I love this game; chiefly for its beautiful artwork and faithfulness to Tolkien's world, but as being one who only gets to play solo (95% of the time), I am becoming more and more aware how much my play time is being "cheated" so to speak, because am not questing with other people. Solo scales majorly bad in some ways, especially when you draw a few nasty enemy cards and only have 3 heroes to quest and fight with. I don't think FF has done a good job making this game scale to single and multiplayer mode at the same time; this is a game built for more than one player.

i play 100% solo and at first i thought 'this is winnable 1 player! no way!' but now im winning much more with the decks im building.

i agree that quests like dol guldor and return to mirkwood are not at all for solo, but i dont really have a problem with FFG bringing out a 1 or 2 of those, just as long as in a year's time they stay faithful to that 'a game for 1-2 players' written on the box. i think over time this situation wont be as big a problem as now

you are gonna get alot of stick for this post though, but i can see why you're annoyed, and it really irritates me when people say just 'play with other people' - i play this game to GET AWAY from people and you know, if your gonna advertise as 1-2 player game then youve got to stick with it, but ive brought these posts up before and due to serious lack of support for my views, i refuse to bring them up anymore

but bottom line is im a tolkein nut, and right now this game is getting me through some tough times (dont worry im not here to tell a sob story!) so i still take my hat off to FFG

just out of interest, ive noticed that like me and others here, youve been with the game pretty much from its start? Just curious as to why youve become fed up with the scaling now as opposed to a few months ago

RICH

Dol Guldur quest is not for solo, but Return to Mirkwood is totally manageable. Hard but you can win it. To sum it up, so far just 1 out of 10 quests is not playable solo (and I believe that there will be a time, once card pool gets bigger, that we will be able to challenge Dol Guldur consistently)

I do hope the future quests have more player-scaling mechanics. I've recently been playing this game normally with 3 players, but when I first bought it I spent a lot of time playing solo. One of the major draws for me was that I could play this game solo or with other people. I was fairly disappointed by Return to Mirkwood, because it is designed so there is no possible way to beat it solo. It doesn't even give an illusion of being beatable solo the way Escape from Dol Guldur does.

That being said, I still love playing this game, and I hope to see it get better as time goes on.

Hey Rich,

I absolutely agree with what you have said; and also, thank you for the kind regards. As to your question about why now and not awhile back, well, it really probably just boils down to having lost my last several games. Perhaps I am just getting lots of bad draws in these games of late. But, my contention still stands; I think the game scales a bit worse for 1 player.

The real reason I have stuck with this game is my obsession with Tolkien and his world. The art is phenomenal; the game play fantastic and innovated; and this discussion community is very helpful. I have just been frustrated about my losing streak I guess. I do have good feelings for the future of this game though, and I think that once a few more big boxes and expansions hit, I will be more content overall.

I will buy every one of these packs as long as the game continues to be fun (though I may still buy them just for the art and coolness) and so far they deliver!

Thanks for listening guys (especially you Richsabre. I am glad this game is helping you get your mind off of other things; good luck).

Joseph

Kiwina said:

Did you ever try playing Return to Mirkwood? What decks did you use? Or do you say its not possible to beat quest just by looking at cards? Legolas - Theodred - Eowin holds 9 wins 17 loses record against this adventure. I think the difficulty level of the quest relies heavily on the deck that you use. For instance, for my deck it works other way round: there is no chance for me to beat Dol Guldur (unless we count super easy encounter draws), while I am able to fight back in RtM.

DurinIII said:

cheers mate

I think it is universally agreed that odd scenarios like Dol Guldur are tough solo due to losing a third of your force from the start, and others depend on the timeing of important factors. However, it seems to me that in most cases 'solo' plays means only 1 set of 3 heroes. I play on my own quite a bit and mostly play 2 teams. This way it doesn't boil down to just one 'bad happening', you get a chance to recover, and meet more interesting encounters. I know the rules state that players cannot show or tell what cards you have, and on your own you have 100% knowledge, but how often have other players let slip what their intentions are? No-one seems to keep Gandalf a secret! Therefore I would state that solo (1 group) is the most difficult and 2 player the optimum, with 1 player 2 groups slightly easier. Cheers!

guciomir said:

Honestly I haven't tried it solo yet. I've only played it with my two other roommates, so I say it's nearly impossible for solo based on my experience with 3 players. Which has a 1 win out of 4 or 5 games. The only game we won was the one where we didn't see any Addercop, Addercop cards and only saw about 2 tantrums. We found the Addercops and tantrums extremely crippling cards. I just couldn't imagine beating the game solo. It seemed like you'd have to be really lucky to win, but then again you have a 50%+ win ratio against it.

