Hey gang,

My wife and I have the game and all the expansions released so far, but are still struggling with the Quests in the core set. We have beat the game on the first quest maybe once, and lose far more often than not, and are finding it frustrating as we get absolutely smashed by the game.

I am usually playing Leadership as an Aragorn fan, and she has taken Spirit as an Eowyn fan. We have tried mixing in the Tactics and Lore cards but found we were resource strapped for the secondary resource so have gone back to just running a single resource, but still getting owned by the game. As a fan of games both miniature and card in the past, there are a few things that I wonder if we are doing wrong, and maybe you guys can offer insight or guidance to help alleviate our frustrations currently.

1. Could just be bad hands, we may be drawing stuff that doesn't help out with low amounts of resources at the start, and there is no "mulligan" rule that I have read. Bad shuffling/drawing hand can make it harder, but shouldn't defeat us unless coupled with tough shadow cards int he staging area, no?
2. At two-player level, should we be sticking with learning our preferred resource, or tailoring the resources to the quest? Is Tactics something you always take, and then sprinkle with others? Are there enough Willpower in these two options to win most quests? I know Eowyn is powerful since we can both discard to give +1 Willpower, but do we need more fighters? I would think the four spheres would be pretty well-balanced...
3. Should we be adding things from the expansions to our decks right away to help improve our chances, or are they more geared towards the expansions? I know there are new heroes, allies, attachments etc in the expansion AP's, but how soon do you incorporate them?
4. Should we leave off the Shadow cards during combat to give ourselves a break until we get a really good handle on the game? We played twice without, and went 1-1 that way, and then started adding them in and have been 0-6 since then. We played Sunday night, the "Journey Down the Anduin" quest, and just got so angry after getting annihilated right from the start. It was almost impossible to not lose 3 heroes by our second round when we revealed nothing but enemies and watched our threat counters get booted up so that everything engaged us. How common is it to lose a hero in the first few turns of the game? Seems like it shouldn't happen that early/easily, but hey maybe we are doing it wrong.

Thanks for any insight or help you can offer, I really plan to keep collecting and playing this game, but am struggling to keep a non-gamer wife who is a huge LotR fan involved in the game when it seems really hopeless every time we play.

Also, if building decks, is there a common theme/standard people have found to work? Like 2 Tactics Heroes and 1 Leadership/Lore/Spirit Hero to provide support? Can the solo sphere decks stand up to these Scenarios?

I may play a solo game tonight and see how I do, but not sure if there is some preparation I need to do in advance to make it an easier time and more enjoyable experience.

Well, the first thing to make sure of is that you are not counting the threat from enemies engaged with you or from active locations. Once an enemy or location leaves the staging area you no longer count it's threat when questing.

1. You can take a mulligan on the initial draw, but only 1 time. There is always the possibility that a bad draw, either from your decks or the encounter deck, will cost you the game. That's part of the nature of a random game, and happens to everyone from time to time.

2. You will have better successes by tailoring the deck specifically to the quest, but it shouldn't be necessary. Have you tried playing with the starter decks? I've never lost Passage Through Mirkwood with 2+ players using them. Eowyn is a great choice for questing, and Aragorn is a really good choice as well.

3. The cards from the expansions can be used to good success with the core quests. They are not necessary, but if you get some good combos that can help.

4. I wouldn't leave off the shadow cards. It really changes the game. You'll get used to it this way and then when you add them back on it will really confuse you and throw off your game.

I would recommend sticking with Passage Through Mirkwood until you have a handle on the game. The others can be pretty brutal. If you are playing Journey Down the Anduin though, starting with heroes with less threat can give you a few turns before you have to deal with a hill troll.

Also, check out this thread for some more tips.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

You can mulligan your first 6 cards that you start with. It sounds like you should mulligan if you dont have any ally cards in your first 6.

Thanks for your response, I had read that other thread, that's why I wasn't sure if we were missing something else.

