Hello,

I am just after my first game using mono Leadership deck with all 3 heroes trying to push through Mirkwood's spiders. Well, what can i say - the son of Arathorn failed miserably and to make matters worse he did not even have a dignity to die on the battlefield like a man but fled before constant increase of threat leaving poor Gimli choking with blood behind...

The game is plain brutal when you draw unlucky streak of encounters...I must say i enjoyed the scenario even though the game kicked my ass in i believe 6th/7th rounds. However my team's humiliation was caused not by their incapabilities but really unlucky streak of encounters pouring threat on the party.

I must say i really sympatised with them - after a nice hand draw which came with 2x Gandalf + set of allies they thought Mirkwood will be a peanut. Having a high spirit they commited to the quest willingly hoping to quickly progress through first part of the forest just to be hit on the head with Necromancer's Pass drawn from encounter deck just after that. Then they took the old forest road with Forest spider chasing their tails. Gimli took the fight with spider and his wounds contributed resources so needed to call Gandalf to aid them in next round

Things were not looking that bad at tt moment as Gandalf promised to help clear old forest road and even progress some more through Mirkwood and just at the moment he commited to the quest along with the rest of the team Mountains of Mirkwood emerged on the distance driving back the party with their tails down. Gandalf left the party so they were left questing in vain just to not let the threat build up without the chance to go deeper into Mirkwood or even go past old forest road . Battered by spider Gimli was crushed to see Hummerhorns to emerge to staging area - they called Gandalf once more to help but even when he disposed of the creature and assisted in questing he was left speechless and his heart fell when Necromancer's Pass threatened them once more...The threat was relentlessly beating them down and when during next two consecutive rounds they were hit each time by Necromancer's Reach causing Gimli to fell not to rise ever again they saw their end is close.

Well - that would be about it :-) When the game is hard on you i saw no chances with monodeck, especially if the party questing potential is not high enough to overcome possibility of appearing two threat-heavy locations in staging area not to mention active location and some creatures in addition.:-)

Anyway it is all a lot of fun s i cannot wait until i tackle Mirkwood again!

All in all - a GREAT GAME :-)

qwertyuiop said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you don't quest the threat strength is always going to be higher than the committed willpower. The threat shoots up if you don't quest.

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

Yes.

I so far have only had a chance for one run at it last night after work. I used the Lore Deck. I got pretty bogged down mainly due to wondering how exactly to interprest rules. The one that flumoxed me most was how to use the Shadow Cards abilities during engagements. I was forced to discard an attachment card, but could not figure out if it only applied to the Hero in the engagement or the entire questing party.

monkeylite said:

LOL. Well that takes the game from challenging to brutal for the second two scenarios. Lore is not good.

Got my first game in finally. The first scenario was pretty much a breeze, even with decks we made from just one box. The Troll was really the only challenge (although the dogs that go back into the staging area are VERY annoying in the last one, since you have to kill all minions).

I had Aragorn, Gloin, and Eowyn - my friend had Legolas, Gimli, and the draw 2 gal. I quested heavily, he kicked butt with Gimli mainly. Turns out Aragorn with Steward of Gondor 1st turn is as good as I thought it would be. Even making a ton of mistakes we finished with a good score.

Some cards were worse than I thought they would be (card draw isn't that good IMHO, even using all the cheap events), and some were way better (the tactics guy that does 1 when he defends, the kneeling a hero to stand one). It was a fun experience, but I am looking forward to solo, and playing the other (harder) scenarios.

We won our first 2 player game (barely) using the Leadership and Spirit decks. The Northern Tracker & Lorien Guide made an immense contribution! Much easier to handle locations when those scouts & rangers add progress tokens. Gandalf made an appearance at just the right time which really helped. We lost about half our heroes by the end but managed to win. It felt a bit odd at the ending though since we won by defeating Ungoliant's Spawn but had so many other enemies attacking us that we wouldn't have lasted two more rounds. Story-wise we had to interpret it as the monster's death causing the other enemies to run away in hopeless fear.

It really is a story game for a cooperative group which is what we love best. The various Quests will make or break this game in the long run. We're looking forward to the next Adventure pack already so expand the possible scenarios. Using specific Encounter sets really enhances the story feel and makes each quest really different and new cards and sets will enhance the story and challenges and make it more replayable.

While we are looking forward to seeing new characters, my fear is that adding lots of new attachments and events, especially if they require modifications to the existing rules, will interfere with the wonderful flow and ease of play. That's what, IMHO, killed the Decipher CCG. Later expansions overwhelmed the rules with all sorts of oddities that made it harder to play and less fun.