Actually 9 - 17 gives me 34% ratio. Because I played a lot of games - 26, I can really say that the luck / misfortune were not involved. Also, this was my standard deck that I used for previous adventures, I did not prepare it for RtM,

Scenario is hard for solo player but you can really win it and you do not have to rely on luck. I killed dozen of attercops and to be honest, if given a choice I would prefer fighting against attercop and not against Hill Troll.

And yes, I was also thinking that the scenario is impossible to win for solo player. But this was before I started playing it.

The game does seem to play best with 2, but, as stated several times, you can win consistently solo. In fact you can even win against the different scenarios consistently with the same deck if you make it versatile enough. The thing is that it's a good enough game, with enough variety in both the player's cards and scenarios/encounter cards, that I usually have fun even if I lose (some notable exceptions, but true for the most part). I often do a fair amount of late night online gaming with friends or get lost in games of Civ5 or Total War, but these days I'll more likely pull out the LotR cards and solo a few quests...and I have almost as much fun as I do in the the weekly gaming sessions which usually include a game or two of 2-4 player LotR.

As for Return to Mirkwood solo, my LGS just got theirs in this weekend so first games this weekend. I think it will be much more fun to play multi player with the strategies of moving Gollum around, but I did go 2 and 3 with two of the losses being close...the third loss was a turn 3 slaughter from a starting Attercap! At least it was quick.

DurinIII said:

It just doesnt. Last time I went totally overboard with it an posted a fuddgin science articel about propabilties and scaling effects and I dont think anyone understood. Just let me assure you, with a degree of absolute certainity, that 2 player is in no way, shape or form much easier than 1 Player. It requires different deck building, yes. But thats about it. Dul Guldor beeing the super-obvious exception of course.

There is an interesting variant on BGG forums, which allows solo players to play with more than 3 heroes. That means these decks are essentially multi-sphere, but people who tried it seem to be happy with the result:

http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/69038/expanded-solo-variant-v0-8

There are other variants too (such as in solo players get 3 resources even with less than 3 heroes).

UnthoughtKnown said:

Can you provide the link for your probability/scaling post ?

guciomir said:

Actually I forgot that half of it went to **** when my browser crashed. You should still get the idea though. The discussion can be found here:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/727633/my-thoughts-on-lotr-the-card-game-after-20-solo-pl

Half of it is slightly offtopic since I also had to adress the whole "luck dependancy" issue that doesnt really shine through in this thread.

This is the actual post from it with an important addition at the end of it:

I could not disagree more on the whole "solo play is too difficult" sentiment, which I keep reading on various boards.This is just a flat out wrong assumption by people with a great lack of understanding of the game and its mechanics.

I really could care less about it. But I came to this place to get some insight on whether to invest into the game or not, and I read a lot of those "reviews" who bash on single player aspect of the game and / or its luck dependency. And it almost scared me away from this wonderful game, which would have been a huge mistake.

For those potential single-player gamers who are struggling with a purchase, let me get you the facts straight once and for all. This comes from a player who played a great deal of CCGs (Dark Force, Shadowrun, Middle-Earth, Magic (online and offline),Pokemom and World of Warcraft) and semi-professional online poker for years. So, while the questions of whether you like something or not boils down to personal opionion, I think Im in a position to make some qualified and objective statements about the nature of some aspects of the game.

Solo play is too difficult!

What do you mean? What exactly is too difficult? And why is a 2 player game less difficult?

Lets start with the term "difficulty" itself. Difficulty is in this game is measured by a difficulty value. The starter quest in the core set got a difficulty of 1. A player with a structured deck and basic understanding of the game will beat this quest like 29 out of 30 times. Its almost a guaranteed victory. Now tell me: where exactly is the fun in that? Right, theres none. This is why there are higher levels of difficulty.

The next quest, Journey down the Anduin, is a whole of a lot different. Its got a difficulty of 4. Playing it solo for the first time will probably yield a loss. However, this quest is a good example of what a difficulty 4 quests looks like. As soon as you a) know whats going to happen and b) adjust your deck to the quest you will win at the very least 6 out of 10 times. So whats happening in the 4 times when actually still loose?

There are factors that make the game seem "luck-based". But as a former poker player I thoroughly hate the term "luck" with a passion. In short, there is no such a thing as luck when it comes to propabilties. For example: After revealing the first Hill Troll for the Anduin-quest, theres a chance that the first card that comes of the encounter deck is a second Hill Troll, leaving you in a near unwinable game. If the encounter deck starts with 60 cards (not sure about the correct number), theres a like a 1 to 59 chance that the first card you flip over is the second Hill Troll (there are 2 copies in the deck). This means that in more than 98% of your games, this is not going to happen. Of course this no guarantee that its not going to happen. If you play a sufficient number of poker hands you can also lose with AA vs KK 10 times in a row, even though you are a 80+% favourite each time. This is called variance. It doesnt matter though because in the long run, the AA vs KK play yields you a net win.

