When I first started playing this game, it's biggest appeal for me (as for many of you, from what I have read on this and other message board sites) is the potential for solo play. However, after a few months of delving into the massive card base, exploring the encounter packs, and collecting everything FFG ha put out for this game, I came to the sad conclusion that it just ain't so.

Now, don't get me wrong - I have a solo deck that performs well about 85% of the time. There is a way to beat almost every quest produced (Dol Guldur and Return to Mirkwood notwithstanding). However, you can't just build in any particular sphere and do well. Even building 2-sphere (color) decks isn't completely feasible. If you want to run Tactics in solo play and win, forget it. You will spend all your time trying to quest unsuccessfully and end up having to hold back in order to take on very bloody and difficult fights. There just aren't any good solo cards in that particular sphere. I don't even look at cards in that sphere anymore unless I am putting a support deck together for a two-player game (which unfortunately, I don't get to play 2-player very often because most of my friends care nothing for this game and would rather play something competitive like Dust Tactics or HeroClix - which is fine, I enjoy those games, too).

So with Tactics out of my field of vision, that leaves Leadership, Spirit, and Lore. Leadership has some nice support cards like Sneak Attack (I only use these with Gandalf or the Song searcher card whose name I cannot recall at the moment), most of the Dunedain attachments, and Steward of Gondor. I used to think Celebrain Stone was fantastic until I realized that I am spending 2 leadership resources for an attachment when I could just buy an ally card that adds 2 to the quest total and has other uses as well (like attacking and blocking). Furthermore, the only good leadership card for solo play is Theodred (Gloin is a close second) because he speeds up your resource collection and I'm sorry to say that is critical for going it alone. If you can't build up your resources fast enough to play the cards in your hand, you will lose.

Ultimately, by the time The Redhorn Gate came out, I was already thinking about dumping Leadership cards out of my deck. I was really torn about not being able to use Sneak Attack for Gandalf, and I wondered if I would ever pull Grimeborn off the staging area, but running Theodred and watering my deck down with song cards just to have mana fixing options seemed a waste when I looked at all I was leaving out of the deck in the remaining two spheres (the best two, I might add). For the longest time, my heroes were Frodo (with the Celebrain), Theodred, and Beravor (the best hero in the game for lots of reasons). I was smashing through just about every encounter with the three of them. I had trouble with the Hill Troll but I won against that deck enough times to call it a success.

I had resource issues a lot. I mean ALOT. I couldn't collect 3 Lore every other round if I had to leave Beravor at home to block. And Frodo struggled with questing if the stone wasn't in my opening hand. My rule of thumb was if the deck design couldn't beat the level one encounter in the core set, it would fail against everything else. (By the way, I have wondered often who comes up with these challenge rating numbers. Journey Along the Anduin is much, much harder than Conflict at the Carrock. I have yet to lose to Conflict, even when I rush the quests.) Anyway, I tinkered around with the deck frequently, looking for the right combo of heroes. I even tried to build my deck to work with a Dwarf-focused support deck for when a friend did want to play. (Tactics/Lore/Leadership using Thalin/Bofur/Dain was the support structure. Tactics + Healing was incredible!) The more I tinkered, the more cards I kicked to the box never to be looked at again. They just don't work in solo mode, and I am not just referring to cards that do stuff when other players are in the game. A lot of the cards aren't meant for solo play. Only one or 2 have any real use, and those are limited to the ones that let you look at that top card of the encounter deck. Mercy on you if the card has Surge, though - ugh.)

When I finally hit the point where I decided I wanted to be able to play a deck that didn't care who the heroes were, I scrapped Leadership completely and just built Lore/Spirit. Threat reduction and healing is all that really matters - and of course, Gandalf, for the damage component. I started out with Beravor, but dropped that hero for Bofur, when I realized I was still having trouble playing Lore cards. Now my heroes are Eowyn "The Crutch," Dunhere "The Rescuer," and Bofur "The Fixer." With the three of them, I can start the game with 2 Lore when needed, or 2 Spirit, or rotate from Spirit to Lore just enough to build up both resource collections equally. My threat is 24, which is low enough to make Dunhere fantastic for combat since I hardly ever force engagements. And with only 2 spheres. I could really hone in on which allies to bring and not waste a lot of deck space trying to load up on attachments and events that had limited uses. I really miss Sneak Attack and the Dunedain Mark, but the trade-off of being able to run a total of 6 "cancel stupid evil shadow effects" was well worth it. Bofur doesn't have to sit at home to block with A Burning Brand on his back while I hold a Spirit event (can't remember the name) that does the same thing. And I don't fear every shadow card, so I can be selective about when to use it.

