After thoroughly getting my ass handed to me by Rosgobel solo play, I finally fine tuned a deck that I have gotten two solid victories in a row with. I use a tri-sphere deck (eowyn, theodred, and the beravor). I can't seem to find the ruling on this. is the lowest legal threat 00 or 01? Through spirit cards, gandalfs, and sneak attacks i managed to get what would have been a negative threat. I don't know how the tracker can legally go though. Then I got a 4 victory point boost from the Rosgobel card. Not sure if I should have ended with a -3 or -4 score.

The trick i used was lots of healing, lots of card draw, good questers, and lots of "when revealed" and shadow counters. Theodred is amazing at holding you over until you can get some songs and stews of gondor into play. By the end, there wasn't really a challenge, and I was able to risk going a few extra rounds to bottom out my threat level. I was a little bummed after my victory when I looked through the encounter deck and saw quit a few victory point cards that could have further lowered my score.

That leads me to the next question.. has anyone ever managed a "perfect game"? All victory points, zero (or 1, whichever is legal) threat, and fully healed heroes?

Captain Poe said:

hi well done!

none i havnt- but would you mind posting a turn by turn acount of the game if you can remember- not that i doubt your win - i just like reading them, and like to get tips

Captain Poe said:

Unless you can drop your threat more than 10 in a single round the maths work out that it is better to just finish teh quest. Stalling to drop threat in fact worsens your score.

I think threat gose to zero, I do not think it can go minus. Though during teh caculation of teh final score I think it can. Like your personal threat can nto go -5 ... but when you do your score you can go -5, then you add the turn count x 10 and you will always be back in teh positive.

Be interesting to see what deck you used. I'm trying to make a restricted deck for this quest and finding it pretty hard to get one running.. that wins a lot.

Unfortunately i couldn't really tell you turn by turn. I'll tell you the cards i used and how each came in use as I can recall:

In my experience, this quest is brutal for a few reasons:

Direct damage - I delt with this through healing cards and spirit counter cards

Flying enemies - threw in a few ranged allies, that seemed to do the trick.

Outside of that, the only real trouble is questing... which with this build, i didn't really have a problem. as a matter of fact, twards the end i was having eowyn sit out of the questing phase because i didn't want to complete the quest before lowering my threat all the way:

Theodred - Quester, use to generate needed resources, depending on card draw and sphere requirements.

Beravor - use mainly for card draw

Eowyn - use for questing.

Neutral -

2x Gandalf - Used with sneak attack twice, then played twice. Each time i used him to lower threat by 5

2x Song of wisdom - Used one on Eowyn

2x Song of Kings - Used on on Eowyn

Spirit -

3x - Ancient Mathom - Pulled two, and put both of them on rosgobel. When i explored it, it was like christmas

2x Galadhrim's Greeting - Used both, and eventually redrew one of them for a second time.

Dwarven Tomb - Used with Galadhrims Greeting.

2x Escort From Edoras - Didn't come into play

2 Westfold Horse-Breaker - Had one in play. never used him, but could have been used with beravor if needed

2x Hasty Stroke - Used to prevent extra damange from shadow cards

2x test of will - One of the most valuable cards in this quest. Almost used Dwarven tomb on this, but took my chances.

Unexpected Courage - Used on Beravor for extra card generation, or to use her as attack/block/object gather if needed

Leadership:

2x Sneak attack - Used to lower threat with gandalf. Could have been used to instead kill enemies with gandalf if needed.

2x steward of gondor - put both of these on eowyn. With her 2 songs, she was a money making machine.

3x Snowborn scout - Used to take out locations quicker, to keep threat in check.

2x Farimar - never came into play.

2x Silverlode archer - used to attack flying enemies, only one came into play.

Parting gift - never came into play, but useful if you dont have songs in play or a steward.

Lore

3x Lore of imladris - Used 2 on wyliador, one on Theordred (I let an orc attack go unblocked because i had a hasty stroke in hand).

3x Self Preservation - Put one on Beravor and used her to block a few times after my deck ran out and I no longer needed her to generate draw

2x Radagast's cunning - Never needed to use

2x Secret Paths - never needed to use.

2x Minor from Iron hills - Never used. When I won, theodred was caught in a web, but by that point, i wasn't even worried.

