A "balanced" deck with Tactics would still take twice as long to win as a Lore/Spirit based deck. You could even replace Lore or Spirit with Tactics and the statement still be true.

A "balanced, Tactics-based" deck is a support deck. Period. But I also accept your amendment.

Boris_the_Dwarf said:

So scenarios featuring a lot of enemies can be defeated faster with a good dose of Tactics.

However, where it really shines is in a 2-Player game. In our 2-Player games it's a given, that one player will play a Mono-Tactics deck.

I also find the game hard to balance with all the aspects. I have a dwarf deck that can kick ass in combat but is really bad at questing and my main elf deck that can quest well but depends on the luck of the draw really when it comes to combat. the most frustrating thing i find is when cards like the hummer horns or the cave trolls wipe out a hero per turn with no way of bringing them back except landroval the eagle. My hero choice of legolas, glorfindel and elrohir gives me a fairly high starting threat of 31 but affords me access to some pretty useful cards like the citadel plate and the healing and snare cards.

I find the quests like journey down the andurin to be the hardest due to the extra encounter cards drawn during the quest phase and the troll enemies. i have the card that makes me draw one less card per quest phase but it's if that comes up. If my heroes survive it is usually at the expense of questing which meens my threat reaches fifty long before i complete quest card 2 (stupid rule by the way! especially since the threat dial goes up to 99 in theory. couldn't some way of modifying score based on final threat level be used instead?). That is if you dont count massing at osgiliath which is impossible as far as i can tell. lol. Its a fun game and i have found the quests that i can do without getting too stressed (hunt for gollum, return to mirkwood, escape form dol goldur seem to be the easiest for me) so i tend to stick to those for solo play. I find the other quests much easier in duo play when you have more characters in play.

gman707 said:

How do you consider Escape from Dol Goldur easy? As of today, I've beaten every quest from the Core and Shadows of Mirkwood except for Escape from Dol Goldur. It seems odd that you would complain about solo balance when you claim that as one of the easiest.

jhaelen said:

Except that killing enemies has next to nothing to do with winning (next to nothing meaning unless the win condition specifically calls for that). You win by progressing through the stages. You can kill every enemy and still lose the game if you are not questing.

gman707 said:

Really, you find Return to Mirkwood and Escape from Dol Guldur to be some of the easiest quests for playing solo? I've only ever beaten those quests while playing co-op, and even then our win percentage for Escape is pretty low. Escape is a complete nightmare solo, what makes it so easy for you?

And as for Journey Down the Anduin, a combo that works well for me is Eowyn, Dunhere and Thalin. I've played that quest seven times with that combination of heroes, and have won every single time. Dunhere and Thalin make the second stage of that quest pretty trivial as they can take out enemies incredibly quickly.

Boris_the_Dwarf said:

That's true for almost every scenario. There are some exceptions though: The Watcher in the Water (I had better results using lore/tactics than using lore/spirit), a scenario full of enemies, and scenarios which include Wargs. These you have to defeat quickly, or they might sit in your staging area forever. But in general, yes, tactics doesn't help you to get through an adventure faster than other spheres (but often safer).

Boris_the_Dwarf said:

I seem to notice a tendency for selective perception: "Barring all situations that require enemies to be defeated, defeating enemies is totally not necessary."

Yeah, right.

This reminds me of an argument someone made to me that "Earth is the largest planet in our solar system. - If you only consider the small ones." Well, duh.

From Core and Shadows of Mirkwood, I count 6 quest cards of 25 that have a requirement that an enemy or multiple enemies cannot be in play in order to advance to the next stage. So roughly 1/3 of the quest stages have a killing requirement. That doesn't include situations where you need to kill enemies to bring the threat in the staging area down to a manageable level. Admittedly, these 6 also include stages where you can't beat it if there is a certain card in play, but there is no guarantee that said card will enter play (e.g. Beorn's Path).

