Toqtamish said:

Dam said:

Luck plays a part in those games too, unless you have a perfect game where all players involved always make the optimal move. But since it's normally only known what the optimal move was after the game has finished, these games tend to include luck as well. Not as much as in a random draw game like LotR, obviously, but still.

well, that depends on whether you call your opponent making a mistake luck or not...

faith_star83 said:

I would.

As would I. Every game involves some luck. Some more than others. Heck most of life involves luck in some fashion.

Oh dear. You really have a strange definition of luck. So if you lose a game of tic-tac-toe you think it's because your opponent was lucky? I think I'd enjoy playing chess against you

I guess, there is luck involved in finding an opponent who believes there is luck involved in these games. So, ultimately you're right

jhaelen said:

Nonsense, there is totally luck in chess and tic-tac-toe.... You randomly determine who gets to play first.

jhaelen said:

I do not appreciate the attitude. There is no need to be rude to make a point.

Well I wasnt so lucky with the tactis in scenario 1 solo, as expected. Questing was awful and altough I could take on every enemy, my threat kept rising sky high. Lots of locations on the table and I could not even explore the first location. Well lost big time, though with some tweaking, I can see nice potential for tactis.

Today I played my first 2 player game with a friend. He Leadership, me with spirit. Well we started with scenario 1, got easily through it, thought we could continue our quest and go straight through scenario 2 and had so much fun and went so well that we managed to beat scenario 3 as well, though it was really close in the end (my threat at 48, friends at 46). Did not keep track of scores, but I guess we did well, no heroes had died (though gloin almost was gone). So we finished our first nightmare mode game and had lots of fun. Too bad next time I know what the quests will be, as now it was a surprise what my goals would be. Well next time lore and tactis I guess, lets see how far we can get with that.

Having a tough time making any quest progress. I ran Tactics against the first quest a few times and quickly got crippled, so then I tried Leadership/Spirit against quest two and got creamed by the troll. It's getting kind of annoying, really. I think next time I'll try Tactics/Lore against the first quest, but I'm thinking that I'm probably gonna do custom rules to make it easier on me.

If you are getting frustrated I would try a Leadership/spirit. It is the best combo I think for these opening quests. Then you can get some victories and not be so discouraged. I must say I am having a great time with the game with my three oldest kids. I am hoping to get the wife to play tonight. I think it will be a better pass time for her than facebook games.

Apophenia said:

Good grief, I saw your icon and though johnny shoes had invaded these forums too.

AUCodeMonkey said:

Being confused with someone else is just one of my many evil powers.

Apophenia said:

It's definitely evil to be confused with jshoes

To answer the thread topic, however, the first game went fine. Me and a buddy played Tactics and Leadership, respectively. We got lucky with some Gandalf/Beorn draws to kill Ungoliant's Spawn. Overall it was a whole lot of fun. We had a few things we needed to get clarified, and thankfully the unofficial FAQ thread is alive and kicking, so thanks to all who have contributed to that!

I then played a few solo games. Annihilated it with the Spirit deck (Final score of 22!), and then got crushed with Lore. I knew I shouldn't have let that Dol Guldur Orc attack go through unblocked...

I've played a few other games: a 3 player Spirit/Lore/Tactics game, and Spirit/Tactics game, and we've managed to win all of those on the Escape through Mirkwood scenario.

Overall, Spirit is my favorite faction right now, though I see huge potential in a Leadership/Tactics deck (Sneak Attack-> Beorn, etc.). Now I have 2 more core sets on the way so me and the missus can start fiending. Can't wait to see what we come up with!

First game was a success. I played a Leadership deck using the cards from two core sets. Also included three Gandalf cards (which ended up being one of the key cards I used for victory). Final score was 40.

Aragorn and Steward of Gondor combo was set up on first turn. This was huge. Along with some chump allies, Faramir came by about mid-game and helped seal the deal. He's an amazing character as well, especially if one has a bunch of chump allies able to commit to completing a quest.