Keep the Quests and Encounters coming! That's the heart of the game and story. More characters (can't wait to see Bilbo in the next pack) would be great too. But please take it easy on Events and Attachments so it doesn't become an arms race or spin off in odd directions.

I played with the standard Aragorn, Gloin, Theodred in a solo game.

First, I absolutely crushed the Mirkwood quest. With everyone unscathed I felt emboldened and moved right on to the Anduin. Wow, that was freaking hard. I got past the Hill Troll okay, but I got hung up about halfway down the Anduin (16 quest points!?)

I kept getting the **** surge bats, so for 2 straight turns I had THREE encounters!

In the end, it was my threat level that took me out. I got 2 copies of Pursued by shadow, of course, OF COURSE, on turns that I hung back from questing to deal with my one optional engagement. So, that was +10 threat right there... toast.

All in all, an amazing and quite addictive game. I now feel like a hermit as I'm huddled over playing cards alone.. but I'm ok with that.

Made it through Anduin the second time just barely, with a score of 52.

I finally drew a Gandalf which was a huge help.. and I got to use him for 2 turns thanks to the card that lets you drop an ally then return to hand.

Came down to Aragorn and allies taking down Chieftain Uthnak.. epic!

My first games with each sphere ended with a 2-2 record.

Spirit has great questing power, but doesn't appear to have enough hitting power to survive many enemy attacks.

Tactics has massive killing ability, no need to worry about any enemy. However, low questing seems to earn a great amount of threat.

Lore is a versatile and very tricky deck. In one play I don't think I quite have a full grasp of it. Fun stuff, though.

Leadership is very versatile and good at almost everything. I'm particularly fond of the great number of allies. I'll say the same thing that I said when I first read The Two Towers, all those years ago: I like him. A lot.

I'll be the first to say outright that my first experience sucked. My head was buried in the rulebook most of the time trying to figure out what happened first, then next, and what does this do, and what happens now, etc. I had a friend come over who has some Magic experience and together we tried to make sense of it all. I have ZERO experience with this type of game so the learning curve is huge for me. So far, I am frustrated, so I'll have to watch the tutorials again, read the rules again, and read more forum comments. My friend and I decided to start with the Leadership/Spirit deck but two hours later we hadn't made it to 2A of the Mirkwood Scenario due to the rules marsh.

Cabelos said:

Well most of us here on the forums try to be friendly folks, much like Hobbits giving presents away on their birthday, so feel free to ask any questions you want.

Maybe I'm missing a key element here, but with only 3 heroes, playing solo is really hard. You exhaust one to questing to stay in the game threat wise, leaving you 2 to defend. Except for Spirit most of the starting values are over 25, so you're at LEAST pulling the Forest Spider. I tried first with Lore (starting value of 30) and pulled everything on the checks. 2 defenders isn't enough when you have 3-4 enemies engaged. Therefore, you're either taking massive damage or you have absolutely no one to attack with, which just increases the number of enemies. With Lore I could keep healed fairly long but my threat quickly got to 50 (in like 5-6 turns). I tried my second game with Spirit (starting 24) so I got one free round without pulling the Forest Spider but quickly ran into the same issue of not enough hit points to soak the free attackers. I lost one hero on turn 3 due to a bad shadow card.

Am I missing something important for solo play? If not, my enthusiasm for this game dropped quite a bit.

Mestrahd said:

Yeah, if you have 3-4 enemies engaged then you are going to have a problem but you should kill them before it comes to that point. Plus in the first scenario you shouldn't have that much trouble with the first turn.

Say you are playing the lore deck. You get an average starting hand and play something like the Daughter of the Nimrodel. There is 3 Threat Strength showing (in the form of a Forest Spider and an Old Forest Road) so you decide to send Glorfindel and your Daughter of the Nimrondel questing. Say you flip a second Forest Spider. You increase your threat by 1 but that was a risk you took. You decide to travel to the Old Forest Road so you can straighten Glorfindel and use him to attack. Then the two forest spiders engage you. You decide to defend against one of them with Denethor and he takes no damage. Since you know you can use your Daughter of Nimrodel to heal you later you decide not to defend against the other attack. You put the three damage on Glorfindel. Then you use Beravor and Glorfindel to attack and kill one of the Forest Spiders (Their combined attack total of 5 is enough to kill it). Then you increase your threat by one because it is at the end of the turn.

So at the end of the first turn you have 3 damage on Glorfindal which you can heal most of next turn and a single Forest Spider in front of you. There is nothing in the staging so you can send only Beravor questing so that you can attack the Forest Spider with Glorfindel. Maybe you even have an extra ally or two to make the turn easier.

Thank you.

