First of all, let me just say that these tournaments are intended for fun and enjoyment and to explore deck building, the scoring mechanics, different approaches to various quests, and to provide a platform for telling adventure tales.

These tournaments are also competitive by design – they are tournaments, and with that we have to hold to certain standards of in-game play, reporting, and accuracy.

There is no formal referee system. Implied in how this is set up is that everyone be as honest as possible with themselves and with the community. No one is obligated to provide detailed reports of their quests, and if a glaring error is not evident in a reported result, a score will stand. If a mistake is made and realized later during the tournament, I would appreciate for whoever made the mistake to make a post about it so the score could be retracted. However, once a tournament is completed and “in the books” there will be no going back and readjusting scores. At that point, it’s water under the bridge. This whole system relies on everyone doing the best they can over both the short and long haul, including me – the host.

That said, as host, I rely on each participant to submit scores you believe honestly reflect the game you have played. So, specifically, in the Da_Engineer’s case (see above), there has been so much consideration (so many theoretical outcomes for how the game could have gone, posted after the fact) that I feel like I’ve lost clarity around what actually happened during the game itself. To me this starts to sound more like a theoretical game than actual game play. And while theory is fun too, I want to rank scores based on what actually happened. In this context, I think game play matters. Deck building, preparation, and in-game execution all matter. Otherwise, we wouldn't need to even play the game; we could just prepare for it and call it good.

Everyone, even the “experts” here, are on a learning curve with this game, and I hope we can all continue to learn and grow in our understanding and enjoyment of LOTR LCG along the way. I hope the tournaments I host help enhance those things. I hope everyone who participates has fun. I know I’m having fun hosting.

As for the idea of posting to BGG, I think that’s a fantastic idea. While I check BGG often as a resource, I do not have my own account (by choice), and so I would welcome anyone who’s enjoying these tournaments here to post announcements and invitations on the BGG forums (with links to the FFG tournament threads) to come here and join in the tournaments. Thanks!

Ok that's too bad.

Don't think I have what it takes to redo more runs, kinda burnt out, so I'll leave it at that lol, good game.

muemakan said:

Thanks for the info, I thought I had to "guess" when I applying cards to make up for the willpower. This definately helps a lot as well as you don't waste any cards.

Da_Engineer said:

Da_Engineer said:

Da_Engineer said:

That's not quite true. In each round you have to make decisions about which cards to play, thereby considering most possible encounters. For example, you played Song of Wisdom in round 1, which I wouldn't have done. Why spend that resouce if you don't even know that you'd need a lore card immediatly during the next round? Should one spare his resources to get Grimbeorn ASAP, or invest a resource just to be able to play DotN, just in case one of the few enemies with 2 attack points should enter the game in round 2? You can play both ways. Your approach apparently is to hope for the best possible encounter card to come, my approach is to cover most of the possible bad encounters that might come.

Btw, you have to improve your probability calculations. If your deck should work in they way you planned it, you'd need roughly 1/4 of the cards in your deck. Even if I only consider the six cards you mentined, it's not very likely to get all of them at round 4. I simulated card draws of 18 cards, and in my 47th attempt I finally got all those six cards (but only three 2 resource meat shields). And now I still I only have to get the right encounter cards. I guess that in approx every 100th game you'll be able to play your deck to the max. And that's an optimistic calculation.

I played it because I needed a lore card in round 2 yes or else why would I play this in round 1...

Along the same lines, you keep saying that I need 1/4 my deck which is false, there's some cards I need but it's far from being 1/4. Just the same as saying that I played Song in round 1 for no reason, without knowing why I did or what my deck has in it, you say that I need 1/4 the cards without knowing what I have in my deck... Not sure why you need to say this or the purpose of you saying this.

So that was quite a night. It´s around early morning here in Austria and I think I am satisfied for now.

When I came home I sat down and tuned my deck a little bit ( something I wanted to try earlier but feared 3 different spheres could become difficult )

Inspired by Da_Engineers impressive 70, I tried a lower score than my previous 82.

And after 7 tries whith 6 wins and one forfeit after loosing a hero in the first turn, I finally got a better score. ( I had twice the same 82 as before and some in 90s)

So I want to cheek it again in a few hours ( I recorded the session for control purpose). So after I went through the 22 minutes replay I will hopefully confirm the score tomorrow.

At the moment it looks like I scored a 57. ( 6 rounds, 0 threat and Gladden fields)

muemakan said:

Dude, you rock! That's insane! I cannot figure out how you guys blow through it in so few rounds...

muemakan said:

That's just...

Which heroes did you use? I'll update the Top Ten with your sonic boom of a result once you post your confirmation and heroes.

Nice work muemakan! Now, get some rest!

For me, I had a chance to do some tweaking myself, and while I'm not quite on the same level, I did see some improvement:

Heroes: Aragorn, Beravor, Biblo

Final Threat: 27

Hero Wounds: 0

Victory Points: 4 (Hill Troll)

Round Marker: 11 (110 points)

Total Score: 133

As we say in my house... poco a poco (little by little).

muemakan said:

Wow that's sick, good job. I assume you use 3 copies of Galadrhims Greeting and a gandalfs to get your threat to zero?

