I suffered my first FAIL today (hit 50 Threat Points) in the Passage Thru Mirkwood Quest using the PREMADE Tactics Player Deck from the CORE SET.

Gimli, Thalin and Legolas just couldn't progress at all. I drew 5 locations in the first 5 Encounter Deck Draws during the Quest Stages.....I had a total of 9 threat points that I could not overcome with the 3 Heroes only having a combined WP of 4. I added 5 to my threat level 3 turns in a row. I kept drawing ALLY cards at each Resource Phase and in the middle of Turn 8, I hit 50.

NOTE TO SELF: Do not attempt to play against any quest solo using only the core, premade tactics deck.

Progressing is almost impossible when you keep drawing location cards and get no help from event cards that help the progress level. I was not able to get to Legolas' Ability of adding to the Quest when being part of an attack that kills an enemy because I never drew any enemies.

Sad! First FAIL! in my first 5 attempts at LOTR:LCG comes at an utter beat down!

hendersondayton said:

haha...get used to it ..it dont get any better , but seriously passage through mirkwood in my opinion is harder than some of the shadows of mirkwood quests when you get bad draws.

Yeah man; passage is about the only scenario I can consistently beat. All the others give me some trouble in various capacities. I agree with Rich; get used to loosing a lot in this game solo.

ironically given that its the intro quest i cant beat passage consistently, i dont know what it is about it, i mean firstly, you start with 2 encounter cards...in what other quests do you do that? not many, secondly you got a 3 attack enemy on your hands straight away, and if that isnt enough you have a 50/50 chance of having to beat one of the worst bad guys in the game so far in 3b...not too easy.....easy in my opinion is emyn muil with a spirit rohan deck....now that i can beat consistently.

hendersondayton said:

There are very few (if any) quests that you can expect to beat consistenly with a solo-mono-tactics deck. I would even extend that to say that there are very few (if any) quests that you can expect to beat consistently with a solo-mono-anything deck. It's like bringing Lance Armstrong to a triathalon: sure he's good at cycling, but when you have to swim and run...he's kind of out of luck. The encounter deck throw a lot of different things at you and you realy need a couple different spheres in order to deal with all of those things.

conykchameleon said:

true true, but as above...i can get around an 80% win rate with mono spirit on dead marshes and emyn muil, the other arent as quest orientated so yes..mono decks will fall apart on them

my best decks are usually 2 spheres, i find 3 waters it down a bit much for me

Interesting Rich; when you make 2 sphere decks do you add songs a splash Steward and the Stone? Or add songs and splash Spirit cards for extra support, or do you just straight up make a 2 color deck? I am curious to know.

I was consistently beating PTM with the Core Leadership Deck...4 for 4. The first attempt at that Scenario with the Tactics deck and it was a mess.

I get in such a rut...the draw was terrible...

So far I have not attempted to mix decks...I am looking forward to it.

conykchameleon said:

Would you say this is the norm for all the quests? To mix decks?

Mixing for sure (most of the time). I imagine that you are talking about the 4 pre-made decks that come in the core box (with the edition of 1 Gandalf copy per deck). You probably already know that in custom decks the minimum size is 50. So in general you usually see at least a 2-sphere deck running cards from the core set the adventure packs, and now, Khazad-Dum. I often gravitate toward a three-sphere myself; I love the versatility you get with cards from all three spheres. Sometimes I even run a three-sphere deck and splash in a Spirit or Lore song to include a small set of what I think are the best cards from that chosen color to my deck; so technically I guess that means it's a "four-sphere" deck. Anyway, single-color decks are also very useful (obviously for their easy ability to get cards out of your hand fast). They shine the most when they are played as a "support" deck in a multi-player game. These are my thoughts, I hope they help some. By the way, good job on your 4/4 win ratio! Happy Gaming.

Joseph

"Far over the Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old, we must away ere break of day,to seek the pale enchanted gold."

DurinIII said:

i usually make straight double sphere decks- then add the copies of the two song cards belonging to those spheres, then i also add the neutral cards i want... i completely leave out the remaining 2 spheres and the songs that belong to them.

i usually try and pair the spheres up so to use on quests so.......

tactics/lore......fighting and consequently healing the warriors that are fighting, also card draw to get allies (conflict at carrock)

spirit/lore........heavy questing with little worries over fighting (emyn)

spirit/tactics.......for those quests that have both a big need to quest and some nasty enemies (hfg)

then i play around with taking each of those out and substituting leadership as an alternative, or sometimes i try and 3 sphere by adding leadership to each one of those

i have tried the 4 sphere decks that you mention....picking out the best cards of each....unex. courage...celebrians stone.....sneak attack etc, but i still find that the benefits of such are hit and miss depending on whether you see them early on or not, of course i could use lore and use it to fly through my deck with card draws....but that would mean including lore cards!!!!.......thats why i like this game....so many options.....

hendersondayton said:

yes i would (sorry dont know how to double quote)

My goal with playing the core set decks, even though they are under the 50min, was to get used to the types of cards in each sphere in the beginning. I chose this approach as this is my first attempt at a card game of any kind. The idea is that it would:

1. help me get used to a card game and how it is played. Even though the game is different, all card games play the same. You have a hand, you have an objective (whether a quest or enemy) and you need to learn to build your hand to best complete the objective.

2. gives me a good idea at what type of cards are in each sphere. I assumed that with each adventure pack, FFG would stay true to the general types of cards in each sphere (tactics = cards for fighters, lore = healing, spirit = questing, etc). Once I had an idea of what each Sphere was all about, I could get into the real strategy of this game which is probably the deck building.

Using the Passage Thru Mirkwood Quest (unless there is a better one for "deck testing"), I have played leadership 4 times. My first attempt at Tactics was an epic fail! I am going to try it a couple more times though before moving on to the other two spheres.

You both mentioned "songs" which I don't know much about yet.

This a "Song" card. A neutral cost card that allows the attached hero to gain an additional resource icon (so that he can play a larger variety of cards). Hope this helps. They aren't introduced until I think around the second adventure pack? I can't quite remember, maybe their in the first. They are quite useful cards and benefit decks in many ways!

DurinIII said:

i think kings is in hunt for gollum if im not mistaken? anyways really useful card....i wonder what type of songs we'l see in dwarrowdef cycle? i hope its interesting ones like song of mocking....so somthing like

song of drunkeness

attach to a hero

exhaust song of drunkeness to give attached hero +3 attack and -3 defense for the rest of the round (limit once per round)

SILLY i know

I have up thru A Journey to Rhosgobel of the Shadows of Mirkwood series. The Song of Wisdom, and the Song of Kings (you listed) are in those.

I can see how those would be very useful. You could make a character or two multisphere and then include several good cards from all the spheres into the same deck. Nice. They also look CHEAP to play, which is always a bonus.

I find that, if you are going to use Mono decks, use 2 decks. I found that Lore and Tactics work well together. Tactics crush any enemies and Lore will keep them in the fight forever. If there is questing I found tactics and a Spirit/Lore deck work well. I have not been able to get the handle of leadership (not sure why).

To be honest, I sometimes try solo decks but I prefer to win occasionally so I would prefer 2 decks. I will be using 2 mono decks tonight (Lore and Tactics) to (try to) beat Conflict at the Carrock.

The premade deck does not quest well at all. The trick that seemed to work best for me is to focus on what it can do; Combat. Get leglas 2 gondor blades, and use his special ability to knock out locations by having him deal the killing blow. Of coarse, it wont work if you draw nothing but locations and can't get into any encounters, but thats just the luck of the draw.