Please pick your top three favorite encounter decks and post a quick reason why…

I would like some clarification. When you say "encounter deck," do you mean my favorite three scenarios, or do you mean my favorite 3 subsets of encounter cards (with their own little icons).

My top three favorite encounter sets are:

Passage Through Mirkwood
Spiders of Mirkwood
Return to Mirkwood

Reason why? Spiders, spiders, and more spiders. I'm an arachnologist. What can I say?

My top three favorite scenarios are

Passage Through Mirkwood
Conflict at the Carrock
The Hills of Emyn Muil

I'm basing this on the fact that these are the scenarios I tend to come back to over and over again. I love having to focus on travelling during Hills of Emyn Muil, instead of focusing so much on enemies like we normally do. It's such a satisfying scenario when you start using all your tricks to get the victory points you need. Some think it's boring, but I'm not good enough at this game to think so. It's still a really fun one for me.

I also love to use the Tactics sphere, so I like Carrock because it's relatively easy to throw Tactics in and pull off a win. It can be frustrating one, but also very satisfying because you know you've got to deal with not one, not two, but FOUR trolls at the same time! And yet it is completely doable.

I have a love-hate relationship with Passage Through Mirkwood. I often want to play it because A) there's spiders, and B) it's the intro scenario so how hard can it be, right? As most of you are aware, this can be an unforgiving quest. Between Spawn of Ungoliant and Caught In A Web, there's plenty of danger to give your fellowship a run for their money. A few months ago I kept making the mistake of saying, "I want to see how this new deck works with these heroes. I'll try Passage Through Mirkwood so I can focus more on the deck and less on staying alive," but I've found it doesn't work like that. Not for me, anyway. If I don't tailor my deck to a specific scenario, I might as well not play because I know I'm going to lose.

Budgernaut said:

Difficulty of a quest can make it boring, but Emyn Muil, even though it is one of the easier quests, isn't boring (IMO) because it is easy, it is boring because there is nothing to do. It's quest, quest, quest, wait for the VPs to mount up. So few Enemies, you almost never need to leave anybody back to defend. And having just 1 quest stage didn't do EM any favours either. Other two cakewalks from Mirkwood cycle, Carrock and Dead Marshes, both had other elements that you had to deal with. Carrock even had a big-ass fight at the end, WAY more satisfying way to win than "oh look, I cleared the last VP-location, yay " and DM forced you to keep people back, not only because it had many more Enemies, but also because you had at least 1 escape test per turn, sometimes more depending on Treacheries.

Budgernaut said:

I'm sorry, it was scenarios. I still call them encounters in my head.

My favourite scenarios are:

Journey Along the Anduin and Massing at Osgilliath because they both require a fairly balanced deck. I like Conlfict at the Carrock, too. But I never ever seem to win that one