BTW much respect for being one that not only tried to find mistakes in my rule usage but looked at what I did and tried to actually find things I did wrong which actually hurt me and I can use to improve my score.

Zjb12 said:

Thats because I didn´t do it......****.

Noooooooooooo........Shame on me..........I just watched my game twice.

Everything went perfect and I did not´make a mistake as long as you don´t count me forgetting to count round 2.

So I must apologize.

My final score is now 67.

Heroes were: Beravor, Theodred, Thalin

Final threat was 0

Wounds: none

Victory Points: 3 ( Gladden Fields)

Rounds 7

Final Score 67

Da_Engineer said:

Don´t want to hurt anybody, sorry. I think somethings don´t sound the way I intend them to sound because english is not my first language.

Sadly I now know it´s not that sick of a job as I forget to count one round.....so its just 67.

I played only one GG, the rest was done by our old friend Gandalf.

muemakan said:

sorry, of course the Heroes were Beravor, Thalin and Frodo. ( 3 coresets+2APs)

Ok, finally got an ok score! This quest is hard to get through quickly without crashing and burning when you hit those trolls! Part of my problem is never feeling quite ready to fight the trolls and so delaying some. Then I get trapped by having to wait for some threat reduction and taking longer to get that set up! Kind of frustrating. I don't like having to be such a Boromir player when I'm not naturally. Anyway...

I played with Eowyn, Bilbo, and Gimli

Final threat 29

Damage on Gimli: 4

Victory Points: 4 (Hill Troll)

Round Marker: 12

Total: 149

I can't wait until we have challenges where we're not as limited in our card pool!

muemakan said:

Yes, shame on you!

Only 67....

Oh, and I'm waiting for Juicy to try this scenario with Gimli. If you want battle action, if you don't want to rely on Grimbeorn, he's your man!

Da_Engineer said:

Why would you need a lore card in round 2?

leptokurt said:

He needed to play Daughter of the Nimrodel to heal Gloin so he would be able to take the damage again from the attack this round.

muemakan said:

But he didn't know that he would be attacked in round 1when he played SoW - so why didn't he play SoW in round 2? Why planning to spent 4 resources at the start of the game if you have no clue what encounters you will draw? The chance to draw an enemy that has 2 attack point is rather slim, as there are only 6 of them in this deck (and one of them has surge). Makes no sense at all to me.

juicebox said:

Dude, you took my place in the top ten...

So I tweaked my deck a little and managed to get a score of 87.

Heroes: Eowyn, Beravor, Bilbo

Final Threat: 21

Hero Wounds: 0

Victory Points: 4 (Hill Troll)

Round Marker: 7 (70 points)

Total Score: 87

Encounters were:

1. Brown Lands

2. River Langflood

3. East Bight

4. Hill Troll

5. Sacked

6. Goblin Sniper

7. Banks of the Anduin

8. Sacked

I managed without Grimbeorn this time.The key was sneaking out Gandalf six turns in a row (I used Will of the West to get the Sneaks back in the deck). I also played Ever Vigilant a few times on Gandalf so that he could both defend and attack. I played two GG:s and used Gandalf once to lower my threat.

Bilbo got Sacked twice, but since I killed a troll each turn it didn't matter that much.

Narsil0420 said:

Hi Narsil0420,

If you're looking forward to a more open build, you might enjoy the upcoming 2 Player Tournament in January.

Check the Ideas Thread for the most recent announcement. Should be good times.

leptokurt said:

Actually, I did try Gimli a couple of times in a Tactics heavy deck that I toyed around with. The part that was fun was using Gimli, as he became a walking TANK! Unfortunately, I was still moving along way too slowly, and I didn't have enough meat shields in my deck to defend as was needed.

Let's just say there were no scores worth mentioning outloud that resulted from my dwarf-beast attempts.

Zjb12 said:

Sorry Buddy.

muemakan said:

hehe I think you mistunderstood me, I was saying I had lots of respect for you as you were actually looking at my play and seeing where I could improve and what things I did or misunderstood which actually hurt me instead of just trying really hard to find flaws in my game (like some).

67 is still a sick score...

I was playing around with the deckbuilder last night for a couple hours and think I found a way to get a sub 60 score but the cards needed are just too improbable to actually give it a try.

The heroes used would've been Theodred, Aragorn and Glorfindel.

I think with these 3 heroes you can get a pretty good score if you can get Steward and Celebrian on Aragorn and unexpected on Glorfindel but you absolutely need Grim and a few sneaks with gandalf so you need a near perfect draw (without having any card draw heroes) to get sub 60 but you can probably get sub 80 pretty easily with a decent draw.

Da_Engineer said:

Sounds interesting, but perhaps Beravor outdoes Glorfindel. I mean she and PoL are a walking WP smash party! There might only be a problem if you want to engage the trolls in round 3 (I guess that's what you're up for?) and your threat is only at 33.

muemakan said:

I had a similar game today during the time I did the morning dishes. But my score was the opposite way. I gave up when I went over 250! Sam got tired of fighting trolls off with his frying pan while merry and pippin did all the questing and sat around otherwise smoking old Toby and drinking pints!!!