expect more losses with solo decks, unless they are extremely strong decks. But I don't play solo much so I am not particularly good at it.

For a casual pick up game, I’d be happy with a win percentage of around fifty percent. If I’m building a deck specifically for a quest, though, I’d better be winning way more than half my games.

The issue with progression style win percentages is that an experienced player (Rouxxor, Sebastian, Pocketwraith, Mr. Underhill.) knows exactly what threats to expect in any given quest, leading to much higher percentages than a new player playing through the game in progression style for the first time, like dale mentioned.That leads to those new players feeling discouraged and skeptical, even though they shouldn’t expect to be able to reach those numbers.

For me I've always looked at it from a baseball perspective. In that game a .300 batting average is considered pretty good. So if I can win a quest 3 times out of 10 I consider that a victory and move on.

I kept a record of my plays for 2019. I won 90 out of 224 games. Higher win percentage then I would have guessed.

So apparently there are LOTR LCG "grandmasters" who have win virtually every game they play (95% is close enough)? Obviously I'm not doing something right. Makes me wonder how they avoid getting bad draws from their encounter decks which mess things up early. There are only so many cards you can start with. Even if you have a super Vilya deck, you still have to draw Vilya.

Makes me wonder how they would fair solo one handed as well.

I also wonder what kind of win percentage the game creators and game testers have, and what they shoot for.

1 hour ago, Vince79 said:

Even if you have a super Vilya deck, you still have to draw Vilya.

Or have Master of the Forge/Heed the Dream/Drinking Song (just to name a few) to fish for it.

Anyway for me and my wife our win percentage is around 65%, but it's also due to how we are obstinate in wanting to play all the quests with the same decks. I think it could go higher if we went straight for a couple of power decks.

On 3/21/2020 at 5:47 PM, Vince79 said:

If people are playing progressive and tell me they're winning 80% of their games, I'm not inclined to believe them.

What if there's video evidence of it?
I mean, you have to take my word for it that I don't just delete the footage of more failed attempts than I post, and I've never actually bothered to keep track of the percentage (plus it may be skewed a little by the fact that I stop playing a quest after winning and move on to the next), but I'm pretty sure The Line Unbroken stands as a testament to the fact this perspective of yours is wrong. And that's using decks which are built with the intent to show off as much of the card pool as possible rather than necessarily optimising to beat the quest as consistently as possible.

In more general play, I'd struggle to give an answer because I don't keep track of my game results well enough to give a percentage, but I win a lot more than I lose.

30 minutes ago, PocketWraith said:

What if there's video evidence of it?
I mean, you have to take my word for it that I don't just delete the footage of more failed attempts than I post, and I've never actually bothered to keep track of the percentage (plus it may be skewed a little by the fact that I stop playing a quest after winning and move on to the next), but I'm pretty sure The Line Unbroken stands as a testament to the fact this perspective of yours is wrong.

Okay, it appears that I was wrong. This is why I asked the question in the first place. Apparently I have to get waaaay better at deck building, or just use some of the more popular decks on Ringsdb, which claim to beat the great majority of quests on the first try. I was thinking if I could win 50%, that would be a good winning percentage, but apparently I've set the bar far too low. I don't have much of a gaming community at all where I live, so I'm pretty much on my own here.

The reason I wanted video was not for proof - someone could just keep shooting a scenario until they won. I just wanted to see how they were doing what they were doing. I want to see what it is I'm doing wrong. I almost wonder where the challenge is in the game if people are winning 95% though.

One thing I do is I usually just fold and give up if I get a hero killed early on (in the first couple rounds). That's always seemed reasonable to me. Or would a good player be able to easily overcome such a thing?

On 3/22/2020 at 3:03 PM, Vince79 said:

So apparently there are LOTR LCG "grandmasters" who have win virtually every game they play (95% is close enough)? Obviously I'm not doing something right. Makes me wonder how they avoid getting bad draws from their encounter decks which mess things up early. There are only so many cards you can start with. Even if you have a super Vilya deck, you still have to draw Vilya.

I doubt that LOTR "grandmasters" win virtually every game they play, or 95% of them even, for two reasons:

1) They don't play non-nightmare versions of quests that have nightmare versions.

2) They don't, to my knowledge, generally spend their time constructing the optimal deck for a *particular quest* before playing it -- the exceptions are the rare quests that are very difficult to beat and/or are unfriendly to an all-around deck (for example, Mount Doom).

I specifically named Rouxxor, and he publishes optimized archtype decks, but they are optimized for the whole mass of quests instead of one particular quest. I think even I could construct a deck that wins 95% of the time against non-nightmare Mount Gram or Dungeons Deep and Caverns Dim, but wouldn't be particularly good against other quests.

