Hey people command!!!! Sure some of yoy have it already and play give us some info please!!!!

What I like:

- quest is once again much different and some old strategies do not work anymore. You can't commit best questers, because they have to guard gollum and you will fail the quest quite a lot of times, so threat may become a problem (35+ cards start to work). It is quite hard to keep gollum on the board, but it is manageable. Still, I love the challenge and I like the quest so far

What I dislike:

- when gollum escapes, in my opinion player should lose the game. However, gollum is shuffled into the deck instead. And when it happens, it may take forever to see him again and you can ignore most quest mechanics / new cards. Stalling decks like Beravor + Courage can play for hours and will not lose against this quest (but the score will be ugly).

Glaurung said:

It's difficulty 5, but it feels more like a 4. If you have Protector of Lorien/Eowyn, card drawing engine/The Galadhrim's Greeting, you'll pretty much never have to worry about the Escape checks.

The new enemy Worm monster's ability to heal itself by 2 after every round isn't so bad if you have anything that can deal decent damage. It has 3 Attack, 2 Defense and 6 HP, so it's not that scary.

Basically, The Dead Marshes is too easy. I'm sure you will agree.

Lenbo said:

I dont understand........ They give us more and more better players cards to make better deck and after give us more easy quests.... Where the logic???

They give us lot of attachments and there is no any encounter card can discard attachments since core set......

I even dont know what to say......

Glaurung said:

Did you see the preview of the Orc Raiders? They're not in Dead Marshes, but forcing players to discard two attachments seems pretty nasty to me.

Lenbo said:

Oh really? So you have spare 6 will power to guard gollum every turn? Eowyn herself is not enough (4 is less than 6) and discarding a card every turn (5 may not be enough as some escape values = 5 and you have to beat the number) can be a real pain. And protector of lorien? Do you know that you can't make an action once the escape card is drawn? You have to activate abilities before you see the escape check value.

Of course, guarding gollum gets easier after a few turns, when you have bunch of allies or your favorite combos in play etc. But before it happens, gollum will probably have some resources.

gatharion said:

Yes i sow this. Look like next cycle more interesting and hard. Bu it come later what about now???

guciomir said:

Yeah, I knew that. We didn't use Protector of Lorien for Gollum. Just for that annoying Unpassable Bog or whatever it's called with Quest Points of 12. That's probably the most powerful card in the set. Gives you 7 Victory Points too if you explore it, which is nice.

Something did bother me though, because I wasn't entirely sure of the answer. Do you still need to perform escape tests if Gollum is not in play?

I think you need to perform escape checks when treachery cards tell you to do it (you can still suffer additional effect). But no more escape tests every turn as per gollum card.

About the player cards:

Small eagle is great, I like it as much as leadership scout

Observer is also nice, my deck was missing some good leadership allies and this one is versatile

Elfhelm rocks, he has same stats as tracker but serves different purpose. His ability will trigger quite often and the best time is when you have some constant effect that raises your threat. For example in carrock, when all trolls engage you do not get +12 threat, but just +8.

guciomir said:

Yes yes you right new cards is good.

But situation more and more funny: we already can win Carrock and other quests quite easy so now we have more cards to win even more effective. So according this logic soon we will have a player decks which ones can win all quests(exclude Osgiliath) without any problem cose 2 last new quest is more easy than previous. So we get less and less challenge right??? But game without challenge still fun??? I just didn understand where we going?!

You are repeating yourself all the time and just make people angry (not because of what you say, but because you write the same words 5 times per day).

You can't have 50% win rate against every quest with the same solo deck. The one you shown here in forums (glorfindel) was good against SOME quests, but really sucked against the rest quests.

And just don't say that you are right because you are good player (like you did plenty of times), this sounds like a boasting of 5 year old kid.

