I've only played this game solo and so far only with the 4 default decks, but it seems to me that the game is going to be a bit easier the more players you have (I guess that is only natural, to be fair), simply because of the number of extra characters you have to deal with stuff. Sure you get 1 extra card into the staging area, but you get 3 extra characters to deal with stuff, which is a net increase of 2 over solo players, per extra player.

I'm not complaining about this, because the difficulty of the solo game seems about right to me (its certainly not easy!), and if it gets a bit easier with more players, perhaps thats a good thing as it makes the game more about a social activity with friends without the 3 round massacres that I have witnessed on a couple of occasions solo!

I also think that a solo deck is going to be built totally different to a co-op deck, again not a bad thing.

From my experience, when playing solo it is all about how many characters you can get down on the board, to allow you to get enough willpower to devote to questing, while still keeping enough characters back to deal with the combat phase. I have had more success so far with the leadership deck (count the number of allies in that deck compared with others) than the other three, and Aragorn plays a big part of that i think, as does Celebrian's stone, for the willpower boost.

The lore deck seems particularly tricky, because although they have lots of support actions, especially around healing, this all becomes a luxury in solo mode, when what you really need is to remove encounter cards from play to keep the threat levels down. Lore does have forst snare which is an excellent card.

So far, i think a solo deck will end up being a primary leadership deck and secondary a.n.other deck depending on your play style preference or favourite heor (Eowyn from spirit again has high potential due to her high willpower and hence questing power).

I see a tactics/lore deck combo struggling in general terms, because the tactics allies are poor at questing to say the least. I can see this kind of deck being able to hold its own without making much progress but in the end it will be overwhelmed by too many locations in the staging area, unless the player gets lucky.

However, in a co-op game,, a tactics/lore deck would make a very good support deck for someone elses leadership heavy deck.

What have other peoples experiences being with playing with the default decks, or with more or less players?

Solo is really tough I found. Two players was a reasonable challenge and three was just easy. Haven't tried yet with four players.

I have had most of my ... near success in solo basing my deck around Tactics simply because of Legolas' ability to add progress tokens when killing creatures. I admit it hasn't gotten me through the 2nd scenario but I think once I figure out a good combination to it it may work.

Most of my drawback comes from when there is a patch of locations and treachery cards and I don't get any Creatures... and eventually I just threat out.So I have been considering running with Spirit instead of Leadership but the only issue with that is stupid the stupid took... he is worthless in solo mode and I need more allies that can actually make a difference. Granted I can pull my allies who die back with Stand and Fight. So I will most likely play with it and test it's success.

Either way it is difficult which I find a good challenge to be fun. Here is hoping I can make it through all three scenarios. P.S. Goblin Snipers... ouch. Especially when there are 2. You can't touch them.

I definitely agree that there will be some big differences between solo and co-op decks. For example, a lot of the keyword powers (specifically Sentinel and Ranged) work best with more than one player. Legolas is good in solo play but a real beast when you can further use his ranged power to assist a fellow player who may otherwise be tanking the creatures.

I think a lot of casual co-op play is going to revolve around players building decks that really compliment each other. Think of a tanking deck like I mentioned above. Lots of healing, guys with big defense, HP, and sentinel, and allies like the Son of Arnor and Gondorian Spearmen. The other play then builds a deck that focuses almost exclusively on location clearing and questing. At that point, any quest challenge should be a breeze to get through if the decks are built well.

Iron-on Ghost said:

Of the pre-built decks, I think, Leadership and Lore work best. Spirit has too few allies to work well.

After playing one game with each of the pre-built decks I've put together four two-sphere decks, which all work a lot better in solo play.