The other things that a "grandmaster" has that mere mortals lack is a deep knowledge of both their deck *and* the quest. Before the quest ever starts, they know exactly what is in the encounter deck, exactly how to use every card in their deck, and have a strategy for everything. They know when to turtle, when to rush, when to take undefended attacks, when to ignore questing and take the threat raise, etc.

In the case of a Vilya deck, you certainly want Vilya in play ASAP. But it's worth remembering that before Vilya shows up, Elrond is quite a powerful hero in his own right, 3/2/3/4 with two useful abilities (increasing healing, playing for allies of any sphere). And Vilya decks are chock full of powerful allies.

What are the odds of getting Vilya quickly? Let's take an example early Vilya deck, not optimized but I think very typical, my Stereotypical non-Gandalf Vilya deck:

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/11043/a-stereotypical-non-gandalf-vilya-deck-1.0

It's a 50 card deck with 3 copies of Vilya. In a 50-card deck, there's a 32% chance of a 3x card showing up in the first 6 cards and 37% in the first 7, meaning the odds of NOT getting Vilya are about 43%. So what then? Well, you have Beravor to draw cards. You have 2 copies of Gleowine to draw a card. You have 3 copies of Daeron's Runes to draw two cards. You have 3 copies of Imladris Stargazer to reorder the next five cards. You have three copies of Master of the Forge to fetch an attachment from the next five cards -- and all three of those allies are 2-cost, affordable in the first round. The odds of having *none* of them in your first hand are pretty slim, and with Beravor drawing cards even those rare cases won't last long.

And the deck's not helpless without Vilya. The heroes by themselves can quest for 10, or defend for 3 and counterattack for 5. There's enough starting strength that it'll be a rare quest where they can't stay afloat while waiting for Vilya.

Let's do 20 draws from the deck and see how long it takes to find Vilya.

1) Vilya in initial draw

2) Vilya in mulligan

3) Daeron's Runes in opening hand, Vilya 10th card. 1st turn play with Beravor's help, 3rd turn without.

4) Vilya in mulligan

5) Daeron's Runes and Master of Forge in inital hand, Imladris Stargazer drawn with Daeron's Runes. Master of Forge whiffs on first and second round with or without Beravor, Stargazer misses on turn two after Forge -- but the drawn card from third round is Vilya.

6) Vilya drawn after Mulligan (7th card)

7) Vilya in mulligan

8 ) Vilya in initial draw

9) no draw cards but Gandalf in starting hand. 8th card another Gandalf, 10th card Stargazer, 16th card Gleowine, 17th card Daeron's Runes, 18th Master of Forge, 19th Daeron's Runes, 21st Vilya. That's *deep* in the deck for a 3x card, but how many turns would it take to get there, if you prioritized card draw?

Turn 1 -- draw through card 9 with Beravor

Turn 2 -- Gandalf + Beravor get you through card 16, giving you Stargazer and Gleowine.

Turn 3 -- Beravor gets you through card 19, two Daeron's Runes will get you Vilya and play it right away. That's right, you can play Vilya on turn three with it being the *21st* card in the deck.

10) Vilya in initial draw

11) Vilya in initial draw

12) Vilya in initial draw (actually *all three* Vilya in inital draw -- that's not optimal)

13) Vilya in initial draw

14) Vilya in initial draw

15) Vilya in inital draw

16) Vilya in initial draw

17) Imladris Stargazer in post-mulligan hand. Vilya 11th card, so initial stargazer can put it on top and it can be played 2nd turn.

18) Vilya drawn after mulligan (7th card)

19) Vilya in initial draw

20) Vilya in initial draw

We were lucky in these 20 in how often Vilya came up in our first hand, far higher than the expected 57%, but in the cases where it was missed you could play it no later than the 3rd turn, even when the first copy was buried 21 cards deep. And with these allies and heroes, there's a lot of quests you can beat without ever playing Vilya at all! This *isn't* an optimized deck -- just a stereotypical early Vilya deck. The whole deck has but a single card in it released after Shadow and Flame (Thror's Map from OHUH, which I only ever use as a sideboard card).

38 minutes ago, Vince79 said:

The reason I wanted video was not for proof - someone could just keep shooting a scenario until they won. I just wanted to see how they were doing what they were doing. I want to see what it is I'm doing wrong. I almost wonder where the challenge is in the game if people are winning 95% though.

One thing I do is I usually just fold and give up if I get a hero killed early on (in the first couple rounds). That's always seemed reasonable to me. Or would a good player be able to easily overcome such a thing?

I'm usually quick to scoop when a hero dies, unless it's later in the quest and I think we're likely to win anyways. If I played every scoop out I'm sure I'd win the occasional one, I just don't enjoy the process of playing out the loss in the more common case where I lose.

