mr.thomasschmidt said:

HA HA HA HA. Is quite funny what you say. But there only one problem. Is nothing to do with real. My arguments is quite strong!!!!

But i ready to give all of them back to comeback to be small little baby. But i dont think is possible............

Glaurung said:

Do you mind if I ask where you live? Some of your posts are quite hard to read and I'm wondering if you're a native english speaker.

@Ulairi:

As he told about russian tales I think he is from russia. Also looking for time of his posts it is possible.

LEGA said:

Yes im Russian. But i live for now in Thailand.

It isn't that the game is "to easy" , it is that if you are into deck building, once you design a deck that can beat a quest, you always beat it as the quest deck has no ability to surprise you or get tricky like when playing a human in a duel game. No matter how "hard" the quest, you can design a deck that will crush. There is no doubt that Escape is one of the hardest solo quests, there are even some decks floating about now that use a single copy of core that are able to beat that pretty regularly.

What this means is that dedicated players, especially those with high level dueling game background soon find deck builds and plays that make the quests pretty trivial. A perfect example of this is Conflict at the Carrock. This quest seamed pretty hard, but is now considered one of the easiest in the game, why? Because people now know it and can play to it, they know what is coming, what the threats are and how to play and use their deck to crush it. ALL the quest are like this. The only one I have problems with solo still on a regular basis is Osgilith and Escape.

It isn't that the game is easy, it is that it is static, it dose not adapt to you, or to your game situation. So once you have a working strategy and deck, you ALWAYS have a working strat and deck.

booored said:

I think there is more to the weakness of Carrock than just knowing the decks. Same decks (with minor improvements) that crushed Carrock 7-0, broke even against Rhosgobel 3-3, same result for Anduin and HFG went 4-2 with a pair of very close call wins. If Carrock is missing direct damage Treacheries, Rhosgobel has more than its fair share of them IMO (on the back of the last game seeing three first turn hero deaths: Exhaustion + Festering Wounds).

Glaurung said:

Your English is better than my Russian.

Menya zavoot Marlow. Kak vy pajivayete?

(I don't even know if this forum would allow cyrillic?)

booored said:

I understand your point, but I can't say I agree with the claim that what you call the "static" nature of the encounter deck is the only reason that some feel the game is too easy. Suppose you played a scenario and just increased the threat strength of each location by 1 and the attack and defense value of each enemy by 1. Would you not say that the game is still static in nature, and yet more difficult? In other words, the game could be more challenging if the actual encounter deck created such a challenge, even if you know all the possibilities of cards to come. I believe that the reason players with well-constructed decks are finding the game too easy is a result of not only the weakness of the encounter deck itself, but also because of the versatility of the expanding player cards (some of which are designed to counter-act some of the nasty mechanics of the encounter deck) and the synergy of new cards with old ones that offsets the original game balance.

absolutely. Your right the game has the mechanics to try and address this. There are ways that you could make the deck more reactive based on your board position though quest cards and effects that run in the staging area or w/e. But at this point the game don't have this.

Even if you increased the threat of all the cards by +2 or w/e, it is still static, and once you built a deck that can beat it, you will always have a better than average chance of beating it.. unless you upped the power again and as you said as more cards come out the easy of beating a given quest will get greater and greater.

Some really simple effects like say, if you have threat under 22 all cards gain surge2, or if you have more than 5 allys out all treachery cards get Doom3 or Enemy cards that are engaged at the start of the round when you have 5 allies get to attack twice, or a dmg buff, or an extra shadow card .... w/e I am not a designer. The point is that you make effects that use the board and threat position of the players to determine there affects. While this wouldn't be perfect, it would mean that the decks would in some way be reactive. There is so much they could trigger off, if you have X or more attachments on a single hero. How many restricted attachments, for ever unique character / item the encounter deck gets this buff... if you draw more than x cards in a single round, how many cards are in your hand at a given time. If you discard x ammount of cards, encoungter deck surges etc etc

The crux of the point is that when you buff your deck and your player board you need to take into account that at teh same time it will buff and change teh encounter deck. Adding a entire different and extra level of strategy.

I think this would be a good solution, though it doesn't "really" matter, well like I think a reactive encounter deck would be awesome, but players will work out stratergies and deck combos that will beat a given scenario, and that is it, they have it beaten, all they need is the draw. So even a encounter deck like what I am talking about here will at some point become trivial.

booored said:

Some really simple effects like say, if you have threat under 22 all cards gain surge2, or if you have more than 5 allys out all treachery cards get Doom3 or Enemy cards that are engaged at the start of the round when you have 5 allies get to attack twice, or a dmg buff, or an extra shadow card ....

Yes you hit the point. This is a biggest porblem of the game mechanic. I already talking about it all 6 months. Encounter deck should react on player growing power!!!!

When we start the game player side is weak but Encounter deck play with all his full power. In the middle of the game we more stronger by attachments and allies card draw but Encounter deck still play with the same power. And from certain moment players start to be more powerful then encounter deck and game is done. You know encounter deck cannot do nothing to you.

But is possible to change. Make when revealed and Shadow effect not only track a threat level but also track the ally number and attachments number.

Like : discard 1 ally from play or if you can spot 4 ally discard 2 ally. Or for every ally make enemies strange +1 or for any cards in hand or for any attachments +1 threat level. Than some threachery cards working as a condition stay all the time on staging area and give some permanents effect to all encounter cards or somethings. Yes we have some cards like this. Example: Old ford in HFG but so few of them for now to be a serious power.

For example Drums in the deep: Treachery-condition stay on the staging area. all orks get +1 attacks and +1 threat. forced: every first orc revealed from encounter deck gains surge.

