I'm curious if folks prefer to build decks to beat a specific scenario or 'generic' decks that can take on a range of scenarios. I enjoy both, but I definitely like the idea of creating a versatile deck that can handle the location overload and the subtleties of HfG and still take on the punch in the jaw style of CatC. Something I look forward to trying after the full release of the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle is creating a deck that beats each scenario...maybe with a 5 card sideboard or something along those lines.

Thoughts?

I prefer making a fixed deck and running it against all available scenarios, rather than tailoring each deck for specific challenges.

I build up my deck as a deck against the game not against certain quest. My deck can beat every quest. When i make the deck i think what i do with threat, fighting, healing, questing. Important for me concept of the deck as a game deck not boosting for certain quest.

I prepare my self for for future tournaments. As i know on the tournaments we play against unknow quest, special scenario made for certain tournament.This is really cool!!!

i make allround decks as well

I prefer an all round deck to challenge any scenario rather than tailoring to a specific.

I also make "all comers" decks, and I'm hoping I won't have to stray very far from that mold to be able to consistently beat A Journey to Rhosghobel. For example, Miner of the Iron Hills is useful in 2 of our scenarios, so I use it, but it feels rather like dead weight the rest of the time. I hope something like Lore of Imladris won't feel the same way, but I predict it probably may. Funny to think that I'll probably be swapping out a Forest Snare (among other things) for 2-3 copies of Lore of Imladris, good lord.

Same for me, at least for my solo decks.

For multiplayer decks, we usualy decide in advance which scenario we'll play and who gets which hero. I slightly adjust my deck in that context (for example, running Miner of the Iron Hills if facing the Spider of Mirkwood encounter deck).

I like trying new decks and seeing how different ones play on different quests. For me at least using the same deck and same heroes over and over again each quest gets a little stale, switching up the cards in my deck and which heroes I use gives the quests more replay value in my opinion.

Lightdarker said:

About Miners : Yes you can use them not in every scenario but still is good ally even without ability.

I tend to swap a few cards for each scenario (like Miners, in or out depending on presence or absence of Caugh in a Web or Sacked!) so I really like the 5-card sideboard idea of the OP.

I also change Heroes depending on the Quest. For Anduin for instance, Aragorn goes out and Gloin comes in to lower starting threat.

But overall I like to play roughly the same deck for different Quests, and since I'm playing solo they tend to be tri-sphere.

The only one I have parked for now is Dol Guldur; I'm waiting for a few more adventure packs to come out before making a really good tournament-legal monosphere deck as i think having three Heroes of the same sphere is key to beating Dol Guldur solo.

I make Game Decks, not Scenario Decks.

But more importantly we design Decks as a Team. Knowing what the other players have is almost as important .

We regularly play 3 or 4 players and always discuss Team Tactics and Inter-Deck Strategies before hand.

What we DON'T do however, is decide what scenario to play. Not until it's actually time to play, and even then we sometimes let the dice decide for us.

/wolf

GhostWolf69 said:

you play 3-4 players regularly??? I play mostly solo. And sometimes play with my friend.

We dont really like to play more than 1 player cose we always win and is boring. Core set quests and HFG we NEVER EVER lose any 2 players game.

Ok Massing in Osgiliath and Carrock i hope change it la lot.

So tell me please you lose any game 3 or 4 players???? And if not what kind of fun you can have in the game which one you know already win???

Or maybe you play with precon starter decks??? Than i understand....

We started to customize deck just two weeks ago. Before that we used Core Set pre-made decks (single colour) only.

Now we've got 4 players having in total 5 Core Sets, and three HFG. (Carrock is not yet available here) and we recently started "building" decks ourselves.

Do we win alot? Yes. More often than not, we win. But it can still happen that we lose. Playing 2 players we frequently lose Difficulty 7 and sometimes even Difficulty 4 Quests. And in my opinion Difficulty 7 is HARD even with 3 and 4 players. I think we've only won the Dol Goldur quest 3 times out of 6 attempts.

Why do we still play? Because we compete with ourselves and try to get a better score than last time. We keep track of the scores we get and try to do better next time. There in lies the sense of competition.

/wolf

GhostWolf69 said:

AAAA ok. You lose 3 you win 3. So that fine.

But as i say before we never lose any 2 players game so we find is boring. Play for victory points?? I dont interesting......

But Massing in Osgiliath very difficult. I play alone and lose every second or third game. Still wait for Carrock. And wait for my friend to play with him.

Sounds like I should be happy we're not any good at this game then. :-)

/wolf

Indeed, I do both. I love the idea of having the all around deck, but what I find with such a build is that it eventually gets boring to play. That is when I change it up. It is always fun to tweak decks for certain quests, however, that seems kinda "lame" in some ways...like "too easy." I think that is the way the game is designed though; to let you see how powerful certain strategies can be against certain quests. I don't quite see how one can build a "cover all bases deck" with the current card pool...(perhaps you can if you buy 3 core sets, which I just can't justify). The game is about having fun...running the same ol' tried and true deck gets old to me; also, you can only really tweak said deck once per month when the new pack comes out. That's my 2 cents...Happy gamming fellow LOTR'ers!

GhostWolf69 said:

Ha ha ha. I play a lot. I like this game to much!!! And before i sue to play lotr tcg from Decipher. Was also good game if you heard about it.

Anyway hope see each other on the first world cup Tournaments!!!

DurinIII said:

I totally agree with you Durin. I like to make an all around deck, but tend to get tired of playing it after three or four cycles (not of the moon or the earth) of playing the regular quests. I find changing up the focus of the deck e,g; which card i want to help shine, makes deckbuilding pretty fun. However, it is somewhat challenging because I share two core sets with my wife and she often takes all the support/main cards. Like Eowyn, Beravor, and Theodred.

**** hero hog.

Some good comments. Along these lines, once the card population increases I would love to see FFG get creative with the quest scenarios to challenge deckbuilding and gameplay furhter...I could see a campaign set where the results of one scenario take you down different paths or cause you to start with a disadvantage or advantage in the subsequent scenarios. Another interesting one would be parallel scenarios...build 2 decks with no common uniques (other than Gandalf of course. He gets around). Play the scenarios (most interesting if they are different scenarios), if they both win, you play against the 3rd scenario with both decks. I think there are lots of concepts that can be built into the game to keep it fresh and unique.

I think it's a "soft" cheat when someone reads(or worse: memorises) the whole encounter deck. I mean the encounter deck is supposed to *surprise* heroes so that they are tested whether they are ready for everything. Game is just so much less fun when everything is known and nothing can really surprise a player.

avgzxc said:

This is exactly why I purposefully lock myself in a freshly painted, poorly ventilated room after every game I play.