Just picked up Return to Mirkwood and its a fairly interesting and challenging quest for a finale! Some of the encounter cards can be very brutal in this adventure so anyone looking for good challenge will probably be happy this time around. The new round of player cards are fairly decent, but the lore cards are what seem to shine in my opinion. Also the new neutral card makes for some interesting tactics for managing the encounter deck. Trying to keep this spoiler free until more receive their copy. Happy journeying when you finally pick it up!

I also got it yesterday and played two rounds with my girlfriend. I know several people hunger for information, so here are my impressions (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!):

My girlfriend played a Tactics/Leadership eagle/dwarf deck with Thalin, Gimli and Dain as the heroes. Despite the high starting threat, it worked very well. My Spirit/Lore deck was probably badly built and struggled a bit. Anyway, we played 2 games and won both times. Game 1 was tedious as we revealed Ungoliant's Spawn during setup, but we eventually managed it. Game 2 was much smoother. Here are my observations and impressions:

- The central theme of the quest seems to be threat, with several challenging fights also thrown in. Questing will only play a secondary role.
- The new tactics cards are very good, the rest is mediocre at best.
- The new bats from the encounter cards are rather nasty if you don't play with Thalin.
- The quest features 4 cards, but they aren't all that much different or exciting.
- This will scale badly with the number of players. Like, Dol Guldur-badly. A lot of the quest and encounter cards basically revolve around giving Gollum around which will be completely eliminated from play for solo players. Also, solo-players will have to raise their threat by an additional 3 EVERY SINGLE ROUND, so you won't have much time. If you play with 4 players, you will probably be hard-pressed to lose, just like Dol Guldur.
- Dain is ok in a dedicated dwarf deck, but to really shine, he will need to wait for Khazad Dum to arrive. Not enough dwarves out there yet.

I have to admit I expected a little more after the first previews. It's better than Dead Marshes or Emyn Muil, but the design of the quest isn't very exciting or innovative. Also, I thought (and hoped) the extremely bad scaling was exclusive to the Core Set, but alas, it was not to be.

Trantor said:

Agreed. Since, according to Tolkien, Aragorn basically performed this entire quest on his own (plus a little help from some Beornings in one river crossing), it seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a quest that ONE player could handle. I was really hoping to be able to do a solo back-to-back adventure of Dead Marshes + Return to Mirkwood. Apparently that can't happen without house rules and/or modifying the encouter deck before hand.

RtM has several cards that punish the player guarding Gollum. For example, one reaises the Gollum guard's threat by 8. Why not just make it raise the threat by 2x the number of players (or even 3x the number of players)? That kind of scaling allows a single player to survive, and really hurts a 4 player team, forcing them to pass Gollum around.

All this hurt on the one player guarding Gollum can't be spread around in a one-player game. Granted, you are revealing fewer encounter cards in one-player games, but then again, there are cards for multiplayer (like Gildor's Counsel?) that can keep multiple reveals from happening.

Trantor said:

Ugh, time to re-think that Thalin out, Brand in move I just made to a deck?

I think in a coop game Brand shall be more useful generally. However, with Dain, Thalin can become a very useful member of the all-Dwarven deck, I feel.

On a side out, you guys that have got the game already, would you mind posting some pics of the player cards?

Bryon said:

Why?? Why ?? Why?? You know how many times i ask this question to my self??? And there is a very simple answer. They are not so great designers team.

Sorry but its true. Like mettalica song : SAD BUT TRUE!

They make many mistakes so they are just people who is made mistakes.

So there is only one hope: with time they will do it better.

They do a lot of things right. I really, really like this game. I have 3x Core set, Massing at Osgiliath, and every adventure pack released, and I will stick with it at least through the first two packs of the Dwarrowdelf cycle for sure.

I understand that the game is designed primarily for 2 players. I bet it is HEAVILY tested with that number of players. My son and I love to play this game together, and we don't have any complaints about 2-player games.

However, there are a couple adventures that are too difficult solo, and could have been scaled more appropriately so that 1 player could have the same chance of victory as 2 players. Return to Mirkwood is one of them. Escape from Dol Guldur is the other.

Could someone who has received please post the difficulty level and what encounter sets are included? Much appreciated!

Glaurung said:

There's only one thing that's sad here, and it isn't the design team... ...

Bryon said:

I'm sure they are playtesting but sometimes I have my doubts about the debth of playtesting. The design gaps in Dead Marshes (Gollum escapes and gets discarded as a escape/shadow card) which becomes obvious after one day of gaming makes me doubtful.

