Perhaps, which brings me to something I forgot to mention: another drawback in solo is that, since you only reveal one encounter card per turn, that makes it less likely that you will have enemies to fight. And if you aren't going to fight that much, Tactics is really doing nothing for you.

personally, i can never get on with tactics, i have tried, but as titan says there are other methods that have other good benefits also- such as running 3 mirkwood runners in khazad can clear goblins out like skittles, and for the real bad guys forest snare is always a winner

not that im saying i dont see gimli with 6 damage, citadel plate and 2 axes an absolute beast- which he is, so im not knocking tactics as much as some, but nor am i defending it

i guess as ive said above- time will tell, perhaps a cycle will bring as many tactics cards as mirkwood brought us spirit- perhaps gondor wil be full of excellent tactics cards that will have us looking back red faced at this thread- who knows

I think what they can (and should) do, at least sometimes, is to have more fighting oriented quests, as suggested above. With no terrible treacheries besides perhaps adding more enemies into play. And with shadow effects only boosting attack by two or so, so that you need a good fighter to deal with that (and even more of those enemies that cannot be blocked by allies), yet the best blocker in the game is probably a Leadership hero. At least he requires a Tactics hero to be in play. And you would need many VPs to win, all of those coming from enemies, of course.

The more players you have, the more encounter cards get revealed, which means more enemies are likely to come off. That's when Tactics can really shine.

That's why I don't feel they get the "short end of the stick". The game is not just about playing solo games with mono sphere decks!

Titan said:

I don't get this at all.

There are lots of cards that only have a single function. I can use Dunhere or Legolas, they both quest equally well, but are mostly get used for fighting with different special abilities, which is more benefical depends on what you're facing. I completely agree that all of the Spheres are generally more flexible, but there are also always enemies in every quest. I've lost plenty of games because I've been swarmed by enemies and my handful of cards that could let me dump bunches of progress tokens weren't doing me a lick of good. Not to mention, the single most flexible hero in the whole game is unquestionably Boromir, a Tactics hero.

You don't *need* Tactics to win, but you can make a deck that is plenty "strong" with them.

double post

gatharion said:

We have all been overwhelmed by enemies at one point or another. It happens. But by and large, enemies in solo can be handled without Tactics. And once you can do that, you have the added flexibility of whatever else you are running. It is a sphere that specializes in something that all the other spheres have their own way of handling, meaning that too often it brings very little to a deck. Can a deck be strong with Tactics in it? It can do ok, but it will almost certainly get stronger the moment Tactics is taken out of it, and that is the problem.

Titan said:

I knew that tacticts is the weakest sphere by far, but what I didn't expect is that it's not playable at all.

gatharion said:

I am talking about solo play here. I am fully aware that tactics is shining as a supporting sphere in multiplayer games.

FYI, I just build a mono leadership deck around Gimli, Dáin and Théodred. To make things even harder, I don't use any songs nor Narvi's Belt. So far my record is 1-4, with one game being lost to a nasty shadow effect ("Despair") and one to "Pursued by Shadows" during setup. I am confident that I will achieve a long term 20-30 percent win ratio with this deck. The main problem so far is to survive the first couple of rounds without being eaten by the troll. Of course I am always hoping for Gandalf to do the job, but some Dúnedain warnings plus Erebor Boots or Durin's Song enable Dáin to defend twice against the troll. That's how I won my only game so far btw.

Anyway, this deck is already doing a better job than tactics. If I'd add a spirit or a lore hero, things would even get better.

You meant Glóin, right?

Now, I quite agree with those saying Tactics don't stand a chance in solo. But as I said before, don't you think one way to mend this problem is to make quests more oriented toward fighting. I mean there is the Carrock but Tactics will still struggle their as their threat will rise quickly and the Trolls will attack at once. What I mean is quests with few treacheries, locations of low threat (thematic to battlefields) and many enemies of different strength that require a varied approach in getting rid of them. I would also like to see such a quest that would require a lot of healing but not in a way of Rhosgobel.

lleimmoen said:

Yeah, I meant Glóin, of course.

I completely agree with you about the rest. I already mentioned this in another thread, but the most enjoyable thing about this game is the fighting. More enemies is something I am waiting for (KD made a good job there). Best would be enemies with a high threat but an even higher threat level to engage you. Say, threat 2 and threat level 35 or more. That way a spirit player can choose to avoid fighting them by adding more WP in the quest phase, while a tactics player would rather engage this enemy in battle.

I'd love to see a tactics healer or healing attachment. Doesn#t have to be as powerful as lore healers, but something like Glorfindel's ability for tactics would be great.

One thing (of many of course) we haven't got any of yet is the shields. I believe they may become a great thing with Gondor perhaps. I can imagine Boromir's shield being the most iconic of those.

Why I'm saying this is since you brought a Tactics healing card, I know shield may be more of a defence thing, or either defence or hp (or both) but maybe Tactics will get a first aid kit, too.