Finally, Hills and Marshes are harder in my opinion solo if you compare them to Carrock or Hunt For Gollum. I do not remember losing against Carrock , well, I did once when 1st turn snake killed my hero and another time when just everything went wrong, but this was some weeks ago. Today I won a game with 1st turn hero being sacked. Hell, I did not lose against Gollum quest ever. While I did lose a couple of times against Hills (nasty treacheries) and against Marshes (I have a house rule - gollum escapes - player is defeated).

guciomir said:

If you dont like what i say dont need to answer ok??? Just ignore me.

About win and lose. I didnt lose any game i mena coop game already 2 months or somethings. Yes some solo game still lose sometimes. Actually i dont care anymore cose i already dont spend to much time with this game than before and most of my friends too. Cose is boring to win all the time.

For someone who does not spend much time on it, and does not care anymore, you spend a lot of time answering this board. Just saying. Have a nice day, all!

lleimmoen said:

Yes actually you right.

Is not easy to leave something what you do every day for last 6 months. But its happen by the way. We dont gather every week anymore cose only 1 quest which is interesting is Osgiliaht(but you cannot play 1 quest all the time), nightmare mode is really shame fo designers and new quests is not worse to gather to play together(boring and easy). So my attempt to bulid up players community in my city fail cose other card games give more opportunity for players.Some players already switch to AGOT and other games.

So for now is not much things to do there is no events or somethings to bring new players. Just wait until tournaments system and see what happen then. And Khazad-dum also sure!!

One can always try to build nice thematic decks. You know, not always the best cards fitting into a deck from the winning potential view but those that shall flavour the deck best. I think that could result in some sound thrashings against some quests and perhaps more of a satisfactory feeling when things go well.

Yeah, I've suggested that before.

I play with theme decks and only one core set and I find the game plenty challenging.

I guess the game can be "broken". I'm just as happy that it's not harder, I've no interest in buying three core sets and finding the maximumly efficient set of cards possible to pwn the game.

He also mentioned playing with friends, plural. If you're playing three/four player games then that's also going to go a long way towards making the game "too easy".

Glaurung said:

Or make your own quests, since you know better than Nate French. There's a card creator program somewhere on the internet (I'm sure the link's on these forums somewhere). With your God-like level of expertise about the Lord of the Rings the Card Game, I'm sure you could come up with something great.

Nate French is a genius for coming up with this game!

In Glaurung's defense, not everyone wants to play with thematic decks. Ideally, the game should give you a challenge even if you prefer playing with the higher end decks. In all honesty, it hasn't been doing that, lately. This continues to be the toughest challenge the developers have, to make the game interesting and challenging for both top tier decks and more casual decks. It just isn't easy to do. Personally, I'm not convinced that this game will do well outside of a more casual environment.

You mean you suffer the same problem, winning easy all the time with your best decks? As self-confident as it may sound, I think I have made some very powerful decks but I have never come to a point that I would feel the game cannot surprise me (or beat me). Maybe it is just me, but I am rather glad when things go well, of course I like challenge, it is just I am getting it in fair share, I feel.

Bottom line, I was not trying to attack, I was genuinly trying to advice.

lleimmoen said:

I never feel that the game cannot beat me, but outside of Rhosgobel, I don't find any of the other scenarios that difficult. I have all of one loss against Gollum and Emyn Muil combined. I didn't even play Emyn Muil that much because it simply wasn't very interesting. And once you've played a scenario a few times and you've seen the quest cards and encounter deck, how much can it surprise you? You know everything that's in there already. Please do not think that I'm trying to sound like I'm better than anyone else, because I'll be the first to tell you I'm not. But I don't care too much for putting together a deck that will be less competitive against a scenario simply because it is thematic. I prefer to use the best tools I'm given.

Titan said:

Titan said:

Thanks Titan for you support and understand. Yes maybe you right this game will never come to the same level as AGOT or Magic OR LOTR TCG Decipher.

And this make me feel really sad. But ok hope is still there. Will see....

About Designers: They try to do nightmare mode for players who is already want more challenge. But nightmare mode is a joke in the end of the day even after second rules changing. Who try it they know what im talking about.