Probability works the other way around, too. If theres a card you really really need to draw, like Steward of Gondor, you put 3 of 'em in your deck. If you do so, you have a 32,5% chance of getting one on your first 6 cards before the first draw-phase. Add in the muligan (draw 6 new cards), your chance of NOT having a Steward of Gondor on each of your starting hands drops to a measily 35% chance.

Now the game has a smart way of ballancing the variances of the 2 decks out. On the one hand, while the game progresses, the chance of a second Hill Troll appearing becomes more and more likely (because there are less and less cards left to draw from). On the other hand though, the chance of you getting a single card that you need also rises.

It is however 100% certain that you will not win every game. The game is designed around this assumption. A win however (while maintaning equal player skill and deck strength) becomes more and more unlikely with rising difficulty level. Assuming that you can win 6 out of 10 times vs a difficulty 4 quest, youd win only 3 out 10 times vs a difficulty 7 quest (making these numbers up on the fly right now to make a point, without a simple size of thousands of games they cannot ever be confirmed).

So, is it bad luck when you loose A Journey Down the Anduin? No, its not. The game is designed in such a way that x out of y games will turn out as a loss for the player. This is, however, under the assumption of equal player skill and deck strength.

The game has 2 major factors that a lot of unexperienced players seem to forget: Player skill and deck strenght can improve. As these two factors improve you will lose less quests.Yes, you can get better at this game. If youre new to LotR:LCG, you will make mistakes which impact your win ratio. Also, if youre tired, drunk, stressed, doped or in whatever unballanced state of mind, you will make more mistakes. Avoiding mistakes is the first major path to victory. Finesse can come later. This is true for LotR as well as for most other games, or sports.

So we learn that the player skill is a big factor on the win percentage. Now you can allready see why a statement such as "this game is too hard single player" makes absolutely no sense.

Note: At this point my browser crashed, this is what I had left in the paste. I lost like a wall of text. I dont wanna throw this away so Ill end it very briefly with cliffnotes.

2 Player is easier than 1 Player

- cannot be proven with empirical data due to lack of samplesize
- has to be looked into from a theoretical point of view

Basic math of 2 players vs 1 Player:

1P: 3 heroes vs 1 card from encounter deck
2P: 6 heroes vs 2 card from ecnounter deck
----------------
Hero-per-card ratio stays the same (0,33 cards per heroe) in both modes (excpetion: escape from dunblabla quest)

2P mode also gets
+ variety (more choices, have ewoyn each time, more synergy
- exponentially more possible mistakes***
----------------
I call this even. Might give a slight advantage to 2P mode.

But, and this is the biggest difference:

2P mode doubles the possibilty of kill cards. When you played for a while you know that certain positions arise where a certain treachery outright instantly kills you. While you dont have the double potential of countering said effects (only 1 player will be playing treachery counters most of the time), you get double the chance total to instant-die. Example:

CatC: Stage 2 puts a ton of thread into the staging area. When you now pull the treachery that adds the staging areas thread to your thread you die like 95 out of 100 times. You may or may not be able to counter the treachery in 1P mode, but you also only reveal 1 card. In 2P mode you DOUBLE the chance of being insta-killed (2 cards pulled instead of 1), but your chance to counter is NOT doubled!

To sum it up:

- 2 player mode beeing harder than 1 player mode is a statement I cannot confirm empirically or theoretically.

- 1 player mode is not "too hard". Its fun and challenging and every gamer (read: not a whiny WoW-style loser who demands free purplez aka the game is to hard Q_Q) can safely pick this game up without a shadow of a doubt.

*** After reading my ranting again I should probably explain what I mean with exponentially more possible mistakes since this in an important observation. See, in 1 Player mode you can play your stuff and thats it. Theres still a lot of room for mistakes though. Playing a card prematurely, not having ressources spare, supoptimal attachment placement, poor judgement on questing, defending or attacking and so on.

Now when you add a second player the possible mistakes do not merely double, which would put it on a level playing field with 1P. In fact we have a problem here which we sociologist call double (or two sided) contingency.