So killing things is a big part of the game. Is that news? Not really. Now the question for each individual is whether they feel Tatics is necessary for dealing with those martial threats, or if other spheres can step up to the challenge just as well. For my part, I usually use Tactics, but I haven't experimented with Lore as much as others. That's probably what I need to focus on next.

Lore is a great support deck. Especially with the snare attachment… allowing the other player to deal with big threats without suffering horrendous damage.

On its own, its not a bad solo choice (it can heal itself) but there is no real punch when you have to eliminate mid-range enemies quickly.

CreepyBastard said:

Wouldn't you still suffer from horrendous damage once the enemy first engages you? Personally I prefer Feint to Forest Snare. Has the same basic ability and only costs 1 resource, and can be played when the enemy engages you instead of the next planning phase.

With luck you would only have to deal with the damage for a couple of rounds until the snare was attached.

If you are EXTREMELY lucky, you could play feint first and then have the snare attached right away and not take any damage at all.

Feint IS an excellent card.

Budgernaut said:

That also means that 2/3 of the quests require QUESTING. While Tactics excels at killing enemies and will easily help the solo player get through that 1/3 approximation you point out, it cannot handle the questing component the other 2/3 of the time. Meanwhile, Lore can do everything Tactics can do plus heal AND quest, so it gets the solo player through that 1/3 challenge - especially when paired with spirit.

Prior to the new hero in The Long Dark, Tactics has offered nothing solid to pair with the questing spheres for solo play.

jhaelen said:

You took one sentence completely out of context and centered your response around it. I also said:

"You can kill every enemy and still lose the game if you are not questing."

When building a deck for solo play, the following things matter (in order of importance):

1. Willpower rating. You must have characters that can quest. If your deck consists primarily of combat-oriented heroes and allies, you will probably lose more times than you win.

2. Stage control. If you can't successfully remove cards from the staging area at least every other round, you will probably lose. Whether this means optionally engaging enemies (or them engaging you). traveling, or just knocking cards out of the staging area with special tricks, it's the second most important aspect of the game. It's so important that I'd daresay it goes hand-in-hand with number 1.

3. Combat ability. This doesn't necessarily mean wiping out every enemy on the table through reckless combat, but at least controlling the enemies that are engaged with you. Whether that is playing cards that prevent them from attacking, letting them attack over and over without taking significant damage on your heroes, or just bumping them off with combat/events, enemies can overwhelm you quickly if you aren't controlling them. And yes, you need to be working on defeating them as fast as possible, but it's not necessary to kill every single enemy to win (unless that is a scenario condition, of course - most of the time, it's not; you just need to put the listed number of progress tokens on the current quest card. I have won many, many games with 3-5 enemies engaged with me.)

4. Threat reduction. Think of everything you do by the numbers. 1 pt. of threat = 1 turn. So on average, players have about 22-26 turns (more if you are running secrecy decks) before they lose. So, something like Elron'ds Counsel gives you 3 extra turns in which to win, whereas something with the Doomed 1 ability takes a turn away. It's not just about comparing threat ratings to what's in the staging area, because if you are playing smart, you are dealing with enemies in the staging area before they would engage you anyway, even if that means just dropping Gandalf to put damage on a hard to kill monster.

5. Resource management. This is not just resource tokens, but also card drawing and knowing what's in the encounter deck. The more cards you can get in your hand, the more you can do, and the more you can do to accomplish the above 4 goals that are needed in order to win. If you know the next card on top of the encounter deck is going to deal 1 damage to each exhausted character, then you won't send that 1 hit point ally to quest. If you know the next card on top of the encounter deck is a location, you won't hold back a blocker when there are no other enemies engaged or in the staging area. But the term "resource management" includes tokens, even though it's not just about them. Knowing when to play which cards is the most important aspect of solo play if you want to be successful with these five goals. The best games I have played have not been ones where I breezed through by luck, but when I was in a losing position and looked at my game position three turns later rather than what might happen on the current turn. I actually held off playing a Gandalf for 4 turns once because I saw a chance for him to be far more useful at that point than if I just dropped him as soon as I had 5 tokens.