Any game in my opinion should go from easy to hard. This is logic right???

But in this game is more cards we have with more Adv. packs release more better we can build up the players decks and this is right. If you remember the first decks build up only from core set and compare them to current decks, they are much more weaker. So our players decks now is much more stronger much more!!! And According by logic the quests and encounter decks should be also grow up.Cose we can deal with them even without the new players cards.

But what about with encounter decks and quests from Adv packs??Some of them even more easy then core set quests!!! Dol-Guldor is for sure more interesting and challenge then Carrock and Anduin is more hard then then HFG and HOEM. So I really happy we have a brilliant Osgiliaht which ine is show : yes they know how to make a good quest. In my opinion the first quest since core set which is good. Can you image if we have all the quests in Cycle like this???Wow!!! And i didn talk only about hard level but also whole level of the quest is really example of good job on any aspect(including story and so on) . And only this still give me hope every think can be ok( in my opinion of course cose most if the players is happy already).

Cheers.

Also i happy to practice my Engilsh typing. Thanks a lot for that too!!!!

Game difficulty hasn't been much of an issue for me yet, as I am still learning and tweaking my decks (and waiting for my second core set =P), so I'm still enjoying my little struggle (Anduin is hard!). But I can understand that with the most efficient or "minimaxed" decks, such as a Beravor draw deck, the game loses its flavor if it is never challenging.

I think part of the problem is the model of the using encounter sets from the core set in the scenarios for the APs. Since the scenarios from the APs utilize the encounter sets from the core set, how could it be that much harder than the core set quests, such as Anduin, if half of the deck is constructed from the same subset of cards? Sure, the designers can utilize new mechanics and nastier treacheries with the new encounter sets from the APs, but unless the encounter deck is self-contained (i.e. Massing at Osgiliath), they are still limited in what they are able to accomplish. Meanwhile, the player decks become increasingly versatile... I think players like Massing at Osgiliath because of the synergy of the encounter deck (which also fits in thematically for the players more interested in the immersive aspect), which is harder to achieve when you are reusing encounter cards.

Just thinking out loud...

TheRomance said:

Hey Romance but this is a really good spot!!! I think you absolutely right about about core encounter decks. Yes this is the different with Osgiliath quest.

And you know what??? They will give us 9 Encounter sets in Khazad-dum box which ones we will use in next cycle. And that how they can make next cycle more challenge and different to each other to add to those 9 encounter sets one more by every new Adv. packs. Really really exiting!!!! So it mean we will have much more challenge with another 9+6=15 encounter sets.Sounds cool!!!

Titan said:

Emyn Muil can be brutal sometimes. Sure, I got a sequence of flawless victories when the encounter deck was not really trying to beat me. But from time to time, the treacheries can hit really hard or if a few first cards are nasty, the game can change from easy to medium or even hard. Some people would just say "bad luck, my deck is still invincible and I just lost because of pure misfortune" . But statistically speaking, in most cases this is not a misfortune, but rather a trend. Which means , the deck can be improved , so the odds are better.

Gollum quest is way too easy for solo player (as most of us design decks targeted at quest/threat/location control). Carrock also seems easy, but sometimes, when you get him by 1st/2nd turn sacked or 1st turn deadly snake who kills your hero... All I can say that I really love those games, when the sacked is first or second card - I won 2 out of 3 of such games, but it was very close and the games were very fun.

I also disagree that the old quests are not changing. Think about Rhosgobel. My deck was absolutely hopeless against Rhosgobel, so I had to change Gimli to Legolas and I also added 3x Radagast to the deck. As a result, I have a chance against Rhosgobel (small, but much bigger than before). And, most importantly, some old quests got harder as Gimli was a better fighter in my deck and also Radagast is rather poor ally.

We have 1 adventure pack left. If it is fight oriented (and I really hope it will be) , most top tier decks who focus on quest/threat/location control will have to adjust so they can handle this new quest. As a result, they will lose some edge over old quests.