Finally got my copy and played through the first quest with Aragorn, Gloin, and Theordred. Gloin died off early as a sacrificial lamb due to low ally draw and high spider spam from the encounter deck. However, an early Steward of Gondor on Theodred was huge as I had enough resources not to miss Gloin for too long and get more allies out. Aragorn's power is amazing as he continued to advance quests and kill spiders in his spare time. The nail in the coffin for the Enemy was when I got Faramir out and was able to use his power, play the event card (can't remember the name now) that lets you stand an ally, and quest for a huge 8 willpower on the Chosen Path that makes you avoid Ungoliant's Spawn in favor of getting ten progress tokens.

Overall it was a really fun experience and I can't wait to keep going down the quest line to see how far I can take these three. Gloin's not my favorite without some ability to heal him, and Theodred was really just a good Steward (appropriately!) to Aragorn who was the real star.

How'd it go for everyone else?

I tried the tactics deck with Gimli, Legolas and Thalin. This deck is powerfuk against enemies but cannot succeed solo. There is not enough questing power to make progress and thus each turn you are only delaying the inevitable except for the few times you draw an enemy. Locations just overwhelm this deck. It will combine well with leadership i think.

I, too, chose the tactics deck, got an early run of locations, ran up my threatometer. In the turn before my threat was to run out, and I was to be cut down by a previous rounds big bad orc guy (don't know name, but he gets +2 attack each turn) I scored gandalf, played him, reduced my threat and was about to cut down aforementioned orcy guy with my dwarf dood that gets +attack for each damage he has. however shadow effect did one damage to him, which enabled bad orc guy to cut him down before he could return the favor. The game ended with me 2 tokens away from completing the quest, and all my doods getting cut down by enemies.

The lack of healing is of one concern, as is the lack of questing progress. Combining the deck with one that can assist me on either one of those fronts would be of interest.

Retracted: I made a ruling mistake: Engaged enemies do not contribute their threat! I won the thing! WOOOO!!!!! (with aforementioned tactics deck)

I've played three solo games so far as lost them all. With just three characters I find it exceptionally difficult. I'm tempted to use four heroes instead of three.

We won our game with a score of 120, (a rules interpretation notwithstanding) in a 2 player tactics and leadership game. We struggled for ages to make any in roads in the first quest card in Mirkwood, and lost Thalin and Aragorn pretty quickly. Then it quietened down a bit and we loaded Gimli up with mad powerups giving him +10 damage. But it was stilll very close and we would have only lasted a couple more rounds at most. And Ungoliant's Spawn turned up at exactly the right moment.

First game went well, was extremely tense!

I ran the Knowledge deck against the first quest. Got off to a bit of a slow start. The deck's healing powers are awesome, but it suffers from a real lack of combat strength aside from Glorfindel, who also happens to be the best quester. I was lucky to get Hemarth Riversong in my opening hand, who's ability let me look at the top card of the encounter deck every turn - so I wasn't ever surprised. I also got a couple of Daughters of Nimrodel out early and their healing mojo kept my characters feeling good. I had the misfortune to draw Ungoliant's Spawn early and had to lock him down with the expensive-but-amazingly-effective "Forest Snare".

But it wasn't all fun and games, an early "Caught in a Web" locked down Denethor for the majority of the game, until I finally pulled a Miner of the Iron Hills to free him. The game came down to the wire, my threat was in the mid-high 40's and I had already locked down the Spawn when I got to the end of the quest, so I had to pull 2 more Spiders on top of an Orc that was already giving me trouble. So not only did I have to take down the really, really tough Spawn, but I had to hold off 3 other baddies to boot. Long story short a lot of guys got sacrificed while my Heroes fought off the Spawn. The last round was nail biting...my three Daughters of Nimrodel all defended the 3 opponents while my three heroes and my Erebor Hammersmith attacked the Spawn. One daughter sucked it up and died. The second...ran into a horrendous Shadow card that dealt 1 damage to all of my characters, instantly killing her AND the other defender. So that left 2 attacks undefended, which took down 2 of my heroes in one fell blow. I was left with Glorfindel and the Hammersmith, who did exactly enough damage together to take out Ungoliant's Spawn.

Close! Really close! But they did the job. I had a bit of luck (getting the early Daughters was key) and a bit of bad luck (Caught in a Web is just brutal and effectively takes one of your heroes out of the game, and I had Gandalf up and ready to fight Ungoliants spawn but discarded him out of my huge hand when I traveled Necromancers Pass the turn before) so I think overall it was fairly even.