On a side note: I dont think its possible to design a deckbuilding game with given scenarios to have properly scale for 1-4 players. There are just too many variables that you cant completely control (number of core sets, availability of AP player cards, number of players, used spheres/sphere-combinations and difficulty setting of the quest). They should stick two a balanced 2-player challenge, the rest should be optional tbh.

Valyrian Steel said:

Difficult 7.

The encounter sets used are the ones with the pawn and the spider, so you will meet Hill Trolls and Ungoliant's Spawn again. Also, there are THREE copies of Attercop, Attercop in there.

I agree that there are several grievous design mistakes in both the design itself and with regards to scaling. Gollum escaping in the Dead Marshes is the most obvious example for bad design. At least create a location that lets you get him back once explored.
The scaling was obviously bad in the Core Set, especially in Dol Guldur (losing 1/3 of your heroes isn't quite the same as losing 1/6 or 1/12). The first packs, however, did better in this regard. Using less Sacked! cards in Carrock for example is a good way to balance scaling. You will never quite reach the same difficulty for any number of players, but the first packs were good all in all. This is why I am so disappointed that Return to Mirkwood is just as bad as Escape from Dol Guldur - it seemed that the design team did indeed learn something important after finishing the Core Set, but Return to Mirkwood shows that they didn't.

I'm not really one to complain as I play 90% of my games 2 player with my girlfriend, but I still hope the scaling will be better in the next cycle. One thing is for sure: I'm sticking with this game, I love the good aspects too much.

Shelfwear said:

Yeah, I agree with this assessment of scaling and balance -- it is too difficult to cater to anywhere from one to four players for every single scenario. Imagine how much cleaner and tighter the encounter sets could be if each scenario was designed for an exact number of players (and to their credit, they have attempted this in some encounter cards that scale to "X" number of players, but it's often the mechanics of the scenario itself that holds back the scaling). As it is now, I feel as if playing the game with three to four players is an entirely different experience than playing solo or with one other person. For example, enemies in multiplayer games feel a lot more trivial than they do in solo, when you can essentially delegate combat responsibilities as you see fit, whereas some treacheries that affect every single player in the game are a lot more detrimental. That's why I believe balancing the quests for two players, while keeping solo players in mind, stands out to me as the best option. A more focused design effort allows solo players and two player teams to have a reasonable/moderate challenge, while still allowing parties of four to get together and just have a good time.

The other viable option is to design some scenarios specifically for solo players and others for two players, and to tailor others specifically for three to four players. This could create a better experience with a more appropriate level of difficulty for people looking to play exclusively with three other players or exclusively on his own. We kind of see this design philosophy in play with Dol Guldur and Massing at Osgiliath. The problem with this alternative, though, is the nature of the business model that FFG has elected for this LCG -- the APs come with the new encounter set as well as new player cards. If you want the new player cards, you have to pay for the new encounter set as well...

In short: I like the approach FFG has taken with the balance and scaling issue in principle; I just feel like they need to ramp up the difficulty up a notch in general, even for the quests designed to be a walk in the park.

Trantor said:

It may be though that it is by design that the game does not scale well. I mean they might have thought it fit that Osgiliath, for instance, will be much easier solo and Return to Mirkwood vice versa. The only scaling I really disliked was Dol Guldur as the game seems almost absurd solo, I mean much harder than Osgiliath (that is level 9 supposedly).

My two cents is that they should just up right say what a quests difficulty is designed around. For Example.

Generic Quest Name

Difficulty = 7

Best played with 2-3 players

...or one or four and what not. That way the player knows what to expect from the experience. After three attempts I have decided that verily this quest is basically a punishment for one player play. Very high difficulty mobs (Hill Troll, Attercop Attercop, etc) with extremely punishing treachery cards that can increase your threat in one fell swoop by eight. Devastating for a one player game where as it is threat will always go up by three. As well as treacheries that will do a whopping four damage to one your heroes. A one player win at this quest basically comes down to dumb luck. However as soon as you add another player or two, balance is quickly achieved. I played three player with some friends the same night I picked up the AP and we won twice and lost once. One win was a knockout victory and the second very narrow. We lost our first attempt.

Can anybody post the full content of this pack, please? (I mean player cards, obv)

Thanks!

Go to boardgamegeek and search for the pack, in the forum section is a full spoiler listing.