I've since played a couple of other types of deck and won. One was Leadership/Lore using the super-engine of Aragorn/Theodred/Steward/Stone and another was Tactics/Spirit with Legolas/Thalin/Eowyn. In the Leadership/Lore game I had like 15 allies out by the end, so now I realize just how important they are. I'm also getting better at recognizing the cards worth mulliganing for. So, having actually won 2 times so far, my outlook is much better for scenario one at least.

Well, my first game went the same way as my 2nd to 9th games - I got the heads of my Heroes served to me on platters... Until I discovered that engaged enemies do not count as being in the Staging Area and therefore do not add their threat values to the Quest. Correcting for this oversight brought victory in the very next game (Leadership against the 1st scenario).

Whilst I appreciate that no set of rules can account for all possible card interactions - the game has been made playable only with the help of these forums. I think the rules, as far as they go, are well presented, with plenty of worked examples (and video tutorials available) - however, I am eagerly awaiting the first official FAQ.

Love the theme - love the presentation - and I think it's only going to get better.

Leadership + Lore starters, victory with a score of 72 (37+36+3-4). Getting Protector of Lorien on Glorfindel and Aragorn meant questing wasn't all the difficult. Once Faramir showed up, questing like crazy (commit everyone on Leadership side, then use the Ready all characters, use Faramir netted 9 tokens on the final location where you need 10 to win). Would've won in one turn, but saved Sneak Attack + Gandalf (with Fara extra 5WP) in case something nasty would pop out of the Encounter draws.

My first solo game? I lost horridly. My first co op game. We won. then we did custom decks and decided to do the last quest. Lost horribly.

Fotonurth said:

Don't expect more,by playing only with Core Set. New Adventure Packs, give more new possibilities and new option for our decks

First AP i think, be released in first day of june

I've played 8 times so far, each time with a solo deck and always against Passage Through Mirkwood. First game was with a Leadership Sphere and I lost, second game was again with Leadership and this time I managed to win with 43 points at the end. Third game was with Tactics Sphere and I lost, so fourth game was with Tactics Sphere again, this time I won with 49 points at end of game. Fifth game I chose Spirit Sphere and again lost! (pattern emerging here!) Sixth game was again with Spirit and I won with 40 points at end. Seventh game I chose Lore and (you guessed it) lost, so eighth game was with Lore again and I managed to win with 45 points at end.

I enjoyed all games, but have since realised I had been playing slightly wrong ( to my detriment) I included the threat of Enemies that were engaged with me and so would often find it difficult to progress in quests. If I had played correctly I believe I would have won more convincingly and may not have lost so many of the games. On the plus side I have managed to succeed with all Spheres.

One thing that I found throughout all of the games I played is that Quest card 1B is the hard part and once/if I got passed that it was fairly plain sailing to win from there. Depending on the Sphere you play, a card draw of mostly Enemies or mostly Locations is a major factor in your chance of winning.

Oh and another thing, on every single game that I got to stage 3B on, I always drew Don't Leave the Path, so I have always needed to kill Ungoliant's Spawn and have never tried Beorn's Path. I may not do it random next time and choose Beorn's Path to try it.

Won 4 games of Mirkwood in coop Tactic/Leadership without problems. But we cannot win Anduin

Rules Question: If no player will commit any character to quest - so no character questing. Will encouter deck slit stag new cards? Is possible to avoid questing and then stagging another enemies? Sometimes we had 3 locations in stagging area and another asi active location and we cant have enought willpower for questing...

Thx for answer!

-Dafrigo

Reveal Encounter card(s) and Resolve Questing are both mandatory steps you resolve, regardless of whether you send people to quest. If you don't send anyone, all the Threat out there goes straight to your dial.

Recieved my 3 core sets today (only opened 1 yet) and just finished my first solo game with starter deck of leadership (scenario 1). At start I was worried about not having enough willpower to complete quest AND being able to attack and defend as well. In the end I won pretty easily, though primarily because I got Steward of Gondor out in turn 1 and got out 1 ally each turn with these extra resources. Ungolianths Spawn came out quickly and because of its forced effect I lost the quest phase and threat went up to 32, just enough for the spider to engage me. Surprised me a bit, but the next turn I could kill the spider with help of Gandalf. Then I got lucky with card draw from the encouter deck I guess and questing from then on was easy. Then I had to kill the Spider again to win...

Well I had fun, though I felt a bit lucky. The combo of Theodred and Aragorn Questing seems really strong and with Steward of Gondor you get a (relative) huge boost of resources each turn. Well I think I will try another game tonight with Tactics. Doubt I will get through so easy again.

Primus_Magicus said:

Anyway, congratulations and lots of luck for your attempt with the tactics deck!

Winning any game involves luck no matter what the game is Carcassonne, Magic, Ascension, LotR.

Toqtamish said:

Chess? Games with no randomness, nothing but open information?