The point of this long essay is to see how other people really feel about the solo aspect of this game. Do you find you are locked into playing specific heroes/cards if you want to win? Is it just me, or do cards with Ranged/Sentinel/anything with the Tactics symbol just mean auto-loss? I look at these 1-cost allies and I think, what in the world? Not all of them are bad, but the ones that aren't usually have a dot in front of their name.

Maybe it is just me, but I think they missed the boat on proper scaling for players with this game. It needs to be about more than determining the number of encounter cards that get flipped over each quest phase. Scaling of threat levels based on the number of players would be a start. And for crying out loud, why can't a deck without Eowyn win the game without being pushed to the brink of defeat? I've played with her and without her, and let me tell you, playing the game without her is a heckuva lot harder than playing with her. There have been many games where she can just go the quest stage all alone for rounds at a time. Forget about doing that with just Frodo or Bofur or Beravor or Aragon, even if you have the stone attached. Those are your combatants (be it attacking or defending) and there are no other "QUEST WITH ME" cards in the game like Eowyn.

Thoughts?

I've only played solo for the first time yesterday, having played the game maybe seven or eight times total, with my gaming group.

You see, I'm the only one with the game, so we had played the pre cons that came with the game and whilst I was keen to play more, my other mates didn't want to invest in yet another card game.

Anyway, I've kept buying the expansions, hoping they would change their minds, which unfortunatley they haven't, hence me doing the solo games last night.

Now I put together 2 decks one tactics/lore and a tactics/spirit.

I played Conflict at the Carrock, Escape from dol guldur, and was crushed by both playing 2 or 3 games of each.

Finally I tried the first sceanrio, escape from Mirkwood and whilst this at least seemed winable I still lost. ( but it didn't feel impossable this particular one )

I just felt I had no way of beating the games. I mean those 4 unique trolls in Conflict of Carrock! One would have been bad enough but 4! crazy! The sacking effect too, If one of them comes out it was game over there and then!

Also generally you just don't seem to acquire rescources to be able to do anything and the treachery effects cripple you. I had the charcter who could tap to cancel the treachery effect but it meant I couldn't use them for any questing or combat

I didn't think my decks were to bad either I have access to 2 core sets and all the current expansions.

I was very disappointed with the solo experience I'm afraid and with a lack of gaming buddies willing to shell out on anything but MTG I'm not sure if I'll get to play it much.

I think solo play in this game is more about deck building than anything else.

There is an element of luck to winning several quests, especially while solo -- that is the nature of playing with cards. I can't fault the game completely for that, but in some cases (Dol Guldur, Rhosgobel) luck is the number one factor to winning solo, IMHO. To me that says that those particular quests were not designed/balanced for solo play, which is really unfortunate since the box says 1-2 players.

But luck aside, deck construction becomes much, much more important when playing alone. I play solo occasionally, but typically I play with my wife, and we have set decks that we use for every quest. And we can win every quest we've played so far. We just don't like to reinvent the wheel every time, so we don't build decks very often.

Playing solo, the emphasis of the game REALLY switches to deck construction. If you're playing solo Hunt for Gollum without some way to deal with locations in your one deck, you're in for it. But solo Carrock you're thinking a whole lot more about killing power.

It's just a different beast. I don't think you can really compare solo to multiplayer gameplay, because 50% of the gameplay for solo play takes place before you ever deal out a single card. In multiplayer games decks are still important, but much more forgiving if you don't have *just* the right combination. Winning becomes more of a question of cooperation and assignment of responsibilities.

So, long story short (too late), if you are the kind of person who really enjoys deck building over actual playing, you should really like the solo play in this game, because it demands that you think hard when building for each quest! (and I know you folks are out there ! You who own not 1, not 2, but 3 core sets!!)

Imho, solo play, as written, sucks. I still enjoy playing solo using two decks: Follow all the rules for two players, but play both decks.

Then you'll see the game as it's meant to be played. It's similar to Arkham Horror in that regard:

Sure, you can play the game solo with a single investigator, but it's nigh unbeatable if you do. It's much more enjoyable to play several investigators by yourself.

I'm playing LotR with mono faction decks and almost zero deck-building and it generally works very well, regardless of which factions I play.