Something that might interest you is a play-by-forum game I'm running on BGG:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2387546/crowdsourcing-passage-through-mirkwood

We are using xanalor's killer deck, filled out to 50 with a second core, against the one quest where lots of decks will generate 95% win rates, Passage Through Mirkwood. But I think it's fascinating to see how many of the polls on the decisions made are far from unanimous, and it might be a good chance for you to consider what you would do, and see how that compares with the consensus. I think so far it's been a successful experiment.

59 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

The other things that a "grandmaster" has that mere mortals lack is a deep knowledge of both their deck *and* the quest.

Then considering that I don't even look at the quest cards before I start a scenario, maybe shooting for a 50% win rate isn't that bad after all.

Still, I have a lot to learn.

I honestly wouldn't worry too much about win percentages. I mean yes I can go back in BGStats and count my wins versus games played (It's 21/34 if you're curious) but if I am being completely honest, the losses were more fun than the victories. Some of those losses include some grueling matches of Dol Guldor, an amazing hunt for Gollum where all 3 players (and their 9 heroes) started turn 1 exhausted, and one loss was from the "competitive" format at GenCon where my partner and I wiped one turn before the "opposing team" did.

I just enjoy playing the game when I can make the time to. The brutality of it, the joy of building a deck that I know I will love, the pain of building a deck that you want to make work but just won't ( looking at you Saruman Grey Wanderer with Ent support ) there are so many factors of this game that I can invest into and have fun with. So some person I don't know is on ringsdb claiming they win 95% of their games? Good for them, forgive me for sounding callous.

Everyone is different, so if this is what you're interested in I hope you find some good data. I'd be more interested in "percentage of losses that the player enjoyed versus percentage of losses that were frustrating" but I'm sure I look at the game differently from many others in that regard. To each their own and it is certainly a fascinating aspect of this game that so many people can hone in on so many different factors and metrics.

Just for the record, my current grey wanderer deck has a 0% win rate against Escape from Dol Guldor. 😉

3 hours ago, TheSpitfired said:

I just enjoy playing the game when I can make the time to. The brutality of it, the joy of building a deck that I know I will love, the pain of building a deck that you want to make work but just won't ( looking at you Saruman Grey Wanderer with Ent support ) there are so many factors of this game that I can invest into and have fun with. So some person I don't know is on ringsdb claiming they win 95% of their games? Good for them, forgive me for sounding callous.

To be clear, I don't know that anyone on ringsdb is claiming to win 95% of their games played, and I imagine very few players with the required skill level to do so would find that level of success interesting. My claim was that Rouxxor *if he wanted to* could construct progression decks specifically for (normal) quests and pilot them to 95% success rates against the vast majority of them. I've never read anything from him suggesting that he *wants* to do that, he quickly dropped out of the solo league because he didn't find it interesting/challenging enough to be fun.

(To be extra clear, broken combo decks *have* claimed extremely high percentage rates on ringsdb against nearly all quests, but that's just proof-of-concept. I doubt they actually *play* such decks [until the inevitable errata hits] after they've been perfected and well-tested.)

Oh I wouldn't be surprised either way. I hope my statement didn't come off as an affront to your claims. All I was attempting to say was that so far I've never really spent a lot of time looking at other players' decks and success/failures. I've been trying to avoid any outside influence on my growth as a deck-builder and player of this game. It's hard to say whether that is to my benefit or detriment; A mix of both I suppose.

8 hours ago, Vince79 said:

Then considering that I don't even look at the quest cards before I start a scenario, maybe shooting for a 50% win rate isn't that bad after all.

Still, I have a lot to learn.

It feels like there's been some conflation of "Progression player" and "New player" which isn't all that helpful. A lot of new players will choose to play progression style for a number of reasons, but in general all you can assume about a progression player is that they are only using cards which were available at the time the quest was released.

If you compare new players to experienced players then you would naturally expect the newer players to have a lower win rate and that's fine.

I'll give you an example of my own recent experience. I'm not a veteran of the game by any stretch, but I think I have been playing long enough (2.5 years) that I'm no longer "new".

I only recently picked up the last packs from the Ringmaker cycle, the final one I needed to complete outside the current one, and played through the whole thing. I used a pair of decks which were not optimised for the quests and were *not* progression style, but apart from the deluxe I was playing the scenarios blind. My win rate against the six new quests playing blind was 33%. On the replays the win rate was much higher.

At the same time I've been starting a new Saga campaign. This is my second run through - the first was on easy mode with a friend but this time I'll be running two handed solo on normal. With strong decks (one is a Vilya deck) which are tweaked a little for the quests I'm so far 5/5 including the PODs. These are not the hardest quests and things like knowing which treachery I need to cancel go a long way towards getting a win, but there's always a chance that a horrible staging step could ruin everything. I definitely am not expecting to keep this rate of success going as the quests get harder.