Small off-topic detour cause I find it quite revealing and interesting: Lets say youre with another person. You now have the possibilty to do anything. Your theoretical options are basically countless (thats why we talk about contingency). The other person too is confronted with a limitless array of possible actions (hence double contingency). Given this 2 sided spectrum of unlimited possibilities it comes close to a miracle that something like a conversation (where A says something, B responds, A, B etc.), can actually occur since it only represents the tiniest fraction in the horizion of possible events. In fact, every kind social order is unlikely to an unbelievable degree. If youre interested in how this problem is solved you may want to give Parsons or Luhmann a shot.

Back on topic: 2 Player mode is tuned in a way that it requires 2 player to beat. But a second player isnt simply a force itself that counts against the power of the encounter deck. In fact, most of the time, the full potential power of 2 players is needed to beat an encounter. But 2 players are now faced with the problem that they have to interact. You cannot only play your stuff on your dudes, but also on your partners dudes. You can lower his thread by 6, your thread by 6 or both of your thread by 2. You can let him play the Gandalf or play the Gandalf on your own. Does your tactics partner commit a guy to questing too so that you can use your Eowyn ability 2 times? Will you have enough left for blocking?

The new and unique spectrum of options is, like I said, at least exponentially wider when you add a second player. More possibilties also leads to more possible poor judgment calls, or mistakes. If you aknowledge that mistakes can lose you the game, youve got a pretty well balanced counter-weight to the fact that 2 players give you more flexibility. That the hero-to-encounter-card ration doenst change from 1p to 2p should be obvious. In relation to the cards that come of the deck YOU DO NOT GET MORE STUFF in 2 player mode. All you get is MORE OPTIONS, a advantage that is almost entirely eaten away by the fact that you get DOUBLE THE POTENTIAL KILL CARDS (read above) and the fact that you can make WAY, WAY, WAY MORE MISTAKES.

So the point is: No, 1P is not harder than 2P. Also, neither your feelings towards it nor your personal experiences have any impact on the actual discussion. Sample size of games is so small and variance is so large (google it) that any emprical observation is basically pointless, unless you played a couple of thousand games under controlled parameters. If you feel like 1P beeing too hard you should argue on a theoretical level because everything else doenst make any sense.

Disclaimer: Yeah, everyone is fair to have his or her own opinion. But opinions are opinions are nothing more. Also they are like as*h****, everyone has one. It just upsets me a little when I read crap in "reviews" that is just flat out wrong. Also Im bored at work. Also english is not my native so please bear with me on such a long-winded ranting.

How about having actually played both 2 player and 1 player and finding out that two player is easier? Is that "empirical" enough for you UnthoughtKnown?

DurinIII said:

It's not only not empirical enough "for me", it simply isnt. Its, well, a fact. Your statement is based on your subjective opinion and a very low number of observations. But I know its hard to get the fundamental aspect of science into people, no offense.

This is the reason that I wish the Quest Log would actually give us the statistics for both victories and defeats. Finding out percentages, averages for the community, and seeing where the means lie would be something we could all benefit from. As it stands I can only compare victory scores, and really only to one person at a time. If FFG makes this change we could see who the outliers are and actually strengthen the play of the community in this manner.

To be honest though, I am a 'Pippin' player and probably bring all of the averages down with my goofy attempts at combos and theme decks.

Puzzle said:

Yeah I couldnt agree more. Quest Log got so much potential, but as it stands its a trainwreck

I play a lot of solo, in fact I played just solo until marshes came out.. now I play 2 player as well regularly and have a weekly 3 player game as well. Probability and all that crap aside I have to agree that 3+ players is easier than 2 player games on a whole. Though this is affected by the quest itself.

The thing is that these games are won and lost in many situations though the use of "control" or "Trick" cards. Things like "Faint" or "Hasty Stroke" or "Sneak Attack + Beorn/Gandalf/Decendant" or w/e. There are many, many of these cards. Having multiple players allows you to have more free resources, more card draws and better "in the barrel" hands.. as in instead of a single player having a loaded hand with lost of cool stuff he can do, you have 2 or 3 people. Drawing a extra encounter card is not a powerful enough affect to counteract this. Witch is why 4 player games are insanely easy.

Also in solo games, you need to diversify your deck as you have to play multipule roles. Like you can not have a pure high threat monster killer deck and a super low threat control quest deck... you need to be both, this limits the card pool.. again making solo harder.

On top of that these quest seam to start strong, it is normally in the beginnings of the quest that you will fail, as once you have allys out and attachments on the individual turns get more and more trivial. Solo decks are simply not able to get the board presence as fast, so solo players take that initial beating very hard, while in multiplayer you can have a single player take most of the brunt, freeing the other player to do other things

That being said some quest are WAY easier solo.. Like Passage Down the Audin is far easier solo than it is in 2 player, as is the Carrock. While Journey to Rasca--what.ever.it.is.spelt is far easier multiplayer.

