Hi everyone,

I was given a copy of the Lord of the Rings LCG core set as a birthday present a few weeks ago, and I've been enjoying it a lot since that time. I have a few questions that perhaps a few more experienced players can help me to answer:

1) I'm interested in buying adventure packs. Any recommendations on where to start? I did see that the first big box expansion was released recently (Khazad-Dum).

2) Related to question (1) ... I have been playing with the starter decks (that is, the 30-card single-sphere decks in the core set) and haven't built my own yet. If I want to build a 'pure' deck, meaning all one sphere, I'm going to need to buy another set. Do adventure packs always come with additional player cards from each sphere, or are they usually limited to one or two spheres? Or perhaps they usually just come with encounter cards and no player cards?

3) The core set is designed for 1-2 players. I'm having a few people over this weekend, and I don't see anything preventing me from playing it with 3 or 4 using the 30-card starter decks. That is, as long as you don't mind using pen/paper to keep track of threat. None of the other folks have played it before, so I figure the starter decks will work well enough (Obviously we're not going to be tournament-legal here). Am I missing anything? I don't want to get halfway through the game and then find out we can't complete it with 4 players!

Thanks for your help! Looking forward to any replies.

GS

GrandSpleen said:

welcome!

1.i would recommend getting a few mirkwood cycle packs before khazad- its quite difficult to begin with and you may want some plays and some key cards to begin with......apart from that it all depends.....are you a theme guy? do you like to go through a storyline? or are you interested in the packs for their player cards? do you like very hard quests? also do you like combat? or travelling and questing?

2.all packs so far have some from each sphere and contain encounter cards for that quest and 3 copies of each player card

3.sorry...just a solo player ive no idea when it goes over that!

rich

I just bought it for myself after Christmas, so I'm fairly new as well. Welcome!

I played several four-player games with a single core set. It was very, very fun to play it that way. There are plenty of tokens in the core set and all we had to do was keep track of threat for the other two players with a pen and paper. I highly recommend the multiplayer version. Since the holidays are over and the extended family members aren't around, I've been forced to play solo. It can be a frustrating experience, but very rewarding when you do it right.

By the way, nice avatar!

richsabre said:

I don't mind hard quests, but I like to win once in awhile. My success rate is abysmally low with the solo game so far! When I build a deck I think it would be cool to go with a race or nation theme, but I kind of want to stick to one sphere since I am having trouble with resource management as it is. I am a fairly casual player but I also like function, so I will probably look around and see which nation has cards that I like before deciding how to build.

Right now I am primarily interested in the adventure packs for more player cards. The core set is new for me so I am still having fun with those quests, I'd just like to add some cards to the repertoire to flesh out a single sphere some. I've really enjoyed the Lore sphere (but I haven't won with it yet! I came very close once, but I keep hitting 50 threat -- and I've only tried Passage through Mirkwood).

Oh, and Budgernaut, right back at ya!

I only got a second core set around christmastime. Before that, we often played 3 people out of one core set and some aps. Aps only have 1 new hero, and about 2 different cards per sphere and 1 neutral, (3copies of each card though). As richsabre said, I would still go with these first as they do eventually add up and many are quite good and needed.

1 Core set will allow you to play the 3 Core Set scenarios 4-player. Obviously, you only get 1 Gandalf each, and have no deck-building options to speak of- there isn't even a choice of heroes - but that's probably not going to make a big difference, particularly if you're just introducing the game to people, trying to figure out how big a group you've got that like it. As you said, you'll need to keep track of threat with pen & paper.

With a single Core set, you can also deck-build upto a point for less than 4 players, by combining spheres. Biggest drawback, is the lack of ways to give heroes different resource icons- Celebrian's Stone on Aragorn is your only option.

Looking at the Mirkwood cycle each pack will give you 3x copies of 2 new cards per sphere for the player decks, 1 hero, and 3x of a neutral card - in four of the 6 packs, these are "songs" which you can use to give a hero another resources icon, and allow them to pay for cards from a different sphere. The rest of the cards are a new quest.

If you like the game and are going to play it regularly, then go for some adventure packs- there are some really good cards, including some nice themes - eagles for Tactics, Rohan for Spirit, and the new quests make a change from just trudging back and forth through Mirkwood.

If you think you'll play a lot with 3 or 4 players, I'd recommend a 2nd core set as well. It'll give you second copies of some of the really good cards, and allow you to deckbuild much sooner (if you want 4 single-sphere 50 card decks with only 1 core set, you'd basically need all the Mirkwood cycle, and still not have any real choices to make)

Don't even bother thinking about a 3rd Core set until you own every other expansion there is AND have a lot of spare cash- you only get about 12 usable cards (i.e. 3rd copies of the 1x cards)

GrandSpleen said:

my advice then is go to cardgamedb.com and look up the packs- then see which one sounds most interesting and has the cards that appeal to you

difficulty wise my opinion is this is order from easiest to hardest

emyn muil

dead marshes

hunt for gollum

conflict at the carrock

journey to rhosgobel

return to mirkwood

another piece of advice is that you probably/defintaly wont be able to stick to 1 sphere for very long, you'll need to start building multi sphere decks if you want to win, also while it is possible to build nation/theme decks, they arent easy to win with- so far with khazad dum dwarves are the only real people you can make an entire deck with, and they still need some more player cards in my opinion