All of this to say that I think a prepared/experienced player, even playing progression style, will probably expect to win more that the unprepared player.

10 hours ago, Vince79 said:

Then considering that I don't even look at the quest cards before I start a scenario, maybe shooting for a 50% win rate isn't that bad after all.

Still, I have a lot to learn.

I’d say 50% is darned good! 🙂

12 hours ago, Vince79 said:

Okay, it appears that I was wrong. This is why I asked the question in the first place. Apparently I have to get waaaay better at deck building, or just use some of the more popular decks on Ringsdb, which claim to beat the great majority of quests on the first try. I was thinking if I could win 50%, that would be a good winning percentage, but apparently I've set the bar far too low. I don't have much of a gaming community at all where I live, so I'm pretty much on my own here.

The reason I wanted video was not for proof - someone could just keep shooting a scenario until they won. I just wanted to see how they were doing what they were doing. I want to see what it is I'm doing wrong. I almost wonder where the challenge is in the game if people are winning 95% though.

One thing I do is I usually just fold and give up if I get a hero killed early on (in the first couple rounds). That's always seemed reasonable to me. Or would a good player be able to easily overcome such a thing?

I don't think you *have* to do anything. If your specific goal is to get as high a win percentage as possible, then yes you want to be looking for the most optimal decks, but most players (myself included) would rather stick to choosing decks which are fun to play and trying to make them work as well as possible. And if you think 50% is a good winning percentage, it doesn't matter if other people have higher ones, so long as you're enjoying playing the game.

For the record, I also usually upload my losses, because I think there's also value in seeing how things can go wrong. When I don't upload losses it's generally not because I don't want to show myself losing but because I don't think the specific footage would be that interesting to watch. Also, there's a reason I responded to your initial comment about 80% rather than the 95. As mentioned, I don't track my win percentage, but 80% I think is plausible, 95 I don't.

Getting a hero killed early on does generally herald a loss, unless it was planned. It's situational though, sometimes you can struggle through it. Related to some of my above points, making videos has encouraged me to play on a bit more often when things look busted, because I know some people are interested to see a game played out to the end even if it's a loss; on the other hand there are often times, and an early hero loss can be one of these, where it's very easy to see how one thing going wrong is going to cascade into more things going wrong and an inevitable loss (e.g. losing a hero early on often means the engaged enemy which just killed them is still there and you don't have a good means of dealing with it). Again, what matters is that you're enjoying the game, and the rare occasions where you can recover from an early hero loss for most people do not outweigh the many more occasions when playing it on means letting yourself in for an additional half hour of pain and hopelessness.

10 hours ago, Vince79 said:

Then considering that I don't even look at the quest cards before I start a scenario, maybe shooting for a 50% win rate isn't that bad after all.

Still, I have a lot to learn.

I mean, I also don't do that when I'm playing a *new* quest. I enjoy playing quests blind on the first attempt, and I think my win percentage is still decent, certainly over 50. Even without knowing the details of what's coming, a lot of experience playing the game means you have a good idea of what problems you may have, you can compare that to the strengths of your own deck, etc. But if I've played a quest before, especially if I've played it multiple times, then I remember a lot of the important points I really need to be aware of.

9 hours ago, PocketWraith said:

Even without knowing the details of what's coming, a lot of experience playing the game means you have a good idea of what problems you may have

I've been trying to play the game in order or release (mostly), and I'm up to Voice of Isengard now. I think FFG has done a good job so far of finding new ways to mess with you in every cycle (can't say I always enjoy it). Last night I played Into Fangorn for the first time and the Heart of Fangorn card had a new wrinkle I hadn't encountered before: only being able to refresh five characters during the refresh phase. Then there's the new Hinder keyword in this quest also.

Reading this, and my own recent experiences, have made me realize a few things:

1) Sounds like a lot of these "super decks" are Vilya decks, which is interesting, since I've been running a Vilya deck myself lately. So it's possible I could have come to this same position anyway, although I'm sure the deck I'm using if far from being optimized.

2) If your deck is going to have a high win percentage against certain quests, obviously it needs to be able to withstand early difficulties presented by the encounter deck. Or prepared to take on a worst case scenario, because it will almost surely rear its head. Like an enemy with too many attack points, or location lock. I was talking before about getting a hero killed off right away ruining the game - I guess if this can happen, then the deck is simply insufficient?

5 hours ago, Vince79 said:

I was talking before about getting a hero killed off right away ruining the game - I guess if this can happen, then the deck is simply insufficient?

Pretty much, yes. Depending, of course, on your feelings about scooping. I believe that Seastan has put together a basic set of parameters for how much willpower, defense, and attack the heroes ought to be able to muster consistently on the first turn in order to be a good lineup.