Hi everybody:

So I purchased the "Hunt for Gollum" adventure pack, and my girlfriend and I built decks for the first time (we'd been running the premade decks before hand). I have 2 copies of the Core Set and I just made proxies for the remaining 13 cards, so we had access to a full deckbuilding set. She ran Spirit and Tactics (Eowyn, Dunhere, and Legolas) while I ran Leadership and Lore (Aragorn, Bilbo, Beravor). We shuffled up and set out.

It took a while, but once we got our feet under us, there wasn't much the encounter deck could do to stop us. Between the added draw of Bilbo and Beravor and the added resources of 2 Stewards of Gondor and 1 Horn of Gondor, we were getting cards out like crazy. Our threat climbed pretty steadily, but we were able to use Gandalf to reduce it. We were regularly questing with 15+ willpower, and not even 3+ locations in the staging area could stop us, while a beefed up Legolas could kill just about anything within 2 hits.

It was nice to win, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed that we won our very first time. I recognize that there are a couple of factors that worked in our favor:

1. This quest only has a difficult of 4.

2. Our decks were naturally suited to questing, and the encounter deck seems to have a much larger ratio of locations than other decks.

Still, I feel like the frosting on the easy cake was Gandalf. He's the one that kept us from worrying about our threat. It seems to be generally agreed that Gandalf (especially Gandalf + Sneak Attack) is one of the most powerful cards in the game (if not the single most powerful card).

So here's my question: how significant would the impact be if we didn't run Gandalf on a quest anymore after we'd beaten it the first time? Gandalf, as he is now, almost feel like a set of training wheels: just like in the Hobbit, he shows up when the heroes are overwhelmed and resets the difficulty.

Do you think removing Gandalf would make the game significantly harder? Or am I overestimating the impact of that one card?

I think it is significantly harder but not impossible (1st quest probably not a big deal). Not fortunate enough to have Hunt for Gollum yet, so can't comment on that one specifically.

Note that Steward of Gondor is unique so you should only be able to get one in play.

I totally think that eventually, if you are playing in a tournament, Gandalft should be restricted officially by FFG to 1 copy per deck...

Woz said:

D'oh! Thank you! Somehow it slipped my attention that the attachment was unique.

Man, seriously, it was ridiculous. We were just SWIMMING in resources.

Okay, maybe I don't need to take off the training wheels just yet.

The balance of the game for now very bad. Yes Gandalf i very powerfull. And some heroes as well (Eowyn, Gimly, Aragorn.....) but some cads and heroes so weak!!!! So some heroes can manage it without Gandalf some cannot. There is not too much deck you can build up now in solo game to win. 2 or 3 decks only.

The gollum quest should be already advance for the players who is already past the core set already, know rules well, start to build up 50 cards expert deck right?

And what we see??? Looks like the Gollum quest very easy more easy than Anduin quest!!! This is strange!!! Where we going???? I try to understand but cannot..... And with new player cards the players deck will be more powerfull as well. So what about encounter and quest????? They should to be more challenge???? Maybe this tournament quests will be more tough???? i dont know..........

If people can easy win all this quest even with starters mono decks 30 cards what kind of interesting they will have to play and build up 50 cards expert decks??? What you think fellows???

Maggical said:

OMG you must go to prison for that statement.Not only we have Gandalf as an ally and not as a hero, not only we must discard him but now we must have only one copy of him???

SHAME ON YOU .

At the risk of angering Servant, I tend to agree with Maggical. Gandaf is such a strong card, that it will stifle design space as the game progress. Restricting him will open up a lot more possibilities as the game develops.

Glaurung, I understand your position, but I don’t think that you will ever be happy with a multi-player cooperative deck building game. You want a challenge you will only get in a direct, competitive format, and, at least for the time being, the lotR LCG cannot provide that.

I've been playing several TCG for more than 10 years and I strongly think that restricting tournament deckbuilding to 1x Gandalf per deck is a good move for the game, specially since it's SO powerful. There's no shame in saying that, I really think it will be better for the game...

Bohemond said:

Let me no agree with you Bohemond. I think this game can provide a lot of challenge.

But encounter decks and quests manage to be weak.

I have 2 core set. And i try to combine encounter sets. For example put 2 Driven the shadow, 2 eyes of the forest. Take away some weak cards and put more powerfull. Game change a lot than.

I personaly think this guys who made the game just simple make a lot of mistakes with balance and rules and now try ti fix it.

There is lot of opportunity how to make game really interesting and awesome. Just need to work on that and have a plan what to do.... Seems like they dont really have.

This is just a simple : i buy game learn rule, start build up the expert deck and realize there is no challenge and point to do so. To easy win. So what people will do???? Change for another game. So on the expert level they lose all players.

I will try and order already Middle earth ccg. This money i should spend to FFG right??? So this is result of this politics.

Only one thing in this game is still valid: TOLKIEN.

Maggical said:

It was only a joke mate.A bad one as i can see but a joke.I don't realy mean that you must shame for your opinion.

Bohemod@

You $##%^# you p^%&*% shame on you too.

Ok serius now i can understand your point but this is a game based on Tolkien and many people buy this game cause they can play with their favorite characters.If i am not wrong Gandalf is one of the most popular Tolkien characters and i think that many people like me want to play him.

Speaking only for my self if they do somethink like this they take for me half of the fun and my interest and maybe i will quit the game cause i don't enjoy a LOTR game wen i can't play(or play him only for one round) my favorite and one of the most important characters in the books.

In an older post i said that Gandalf could have an abilitie like Beorn.You can have him all the time in your area but if you use his abilitie you must discard him.Ofcourse they wanted to make Gandalf act like in the books and sneak attack still makes Gandalf+SA combo very powerfull but i prefer to limit sneak attack copies than Gandalf.

I think we should keep 3 Gandalf per deck BUT there should be an errata that his effects only happens if he is played in the planning phase (no sneak attack for example)

Kind of off-topic, but I thought Steward of Gondor was a unique title, so that you can't have two of them out? (I could see that making the game much easier, because you could play Gandalfs very easily.)

1 Gandalf limit means spirit becomes total imba vs other spheres. It can simply abuse him through 3 Stand and Fight, 3 Dwarven Tomb and Will of the West resuffle. Leadership still has Sneak Attack. So by this restriction we get:

Spirit: 7+ Gandalfs, Leadership: kind-of-4(3 one phase only) Gandalfs, Lore: 1 Gandalf and Tactics: 1 Gandalf.

Not really a great way to balance things out

IMO, the only card that may seem to be a bit too powerful is Unexpected Courage. Any present(Beravor) or future hero with a useful exhaust may be too unstoppable. Maybe UC should get a dot so that it's at least similar to Steward/Stone: Steward = 2 resource, Stone = 2 will, UC + Beravor = 2 cards.. I just think getting 2 cards per turn is ok, getting 10+ cards (2+ player game) per turn is not that ok. It also kind of ruin a "resource curve" as it makes players play a lot of cheap cards looking for cost/effectivenes ratio only, completly not caring about a rate at which the hand of cards is played. This easy draw mechanic makes majority expensive cards much weaker than they really are supposed to be.

Have you try the nightmare variant? It should increase the difficulty of the general experience.

Personally, I don't think that we should restrict Gandalf.

The thing about restricting card come from competitive TCG. I don't thinl that it is a problem when a card is a must have if it is easy to obtain in a cooperative deck.