I am about to pop my deck building cherry with this game when a thought occurred to me. This game is unique when compared with other deckbuilding games that i have played in the sense that you have the option of knowing what you are trying to accomplish ahead of time (the different quests). So my question is, when you build a deck, do you build it with the thought 'I'm building this deck to try and beat Specific Quest X', or do you build the deck thinking 'I am going to build this deck and throw it at Random Quest X, Y and Z'.

It seems to me that if I was building a deck specifically to beat Journey down the Anduin, that it would be entirely too easy, since I know ahead of time generally the kind of obstacles I'd be facing. The comparison would be knowing your opponents House Card in aGoT before building your own deck. However this may be just me being naive to the solitaire deckbuilding genre.

Thoughts and personal opinions here would be appreciated.

My understanding is that the game was designed for targeted deck-building. I think that's why the game is relatively hard. Even with a tailored deck, the encounter deck can be brutal. But go ahead and try it out. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how easy Journey Along the Anduin is with a deck made just for that scenario.

Try to build a deck to beat the ENTIRE Shadows of Mirkwood cycle!
You'll have a lot of fun, guarantee!

i think youre looking at this the wrong way, i think the enjoyment is in building a deck to beat a specific scenario, sort of like a puzzle, that needs to be cracked, and when you do it the beauty is theres still a huge amount of replayabilty because your 'winning' strategy in one game can fall to pieces in another go at it

also

1.there are certain quests that even given knowledge will never be considered easy in my opinion and

2.you could try not looking at the quest cards- this is a technique of play that i know some people try when first trying them- obviously once youve done it once, then you cant help but know- but its an idea

rich

richsabre said:

I guess I'm just concerned that once I do find that winning strategy for each quest that I wont have any interest in trying it again.

dh098017 said:

thats understandable...........i guess it comes down to the difficulty level of the quest, for instance i can win emyn muil using 1 certain strategy abut 95% of the time, however other quests my strategies work less often so i still enjoy the game

another way to do it is that you dont have to use a winning deck every time, so if i get sick of winning emyn with my winning deck, i try it with a dwarf themed deck, or a lore or tactics

dh098017 said:

So then challenge yourself to beat it a different way. For instance, if you beat it using a lore/leadership deck, then try to beat it using the other spirit/tactics. Others have fun creating themed decks (Dwarves down the Anduin anyone?).

Your gameplay context is probably what should influence your deckbuilding the most.

In my case, I was building decks with the aim of finding the one deck to beat them all, a winning strategy against all scenarios. That's in a context where I mostly play solo.

When playing with friends (one every few months), we do build decks in function of the scenarios we intend to tackle. But we stick to the same decks for the whole night.

Recently, I started playing in online tournaments (Juicebox, zjb). Those tournaments are, for now, geared at beating a specific scenario (or multiple predetermined scenarios). Obviously, in such a context, you want to modify your deck to adapt to circumstances.

There was a thread a while back about a tournament format where quests would be random, thus forcing people to come equipped with more generic decks.

I think once official tournament rules are presented by FFG, it could influence a number of players in their approach to the game in regard to deckbuilding.

richsabre said:

This is exactly how I look at it. I think the puzzle analogy fits perfectly. And as a Pippin player -- a player that likes to try out new decks and new strategies -- I don't foresee myself checking the box that says "beat this scenario" and moving on. I'll go back to the same scenario and keep tweaking my deck. Maybe I'll try to keep adapting to get a lower score. Maybe I'll just try something completely new. The deck building options are so vast and the encounter decks so unpredictable that I feel there is a lot of satisfaction to be had from trying them again and again with new decks. And once I've exhausted solo options, I can play by myself with two decks (unless I can get my wife to play). Adding players can change the way a scenario works and thus require new strategies.

I tend to build a deck along a specific theme, and frequently end up not completing a quest. When trying a new quest, I'll not look at the cards of the encounter deck beforehand, so I don't know what I'm up against. It also helps that I have an apalling memory for remembering LotR cards, what-does-what etc, so I don't have the problem of knowing what I'm up against when I've played the quest once. That's probably got a lot to do with not playing it very often, though, as well - I've not had the time to see all the cards that often to know what-does-what, or which enemies/treacheries are in which set.

(I suppose it seems odd, therefore, that I have no problem remembering all the Stark cards - I play Targaryen - or the High Elf cards - I play Chaos - so I often find myself thinking AGoT or W:I are easier to play against than the encounter deck in LotR...)

My entire strategy revolves around reading the initial preview article to get a general idea for what the quest is about, and then building a deck of interesting and shiny things to see how I do. So I'm a combination of Bilbo and Pippin. I also have a sort of hard-and-fast rule that I would never use more than one copy of a unique ally, as theme is very important to me. Sneak Attack-ing is fine, but I refuse to include three of everyone just because I can. Other than that, my deckbuilding is just about what interesting stuff can I give my fellowship. I have no interest in conquering Mirkwood or Moria, and in fact some of the very best games I've had with LotR have been where I've 'lost'!