at any point in the future? as the card pool grows it is getting more and more possible to make a good single sphere deck, but does this has any extra beneftis over multiple spheres apart from the ability to afford more cards per round?

For games with three and four players, I'm definitely planning to start using single-sphere decks. For me, though, it's more about diversity and specialization than anything else. I think the co-op experience is most enjoyable when each player has his or her particular role, with as little overlap as possible. Beyond the simple ability to play more cards each round, single-sphere decks help ensure that each member of the fellowship has a unique set of responsibilities. In smaller games, however, I'll probably stick with two- or three-sphere decks.

I don't think this will happen on a large scale, so far there is no real advantage in playing only one sphere: neither there are powerful cards that cost 5+ resources nor there are useful cards where you are required 3 heroes of the same sphere (e.g. wall of spears).

The card pool development even encourages you to play multi-sphere decks (Songs, Narvi's Belt) and the whole game design punishes mono-sphere decks bc regardless of your spheres you always need to be able to quest and fight, and to a lesser extent heal and do threat control.

I'm thinking about it, but mostly because I want to limit myself to just one of the spheres and try to build the best deck from that limited card pool. I see it as an extra challenge and a chance to try playing with some cards I've neglected so far.

I think it could be fun to try some of the older quests with that new decks that contain most of the player cards from the first cycle.

Of course multi-sphere is the more effective way to go in the current environment, especially with the songs. I like my Spirit/Tactics deck, but the deckbuilder in me is ready for something different...

I've been toying with the idea of making 4 mono decks and play them against several of the quests and see what happens.

Titan said:

It would be interesting to compare how each sphere does against a given quest, say HfG. I think this is what most people did when they first got the core set and used the given mono-sphere decks to get a feel for the game. I can still remember getting stomped running mono tactics in a core game

That being said, I would tend to agree with starhawk. As a solo player I don't see doing the mono-sphere thing unless I am simply going for the novelty of it. If I were in a multiplayer game though, I would certainly be for it.

I don't have to 'switch' since I've been using mono-sphere decks all the time (in multi-player games). They work well enough. I actually don't like that it's no longer practical to simply include every card of a sphere in the decks - there's already too many of them. Eventually I might even have to start 'building' decks - yuck!

jhaelen said:

you really hate deck building that much? its the best part of the game for me, still..each to their own

The majority of my games are single sphere decks anyway. I find that 2 or 3 spheres waters the deck down too much.

narr .single sphere decks are just not fun and also have no power or diversity. I think if you are playing 3+ players you can get away with 1 maybe 2 players running single sphere but in 2 player or solo single sphere decks are pretty lame. Good thing is there are no rules here, just play what you think it fun. Still you will be hard pressed to make a single sphere deck that can do anything well. I mean maybe way way way in the future when the card pool is higher.. but for now.. no way.. even if it wasn't completely boring to run solo sphere, you just couldn't and be able to build a deck that is any good at anything.

booored said:

i agree, however i have just posted about a spirit deck that beat emyn really easy, but spirit is pretty much made for the quest

yea, but can it beat the other quests in the quest chain?

booored said:

ha, not a chance, imagine putting all spirit against carrock? no thanks

When playing 4-player I can see almost no possible reason not to play 4 mono-sphere decks.

3-player I'd generally have 1 2-sphere decks and the others mono.

That way, you've got a good chance of being able to play any card that comes into your hand within a round.

As soon as you split spheres, you start having one sphere with only a single hero (and therefore only 1 resource per round) or being reliant on pulling out songs, which is tricky.

Whilst there are one or two cards it might be nice to run more than 3x of over a 4-player game, the cash investment to get enough to make it worthwhile would be phenomenal.

I'm with you Mighty Jim! As much as I enjoy playing a two-sphere deck, it sometimes doesn't run as smoothly as I'd like it to.

Two days ago for example I just drew cards from the one sphere, having a lot of unused resources on Boromir and never enough resource tokens to play all the spirit cards in hand...

richsabre said:

you really hate deck building that much? its the best part of the game for me, still..each to their own

I simply want to play this like every other card or board game: Bring it to the table, shuffle the cards and go!

