Man, for all you "theme" solo players out there, get ready for a brutal quest -- the threat gain is just unreal. The trolls are nasty. The "sack" deck is worse. I've tried this quest a few times with no success. So much damage, so much threat gain. I'm not ready to declare it unplayable solo, but it definitely requires a well-tailored deck.

And forget only having characters that were alive at the time of The Hobbit. haha.

is this the hardest of the hobbit quests?

what quest in the previous cycles is it similar to diff. wise?

rich

richsabre said:

they didn't give difficulty ratings, and i like to play in order, but i hear the 3rd is rough, as well. so, i can't say, as I've only tried the first.

it's nothing like the previous quests, IMO. previously, you worry about threat or damage, not both. this had both in multitude. the new gandalf is junk solo (too expensive to keep in play for most decks), particularly in this quest. putting back in the old gandalf is what allowed me to get as far as i did, but it still wasn't enough.

i don't want to spoil too much, but it's difficult without cards like Lore-agorn, Glorfindel, and other low threat type heroes.

Dain Ironfoot said:

Dain Ironfoot said:

Dain Ironfoot said:

ah well- my flight to the ford deck seems tailor made to this- frodo, glorfindel and aragorn….i look forward to it…..rather i look forward to getting killed over and over ….

gah. dunno why my edits turned up as responses. sheesh.

I wanted to try this quest quickly so I just used my Loragorn & the Ninja Twins deck and beat it two times out of three, but when you have Loragorn you largely don' care about threat. (The loss was due to me getting greedy with Loragorn's ability.) But to your point, I agree. I am trying to build a deck that only uses Thorin & co. dwarves (or other generics, but no Gimli, Thalin, Dain) and I'm not sure how to manage the threat AND the trolls.

Yeah, this is the direction I'm going for this quest and haven't won yet. Themed and solo is tough. I've been running Thorin, Bifur, and Nori. Thorin is there for the resource collection, Bifur there for the Lore sphere and Dwarf Allies like the record keeper, and Nori to keep the Threat low. The first stage I've tried to stall to build my allies up plus Gandalf. Sort of like a strategy used often in conflict of the carrick. Once stage 2 comes up I try to pick off the lowest threat troll. Unfortunately without Dane the Dwarf allies like the Hammersmith and Mapmaker don't hit as hard. I'm thinking of trying to add some Tactics cards into the deck to get some combat boosting abilities into play. Having to run all spheres in solo is kind of tough so I'm not sure what I would take out.

We'll see. I'm sure I could beat this quest, but I would like to keep the Heroes themed.

Zdawg88 said:

normally i don't care about theme as much, but seeing as how this is a saga expansion, and that seems to be the purpose, i wanted to give it a go.

I'm thinking Thorin, Ori and Nori with Narvi's belt for a few Tactics cards when I need some big hits at the end. Gotta love Nori holding up the tankard!

Let's talk troll killing strategy. The first troll can't be snared, and the first two can only be attacked by one character at a time.

Any good ideas? ( A Sneak Attack Beorn wouldn't be a bad play maybe.)

Bullroarer Took said:

When I played this the first time, someone used 2 Khazad! Khazad! with Goblin Cleaver on Gimli, who had 3 damage and a Dwarven Axe attached to one shot a troll. But I probably will never see that happen ever again.

I don't have the box yet, but I heared they give two decklists consisting of cards only from the hobbit and one core set. Can you do the quests with these (with any hope of success)? If not (and it sounds like) that would be… mockery…or at least not very nice?!

Bullroarer Took said:

I was thinking Dain, Nori and Ori could be great - though a bit less thematic than the above, of course. I still don't have the box but I like what I am reading. Not only Shadow and Flame but also the Hobbit is going to be quite different from the previous experiences. Then we get the Lake Town and Númenor which might be very different again, hurray!

Legolas of Darkwood said:

i doubt they can accomplish it solo (one has wondering took in it, for goodness sake!) but maybe paired together they can work.

I haven't tried the suggested decks - and I won't - because I don't think they're very good. Not that I'm a great deck builder, but I don't like these at all.

My Thorin, Ori and Nori deck is 2 for 2 against the first quest. I'm really happy with this deck, but it could be even better.* The hard part for me isn't so much beating the trolls, it's finding the key and purse. (I'm basically not putting them into the deck until stage 2 because the wording is so bad.) The strategy is to slow play stage 1 while getting all my dwarven allies in play and reducing my threat via GG and Gandalf. Then move to stage 2 and take the trolls on one by one. By this time Erebor Battle Master will be swinging for 10 and can take a troll down in a couple of hits.* Take out the first troll with EBM, then Forest Snare the 2nd one and then kill the third one. The reason I snare the second one is that the third brings 2 sacks with him and I don't want to risk Ori being sacked at the wrong time.

*At first I included Khazad! and Heavy Stroke in my deck to increase EBM's hitting power, but Thorin is a sack magnet and is never around to play these for me at the critical time (with Narvi's Belt). So I'm going to take these out and put in another Dwarven Tomb and Miner of the Iron Hills.

How does this quest compares with conflict at the carrock?

They seem so similar, as to make one of them redundant….

koraldon said:

totally different. from my perspective, this is more like Escape from the core set, as your heroes get taken out of play and it's quite annoying (especially in solo)…and you really have to manage threat, which you don't in CaC.

I tried Richsabre's Flight from the ford deck that he has talked about, and beat it first try. In response to the whole troll key and purse thing, what we noticed is you have to shuffle the discard pile back into the encounter deck when you start stage two. We missed that our first few attempts. With this, its not nearly as difficult to get the objectives, and with the flight to the ford deck I was able to just quest through stage two and only engage one of the trolls, and keep it engaged with me. It actually happened fairly easy.

In response to Koraldon, it is still pretty different, not to mention is very thematically entertaining. Very likely, CatC was put out by ffg before they had thought of this, as it is a little redundant but Im sure almost no one minds, too cool of a quest!

koraldon said:

koraldon said:

They are so similar that I would hazard a guess as to say that Carrock was meant to recreate the situation in The Hobbit, but was designed BEFORE FFG got the license to do The Hobbit.

However, the trolls are different (and maybe a little worse) and the sacks and the sack mechnic are certainly different. So I would not use the word 'redundant', but 'similar'.

I have to say that I just got it today and I'm really loving this quest! I think it's way more interesting than Carrock. It's great times trying to get the into the cave to get the Treasure cards! It's nice adding that optional bonus and I think really increases replayability. Well done FFG!!!

Bullroarer Took said:

You can still collect resources and spend them even while sacked, as far as I can tell…

Narsil0420 said:

I thought that exhausting Narvi would be triggering an effect. No?

Last night I changed my strategy a little bit more by waiting until I had a Troll Camp in the staging area before moving to 2. Then I just left it there and ate the threat. This allowed Bilbo to make quick work of the sacks and I never needed my Miners. (Finally got the Treasures too!)

Miner of the Iron Hills wont work on the Sacks are objectives not conditions sorry to say