Hello to you all.

I 've just immersed myself to the game and, naturally, the questions abound. Could you please tell me a few words, apart from what the core rules state, concerning the four spheres and their six possible dual combinations? Which are their strengths and which their weaknesses?

Thanks in advance.

Serazu said:

welcome!

firstly its worth pointing out with cards called 'songs' (released in adventure packs) it is possible to have a 4 sphere deck, so this opens up your options even more...onto the spheres

basically..

TACTICS- poor questing, great fighting defending skills, also alot of power buff cards, good allies to defend and attack with, the expansions are based around eagles, which are very strong fighters and defenders, and also have alot of 'card draw' events

SPIRIT- the best questing sphere, cards revolve around increasing willpower and preventing treachery/ threat increase, you can absoluty destroy locations with this sphere. cards tend to be very weak in attack and defense

LORE- healing and card/resource draw, use this to back up your heros and allies. decent in defending, not so much in attacking, has several cards that allow you to look at and mess with the encounter deck, meaning you can tweak what you are immediatly up against

LEADERSHIP- probably the best all rounder, definatly powerful and this is backed by the expensive cards and heros it has, has a bit of everything,alot of buff cards

now to use them, you really cant use the same deck all the time, for some quests yes, but for some you will have to change round. Even on a heavy questing quest (cant think of a better way to say that) you will usually need some back up or else your heros will be quickly killed, so tactics or leadership may be a good combo. I find tactics a lore a good mix, you can throw allies into the fight but mange to heal as well. the downside to that is poor questing ability. you can have a three or even four sphere deck as stated, but downside is that you will have less of a chance of paying/drawing the cards you want. i tend not to go over 2, but thats personal choice.

if you are stuck at the start try leadership with spirit- very powerful all rounder, especially with aragorn and eowyn. spirit has an extremely useful card called unexpected courage which allows a hero to refresh during a turn, free of charge. put that on aragorn who can already refresh after questing by paying 1 resource and you have one powerful guy on your hands

Thanks! The manipulative and card drawing aspect of Lore was what caught my eye at first, but I 'll test all spheres nonetheless to see what best suits my playstyle. I intend to mostly play solo, at least at the beginning.

Serazu said:

As a solo player, you will quickly find that you need to cover a lot of bases with one deck. Obviously questing / defending / attacking, but other important things (depending on the Quest you're playing) are card draw, extra resource generation, threat control, and healing.

Therefore, I tend to favour tri-sphere or even quad-sphere builds (with the Songs from the Mirkwood expansions). With just a core set to play with, tri-sphere gives you the advantage of being able to pick the best 15-16 cards per sphere and put them in a deck with 3 Gandalfs. Make sure you don't pick just the expensive cards as you will only generate 1 resource per sphere per turn (e.g. a Citadel Plate is essentially a wasted card in such a deck). I tend to use Leadership/Spirit/Lore or Leadership/Spirit/Tactics, or Spirit/Lore/Tactics but that one is only viable if you can splash in the leadership power cards through the Song of Kings from the Hunt for Gollum expansion.

In the theoretical instance I decide to share spheres with a friend of mine, so as to split costs, if I have to create two couples, one for me and one for him, I believe, at first glance, that Tactics / Spirit and Lore / Leadership are two viable choices, with each sphere of the couple complementing the other. Am I right or is there a better combination?

Serazu said:

I certainly think that Spirit/Tactics and Leadership/Lore makes for an interesting split. If you are interested in two decks that work well together, I can link you there:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/662483/hammer-and-anvil-a-strategy-template-for-two-playe

Hope that helps.

Thanks. A question though: however important it is to make two dual decks working together, it's also important to know whether the aforementioned combinations work well in solo mode. Are Tactics / Spirit and Lore / Leadership decks viable in solo mode as well?

Serazu said:

Personally I think Leadership/Lore is a much more solid solo attempt. You have the resource generation from Leadership with the card draw from Lore that allows you to cover many weaknesses and hold more playable options in your hand.

I find Spirit/Tactics harder on the other hand since they are lacking in card draw (only Ancient Mathom shines and it probably is the only card draw they got outside of Gandalf) and they don't have meaningful resource acceleration either, especially not well suited for solo play (Horn of Gondor). You can take Radagast and pair him with the creatures (only Spirit and Tactics currently got some), but he takes a long time to repay for himself.

BUT, Spirit and Tactics have probably the more efficient cards out there like Northern Tracker or Feint, so if you got a good draw, they work pretty well together. Leadership/Lore is a little bit more "strength in numbers", which I find more reliable personally, but it is not necessarily stronger.

I think my point is: Spirit is a "quest focused" sphere and tactics a "combat focused", while Leadership ("resources and ally manipulation") and Lore ("card draw, healing and encounter knowledge"), are more of support spheres, but they can dabble in questing and combat pretty well, e.g. Faramir can make huge impact on questing, while For Gondor! can give you the melee oomph when you need it. Lore on the other hand can make a big contribution to questing with Protector of Lorien or remove one enemy from a fight with Forest Snare. But a Spirit/Tactics deck can not do the same and dabble into the Lore/Leadership themes, especially the lack of healing can screw your day.

Hope that helps.

It certainly does.

With all the above in mind, if you had to suggest two dual sphere decks with all four spheres represented that can fare well solo, but can also synergize well in a 2 player game, which two would they be? Solo efficiency takes priority.

Serazu said:

I would favour Spirit and Lore as the major spheres (i.e., 2 heroes) and Leadership and Tactics as the minor spheres (1 hero).

Leadership supports well, but has a lot of dud cards for solo play, so sticking to the best 15 Leadership cards is enough. Tactics has a hard time winning quests on its own so it's better off in a supporting role as well for me. Both Spirit and Lore work well as major spheres, Spirit quests like no other and keeps threat low, while Lore is the most all-round sphere for me.

I would pair them Spirit-Leadership and Lore-Tactics. There are also some nice synergies between Leadership and Lore but that would leave Spirit and Tactics together and for me they work less well because they are both so specialized and have not got much resource generation or card draw to speed things along.

Some new questions:

1. Is there a loose tactic as to how many cards of each type one deck should sport? In AGoT for instance, the basic proportions are 50% of the deck should be Characters, 25% Locations and 25% the rest and each player makes his variations according to his playstyle. Here?

2. Continuing the above, should there be proportions in encounter decks as well or do I take the fixed encounter decks of each adventure pack (and the three fixed encounter decks of the CS in case I want to run the core scenarios) and run those?

3. Concerning the core scenarios, are the fixed encounter decks made to face only 30-card player decks or 50+-card decks as well?

Serazu said:

not sure about the others but the core quests im guessing are really for 50 decks- 30 decks have to be single sphere, and with the core set they dont really stand much of a chance