The question is not is it easier or harder.. but is this a problem?

For me it is no. There is no quest out yet that can not be beaten solo with ease once you experiment with your deck builds. Personally I like it hard. I wouldn't trade that for anything. To many games try to make it "easy" on people to make it more assessable, and that is bull. Keep it hard keep it interesting. As I said, there is no quest that can not be beaten regally solo, so what they hell are you complaining about?

My attitude is yes, the game dose have some scaling issues, this can not be denied. Are they major issues? Absolutely not. The game is still a lot of fun solo or multriplaer, and that in itself is an achievement. Can it be improved? Sure it can.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Some very useful thoughts.

Unthoughtknown; all statements (even so called "proven" ones) are based on some degree of subjectivity. The reason for this is because we are humans with our own unique brains and ways for seeing things. Don't make the amateur mistake of assuming because you herald the name "science" that you are irrefutable. You simply are not. You are one person with your own opinions, and though you may pay special attention to data logs that you have created, you are not the sole possessor of "absolutes."

UnthoughtKnown said:

Is it this?

Hero-per-card ratio stays the same (0,33 cards per heroe) in both modes (excpetion: escape from dunblabla quest)

2P mode also gets
+ variety (more choices, have ewoyn each time, more synergy
- exponentially more possible mistakes***
----------------
I call this even. Might give a slight advantage to 2P mode.

If so, I neither see the science nor the proof. All I'm seeing is a statement based on your personal opinion.

I think it's obvious to anyone who tried playing solo compared to playing with multiple players that multi-player games are easier. There's a number of reasons for this. To name just a few:

1. Deck-Building is easier: Multiplayer games are won easily using decks that require zero deckbuilding. Just put all the cards belonging to a sphere into one deck and play. This doesn't work at all in single player.

2. Resourcing is easier: Since you can use mono-sphere decks, you never have the problem that you cannot play a card because you don't have the right number of resources of the appropriate type available.

3. The pool of available cards is larger: Every player has a hand full of cards she can play. A single player has to rely on extra card draws. For an extremely easy example: the chance to have a 'Gandalf' card ready increases with every player (assuming all player decks include Gandalf cards). To generalize: In any given situation the chance that a player has a card that can help in the current situation increases with every additional player.

4. The consequences of errors is smaller: You state that the number of possible mistakes increases 'exponentially'. What you don't mention is that the effect of these mistakes is lessened: Other players can make up for the mistakes of one player! E.g. if in single player you lose one hero, you're crippled considerably. Unless you're already well on the road of winning, you're probably doomed. In multiplayer games you hardly notice any effect (you only lost one out of six heroes, rather than one out of three). This is why 'Escape from Dol Guldur' is such a difficult scenario for solo players!

5. Responsibilities can be allocated: Instead of one player with one deck having to deal with everything, in multiplayer everyone can concentrate on certain aspects of the game, reducing the likelihood of mistakes. E.g. the Tactics player concentrates on dealing with enemies while the Spirit player goes questing, and the Lore player heals everyone.

A multiplayer game isn't simply a game with several players each playing as if they were playing solo, they're playing as a team! The sum is greater than its parts.

For most quests, to beat them you need adequate willpower, defense and attack power. A smoothly running deck will also have additional resource generation and increased card draw. Optional extras which sometimes make a huge difference are: spying out the encounter deck, healing, and recursion.

The big difference between solo and multiplayer is that a solo deck has to cover all those bases by itself, whereas in multiplayer you can chop up responsibiltiy between decks, most notably by having a willpower deck and a combat deck. That's what makes solo harder than multiplayer. And it's something that can only partially be addressed through appropriate scaling of quests. Therefore, it will always be thus to a certain extent.

I mainly play solo, and apart from Dol Guldur i don't think there is a single quest that is a poor solo quest, although admittedly I haven't yet got Return to Mirkwood. I have beaten all the others except for Osgiliath, which from very limited experience (2 games) I thinks is extremely difficult but winnable without having to rely on crazy amounts of favourable card draws. The first five Mirkwood cycle quests I thought were all very well done from my solo play perspective.

The factors that favor multi are connected to the card pool. Right now solo deck needs to perform multiple functions and as a result solo players often play 3 or 2 spheres. I also heard about players going 4 spheres. When you play with a second player, you can easily go 1 or 2 spheres and should be good. You have a bigger card pool to choose from, you can use different heroes (that you would not even consider in solo play) and most importantly, you have easier time in the first turns (you can bring costly allies into play earlier). For example, when I play alone with my 3 spheres deck, I can just bring snowborn scout into play during the first turn.