Skimming through the rest of the decks has me interested to try them out. The Tactics deck looks great, but it also looks like it would be almost impossible to play solo. The Spirit deck looks fairly boring and has some pretty weak heroes aside from Eowyn. And, finally, the Leadership deck looks absolutely head and shoulders stronger than the others, especially with the broken Celebrian's Stone and Steward of Gondor support cards. Celebrian's Stone alone, while unique, almost makes one want to buy three sets to run 3x just so you can drop it on Aragorn asap.

Anyways, those are my thoughts!

I practiced with 2 normal teams of Heroes, like a 2 player game, but on my own. It does seem easier. Each of the Spheres are good in 1 or 2 areas, but have weaknessess in others that the 'GAME' can exploit. Getting another Sphere to cover your deficiencies, looks the way to go. Solo Sphere play can be won, has been won and will be won, but it is tough. Well done to all who have succeeded! Remember that the Milkwood Quest is only difficulty 1. The next is 4, and the third is 7! Hopefully we will all know the game better by then. Cheers!

Got it today and so far have gone through 2 of the single sphere decks against the first quest.

I agree with others that tactics is a difficult deck to win solo with, it took me three attempts, and the third attempt i think i was pretty lucky to avoid too many locations, as these can just clog up the staging area and with the low willpower ratings of the tactics deck (and difficult to obtain any bonuses) its very difficult to progress the quest.

If you can get past card 1B though, "2B and 3B can fall pretty quickly.

Have also played with Leadership deck, and using Theodred's power with Aragorn's to effectively allow Aragorn to quest and fight in the same round is a pretty powerful combo. Made the passage through mirkwood a breeze, relatively speaking!

My first couple of solo attempts were failed, partially because I was misreading the rules (e.g. counting the threat of current location against me in the quest stage). One of those early attempts, I was at the location that doesn't allow you to draw cards, and didn't have enough willpower to overcome the threat total that I was doing incorrectly, which was clearly game over.

Once I got it straight, I actually did pretty well using the Leadership deck. The Theoden / Aragorn combo (Theoden supplies Aragorn with a resource when they both exhaust for the quest, and then Aragorn spends the resource to untap) was a key. Also, once Faramir hit the table, I could hold him in reserve and decide whether to spend his special (exhaust to give +1 will to the characters committed to the quest) depending on the encounter card that turned up. That plus lots of little allies helped me churn through locations, one per turn.

It was still tense and on-edge most of the time, an early treachery card dumped 4 event cards out of my hand, and it was touch-and-go for a couple of turns because of that.

At the end, a Sneak Attack from Gandalf, and being able to have everyone gang up on the Spawn, and I was able to get the win.

I think part of it was that I got lucky and pulled lots of locations; the combination of many small allies, and Faramir, and untapping Aragorn, really deals with that well. More combat would have made it been harder, because I'd be steadily losing allies.

Card sleeves are a necessity, and I'm still trying to figure out how to keep everything organized in the box.

I've played three solo games (the Mirkwood scenario) so far, using the Leadership, Lore, and Spirit sphere decks.

I won the first game (Leadership) easily mostly because of a lucky first hand: With Celebrian's stone I was breezing through the adventure. I scored 40 points.

The second game (Lore) was slightly more difficult but was turned around eventually by adding Faramir to the party. I scored 37 points.

The third game (Spirit) started extremely well since I could keep my threat level very low. In the end I lost because I had drawn the alternate third adventure card where you have to defeat the Spider boss. Since it kills a character every turn, I was soon running out of combatants.

To be honest I felt that the first scenario is a bit wonky, at least if played solo with mono-sphere decks. The outcome pretty much depends on which version of adventure card 3 you're drawing. If it's 'Beorn's Path' (which I had drawn in my first two games) and you have a sphere that is good at adventuring, you'll win. I assume if you're using the Tactics deck, you'll win if you draw the other path.

After the very first round of dumb mistakes, I immediately picked up my 'winning strategy' for future games: Don't go adventuring in the first round so you have the best chance to immediately get rid of the Forest Spider. Once you reach the third adventure card, go adventuring with as many characters as you can, ideally winning it in a single round.

I just played a Aragorn/Theodred/Eowyn Ld/Sp deck and sailed through Mirkwood with a score of 35. And so, full of confidence I decided to continue on down the Anduin in 'Nightmare' mode. Two trolls turned up straight away and so that lasted less than 2 turns.