I'd much rather play a couple of additional games than spend time trying to build better decks.

jhaelen said:

Pretty much echoes my feelings. I took pre-built bases for my four decks (2x Core), then after each AP, tweak them with the new cards that I like but ever since those early builds, their cores are almost the same. Only one hero has been swapped, Thalin was replaced by Brand. Then again, with 2 hobbit heroes provided so far, that's 2 heroes that never had any chance of getting into any deck . Imrahil, can't rightly toss Aragorn since I splash his deck with Spirit cards with Celebrian's Stone (although these days could use the Spirit song). Boromir? Nope, to meet his threat cost, would have to toss Gimil or Legolas and still would be left with no real way to manage threat, Tactics/Spirit (major/minor) has one Greeting, others are in other decks, doubtful that's enough to overcome Boromir's constant use.

Well wit hall due respect, they why are you even playing this game? This ISN'T a board game you just bring to the table.. the entire POINT of this game, well one of the major concepts in it is deck building. Deck building is part of the game experience, and if you do not like deck building.. they why are you playing?

This is like saying "Hey I really like playing monopoly but man I hate teh fact you need to buy property. Can't we just move round the board and draw cards form community chest?"

I mean each to their own, do what you like.. but be aware that the game is DESIGNED for deck building, and the longer it is out the more and more IMPOSSIBLE it will be to play with out deck building. Soon the card pool will be so large that even if you do want to go solo sphere (witch as many people said is not viable for solo or 2 players), you will still need to deck build within that sphere.

And you know what.. it should be like that. Cause that is what this game is. You need to ask yourself why are you playing a game that you do not like.

you guys might be more interested in games like

Dominion or Eaten by Zombies or Sentinels of the Multiverse.. all FANTASTIC card games, well worth your time but they all start with set decks. No deck "construction" of any kind. FFG makes a few of these, I think that new Blood Bowl one is a set deck list, as is Space Hulk and a few others.

booored said:

Dude, with all due respect, don't tell me how or what to play, k?

The whole point of LCG Core Sets is to provide a fun game experience without requiring deck building. It's supposed to be attractive for casual gamers who aren't interest in the deck-building aspect. It's one box with a complete game, ready for play just like any other card- or board game. It's how it's promoted by FFG!

Have you ever actually played Monopoly? I don't think I know anyone who's playing it exactly by the rules. People houserule it to their heart's content to turn it into the kind of game they enjoy playing. And that's perfectly fine!

If you feel deck-building is the most fun aspect of the game, go ahead and build decks. But don't echo Glaurung and complain that the game isn't challenging enough for you; because, you know, playing without optimized decks actually increases the challenge!

jhaelen said:

You are right; that is the purpose of Core sets.

However the purpose of LCGs is to eliminate the fustration of random card distribution whilst still expanding the games card pool and allowing people to build new decks.

If you are buying the adventure packs then FFG's intent is that you are using the player cards in them, along with the core set, to build decks.

All power to you if you want to just use the packs for new quests! Just keep playing with base decks in the core set, or shuffle everything in as you have been doing.

As this game requires you to "build" the encounter deck each game you change quests between though - maybe you should just shuffle in that quest's cycle's player cards to the core set decks?

That will mean that when KD & DD come out you aren't left with massively oversized decks as you'll remove the Mirkwood cards...

Just a thought

I play single sphere decks in two situations:

If we have three or more players, it starts to get difficult for everyone to pick three heroes without stepping on one another's toes. We just love Gimli, Eowyn, Boromir, etc too much to part with our beloved hero. In that case I just let everyone else declare their sphere(s) and heroes first, and then pick a mono deck based on whichever sphere still has three heroes that I don't hate. This usually gets a little easier when a new expansion comes out.

I play a single sphere deck when we face Gol Dulgur (that never looks right when I spell it). Sure, we have yet to win, but I feel better knowing that if one of my heroes is captured, it will not be the one who leaves me unable to use that entire sphere right out of the gate. I guess songs could mitigate that, but I'm still more comfortable with a single sphere for this one. Still, zero wins...

booored said:

For me, for the quests. Duh. I pretty much play a quest six times (four decks paired once with each other equals six plays) then on to the next quest. Only really played Mirkwood more times, Anduin and Carrock once with a friend for seven plays. After six plays, especially if I have winning record, I see very little to no reason to go back, I've "beaten" the quest. Even worse, if I go 3-0 to begin with, I tend to have a hard time getting motivated to play to my best ability and try and beat the quest three more times. Doesn't just apply to LotR, when we play snooker with my friend, we play 4 frames. If I win the first two, motivation and focus tends to go away, I've secured a draw at worse, won't lose, so don't have to play at my best anymore.

