Here is the thread where I will post all my idiotic questions that could probably have been answered if I just thought about it for another minute or looked in the rules and faq a bit more.

1. For solo games the only main rules difference is that during the quest phase you only reveal one card from the encounter deck. Everything else works the same? (obviously some card effects are pointless in single player or can only target yourself. Ranged is pointless for example.

2. For cards like Forest Spider which reads (FORCED: After forest spider engages a player it gets +1 attack until end of phase) does that mean that the spider gets +1 reguardless of who engages the player or the spider during a check? Another example is I believe that Hummerhorns only does 5 damage to a hero when it engages during a check not if the player choose to engage correct?

3. Now for a timing question. Only reactions can respond to an effect right? If eyes of the forest is revealed during the quest phase the players cannot play any event cards they can afford before having to discard them right?

1. Correct.

2. It does not matter who chooses to engage. The rulebook explicitly states that when an enemy is engaged it is said to have engaged the player and the player is said to have engaged the enemy regardless of who initiated the engage.

3. Yes, only responses can be played in response to something. Otherwise actions may be played using the timing chart in the back of the book.

Briareos200 said:

I love the title of this thread.

1. Yes - during staging, you reveal 1 card per player from the encounter deck. Every single other rule works exactly the same when you have only one player - the only thing to keep in mind is that with few exceptions, certain abilities (i.e., ranged, sentinel), don't really provide any benefit in solo play.

2. Forest Spider gains +1 attack strength on the round it engages a player no matter who engages it, or whatever the reason may be (i.e., optionally engaging it or it comes after you/whomever because you meet its engagement threshold). Hummerhorns does 5 damage to a single hero that the player that it is engaged with controls (the other player suffers no injury).

3. Here's a link to a good timing sequence flowchart. "Actions" and "responses" are different, and typically only "responses" are reactionary in nature, i.e., there is a triggering event, and you can play a response in reaction to it if it. An example would be A Test of Will - you reveal a treachery card during staging, and while you cannot normally take "actions" at that time, you are entirely free to use A Test of Will's "response" to react to the treachery card by canceling its "when revealed" effects. In your specific example, you could use A Test of Will as a response to cancel Eyes of the Forest before it causes players to discard all event cards (i.e., A Test of Will), from their hands. Think of a "response" as an "interrupt" effect, whereas "actions" are just general abilities that aren't quite as quick to occur.

If you have any other questions, I'm sure everyone here should be glad to help out!

edit: beaten, ****!

Briareos200 said:

Svenn and Lightdarker beat me to it but I'm not deleting all of this so you get a double whammy.

1. Keep Ranged in mind for Journey to Rhosgobel. Some of the critters in that scenario can only be attacked or defended against with Eagles or Ranged characters.

2. Forest Spider and Hummerhorns effects would apply at any time that they engage a player. If either one were to return to the Staging Area and then Engage a player again or if they switched from one player to another through any card effects, their effects would apply again when engaging again.

Son of Arnor is the best example of this. If Son of Arnor is used to pull Forest Spider or Hummerhorns away from one player and causes them to engage the person who played Son of Arnor, their effects would apply when they engage the new player. Forest Spider would get +1 Attack strength again for that first engagement phase that they were engaged with the new player and Hummerhorns would deal damage to a hero.

Optionally choosing to engage an enemy doesn't avoid the enemy's effects. Optionally choosing to engage is just a way for players to grab particularly dangerous enemies that might be heading for another player during the upcoming engagement checks or for a solo player to grab an enemy that wouldn't be engaging them this round automatically during the engagement check step due to the enemy's threat cost vs. the players threat total.

3. No, you could play that Spirit event card to cancel the "When Revealed" effect on the Treachery Card as far as I'm aware. So Events can be played in response to cards being revealed. Otherwise that particular event would be useless as there would be no window for it to ever be used. As far as I know off the top of my head, as long as you can pay the cost of an Event, you can use it in response unless it specifically states that it can only be used in certain Phases.

Marlow said:

Events can NOT be used as a response unless it contains "Response". This is the same across all cards. Even event cards have "Action" or "Response" on them letting you know when they can be used. However, typically if a card would be beneficial as a response it will have the "Response" tag (such as A Test of Will).

And I just wanted to make the statement that there's no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers

Svenn said:

For correcting me, I'm going to use Second Breakfast the next time a Treachery Card is revealed and I have no attachments in my discard pile.