My main concern in solo play is that certain heroes/cards are not that effective, while others are so good you're loath to not use them. Now that I've finally tried Bilbio out in solo, can't imagine not using him, and it seems every solo deck has a wee splash of leadership to get SoG and Sneaks in. I guess my main criticism isn't that it's impossible, but that my decks start to look a bit similar. But I can't imagine building a deck for solo play that doesn't feature 3 spheres now, unless secrecy becomes a real possibility.

It is very true, though, that some quests are really bad solo. Wouldn't say I'll stop playing solo though, since I'm starting now to find some combos with cards that are not just effective, but actually fun to play, which for me was a real boon (stopped using Beravor a while ago - effective, but not that much fun, same for Eowyn).

jhaelen said:

I agree with much of the 1st post. Though the 2 player solo game imo is pretty lame as well. It is just to cumbersome for me to be fun, though I do play this way in lackeyccg as you can load as many decks as you like into it.

While there is skills in this game, and there is deck building (witch is near to puzzle solving) The main thing that makes this game fun is the co-op angle were you are interacting with friends. Solo players, as they are missing this single important factor, have to focus so hard on the game mechanics and rules and such (as this is all they have).. and many find it lacking.

Return to Mirkwood. stupid hard.. well when your playing with your mates over a six pack chatting and listening to music this is completely trivial, the enjoyment is playing it, and loosing is not an issue.. so they make super hard and when you win you have a neat "irregular" story.

Or so goes the theory. In truth the game is rather easy for multiplayer and as J said, you can win consistently simply by running mono decks with little to no deck building, and if you spend time decks building, winning is near guaranteed, though again.. this swings to .. hey I am just having fun with my mates... and then sometimes there is a blow out and you have a upset.. witch is exciting.

My point is that solo play can be very fun, there is a definite pleasure in deck building and "solving the puzzle" though due to the nature of card games this means that certain "tools" or cards end up in every good solo deck. So after a while you lack the ability to experiment as much as the multiplayers can. This also means that once you have good decks and you can beat it you start to really get frustrated by the luck angle. the very thing that makes multiplayer so much fun, makes solo play frustrating as ****.

The real question is ... do you enjoy it. If you don't then it is time to sell the collection and move on or shelve it.. as the game is established now and this is the way it is... .. this IS lord of the rings lcg... they say 1-4 players or w/e.. THIS IS what they mean when they say solo play...

Take it, leave it, or make custom rules.

monkeyrama said:

exactly, in a game were there is no winner or looser it is all about game experience. Witch is imo better co-op over solo... but seriously.. stop using these heroes (been saying it for ages)... try wired combinations, find a deck that is dynamic, diverse and has synergy.

I'm having lots of fun with solo play. I play once or twice a week, so I still haven't exhausted all my deck-building options. I recently participated in solo tournament that required Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn as the heroes. It was so much fun! We all thought that combination was hopelessly high in threat, but it actually worked. As others have mentioned, there was a bit of puzzle-solving involved, but I felt like tactical decisions also really mattered. I was also surprised by the variations in decks that people posted. While some card combos will never be efficient, I think you'll be surprised if you spend a little more time experimenting with new cards. Sure, the Sneak Attack-Gandalf combo is wonderful, as is Steward of Gondor, but you don't really need those cards to beat a quest. Force yourself to try something new and see where it takes you, even if you lose more than you're used to.

(By the way, my win percentage is probably close to 10-15%.)

I love the challenge of solo play! Constructing the decks ends up being a lot of fun for me. Playing a deck to see how it stacks up against a quest, losing, and then making adjustments and trying the quest again is probably my favourite part of the game. It's something that I used to do when playing the old Rainbow Six games where you could plot out every move for the mission. I spent more time planning a mission (20-30 minutes) than I actually did playing (usually cleared each mission in about 2-5 minutes), and every time I replayed a mission I would try and get a lower clear time. It was a rewarding experience, and I'm glad that I can replicate it with this game.

Playing co-op is rewarding in a different way. It's much more relaxing, and I enjoy gaming with my girlfriend, so it's a great way to spend time together where we might not be feeling up to going to a movie or something.

I've had a lot of fun playing solo games.

It does require doing deck construction and mono-sphere decks often aren't the best; I've done well with the occasional Lore or Spirit deck, but like you mentioned Tactics just won't work.

I don't see the problem with that though, the various Spheres are meant to compliment each other. What good would the other Spheres be if Tactics could reliably handle Questing, Locations, AND killing stuff??? A few questing/location heavy quests can be completed with a Spirit deck, but mostly you've got to try to think of creative ways to combine your various Spheres.