As far as the quest goes, my friend and I, who usually beat each quest on try 2 if not try 1, thought this was a very fun quest. It has LOTS of big bad monsters while also forcing you to quest a lot. And passing gollum back and forth was a nice little mechanic,

I played with a gimli/thalin/gloin deck based on dwarfs/eagles/buffs and he had a dain/aragorn/eowyn deck based on buffing aragorn and eowyn but used 3 lore songs to have a minor focus on healing. We went 2-3 in the quest and really should have went 3 for 3. We choice to drop a self preservation instead of threat reduction and a +8threat card popped up and ended us.

Fun quest. Some quests do seem easy, but we're very much enjoying the game. Its obvious they could have done more to scale, specially in this quest, something like "4x per player in threat to gollum guarder to a max of 12" That would make guarding gollum in a 3-4 player game more risky and would make solo actually possible.

128 score is our best and that was with hummerthorns killing thalin.

Just finished 2 solo games of Return to Mirkwood.

First game was pure slaugher, second turn attercop was followed by third turn attercop and I was dead meat. Second game was much more interesting and intense. I got perfect opening hand: 2x sneak attack + gandalf. Hero lineup was Legolas, Eowin and Theodred. I had some easy start location in staging area.

I was playing sneak attack on gandalf (lower threat) and assigning him to quest on both turns 1 and 2. In first few turns encounter deck was giving me mirkwood bats (total 2, not in the same turns) which damaged all characters in my party. In both attacks gollum got assigned damage because i was not blocking (4 total damage in stage 1, so I had to be careful later) and legolas was killing bats, giving me further progress. Eventually, stage 1 was completed, but attercop showed on the board. I killed him using regular gandalf direct damage, 1 hit ability of gondorian spearman, 1 feint and 1 leadership scout (meat shield). I also had elfhelm in play. But still, attercop is a beast that completely changes the situation on the board. Then stage 3 started. Stage 3 is AWFUL. 7 progress tokens when you can't play cards is very high number, much higher than it seems. Eowyn was questing and using her ability (with theodred and radagast helping), legolas and elfhelm were waiting in reserve. In this stage, I was getting locations that needed hero to exhaust (some were in staging area already in stage 1 or 2 and got carried up to this point). I was a little bit flooded in the staging area, so progress was slow and the threat was rising ( I wished I had tracker in play , but did not). So I was exploring those locations using legolas (to pay the cost), but every one of them was making stage 3 longer and the threat was getting higher and higher. I had 1x galadrim greeting in hand, but could not play it thanks to stage 3 effect. Theodred got killed by a treachery (deal 4 damage), but this card really helped me because it meant there was no additional threat (and no additional location!) and I made some progress in quest. Finally, when I had 48 threat , I sent Eowyn, Radagast and Elfhelm to quest. And I was really sure that I will move to stage 4, so I could play greetings and gain 1 more turn to live (at that time there were no enemies in play). I got perfect card from encounter deck - goblin sniper. Engaged him, spearman blocked and died. Legolas killed sniper and put 2 progress on quest, finishing stage 4 and winning epic game. I did not have to play greetings, but I would have to, in case Legolas would not get an enemy to kill or if big enemy showed on the board. What I also remember from the game, were the two nasty cards, treachery that raised my threat by 8 (-1 because elfhelm was ready) and the spider den (location that becomes active when shadow effect triggers -> very nasty as it makes location flood more likely).

To summarize, I think the quest is VERY hard and the only way to win is to rush as if hell was chasing you and have a lot of threat reduction. I reduced 10 threat using gandalf in this game. Also elfhelm ability reduced threat by 3 or 4 total, can't remember. You have to rush as fast as possible, because there is no way to stabilize the threat rise. Also, I think I will be able to reproduce the win some time in the future, but not really frequently as the quest is indeed hard. The scaling for 1 player is an issue (should really raise threat by 2, not 3 on gollum card and the locations that lower the threat should also work in solo play, not only multi - developers of the game made mistakes), but those issues are not bigger than in Dol Guldur, maybe even a little smaller. Very challenging , but rewarding. Try it solo Glaurung, I think you will like it.

Sounds like an epic game. What was your score at? 60ish?

guciomir said:

Cool report.

I already like it. At last a good interesting quest. Last 2 quests was really boring so this one is big event now.

Eric W said:

I did not count the turns, but when I do the math today, I think there were 8 turns so the score was around 124 (as per new FAQ rules for scoring).

guciomir said:

You still use Gimly/Theodred/Eowyn deck???? Can you print deck list???

I've been playing Legolas instead of Gimli for a couple of last weeks (starting from Rhosgobel). I can provide the deck list when I'm home.

guciomir said:

OK i see. And how is your win ratio against Rhosgobel???