We worked out in our third game that the shadow does not count for engaged enemies and active locations, so we have that lesson learned, but there are still others. We are using the starter decks, but have decided to try and mix them up with parts of the other starter decks to see if we get better results. Unless you mean that each of us uses two decks, but that seems to be illogical. At present I had thought that by trying to take a bit of Tactics with a primary focus on Leadership that I could build a pretty strong deck, but that seems to have not worked at all. If you suggest that we stick with a starter deck each and just play through and learn those decks our first few times on each scenario then that is something we have gone back to, since our "built" decks seemed to not have helped us at all.

Not sure what else we are missing, the Shadow is important and can change the game, but seems to be making it way too hard when you have 4 enemies all making engagement checks from the start and then not having enough heroes and allies to quest and combat. Just made for a very frustrating game tbh.

Well, if your problem is enemies then you have a few options:

1) Lower your starting threat. You have more time to build up some allies before they engage you. You could also take Dunhere so you can be killing enemies while they are in the staging area.

2) Add more allies to your deck. Having more allies helps with defending, attacking, and questing.

3) Play with Gimli/Legolas. Great combination that allows you to do a ton of damage and continually progress in questing.

Also, just to make sure... you aren't engaging every enemy immediately, are you? As long as your threat isn't too high you can keep enemies from engaging until you are ready.

Stick with 1 deck per player. Stick with Mirkwood until you've got it down. You could also walk us through a few of your turns so maybe we can see where you might be making mistakes.

Oh, and I would recommend each having 2 Gandalfs (despite the "starter" decks saying only 1) assuming you have 1 core set (3 Gandalfs each, the maximum, if you have multiple sets). Gandalf is very powerful and having him available twice as often could help out as well.

I can recommend to play duo sphere both of you. I play only solo since I don't really have any one else to play with and I play a mix of tactic/spirit. And I have heard that a lore/leadership is also good. I have beaten the first core set quest with the spirit/tactic deck but am still fighting the Anduin. I would recommend maybe beating the first quest a couple of times more before moving to the 2 others. Also if you wait with the expansions you'll have a greater feeling as you play through the quests with the cards available at that precise quests time. This way your game experience will last lover too. I'm doing it this way and I enjoy it even though I might go on and try the Anduin with a spirit mono deck...I have read that's the best.But since I haven't opened my expansion packs yet I might not be the best one to give advice

Oh, and I concur, you need to play with the shadow cards. One on each enemy engaged with you each battle phase. And not sure if you got this but when a location is active or enemies engaged their threat isn't counted in the questing phase

Anyway don't give up.

I would suggest sticking with mono-sphere decks as you get used to the game, especially if you have 2+ players. Also, the expansions have very useful cards. The player cards are not specific to the quest that comes with the expansion, so you won't ruin any quest surprises by adding the player cards to your decks.

As others have said doing some deck building should help BUT you should be able to beat Mirkwood with the leadership and spirit decks pretty consistently, and if you can't it might suggest you are doing something wrong; counting threat of engaged enemies and active locations is a common issue, but you've covered that, as is moving engaged enemies back into staging at the end of the round - once engaged, enemies stay engaged unless a specific effect means otherwise.

You are applying events and attachments to the heroes that really need them right, and not limiting them only to the spheres that pay for them? i.e. you know you can apply a spirit attachment to a leadership hero?

Could you maybe write out what happens in a couple of rounds of play? We may then be able to narrow it down to if you are playing something wrong, or just need some improved decks or tactics?

Stick with it and it'll eventually "click." The strategy of this game is very tight in my opinion.

You are leaving the engaged enemies engaged with you, correct? Don't put them back into the staging area after combat. That was something I and some others were messing up on. We would stand everything during refresh, including enemies. Once those enemies engage they stay there until you remove them with a card effect.

Don't hesitate to use a cheap ally as a blocker, expected to die. So you can then retaliate with your heroes.

Don't forget that Aragorn can defend for the other player thanks to the Sentinel keyword.

There aren't many allies in the starter decks so feel free to add some more allies from the Adventure Packs if you feel like you aren't drawing enough allies.