Some quests get a lot easier with more players, but a few can become more tricky as especially nasty encounter cards are more likely to appear. But even the really tough quests can be beaten solo. This forum is chock full of tricks on how to beat some of the harder ones. So far I've been able to beat every quest in solo play with the exceptions of Escape from Dol Goldur and Massing at Osgilioth (which I don't own).

I play completely solo and after playing a few months and picking up a few of the adventure packs I am now finding that I am winning far more often (over half) but am tending to use the same types of deck more and more. Since the release of KD I have been building 2-3 sphere decks with the miner and loading my deck with cards of a certain cost (usually over 30 of the 50). I know it is cheap but it means that I can enjoy seeing the final quest cards sometimes. On some of the easier quests, I have even won before the miner ever showed up (this morning I did a gloin/gimli/eowyn 4-cost deck that did HfG with no miner).

The most reliable strategy I've found is glorfindel/frodo/eowyn and the 3-cost cards with a leadership splash. Eowyn and Frodo quest and defend, respectively, Glorfindel can quest or attack as needed and his ability is nice to take care of any chip damage that builds up on the other 2. The 3-cost cards available to lore and spirit cover most things (traps, threat reduction, song fishing) and you can sneak attack Gandalf or bring in Son of Arnor or Silverload archer with the song for some reasonable attack.

With some of the other synergies that are coming out that allow you to do more with less, like the dwarves, I think things are getting progressively easier for the solo player. I also thought that the KD quests with a lot more 'X where X is the number of players' effects helped with the scaling.

I play quite a bit solo and with a friend or two/three a fair amount. From a gameplay standpoint I enjoy solo as much as multi player - maybe even more. However, the Guys Night experience makes multi player my favorite.

I enjoy solo play. I found this game more my game style now after 15+ years of playing MTG. I find co-op'ing more challenging than building a deck to defeat other player(s) as in MTG. I also like the AD&D/RPG feel to LOTR LCG. The quests are very challenging and keeps me interested. I loose almost 75% of the time when I play solo. The difficultly keeps me coming back for more. It might be that I just like to see my heroes get tortured over and over again. lol

GrandSpleen said:

I agree. the balance seems to lean towards duo play more than solo. some of the quests seem to depend on the cards you get/ enemies you dont get and some seem down right impossible. it's still pretty fun though which is what counts.

I play 90% of my games solo and in the 6 months i have been playing, the excitement is still there. I randomly choose a scenario and tailor my deck to cope best with the challenges that should arise from that encounter deck. Sometimes it doesnt work out but i love the planning of my deck. I must admit i enjoy long games so i tend to play spirit/lore decks a lot to minimise threat, heal, track n guide, stage attack and deal with treachery cards. Winning and racing to the end isnt my priority but thats just personal choice. If you get frustrated with the feeling that a scenario is weighted towards multi player then surely that should encourage you to use your knowledge of the game to beat it in solo mode. Try, adjust, try again, learn, adjust, try again!

I have only played solo so I have found this tread very interesting. Havent played a lot but just wondering if maybe a random hero draw is even playable with this game. Maybe using the easiest quest. Or maybe FFG could create rules for a random quest creation that scales with the number of players. Im sure this has been mention before but just thought I would refreash this thread and get more opinions now that the game has been out longer.

I mostly play solo these days due to workload. One house rule I've tried and feel it's a happy medium between simplicity and enjoyment is to pick my starting 6 draws. Everything after that goes on normal solo, but I find that this rule allows me for more interesting variety in my deck and a higher probability of not getting creamed in the first few rounds, which was usually the case in normal solo.

i could have sworn i had answered this post when it came out, as it seems like something id have a lot to say on….but perhaps not so here it is now

i feel that since watcher in the water, solo has improved vastly, not only in win rates for solo players, but player cards that work for us. take hands upon the bow - its made ranged actually useful! and i expect the same for sentinel at some point

now for the point of being stuck in spheres……i cant say that i am, nor has the game lost any of its exitement or magic- around a year and a half and i still play daily. now regulars of this forum will know this has much to do with my love of tolkien, however it also has much to do with the sheer number of card bulding options that the game now has….and building.

