Wastes of Eriador, 4 Players

By Alonewolf87, in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

I am the only one who finds The Wastes of Eriador exceedingly difficult in 4 players?

Despite having played all the quests of the game with our 4 decks we still find this quest to be one of the most difficult around, on par with stuff like Attack on Dol Guldur. Last time we played we saw a 18 threat increase over 4 rounds and a buckload of treacheries we could not respond to, due to it being Night, that really wrecked us.

Interesting. While playing it solo, I was under impression that this quest becomes easier with the player count, due to there being only 1 extra encounter card from night regardless of the number of players, so if in solo you're basically drawing twice the number of encounter cards during the night turn, in 4 player you're drawing just 25% more encounter cards, therefore less pressure.

20 minutes ago, TrueLolzor said:

Interesting. While playing it solo, I was under impression that this quest becomes easier with the player count, due to there being only 1 extra encounter card from night regardless of the number of players, so if in solo you're basically drawing twice the number of encounter cards during the night turn, in 4 player you're drawing just 25% more encounter cards, therefore less pressure.

As if often the case it's the relatively high number of treacheries and their awful combinations (that you usually only see in high players count that really brought us down), like seeing Biting Wings + Freezing Blast in a Night round, possibly with Make Camp out, even better if Weight of Responsibility brought out Cold From Angmar too (yeah that happened...twice in two different games...)

Sudden Darkness also wrecked our plans a couple of times during Day rounds when we ended up without Test of Will and Eleanor already exhausted from another treachery. The same can be said for Eriador Wastes (though a well timed Thror's Key can help there)

The extra encounter card from the Night shift was often less of a problem since there are at least a couple of treacheries that basically do nothing (Biting Winds and Freezing Blast, doomed aside of course).

Edited by Alonewolf87
19 hours ago, Alonewolf87 said:

I am the only one who finds The Wastes of Eriador exceedingly difficult in 4 players?

I think it is understating it to say: no. No, you are not.

1 minute ago, sappidus said:

I think it is understating it to say: no. No, you are not.

Do you want to share some of your worst moments with that quest?

1 minute ago, Alonewolf87 said:

Do you want to share some of your worst moments with that quest?

In my 3-p group at the time, the first session we played with it, we had several scoops before we had even properly finished encounter setup, so.

I've had victory snatched away in a 3-player game but I don't think I've ever beaten this scenario in 3- and 4-player. I've done 2-player. It's definitely a hard quest.

Unpopular opinion, but I think LotR is often badly balanced for multiplayer, because there are many effects that affect EVERYONE at once, on top of that each player drawing a card EACH, so for example drawing treachery in 4 player game is equal to drawing 4 encounter cards because it affects everybody, and it gets worse with various effect such as "reveal 1 card per player" etc. I'm so glad they got away from this insananity in Arkham Horror LCG where most encounter card affect either the person who drew them, or a specific person that matches the card's condition, instead of everybody at once.

I would say that your opinion is not unpopular. Especially for earlier cycles in the game, some of the treacheries swing wildly hard for larger multiplayer games. This continued into the later cycles as well, but in general treacheries were a little less "game-ending" for 4-player games in the later scenarios.