I'm a new player who started with the Core Set and went ahead and bought 8 Adventure Packs.

What's the recommended way to incorporate the Adventure Packs? If I were to play the Core Set Quests, should I keep to only the Core Set cards? Or should I go ahead and open up all my Adventure Packs and utilize all cards available to me with whatever quest I am adventuring through?

Or is it more "pure" to only take it one step at a time? For example, once I go from the Core Set and start The Hunt for Gollum I then only open up that Adventure Pack and add those cards to my deck while leaving all my other ADs alone.

Or am I over thinking this? Should I just open them all up and use all available cards to me?

thanks,

ge0ff73

I would just play with all of them from the start. Personally I got a core set for my birthday, and I've been buying adventure packs one by one since then. It was definitely harder before I had more cards to choose from. I say throw them all into the mix! I don't think you are missing some core experience by doing so.

If you are playing Solo, you might probably want to have a larger card pool to select from and build your deck, so pooling all the cards together may be a better choice. Some players like to play in a restricted format, that you would only tackle a particular quest using the cards from the coreset and in the adventrue packs up to the particular quest comes. However, if you think that the whole cycle (Mirkwood cycle, for example) as a whole (as it is designed and manufactured as a whole as far as I know), you may be more liberal in this restricted concept that you can use all cards in the coreset and the Mirkwood cycle to build a deck to tackle any quests in the Mirkwood cycle.

Anyway, having fun is the most important part in playing the game. So you should try which way is suitable to you.

I treated the game like an RPG, where I had to defeat a quest before I got the rewards. So I ended up limiting myself even more, in that I didn't even incorporate the current pack's cards in trying to defeat that quest. The end result was probably a tougher first win than otherwise, but once I got that first win it was a nice personal reward to get to deck build with the new cards. I did play with KD cards the first time through those quests, however.

Now, I got the packs one by one as they were released, so it's a different environment than what you have. I just had fun doing it my way, so I thought I'd share.

I'm playing through for the first time myself. When I'm not playing co-op games with my girlfriend, I'm soloing through the quests as they were released which gives me the satisfaction of beating it the way the AP's were released. Once I'm done with everything, I'll probably go back and build a deck that uses all the cards and see if I can improve on my scores from the first time through.

you can do whatever you want- do whatever will give you most enjoyment

Thanks everyone for the comments. My questions are answered. I just wasn't sure at first.

Scoob, that RPG idea is awesome!

I'd love to see someone devise a campaign where as you complete quests you get certain [sets of ] cards as rewards.

Such a campaign could also add some quest-specific "house rules" to make some of the quests easier solo. That way, solo players wouldn't get stuck forever on Anduin or Dol Guldur.

Have you given thought to creating such a campaign?

(Actually, the absolute coolest thing would be to see a campaign with brand new quests designs to gradually up the learning curve and complexity by starting with just a few cards and adding them gradually.)