now i agree that the game was far too brutal for the first few packs….but this is to be expected i guess- though its a little sad that i saw so many solo players give up and sell their packs or put them away to play them ony when they had company….i knew however that sticking with it would pay off, and solo now feels like an important aspect of this game

many may (and do) say that solo play is not the idea of this game- its an extension and i couldnt disagree more- just look at the poll i did….more players play exclusively solo that any other type- thats an important indicator of what solo means to this game and thankfully ffg have taken its popularity into account.

my win rate is about fine for the new quests that are coming out- i dont feel the need to house rule and never have, however i feel that something is needed for the earlier quests like HFG and emyn muil, as theyre getting to easy….now you could say play with a less powerful deck and id agree, however itd be nice for one of the earlier quests to destory my premium decks once in a while……i hear ffg have something in the lines for this, so thats good.

overall id say solo players have had it rough over the development of this game, primarily for one reason- the core set was poorly put together so a solo player, not on the player cards (ok a little) but more on the quests…..guldur still remains the only quest i havent beaten (well apart from lake town), so i do think the core set is the weak part of the game, which is a problem for many given that its the first step of learning to play. perhaps they should start releasing a 2nd edition with even just one more quest in thats easier for solo players, that way it will keep them playing and get them to buy more packs getting ffg more money.

i hope that ffg keep developing the two player and solo play equally well as i believe both types of play are as valid as each other

rich

I play solo but I always play two decks at the same time, taking turns being player 1 and player 2. I found solo with a single deck nearly impossible with the core set, but once I played two decks at once, the game became much easier and far more enjoyable. I could play all the spheres at once (without either eliminating 1-2 of them or trying to cram all four into one deck) and win games (not always, but far more often than with one solo deck). Now that I've been playing this way for so long, I can't imagine going back to playing solo with only one deck. So if you play solo and haven't tried two decks, I would highly recommend it!

rborkowitz said:

this is something i hear alot of people doing, and if its working for you then that great….personally ive tried two handed solo and it just seems to stop the game dead in its tracks- but thats just my opinion

rich

Boris--You said you have a solo deck that performs well about 85% of the time. I'm sorry about your experience, but I'd love to see your successful deck build. Can you post it? I'm very much enjoying solo play, both games and deck-building.

I've just order LOTR through an online store that sells them at a slight discount (which counts a lot if you're buying a bunch to get the free shipping), but I haven't ordered all the adventure packs because it is simply too expensive for me, and I don't want to spend too much before I get to start playing. I plan to solo most of the time, unless my brother wants to join in, and I'm concerned that without the access to all the cards in the pool, constructing a deck for solo play will be next-to-impossible. And with a saga expansion and a deluxe expansion coming soon it seems almost impossible to keep up with the purchasing. Did I made a mistake by buying this game and expect to beat the campaigns as a solo player?

I do not think you made a mistake, as I play solo a lot between our multiplayer game nights and thoroughly enjoy it. Yes, some of the older adventures are not easy to get through solo, but I actually never felt that it was impossible - to be honest, a lot of my losses came through mistakes I made tactically or decisionwise, which on the other hand is quite normal when learning the game.

What might help you if you started to buy chronologically in order of original release would be Beorn's Path . He explains deckbuilding with the core set and each followup adventure pack combined with play-session reports.

What might also be of help to start getting into the game is a deck list by the name of BACK TO BASICS: A Killer deck using only cards from a single Core set . The deck is basically a powerhouse of a deck for its card pool and can carry you for quite a while and also can work as a base for future experimenting or just to get some frustration of your chest by having a way to accrue wins. Take not of the spoiler from the deck-thread there: "If you're a new player who wants to discover which cards work best with each on your own, you might not want to read this post, or stop reading after the deck list... The observations and deck construction are based on experience from hundreds of games played."

Thanks for the links. I'll follow their guide and see if I can make my solo decks work.

You should be fine. Most of this thread was from April 2012. I think Khazad Dum had only just come out, and the metagame was young. People were still coming to grips with the fact that solo play was just different from multiplayer. A lot of people were burned out on the three quests in the core set, which are much harder solo and got easier as you added more players.

Now we've seen quests that scale the opposite direction, too, getting harder the more players you add (and everything in between). People are more willing nowadays to accept that decks that do well multiplayer are not necessarily going to perform well solo. It's also difficult to build a single solo deck that can handle every quest (even every quest in a given cycle) which sometimes puts people off.

But I think you'll find that solo play is still very enjoyable, even without a full card pool. I've seen some of your other posts, and it sounds like you have a pretty good understanding of what you're getting into. I think you're going to love it.