Remember that you can each optionally engage one enemy during the Engagement Phase before the engagement checks start assigning them to you. So consider which enemies are going to be engaging who and if something particularly nasty is going to be going after the Spirit player, optionally engage it and tank it with Leadership. Or vice versa if the Leadership player is swarmed and something else is heading their way, the Spirit player could grab an enemy easy to handle. My group always discusses who is taking on what at the beginning of the Engagement Phase.

With Eowyn you can both discard one card to boost her Willpower if needed. So think of her as a potential 6 WP for questing.

I suggest when trying to learn the game or, at least how to win the first scenario, to stick with the starter decks (no changes). This way you don't introduce unnecessary complexity into the game. A problem that might happen when new players are learning the game and they put together dual-sphere decks is that when they lose, it is harder to pinpoint the reason why they lost. Was it because of bad play or was it because of a bad deck build? So, for beginners, try the starter decks, learn the game, get your play strategy pat down, and try to win the deck. You could try deck building when you are more familiar with the game (and winning).

As for your game with Passage Through Mirkwood, let's say you play Leadership sphere deck and your wife plays Spirit sphere deck. These 2 decks are good and should make it possible for you to win PTM scenario. Some tips here:

1. Play efficiently. For example: to whom should you attach the Celebrian Stone? You could attach it to a leadership hero or to a spirit hero. However, what matters is whether the hero who will receive the Celebrian Stone will be using it - meaning will the hero regularly commit to a quest or stay as a defender/attacker. If it's the latter then the Celebrian Stone will be wasted. You could attach it to Eowyn who because of her high Willpower should be committing to a quest almost every round. Or to Aragorn because he could commit to questing and still ready himself for possible defense or attack due to his ability. Another example is defending. In PTM scenario, in the first round the Forest Spider will most likely engage the leadership player due to 29 threat level. In that round, Forest spider's first attack will be with 3 attack str. Who should defend? For this, either Aragorn (2 defense, so will take 1 damage) or mayble Gloin (1 defense, will take 2 damage, get 2 resource). Another example is if your heroes attack, they should attack to kill an enemy right away and every damage dealt should count. For example, given 2 engaged enemies with same 3 hit points and you have 2 heros to attack (each with 2 attack). You're better off ganging up on 1 enemy and killing it (so one less defender needed next round) than each hero attacking 1 enemy, wounding both but not killing any.

2. Theodred could give a resource to any hero commited to a quest, not just your heroes. So if your wife needs more resources next round to play an ally, then you could decide to give her hero the resource (depends on both of your needs).

3. Play allies as early as possible to help in questing, or to defend or to attack. I realize having allies very early in the game helps a lot.

4. When deciding to mulligan or not, I check if I my initial hand has some cheap allies to play or some powerful card that I could play early on.

Hope these help.

Just keep playing, keep practicing. This game is tricky as heck, but that makes victory so much sweeter.

I always have problems with resource management too. I really wish I could have more, More, MORE resources!

My Two Cents,

Based on the way my group did it:

We started out with Basic Core decks, single Sphere.

We played the same Sphere four or five times to get a feel for it before switching to the next one.
Learning how a deck plays and how to get the most out of it is crucial I would say.

We Realized early on that we needed Tactics and we needed Spirit.
We have even gone so far now that we start to call the other two Spheres (being Lore and Leadership): "Support Spheres"
In our experience Tactics does the killing, and Spirit does the questing. The other two supports this.

So in a Two Player Game, I would NOT recommend playing Leadership + Spirit only. That would put you on the spot when the Anduin Ambush comes up and you have to face of with lots of Enemies. You need that Tactics part in there. But you also Need the Questing (of course)

So... mixing spheres... Deck Customization:

First: I started to mix Leadership and Spirit, reason being that Aragon, even using Core Set only, could "become" a Spirit Hero when Celebrian's Stone was attached. That would at least give me a chanse of having 3 spirit Heroes on the table. Combined with Stuard of Gondor and the fact that the first Songs to come out where Song of Kings... and that would allow my two Spirit Heroes the possibility to "become" Leadership Heores. Good overlap and opens up for other alternatives.