It's pointless, it's illegal, and I'm going to dedicate the playing of it to you.

Svenn said:

This is important to keep in mind because doing something like this would NOT be a legal play:

- A treachery card is revealed during staging

- You play a Dwarven Tomb to return A Test of Will to your hand (illegal - you have no "window" to play regular actions, only responses)

- You play A Test of Will to cancel the "when revealed" effects of the treachery card

Ok on forest spider. It only gets the bonus the round it engages. If it lives to the next round and stays engaged to that player the next conflict round it won't have the bonus right?

Hummerhorns: If I choose to engage it then it deals 5 damage to my character?

Briareos200 said:

Correct on the forest spider.

Hummerhorns: 5 damage to a hero, not just any character =P.

Sorry that's what I meant. My question is it doesn't matter who initiated the engagement

Also, keep in mind that when a card like Hummerhorns (or Gandalf), says "deal damage," this is not reduced by the recipient's defense strength value. Hummerhorns almost always insta-kills a character if you engage it (although there are some ways around this, like Citadel Plate, using Dunhere to kill it, etc).

I'll probably establish some sort of record with TWO stupid questions at once...

1. Does anybody know whether it's possible to beat published adventures using just the base deck and the hero/player cards found in the corresponding adventure pack? I'm a very lazy player and don't want to spend any time optimizing decks and choosing cards (nor searching the web for "well-constructed decks"). So, has anyone tried this? Any opinions/statistics?

2. In my (very limited) experience, the game is hard at the beginning of the quest, but it becomes progressively easier as it progresses, due to having more resources/allies/options at disposal, and so on. As a consequence, the initial hand and the first draws have a disproportionate importance on the adventure outcome. Has anyone tried to "adjust" this problem? My personal suggestion (completely untested!): give some free resources at the beginning (e.g., double the initial resources) and then progressively less as the game progresses (e.g., just 1 resource/hero every other turn from turn 5 or 6 on). This kind of change should probably be calibrated to keep the total amount of resources very close to that of FFG's rules, do you agree?

Any thoughts? Other suggestions?

Thanks for any answer!

Roberto

mandrill_one said:

I just got this game after Christmas (because nobody gave it to me as a present) so my experience is also limited. Anyway, it seems to me that the game designers understood the importance of the first hand and that's why they allow a redraw for your starting 6 cards if you don't like your first hand (the mulligan). Having not played any other FFG games, that may just be a standard rule, but to me it offsets the importance of "first draw" just enough to be acceptable. Is the game still hard? Absolutely. But I think the random element is something that must be accepted if you play card and dice games.

As for free resources, I don't think that solves the problem because there are two limiting factors at the beginning. One is resource availability, as you've mentioned, and the other is card draw, which you alluded to. Gaining extra resources will help you to afford the cards in your starting hand, but you would also burn through them much faster and you'd be starved for cards the duration of the game unless you had more card-draw abilities (which I typically don't as a Spirit player). To "solve" the problem you'd have to add more resources and more cards to draw during the resource phase. Do I think these changes would ensure a win? No. But I think winning would be much easier. In games where you had a good starting hand you would dominate the encounter deck and to me it would feel like a hollow victory.

mandrill_one said:

1. yes it is possible, some are harder than others, a core spirit deck can wipe emyn muil and dead marshes easily, however on conflict at carrock for example not so much

2. as stated take a mulligan, its there so feel free to use it, im not sure about being hard at the beginning, as often more and more encounter cards a revealed as the game progress, especialy if you fail to free up the staging area, so often it can be MUCH harder later, and become in fact impossible, but i dont see a fast and hard rule of easy beginning/hard at end or visa versa

Hope nobody minds if I use this thread for my own noob questions. I've been reading up on the game for a few days now, it'll be arriving tomorrow, and I'm quite excited to get started.

1) Just how important is getting a second Core Set? I'm coming from playing A Game of Thrones, and for that game, the standard advice for every new player is that purchasing a second Core Set is the first thing you should do after the initial investment. Successful deck-building isn't all that possible without the extra cards from that second set. But the AGOT Core Set is almost entirely singletons, so you don't really end up with nearly as many extraneous cards with that purchase. Once I've played with my Core Set enough that I'm comfortable with the game and ready to make a bigger investment, should I be aiming at the Core again or are the Adventure Packs a higher priority?