Also there is lot of opportunity do something with a quest cards. Cose most of the quests for now have only 2 cards and game text mostly is only on 1 side.

So there lot of opportunity again make some effects between moving from 1 quest cards to another. Cose in my opinion further you go danger must grow.

And im sure only that can already make game much more exiting. I also believe the quest and encounter cards didn make for now in full power and with good approach. Sounds like (50% power of great is used). Only Osgiliaht is done well in my opinion. All Shadow of Mirkwood cycle is little bit boring. But ok i understand is the first one.

Marlow said:

Im ok Marlow. Thanks for ask.

This forum is also good opportunity for me to practice my English typing.

Now is much better then before.

booored said:

In LotR instead of your opponent changing the deck, a new quest deck is published.

To simulate the effect of not knowing what kind of deck your opponent brings to the table just determine randomly which scenario you're playing against.

About "difficult - easy": IMO the game is difficult for solo. It is hard for me to defeat as solo 3 of 4 scenarios that I have (easy only Passage through Mirkwood). But it really challenge. Its easier and more interesting when I play 2 players games.

But think about that: most of gamers don't think that that it is easy. So FFG doesn't need to make it more harder that it is, because the most part of players will have no possibility to win and they will be disappointed, that may case decrease of selling the product. We all people, and we always want to win. And this game gives us opportunity to do it and it is interesting, so we all (most of all) are happy. So FFG made very good decision: difficulty level. If some scenario easy for you, you can don't use it, play only the hardest: Osgiliath, Dol Guldur...

LEGA said:

IS very true what you say. I think the best solution is make scenario with ability to increase and discrease difficult level. You always can choose by adding the certain cards or special rules (not home made by official rules) difficult level as you like. Same like video game. Actually we already discuss this before somewhere on this forum. So lets see what designers will do with that.

@Glaurung and @Marlow:

And really good place for improving your my English.

P.S. I'm from Ukraine.

jhaelen said:

the kind of decisions a human can make about the cards he/she decides to play is completely different form the way the encounter deck would work. I am not sure exactly where to start as your question seams a bit wired to me. Sill even in a duel game were people use the same decks you will see massive variety due to how they play, holding cards, sacrifice, faints. A static game rule of turn a card play it, is nothing like how a human plays a game. Just look at this game and how you hold or play cards from your hand. Surly you can see how more complex your own thinking is on card decisions?

jhaelen said:

Or reverse things: First pick a scenario. Then (assuming this is a solo deck) pick 5 heroes at random and select three to build a deck around for that scenario. Imagine: You know you are going to go up against the trolls, but you only get to pick your heros from Frodo, Bilbo, Thalin, Eleanor, and Legolas.

booored said:

If you don't see any variety in the LotR games you play you probably forgot to shuffle the cards

Since there's no 'intelligence' behind the revealing of cards, randomness combined with nasty effects will have to substitute for it. It's exactly this randomness that has at times been criticized by other posters, because it is difficult to create a player deck that will beat a scenario reliably. Even after you've played a dozen games you've won easily you can still have a 13th game that you don't win because the sequence of revealed cards is extremely 'unlucky' for you.

jhaelen said:

yea, but you shouldn't ever be surprised. You only need to play the encounter deck one or two times before you know exactly what is in it. You know what cards are threats and what are not. You know that if you pull your cancel shadow card or w/e to never use it ever unless this one threat your expecting pops up. So unlike a human duel game (even using the same decks) you can tailor your decks to counter specific game changing circumstances. What you end up with is a deck that can counter anything the encounter deck throws at you, as long as you play correctly in holding your counters for when they are needed.

What this means is that after you play the game a few times and design a deck to beat it, you basically have a answer to any situation the game can throw at you. I mean your not going to be killed by rock slide EVER after the first time it gets you.

Once you build your deck, all you need to do is inelegantly use it to beat most quests, sure there is a random element that can trip you up now and then, but in general, once you build a good deck you have a better than average chance to beat the quest every time.

I am sure if you look at your decks you can say that you have a good chance of winning say Hunt for Golem. As in you basically nvr loose to it, I mean you might but not often.

Anyway, this "chance" of winning also just gets better and better as we get more and more powerful card and combos.

booored said:

yea, but you shouldn't ever be surprised. You only need to play against a human opponent's deck one or two times before you know exactly what is in it. You know what cards are threats and what are not. You know that if you pull your cancel shadow card or w/e to never use it ever unless this one threat your expecting pops up. So just like using a fixed encounter deck you can tailor your decks to counter specific game changing circumstances. What you end up with is a deck that can counter anything your opponent's deck throws at you, as long as you play correctly in holding your counters for when they are needed.

Don't believe it? Think it through: There is no way for an opponent player to reveal the cards in any way that a random reveal couldn't!

The new point of criticism you added in your last sentence is actually valid, however. Since there's no way for encounter decks to become more dangerous while player decks get (potentially) stronger with every new AP, it's inevitable that their difficulty will eventually drop.

The only way to prevent that is to release an expansion that will add new, tougher cards to older encounter decks (or replace older cards). What I could imagine is that at some point they create a deck of high-difficulty cards from which you draw a number of cards to be added to any encounter deck to provide a bigger challenge.

FFG has done something similar for the Arkham Horror board game: They released an 'Expansion' expansion called Miskatonic Horror that adds card to be used with each of the previously released expansions.

lol, um ok.. well I guess if you really believe that there isn't much hope for you. rofl... oh well... I am not 100% sure you understand what I am trying to say.. maybe I am not being clear.

booored said:

Well, I am not 100% sure you understand what I am trying to say.. maybe I am the one not being clear

Cheers!