While I have be trolling forum boards looking for 3 and 4 player game rules I have found that people are playing it with out a second core set and this though possible would seem to make the game to easy. I have seen many reasons for needing a second set, such as 2 more trackers and more cards for tournament player deck. I have not seen any about the additional encounter cards. Would not the encounters card keep the game balanced? Most expansions have between 20 and 30 card that go into the encounter deck where the core card have 10 to 20. With the addition of 2 caught in the web card a scenario could get very tricky.

Actually Caught in a Web isn't that dangerous, because you can just attach them all to one unlucky sod who's really not going to ever get ready. But I think they should release something that adds in 2 more threat trackers, as well as a turn counter, because I often forget to track turns and then have to figure it out to calculate total threat.

You are not supposed to add the additional encounter cards from a second (or third) core set to the sets from yuor first box. The added difficulty in multiplayer games come from the fact that you draw an extra card each quest phase and from scenario special rules etc, not from extra encounter cards. Just throw the extra sets away or store them as replamcents if you lose the ones from your first set.

Gartock said:

Or better yet, use them to make permanent decks for some of the quests so you don't have to swap.

But yeah, you should not be adding additional encounter cards from multiple sets, that changes the quests in unintended ways.

Svenn said:

Gartock said:

Where are you getting that information from??

Read the rulebook - it describes how you are supposed to build the quest deck. It does not say anything about changing that process when you play with more that 2 players.

radiskull said:

Hey thanks for the advice!!! So this is what I found in reference to a 3 or 4 player game "The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a one to two player game that can be played using only the contents of this core set. (Up to four players can play the game cooperatively with a second copy of the core set.)"

Gartock said:

I must disagree with this based on the following quote from scenario overview section of the rulebook (P26 PDF format) "The Passage Through Mirkwood encounter deck is built with ALL the cards from the following encounter sets: Passage Through Mirkwood, Spiders of Mirkwood, and Dol Guldur Orcs. "

Hope to hear back on your thoughts.

ziryab1 said:

By your logic, if you owned 3 sets and wanted to play a solo game you would still put the encounter sets of 3 sets together when you created your encounter deck, since the pasasge you are quoting doesnt talk about the number of players at all. But this is not the intended way. An encounter set of Passage through Mirkwood consists of 11 cards - you could own several of these sets but that doesnt make the set bigger, it is still only 11 cards. And the passage you are quoting refers to all the cards of this single set, coupled with all the cards of a single set of Spiders of Mirdwood and Dol Guldur Orcs.

As was said by Radiskull, the rulebook explains how the game is played with differing numbers of players, and the added increase in difficulty comes from the fact that you draw one encounter card per player as well as from encounter card effects that scale with number of players.

Trust us, this is the way you play it

I disagree, because by my logic you would only buy a second set to play a 3 or 4 player game, as stated in the rulebook.

Except that once you stop playing Core-only quests, you run into the problem of either requiring two copies of the Core Set encounters AND two copies of the Adventure Pack encounter (let's say Hunt for Gollum as example). If you use 2x of the Core Set encounter deck pieces and 1x of the Hunt for Gollum encounter deck, then you've dramatically skewed the card ratio between Hunt for Gollum cards and Core Set cards. For example, you'd have one heck of a time finding the Clues.

Encounters are designed so that you play with exactly one of each deck of each necessary type for the encounter so that the card ratios are balanced the way FFG designed it. There's ABSOLUTELY NO reason why you would need two core sets of encounter cards to play with more than 2 people, because the game is designed that if the encounter deck keeps running out a lot (because you've got 4 players, say) then it will just keep shuffling back in. The only reason they say you need another Core Set for 3-4 players is because there aren't enough player cards to make 4 50 card decks with just one Core Set (not to mention that you'd need more threat trackers and probably more tokens).

Thanks for your input everyone. No extra encounter cards it is.

You CAN play 3 or 4 players with only a single core set, or with a 1 core set + APs. In that case, you would only be using 1 set of the encounter cards. Buying extra core sets isn't necessary for playing with more players, people buy multiple core sets simply so they have more player cards and more deck building options. With all the APs and deluxe expansion coming now, it's not really necessary to buy multiple core sets unless you want 2-4 copies of some of the cards that you don't get 3 of in the core set.

You'd probably have a more fun and challenging 3-4 player experience by buying a barrel, a gun, ammo, enough water to fill the barrel, and several fish.