3x haldir - had him in play. Useful for killing flying enemies.

Beorn's Hospitality - Never needed to use it.

Loriens wealth - used for 3 extra cards earlier in game.

Thats it! I thought i would need more questing power... as i figured i would heal Wyliador for all damange, and then rush to the finishline before he could take more damage, but it actually was never really needed. I had more than enough questers, and the 2 ranged allies i had in play were more than enough to handle the 4 flying monster I delt with. I lucked out, and most of my draw was treachery, which i countered or took and was able to then heal, or locations, which i quickly got out of the staging area and explored. I only use cards up to the current expansion so far, so this deck could be greatly improved. I may suggest dropping Eowyn for Elanor... but Eowyn is VERY useful early game. I would say dump the Rad's Cunning and Secret path cards, as they aren't really needed (though, they may help if you do use elanor instead).

So... You put two Steward of Gondor on Éowyn, huh?

i used a similarish deck last night- beat it twice in a row, quite easy, btu not quite as easy as above

my deck was around denethor moving treachery to the bottom, and card draw with protector of lorien

Interesting. My corebook doesnt say anything about total rounds effecting final score. It gets core from Final threat + Dead Heroes + Damage on heroes - victory points.

Looking at this deck, i would say its a solid foundation, but really, has a lot of garbage cards that I thought would come in far more handy. I think a lot of them could be dropped for better allies, who in turn could help handle some of the monsters that have victory points. Looking through the encounter deck now, a lot of this victory was due to my encounter deck draw luck, which more locations than anything else, which this deck is very suited to handling. I may try and perfect the deck at some later date, after I have more expansions.

Captain Poe said:

it was updated in the new faq- 10 per round

oh yeah and i edited my post, as i thought it best to explain the two stewards thing

richsabre said:

Oh, bummer! I didn't even realize that non-character cards could be unique. Hrm... like i said, once i get more cards, i'll fine tune the deck and go for this again, this time with the goal of more victory points.

Captain Poe said:

yeah i made this mistake for about a month til i realised

Captain Poe said:

fail.... this card is unique.. only 1 on the table at a time. Keep an eye on "restricted" as well.

richsabre said:

richsabre said:

Another bummer! You guys are ruining my victory . I just pulled up the FAQ 1.2 and found what you're referring too. That really changes the game. I guess i can use the second threat counter to track this for my future games.

Does anyone see anything else wrong? Ive got the unique attachement and +10 per turn working against me. at first I thought i might be cheating when I had half my deck in my hand, but i could not find anything saying there was a max hand limit.

I know the restricted rule, two restricted items per character (not just on the table, right?)

booored said:

Captain Poe said:

yeah thats right, and if you want to add another discard one of the attatched ones....

That is right... I often see tactic users forget about this... Plate, Horn, Blade and a number of other cards from tactics are restricted, and it is regardless of card name.. so only 2 cards with restricted on the same toon . but you can have as many as you like in play.

Do not worry, LoTR is a little complex, and teh badly written rules make it hard for new players, rule of thumb is ... always look for an official FAQ!! As there is lots of stuff that needs to be read... very common mistake for example is stand and fight can only raise coloured cards.. so no neutral allies.

Look at it this way, at least you didn't have 3 months of scores you needed to throw out

richsabre said:

hmm, I didn't know about that... can you point me to this rule? Where dose it say you can play a restricted on 2 others and it will discard one of the other cards? I know this is how restricted works in magic, but I do not recall this rule in this game.

booored said:

p.24 rule book restricted keyword

richsabre said:

rofl.. that is SOOOOOO lame.....

"restricted attachment is ever attached to a character, one of the restricted attachments must immediately be moved to its owner’s discard pile."

So you need no planning or organization about how your deck engine runs... stupid. rule.. that is seriously retarded, just makes the game degrees easyer to run a deck... super lame.

booored said:

really? i never thought of it that way

It doesn't make much of a difference. You can see it as the character throwing away one of the weapons. Anyway, how many decks are based on so many restricted attachments that it becomes an advantage to be able to discard one to replace another?

As for the original question, your threat may go down to 0. It cannot go negative. As for score, yes, it's possible to have a negative score (by having 0 threat and plenty of victory points cards). Obviously, such scores are now almost impossible since they changed the scoring system, but they were frequent in the game's early days.