And since I brought up Boromir's shield, I hope most of the iconic characters will get "their" attachments, Aragorn's got two, Glorfindel has one, Boromir doesn't have the Horn surprisingly, what happened there? But he may get the shield. Of course there are all sorts of weapons and artifacts for others too.

Something else that will help Tactics would be the possibility of multiple sphere heroes. Or heroes whose abilities allow them to play more than one sphere. However, that won't be a true cure as this will be more like "splashing" Tactics rather than actually playing it outright. That is, of course, assuming that we ever see something like this.

lleimmoen said:

will they release the horn again?- i thought that was the horn of gondor?

richsabre said:

No it was. I was just wondering why the card has no connexion to Boromir. I think it's more connected to the character than Celebrian's Stone is to Aragorn. But I guess since they wanted to release Horn of Gondor in the core set but not Boromir, they wouldn't want to do that connexion. However, I think it was still a fault, as we really didn't need Horn of Gondor in the core set since we hadn't got the combos (Rohan allies, Eagles) for it anyways.

After 12 games with my leadership mono deck I'm at 3-9. Lots of Necromancer's Passes in the setup which is almost every time an auto-loss for a deck with a starting threat of 28. If I get my three rounds to prepare the fight against the troll, things look much better and I get to stage 2 easily. In my earlier games I probably hurried to much and didn't have enough allies out to racedwon the Anduin. My last three games looked much better, the last two being wins.

Biggest complaint about leadership so far: Allies suck! When did I last have "Guard of the Citadel" in my hand? Can't remember! And where have all the dwarfs gone? Dáin was not too happy about that.

Yes, Leadership has got the worst allies to be sure. But the sphere's strengths lie elsewhere.

Much like Tactics, I only use Leadership in conjunction with other Spheres. Spirit and Lore are the only ones I ever build as mono-sphere decks.

Right now though, I'm feeling kinda inspired to try a mono-sphere Tactics deck. (I'm thinking Hama, Legolas, and Gimli.)

I guess my whole reaction to this thread is that up until reading it, it never OCCURRED to me that I should make a mono-Tactics deck for solo play. It just seemed obvious to me that that sphere wasn't designed for that.

I think any mono-sphere is worse than multi-sphere for solo, even Spirit.

But what "we're saying", I guess, is that the issue goes deeper. That Tactics-major (meaning 2 heroes) is hard to win with in solo play. And even perhaps that as a rule it is better to play without a Tactics hero altogether. And the latter I find an issue.

I think the idea of your deck may be fun to play with. Háma certainly seems a hero to build such a deck around. And Legolas might go well in there too. Overall I think Boromir is clearly the best Tactics hero but I know he doesn't fit every deck.

lleimmoen said:

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's better not to use Tactics heroes, since some are very powerful, but the problem is that you have to build around the one you do include. For instance, I have a deck with Loragorn, Boromir and the Prince, mostly to test a stupidly high threat start with good stats. Boromir is the key to the deck, because he can auto-refresh etc, but generally doesn't buy any cards except Gandalf and Feint, so the rest of the deck is built around supplying him with threat reduction and stuff. It's oddly effective, but it's true that I never feel like I can just throw a Tactics hero in without thinking about it; and using two…can't imagine how that'd work.

Which reminds me (although this is a bit off topic) that while there has been some criticism of the new Gorlfindel, having finally played with the new Aragorn, I think FFG absolutely nailed designing his character. He's still 12 threat and all, but his ability opens up some completely new game styles reducing the emphasis on threat control through Galadhrim's Greeting or Elrond's Counsel. I'm really impressed with the simplicity of the concept, and the glorious possibilities it opens up.

There's also a whole thread about how powerful and effective the combo of Elladan and Elrohir is. One of which is a tactics hero.

I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with those saying a deck is weaker just for having Tactics in it. I've kicked far too many encounter decks in their metaphorical rear with my dwarves and/or eagles to buy that line of reasoning.

gatharion said:

That's not exactly what I was saying. I was talking about tactics-driven decks, which are decks with more than one tactics ally. However, when I find myself using tactics I do this mainly for using the hero's ability (Elladan, Thalin, Boromir), but not for the tactics cards in my hand. Usually I put only a dozen of them in my deck. Tactics still can't hold the ground on its own. In the beginning, each one of us tried to use the core set's tactics mono-sphere deck against Passage through Mirwkood anf failed. And each time we saw a beginner doing this, we kept saying "wait until there are more and better cards out there". And now, after the second cycle is almost finished, we're still waiting for that to happen.

monkeyrama said:

Yes, they did a great job with Aragorn. And he also helps to use tactics heroes like Boromir or Gimli, because his ability reduces the risk of running out of threat to a minimum. Playing TWitW with these two is insane!

leptokurt said:

Titan was saying that any Tactics at all made your deck weaker.