I am just getting started with the game and in my first play through I ended up in a situation that seems funky and I am not sure I am doing this right.

I am playing The Passage Through Mirkwood scenario. I am using the Tactics deck so I have Thalin, Legolas and Gimli. Their will is 1, 1 and 2 respectively. I traveled to Old Forest Road early in the game. After a few rounds I end up with Mountains Of Mirkwood and Great Forest Web in the staging area while Old Forest Road is still the current location. Mountains Of Mirkwood and Great Forest Web each have a threat of 2 so there is a total strength of 4 in the staging area. My Hero's combined will is 4 so as long as it sits in this state, I can make no progress on the quest. It seems like this is a dead end. I can't get those Locations out of the staging area until I explore Old Forest Road and I can't explore Old Forest Road until I get at least 1 of those Locations out of the staging area.

I went through my deck and found Blade Of Gondolin which has a Response "After attached hero attacks and destroys an enemy, place 1 progress token on the current quest.". As far as I can tell, that is the only way out of this. Without that card there would be no way to make progress once I get into this situation.

My question is, am I missing something here or is this just the way that it is? I suspect there may be some fundamental rule or step that I am missing and if that is the case, I would like to identify that before playing too many more games.

Thanks for any help.

jb

Location-block can kill you, but especially the Core Tactics deck is vulnerable to it. You need to draw Enemies and engage them, killing them with Legolas + Blade of Gondolin to put progress tokens on the active location (or quest if no active location). But if you draw Location after Location, you'll lose, period.

jeffscottbrown said:

to be honest your mistake here is using core tactics- its notorious for being rubbish without any expansion cards- use spirit lor leadership, any of those rather than tactics, or even better start building decks of 50 cards from a mixture of spheres- id recommend spirit/lore, and play with eowyn, beravor and dunhere, as there is a good mixture of willpower, fighting with dunhere who can attack in staging area and beravor for all round goodness

rich

Doh! I had overlooked that Legolas allows you to put tokens on the current quest. That helps. The situation is still pretty nasty, but not as bad as it would be without that capability.

Thanks

Jb