In the end, Faramir died to US, but in turn his sacrifice was not in vain for Gandalf and Aragorn were able to kill off the foul beast for the win.

I plan to try the other spheres as well, but I really liked how Leadership played for me.

Have now played the first two games of my "Full Matrix" project: 4 starter decks * 4 scenarios = 16 games.

I kicked off with the Lore deck.

First game against PtM-DLtP: a hopeless loss, got US shadow effect early on raising threat to a level where I couldn't afford an easy turn and all enemies auto-engaged. Got swamped by Spiders and when Chieftan Ufthak entered the fray, the game was up.All heroes killed in the turn I started Quest 3. With Threat at 47, I had no hope at all of killing US in 3 turns while at the same time questing to prevent threat being added and keeping my heroes alive.

Second game against PtM-BP was on a knife edge. I eventually lost due to Threat hitting 50 with 9 progress tokens placed on Quest 3! The killer was a last-turn Necromancer's Reach which took out Glorfindel and removed his 3 Willpower from the Quest. If I hadn't spent my 2 available pool (Denethor had already fallen to the Hummerhorns) on an Erebor Hammersmith for his 1 WP, but 1 of them on healing Glorfindel, he would have lived and I would have scored the winning progress token. Bad decision making, essentially.

Did a lot better today with Leadership/Spirit for a nice questing engine, but I still feel the encounter deck piles up too fast for a solo player to handle. I'm experimenting with custom solo rules, like questing requires only half of the listed progress token rounded up, and a five-card limit on the encounter deck until new spaces are cleared. Also contemplating a Magic: The Gathering system where blocked monsters and heroes/allies simply exchange combat damage, since you have to exhaust them no matter what.

I've had a lot of first games, so far all in Mirkwood:

My first solo game with the Leadership starter deck went very well. Using Aragorn twice per turn is very, very helpful. The second game was a success too, even though I had to kill Ungoliant's Spawn twice. Overall, the Leadership deck is effective, flexible and very forgiving of new player mistakes. After playing half a dozen more games, I think this deck may actually be a little too strong.

That made my first games with the other starter decks kind of disappointing. When the encounter draws went well (when they alternate weak foes with bonus-granting locations) the Spirit, Lore and Tactics starter decks are fun and challenging. But they fall apart quickly when the encounters don't go their way.

Now I'm trying my first few games with mixed, 50-card decks. It probably has a lot to do with my inexperience, but these decks are really susceptible to bad encounter draws. On my best game (with a mixed Leadership and Lore deck designed to generate resource points and cards as fast as possible), I fought the encounter deck to a standstill. All those cards and resources gave me a lot of options, but deciding how to use those options was very slow. After 90 minutes I called it a night. On my worst game, I lost two of my heroes on my second turn to a horrible combination of the Necromancer's Reach and the Hummerhorn's shadow effect. Since then I've played 7 or 8 more games, and they've all been pretty quick and pretty brutal. I'm hoping I'll get better with time, but right now the frustration's getting the better of me and my decision-making's getting worse with every game.

Haven't had my first 2-player game yet. But that'll happen next week. I suspect that this is where the game really shines anyway.

Seems i've done something wrong. perhaps that's why my first couple of goes at PtM were so easy. I have played passage through mirkwood for about 5 times now and i've never lost, usually finishing a solo game with around 45 points and a dual game with 60/65. I think the mistake i'm making is this. Instead of mono faction (tactics, lore, etc.) i'm playing dual sphere decks. Both in solo and dual games. For a game I just mesh up all the spirit and leadership cards + 3 gandalf for a 61 cards deck and take 2 heroes, say Aragorn and Eowyn.

Isn't this a valid way to play the game? The games have been rather easy until now, beacuse most of the time i played with one 'combat' sphere (tactics, leaderschip) and one 'control' sphere (lore, spirit.) So questing for 8 has been rather common after turn 7 or something (eowyn + attachments, faramir, etc.)