Second: Since I belive Spirit is the part that gets the Job done in this mix I kept TWO heroes for that (Eowyn and Eleanor), and only One for Leadership (Aragon) this then should reflect what I put in the deck. Even with Three songs and two celebrians stones in the deck I will still design it as if they didn't come up and regard it as a nice "bonus" when they do show. That means 1/3 of the Cards should be Leadership, and 2/3 will be Spirit... this can slide a little of course but is good as a Rule of thumb. I also let go of the more expensive Leadership cards, since I only have one Hero generating Resources there I think cards like Brok Ironfist and Grim Resolve, will probably not see much play. Actually, in the end, I tried to stick with cards that cost 3 or less to play.

Third: Get the Deck "Focus" set. This is a questing Deck, so anything that can help me with Questing is good. Therefore I will include Snowborn Scouts (that adds a Progress Token to a Location i.e. Questing) and exclude Silver Lode Archer.... yes they have 1 Willpower, but looking at the card I realise I will probably be tempted to use it in combat all the time anyway, and that is not what this deck is about... besides I have to limit my Leadership cards, so I have to be really "firm" on cutting these babies out. I also like the idea of cancelling "When Revealed" and "Shadow Effects" so I stacked all of them in there, combined with Eleanors Ability I was aiming for a deck that could Quest and cancel out nasty events while doing so.

Four: Reduce... like any good cook can tell you, you won't hit the spot with the Sauce unless you let it reduce down to bare essence and flavour... So looking at my deck and everything I "wanted" to have in it. I had maybe 57 cards... This was after adding Songs and Gandalf. Roughly. So now I want to cut it down to 50. I'm kinda hard-line here, because I believe that the closer to the 50 card mark you go the more narrow your deck becomes in focus and the more you "know" what your hand will look like and what it is supposed to achieve. Besides, you are rarely going to go through more than 20-25 cards of that deck anyway, no matter how big it is, so the narrower the better, lest chances are you will mix cards in there and never see them in play. This is a rough step. Those last couple of cards you think you REALLY need.... painful to cut out. True kill your darling moments. Removing "Fortune or Fate" for instance. Pure pain. But I figured if one of our Heroes die I'm not going to sit there and "hope" that I might get one of those and freeze up resources based on that "maybe". So I reasoned... we better not DIE!

Five: Then it's time to talk to the others, see what they are building, are you bringing enough omph!? Who should handle the enemies? and hopefully handle them well. I got the questing covered... you take the monsters. Who will support us with some Healing? and maybe a "Condition remover" etc. etc.

So...

In play, I know my deck, I will quest the living crap out of mostly anything... especially if I get a good starting hand. But even a "bad" start is really never going to be all that bad. I can always find things to do that the other are relying on me to do. In combat I'm quite useless, I can usually hold my own for a round or two against one or two orcs, but more than that, and I need help. That's where the Tactics guy comes in, sucking up the baddies clearing the road for my Trackers and Scouts. And when he gets some nasty Shadow Effects, I'm right there behind him cancelling them out. Spirit cards to reduce Threat and Leadership cards to draw some extra cards here and there are simply candy.

Long speach, don't know how much of that made sense or if you'll be able to use it. But there it is.

/wolf

I'm so glad that Northblade started this thread. Not only did the thread cement my belief that LotR:TCG players are some of the most amiable, helpful folks around, but it actually gave me ideas for improving my play, being a relatively new player. I've only just experienced my first win against Anduin, and it was in a two-player game. Playing it the right way, without modifications...it was a sweet victory! My friend and I were really, genuinely excited to have beaten it! That being said, I would not alter the game in any way.

I win more than I lose against Mirkwood, but have never won solo against Anduin. I'm still learning the deck-building side of things, having just acquired the expansions. GhostWolf69 makes some great points that I will be considering when I go back to the drawing board for my decks.

My wife also likes LotR, but isn't much of a gamer. If I can get two well-balanced decks together, I might get her to play on a somewhat regular basis.

Oh, and if anyone is interested, I wouldn't mind trying to play long-distance. As a noob, it might not be fun for an experienced player, but I'd be happy to hash things out with another noob...or a vet with patience =)