10 minutes ago, Kjeld said:

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.

See, up until this point I just figured this was a hazard of playing the game - sometimes you get blown up. I'm also unfamiliar with these apparent titans of the game. I had heard of Seastan before, but I was only aware that he had some decks posted on ringsdb. A Google search reveals he has a blog. Guess I need to study up.

18 hours ago, Vince79 said:

See, up until this point I just figured this was a hazard of playing the game - sometimes you get blown up. I'm also unfamiliar with these apparent titans of the game. I had heard of Seastan before, but I was only aware that he had some decks posted on ringsdb. A Google search reveals he has a blog. Guess I need to study up.

I don't really update my blog much. But I do go over some beginner deckbuilding advice in this episode of Cardboard of the Rings: https://cardboardoftherings.com/2019/05/30/episode-148-passing-of-the-grey-company/

Win percentages depend on a lot of factors, including not least of all the particular quest, whether you're playing 1-Handed or multiplayer, Progression or non-Progression, theme deck vs power deck, Easy/Normal/Nightmare mode, and others. So it's hard to speak about with any generality.


I only pay attention to win percentage some of the time. Currently, I'm trying to see if I can get a "Gray Wanderer One-Deck" that can beat most cycles 1-Handed on Normal Mode (non-Progression, obviously). It's currently beaten the entirety of Core+Mirkwood (sans Dol Goldur, for obvious reasons which is in principle impossible for a Gray Wanderer), entirety of KD+Dwarrowdelf, and the Heirs of Numenor quests. It's win % is sitting at a 62.5% win percentage (20 quest beaten over 32 games), with most of the 12 losses coming from four quests (Into the Pit, Redhorn Gate, Shadow and Flame, and Seige of Carn Andros are responsible for 10 of the 12 losses).

2 hours ago, EBerling said:

I only pay attention to win percentage some of the time. Currently, I'm trying to see if I can get a "Gray Wanderer One-Deck" that can beat most cycles 1-Handed on Normal Mode (non-Progression, obviously).

All I'm trying to do right now is go through all the scenarios progression style and get a couple of wins against each just so I know I can beat them. Along the way, I'm hoping to learn the cards, and different approaches to deck building. This is the first card game of this type I've played, and it only drew me in because I'm a huge Tolkien fan. I've never played another LCG or CCG.

Ideally, I'd like to do this as efficiently as I can, keeping in mind that sometimes I like to take breaks from the game. Once I get through everything, then maybe I'll go back and think more about decks that can go through and beat a lot of quests. Progression style, if I get through this cycle I can start using Seastan's Boromir deck, which sounds pretty powerful:

https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/42/seastan-s-boromir-1.0

2 hours ago, EBerling said:

I only pay attention to win percentage some of the time. Currently, I'm trying to see if I can get a "Gray Wanderer One-Deck" that can beat most cycles 1-Handed on Normal Mode (non-Progression, obviously). It's currently beaten the entirety of Core+Mirkwood (sans Dol Goldur, for obvious reasons which is in principle impossible for a Gray Wanderer), entirety of KD+Dwarrowdelf, and the Heirs of Numenor quests. It's win % is sitting at a 62.5% win percentage (20 quest beaten over 32 games), with most of the 12 losses coming from four quests (Into the Pit, Redhorn Gate, Shadow and Flame, and Seige of Carn Andros are responsible for 10 of the 12 losses).

This illustrates the difference between a win percentage based on number of plays, and a win percentage based on the average of quests. The wins are obviously one per quests, but the losses are concentrated. 14/32 plays were concentrated in four quests, 14 or 15 of the 20 quests have only one play, a win. The median win percentage against a quest is 100%, even though the average of all plays is 62.5%.

I think it's very very common in this game to play hard quests more often than easy quests from the "play until I win" approach -- this results in a *much* lower winning percentage on a per-session basis than the average difficulty of the quests would suggest.

17 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

This illustrates the difference between a win percentage based on number of plays, and a win percentage based on the average of quests. The wins are obviously one per quests, but the losses are concentrated. 14/32 plays were concentrated in four quests, 14 or 15 of the 20 quests have only one play, a win. The median win percentage against a quest is 100%, even though the average of all plays is 62.5%.

I think it's very very common in this game to play hard quests more often than easy quests from the "play until I win" approach -- this results in a *much* lower winning percentage on a per-session basis than the average difficulty of the quests would suggest.

Indeed. It's also an interesting way to visualize the strengths/weaknesses of a deck against particular cycles or quests.

My deck went 100% against Mirkwood, then 47% while clearing Dwarrowdelf (though half of those quests were still cleared in the first attempt). It may or may not also reveal something about the relative difficulty of the two cycles, but I suspect it's possible to build a tailored deck that clears Dwarrowdelf much more readily than Mirkwood. The takeaway, always, is that the difficulty of any given quest is hard to separate from the context of the deck(s) tackling it. Which is why I like to view the "strength" of any deck I make as an aggregate of its performance against a variety of quests.

Here's a good example of the problem with playing blind. I've been playing blind (don't look at the quest cards before I play it the first time). So I'm up to Into Fangorn , and I suddenly realized there are no real enemies in the deck, other than the huorns can attack you under certain circumstances. They're all there mainly to hinder. So this quest becomes much easier when you realize the secret is to forget about the stupid trees, and just quest the crap out of it. In a lot of these quests, there's a "light bulb moment" where you realize what strategy that you're supposed to take.

Like Wandalf said earlier, it's a huge plus to know every threat that is coming out of the encounter deck so you can act accordingly.

Also, it strikes me that the "One Deck" idea makes a lot more sense once you have played through all (or most of) the quests and have all the cards at your disposal. If you're not going to play progressive, it only makes sense that you would want to build decks that could take on everything.

Let me just make one more comment on the "one deck beats all" philosophy. This goes along with there being many different ways to approach the game.

Another approach would be to look at the game specifically by scenarios. With the idea of building the most efficient deck at beating a particular scenario. For instance, why include a certain card in your deck if you won't use it in that particular quest? Why have it in there, when there's another card you might use or might be better?

I enjoy the deck building aspect, but laziness is what keeps me from optimising for every quest. Well, I suppose that's a bit unfair - there are only so many hours in the day and only so many that people can dedicate to deck building.

Depending on my mood, I'll probably just think "If this deck can beat the quest, what do I gain from further optimisation" and the answer is usually not enough to justify the time. But if a deck does need extra work I am quite happy to do so.

4 hours ago, rees263 said:

I enjoy the deck building aspect, but laziness is what keeps me from optimising for every quest.

That's funny because laziness is what keeps me from trying to build an optimal deck that beats every quest.

Right now, I'm playing The Dunland Trap . Discard your hand, discard your allies, discard your attachments. Things are getting unfair lol.