Thanks,jorm

jormungadr that is a perfectly fine way to play. You can play with whatever deck you want. Mono, dual, triple sphere. it is up to you. You are not doing anything wrong.

Well I have finished a few games now and we are actually finishing in the negatives! last night we scored -24 on JatA and we scored -21 just a few mins ago! have come to look up tricky changes and peoples new scenerios! :-)

Did try a few homebrew changes but even 2 tournie decks can't beat 1 treachy and 2 other cards every turn! :-(

Regards

Well, I just got my core set yesterday and after reading through the rules my wife and I decided to give it a twirl - just to keep it crazy and adventurous we opted no to look at any of the cards in the decks before playing. I picked the core set's default Spirit deck and my wife took the core set's default Lore deck.

Not quite having a full grasp of the mechanics and all the bizarre combinations of effects that could happen in this particular game, my three heroes were dead by the end of turn 6. My wife got cooked shortly threafter, as there were too many critters in the staging area being dumped on her to handle solo.

So I decided to try Passage Through Mirkwood scenario again solo. I used the Spirit deck again and did manage to win (barely) with a final score of 54. It came down to a race against the clock (or rather the Threat Dials) as the one hero I had left was badly wounded, had that accursed "Caught in a Web" treachery card on him (and I was out of resource points) and all my allies that were out were on the weak side (2 Northern Trackers and 2 Lorien Guides). The Chieftan Ufthak card was waiting in the staging area to come out and beat the tar out of me. The big advantage I had there was using those 4 allies to knock out Location cards from both the staging and active areas very quickly. Thankfully, I did manage to get the 10th required progress token onto the "Beorn's Path" quest on the turn when the threat dial changed to 35, preventing me from ever having to fight Ufthak.

Whew! If that one was level 1, I can only being to guess how much more difficult the level 4 and 7 scenarios will be...

Matticus

Hi folks!

Finally got the game...I spent days and night translating it in italian for our distributor and it was a nightmare. Great game, lots of concepts and terms...

I loved it since the first time I read it...But now I finally got my copies and played a bunch of solo games...

Tried 3-4 games with Leadership (mono), a couple with Tactics and a couple with Spirit...Just the first scenario (I focused more on the gameplay than the actual deckbuilding-strategy)...Won a couple of games with Leaderschip and almost won one with Spirit...Tactics didn't work that well...

It seems like a bunch of bad "encounter draws" can ruin the whole game: too many locations or the wrong enemy at the wrong time and you're done...But still a great game experience...

I generally like the "american style" in card-boardgames...Luck is part of our life, so why avoiding it in a game?

This game is a matter of tough choices and encounters, extremely strategical deckbuilding and some luck...Very nice, especially if you consider that it's a boardgame with a card-game core, that's almost perfect for any kind of player out there.

Solo play is addictive for me and I'm lookin' forward playin' some 2-3 players game...

Someone says that 4 players games are "easy" and not that satisfying...Is it true?

I guess things will get better with adventure packs...But, as I see the game right now, I see it like a 2, maximum 3 players game...maybe 3 players is the right choice for a possible but still tough game experience.

Anyway: definitely like it both like a piece of "art" in game design and an amazing, original card-board game.

I recently played my first 2-player game, introducing my friend to it. Fortunately, he seemed to love it! I kind of threw him in the deep end, having built dual-sphere decks, but he got the hang of it pretty quick. We then decided to make mono-sphere decks to best use the resources and played a couple of games with those. Overall, we won scenario 1 3/3, scenario 2 2/3 and 0/1 on scenario 3.

He said he's looking forward to playing again, so now I'm looking forward to HFG for some new cards to explore. I would love to try 3 or 4 player, but I don't know any other card players

Mestrahd said:

You are lucky just for having one friend who likes to play Lotr with you.I have no one and i only play solo.I enjoy it a lot but but i think this game must be a lot better if you play it coop.Sentinel and range keywords are only letters in my games .