So far, every time I've drawn Beorn's path, Ungoliants spawn has appeared in the next turn or two anyway - particularly annoying with the tactics deck, as i was able to kill it easily enough (Gimli + Citadel plate + Dwarven axe + about 5 points of damage is a fairly fierce attacker) but it took too many turns, and the threat got out of control before i could score any quest points. With a bit more luck/experience, it could probably have been turned around, but as that's only a difficulty 1 quest, it doesn't bode well for the later stages...

Our best score thus far was 44 Total....Spirit + Lore Decks. 1 Gandalf in each deck...though we saw him no less than 4 times.

A buddy of mine came over and we played the Passage Through Mirkwood scenario - the first one you are supposed to play.

We got our asses handed to us.

We played with two decks mashed together so we played with 50 card decks each instead of 25. He had Tactics and Spirit and I had Leadership and Lore. He used Legolas, Gimli and Dunhere. I used Aragorn, Theodred and Glorfindel.

Problem number one was that all of my friend's heroes were of the low Willpower variety, which made Questing difficult. Problem number two was that we got hit with Ungoliant's Spawn and King Spider on turn one, and Caught In A Web and Driven By Shadow on turn two.

Yeah. Ow ow ow ow. Basically we got hammered before we even had a chance to build up or do anything at all.

After that experience I would say this: Tactics and Lore seem to go well together, as do Leadership and Spirit... so we were behind the curve from the start there. Next, we didn't tune the decks at all and remove any high cost items from the deck in the Sphere where we only had one hero. If you want to tune the decks at all, then having 2 or 3 copies of the base core set is important. Lastly, Legolas is THE MAN, especially with Blade Of Gondolin attached.

Our first game we used the Tactics and Spirit decks. The combat ability in the Tactics deck kept us alive through the first adventure, while the Spirit moved us as swiftly as possible through the quest cards. We ended up successful with a final score of 81.

Wow, the tactics deck really cannot be played solo. The combined will of the 3 heroes is only 4 and there is only 1 card in the entire deck that can bumb that up to 5 with Beorn. (of course I forgot to put in Gandalf too but he's only good for one turn, how's he gonna help me quest?) You should at least have a will of 5 or 6 when questing and that means I was never able to quest at all let alone be able to defend myself after exhausting all my characters for the aforementioned pointless questing. There definitley seems to be an imbalance among the decks currently. I played previously with the spirit deck and had no problems earning explored tokens on active locations and the quest.

So are you guys that play solo using two decks as if two people were playing?

ivory_tower said:

I've been playing one single-sphere deck so far, always with 3 heros. Leadership seems pretty solid on its own, Lore was too slow all by itself.

I think I'm probably done with the single sphere decks, and will instead work on decks with two spheres (tactics and lore in one, and leadership and spirit in the other). Playing 2 decks solitaire doesn't feel quite right to me, I think I'll save that for sitting down with another player.

ivory_tower said:

I think you are forgetting Legolas awesomeness.

And Gandalf card (2 copies at least) is pretty much a MUST in any deck at the moment. He can help you do many things.

I just picked up the game today. For my first game I played the Leadership deck vs. Passage Through Mirkwood, and I breezed through fairly easily with a score of 39.

It seemed a bit easy, but getting Steward of Gondor on turn 1 meant that I didn't have any trouble getting a ton of allies into play. I pulled "Don't Leave the Path" for my final quest card, pulled Ungoliant's Spawn out as my spider of choice, and defeated it right away.

I'm looking forward to trying the other decks, and some 2 player games once my wife gets home from work!

I played two games. Both two player. The first was the Mirkwood. It wasn't too bad. I played Spirit and my buddy played Tactics. Legolas + Blade of Gondolin FTW. Tactics can be played solo. Unless I'm missing something glaring, the only downside to not questing is that it just gets harder to quest. No threat increase unless the threat strength is higher than the committed willpower. I think.

So Legolas quests through murdering piles of monsters. I'm thinking of making a Loregolas deck. 3x Rain of Arrows. 3x Blade of Gondolin. 3X Quick Strike.

The Anduin. Hoo boy. I played Leadership and my buddy played Lore. Yikes. Gloin kicked the bucket at the end. (Leaving the birds undefended and assigning him the damage generally stays lucrative as long as Lore is able to heal him). Without Faramir and an army of goons, the day would have been lost.

No, not questing is bad, very bad. As then the threat will always be higher and raise your threat a lot. Even if the threat is only one or two its still higher than zero.

Keep in mind that, if you use Rain of Arrows, it doesn't trigger Legolas' special ability.

But do you apply threat to your dial for not questing?

Bohemond said:

No. It just makes it easier for another character (if equipped with a Blade of Gondolin) to also trigger the advancement.