2) Are there any online resources for the game that I should be aware of? Obviously there's this forum, and I've been using cardgamedb, which I already knew well from playing AGOT. I've also found lotrlcg.com, which is nice but quite out-of-date, and I've been poking around the Boardgamegeek boards a bit as well. Anywhere else I should be looking?

alpha5099 said:

1) - Yes.. if you enjoy the game get a 2nd set. If you really like it a 3rd set is worth it. This is also true if you are playing in groups and need to field a 4th or 3rd deck. I have 3 sets

2) - CardGameDB.com is probably the best place for deck lists. People post deck lists here but they get lost as the FFG forum is so terrible. The site is not usedas much as it shoud be but it is there. It also has a online deck editor and a card database. These guys do a LOT for the community behind the scenes, it is prety trragic that peopel ignore his site.

lotrlcg.com is also very cool card database and sister to the coc one at http://cthulhu.dbler.com/. It looks semi abandoned but you should see a revivel of this site during the early months of 2012

Also check out the Lord of the Rings Deck Builder, it is a must have for serious players. - http://eric.minet.free.fr/index_en.htm

Then there is BBG file section. - http://www.boardgamegeek.com/files/thing/77423 - this is where you will find new rule sets, cutouts for card storage and custom quests. Also there is the card template files here for making your own cards. I prefer these to the card maker application that is aroudn I do not havde a link for that.. but i do know it used gekoths templates in that app. So if you have photoshop..better jst to yes the raw pds templates yourself.

Hope that helps! Have fun

alpha5099 said:

i would say the packs first....depends if you have the money to waste on many cards you arent going to use from a second core set....you can quite comfortably win the quests with 1 core set and the corresponding adventure packs

OK, just sat down with my newly arrived Core Set. And I had my ass handed to me. Mercilessly, aggressively, and consistently. And this was just the first quest. Played several games with the basic monosphere decks. Tried Lore first off. That went poorly. Tried a few aborted games with Spirit, still not going well. Switched to Leadership, did a bit better. But that's not saying much. In all of these games, I never once got past the first stage of the quest; most of them, I didn't get any progress at all. Started working on two-sphered deck. I never touched Tactics for whatever reason, but I tried pretty much every combination.

After several more failed attempts, I stumbled on a deck that finally worked. Leadership/Spirit, with Aragorn, Theodred, and Eowyn. I got very few allies out over the course of the game; a couple Guards of the Citadel and Gandalf twice, once with Sneak Attack once paying for him. The key to victory seemed to be that I was able to quest with pretty much all my heroes every round, and most would be available for Combat later on, particularly once I got Unexpected Courage onto Theodred.

I had one major question from the game. I got a Forest Spider as a Shadow card at one part, where I had Caught in a Web on Aragorn and Unexpected Courage on Theodred. I chose to discard Caught in a Web, but I wasn't entirely sure that was a legal move. The rules state that "Players always assume control of attachments that have been played on their characters," so I did control Caught in a Web, correct?

alpha5099 said:

no unfortunatly that isnt a valid move....you never 'control' enemy attatchment..you need minor of the iron hills for that one

rich

Dang. Ah yes, should've checked the FAQ, that's even the example they used.

alpha5099 said:

i wouldnt worry...its a common mistake

It seemed too good to be true when I did it.

Figured out part of the reason I'd been struggling so much with my first games: I'd thought that engaged enemies returned to the staging area during the Refresh phase. A couple more questions:

In terms of card effects, does "engaging" referring just to the act of an enemy moving from the staging area to engage a player? Specifically I was wondering about Forest Spider's Forced -- "After Forest Spider engages a player, it gets +1 ATK" -- that bonus would not be active if it attack a round later after already being engaged?

I was also a bit confused by a bit in the FAQ, the second paragraph of 1.11 "Limitations on Attacks:

"Characters are not limited as to how many times they can participate in attacks against the same enemy, provided each attack can be legally declared, and the character is ready and eligible to be declared as an attacker."

What exactly does that mean?

alpha5099 said:

ah well that will make things easier for you...yes engaging refers to when an enemy, or the player engages each other, the spider would only get the +1 when it engages you, and not the rounds afterwards....however if it were sent back to the staging area and re-engaged then it would get the +1 for 1 more round again

this last bit has led to some confusion...it basically means that you arent limited to how many times you can attack 1 certain enemy, as long as its a valid move..so you can only attack an enemy once per turn, and as many characters you want can participate in said attack, but with a card like quick strike, you can attack in in other phases, i.e. the planning phase, then obviously attack again in the combat phase