Also, I prefer to spend my time devoted to LotR to play instead of "wasting" it on deckbuilding. Pre-built decks, with little tweaking, I can break them out and play in about, allowing me to use 99% of the time to actual playing, thus leaving that extra time for other games since it isn't wasted constantly blowing up working decks and starting a new build from scratch.

If I want to play deckbuilding, I take out Thunderstone. In none of the LCGs I own (W:I, LotR and CoC) do I bother with any real deckbuilding. WI and CoC I've built decks that would ideally be balanced against each other (since we play using my decks) so again, all that is needed is take out the game, hand out a deck and play.

Personally I find that extremely strange. You are basically playing the game but ignoring it major design concept. Not doing deck construction in CoC? That is like not deck building in MTG... I just never knew people played like that it is completely shocking to me. I just do not even know how to react to that lol. Don't you get bored playing the same decks all the time in CoC?

I mean I am glad you are having fun in LoTR, but you must realize that the majority of the design decisions and how the cards are constructed during the development is for deck construction. That is one of the core "points" of this game. One that echos though every single card that comes to the table and every design decision in the development process.

What is really wired to me is that there is now an entire sub genre of card games that has evolved in the last 5 years or so that completely eliminate the deck construction aspect from the game. Games that are dsigned just for players like you, were all the design ideas are focused around other aspects of the game not deck construction. Maybe you might wish to try this, you may find that they appeal a lot more as they are basically made for you.

booored said:

Once I've built my decks, I just don't blow them up anymore, they are done and thus playable. Tweak here and there as new cards are added, but no overhauls. As for getting bored, one of the reasons LotR really has a max two plays per day is that after those two plays, all four decks have seen action and I can't be bothered to see the same deck twice in a day (which effectively eliminates me from any and all tournament play). However, that is still 1000x less hassle than: play, blow up, build a new deck, test, play, blow up, build, test, play just to get more plays.

I currently have 36 decks for WWE Raw Deal which is closing in on 3000 plays since August 2008 (will pass 3000 before 2012). Should I be blowing up all those decks day after day as well? Taking out and separating, unsleeving, resleeving 36x60 = 2160 cards constantly? I don't think so. It would take several days to take apart the decks and then rebuild them, not to mention several months to see all the decks paired against one another to see that they are balanced to a point where we can just randomly pick two decks and pit them against each other.

booored said:

I own around 50 games that I actually have played in the last three years I've been logging plays on BGG. Only really missing a couple of games and then I've so far gathered all the games I care for. See for me theme is the #1 requirement/priority. If the theme doesn't click for me (or there is hardly/no theme at all, looking at eurogames), doesn't matter what it brings to the table in terms of mechanics, innovation, etc., it simply won't get played. Period.

I play LCGs for their theme and no random booster approach. Knowing what I get in each and every pack fixed allows me to choose if a want a pack or not. For LotR the packs have been more must-buy than for W:I or CoC since the quests are what for me are the most important aspect of the game. Deckbuilding doesn't even get on the chart as far as importance is concerned. One of the reasons I took the basic structure for the decks from a thread on BGG was that I didn't have to bother mulling over what combos of heroes and spheres to use, I could just take the decks proposed and tweak them here and there as I desired. Less time spent on deckbuilding, more on actual playing.

I play with a small group, we play 2 players, 3 players, and 4 players games fairly often.

After spending some time running dual sphere decks we've all moved towards single sphere decks (aside from our Aragorn deck splashing a tiny amount of threat reduction, shadow/when revealed cancel events).

We've found that single sphere decks work extremely efficiently in 3 and 4 player games as it narrows our focus down and lets us play off of team synergy.

Several of the quests went poorly over repeated plays with multisphere decks mainly due to the lack of resource outside of Leadership (though atleast they can transfer resources now because of CP 4).

But we've gone through each quest with 3 or 4 players using mono sphere decks (50 cards each) and have had no realy trouble. The only one that is tough is Massing at Osgiliath (which is just tough).

We think we may start multi sphere decks again soon though, especially with Boromir and Dain, and the upcoming Khazad Dum expansions. Fingers crossed for a bit more resource gain outside of Stewards of Gondor and Horn of Gondor.