Has anybody been able to win the first quest solo using only 1 Core set and the Hobbit expansion? I've got all of the APs to-date, but decided to challenge myself by trying to play the Hobbit with just the Core set and Hobbit cards. So far, I've tried 5 times and have not yet been able to get past stage 2B, or for that matter kill a single Troll. Not having access to the Song cards is hurting - I'm playing a tri-sphere Leadership (Thorin), Spirit (Nori), Tactics (Beorn) deck. I'm close to surrendering and giving up on this approach.

what state are the characters in when you remove the sack. Im thinking the way they were in when sacked. also troll camp says that bilbo can use the action even if he is sacked. So does that mean he can use it more then once since he is not exhausted or ready. Is it once per round. I'm thinking it's best just not to get sacked at all and leave the trolls in the staging area and quest a lot.

Bullroarer Took said:

Ok, does the bolded part refer to Tom's card text? Because in my German version his text states that a troll can only be atacked by a single player at a time. Could anyone confirm that B.R. is right about that?

leptokurt said:

Yes, check the card javascript:void(0);

This is why I hate translated games. The original designer english wording is confusing enough, no need to add the translator confusion to this.

wlk said:

Well, usually they translate the cards very good, but this time they really messed it up. One time they translate the word "character" with "ally" (on the sack cards), and one time with "player". I get the feeling that the translator hasn't played the game before translating it. Quest 1 is really only a kindergarden version in German…

Thanks for clearing that!

leptokurt said:

Actually, in English there is at least one of the "sack" cards that does mention an ally, so that may be translated correctly.

benhanses said:

i was talking to leptokurt on that last night- it does sound like the whole cards are pretty much screwed

richsabre said:

Well, that's disappointing… as confusing as the FFG wordin gIN ENGLISH can be at times, if translation gets buggered up to German (Spanish, French, whichever), that must be frustrating as hell….

Feel like I'm a bit late to the Hobbit party, having only just recently played the first two quests, but it seems FFG did an amazing job with these quests! First run through of Troll quest, and ended up engaged to all three trolls across the two teams of dwarves thanks to some nasty shadow effects. We almost got the first troll killed while only engaged with two of the trolls, only for the treachery that forces you to engage with a troll brought the last one in, and sacked enough characters to really push us.

Then, with glorious timing, the new Gandalf popped up (came into my partners hand at just the right moment, just like Gandalf), and in two turns of questing we managed, just, with nearly every ally dead from the trolls, to discard the last card from the deck, with our threat levels pushing 46 and 48, and Gandalf hanging around to finish off the job! Perfect combo of a win in good narrative fashion, and with defeat so near. I love the fact that the quest holds so true to the narrative of the Hobbit, and yet also makes it work in gameplay terms that are really satisfying. If FFG continues like this with quests (and the track record recently is so good with FoS etc) I'll be very happy!

monkeyrama said:

Yes i agree with you quality of the quest is better then before. Keep good work FFG!

I tried to do this solo tonight and basically threw in the towel when I saw 3 trolls in the staging area. Between them and the sack effects, my whole party was going to get slaughtered. I was using heroes from the saga expansion (2 dwarves plus that bear). I wonder if it is like Conflict at the Carrock where you keep your threat ultra low and wait through the first part of the quest before engaging the trolls. Any suggestions on winning this using the heroes and themes from the Saga expansion???

I tried to do this solo tonight and basically threw in the towel when I saw 3 trolls in the staging area. Between them and the sack effects, my whole party was going to get slaughtered. I was using heroes from the saga expansion (2 dwarves plus that bear). I wonder if it is like Conflict at the Carrock where you keep your threat ultra low and wait through the first part of the quest before engaging the trolls. Any suggestions on winning this using the heroes and themes from the Saga expansion???

Sorry for the double post, but I have two more questions

1/ Do you mix the Treasure cards into the encounter deck and then "discover them"? It seems that since they have rings on the back they would stick out when you are mixing up the encounter deck.

2/ Can you use 3 Gandalf cards from the core set AND the 3 new Gandalf cards from the saga expansion in the same deck?

peterstepon said:

1. Treasures are player cards and can be put into your player deck for scenarios 2 and 3 IF you can claim them during this quest.

2. The rules state only 3 cards with the same name per deck, so no you can't have 3 of both types of Gandalf.

As for tactics, I played a similar sounding deck to you and did very little questing in stage 1 so as not to complete it before I was ready. I had 2 trolls engage by then, but I had a troll camp in play and a fast hitch on Bilbo, so the sack cards were never a problem.

I finally managed to beat the third quest on a regular basis. Inspired by Mementix's solo-sphere deck I created a two-sphere (spirit/leadership) deck with tons of 2 and 3 cost allies. Men, I didn't use Lorien Guide for ages! But that way I could finally solve these riddles before I ran out of cards (didn't need to use Will of the West so far). My heroes were Dain/Nori/Dwalin which is a good combo to keep your threat low (<30).

The quest still feels overly complicated. I like fighting against the hordes of goblins, but the riddles feel like they've put too much new stuff into one quest. I like it better now but still the whole expansion doesn't give me that feeling of awesomeness like KD did. The news about HoN sounds promising though!

peterstepon said:

I tried about 10 times solo using just the cards from 1 core set and the hobbit expansion and did not have any luck. I finally gave up and used some of the good tactics cards from the Darrowdelf cycle (e.g. Erebor BattleMaster, Heavy Stroke, Khazad!, Khazad!, etc.) and a couple of the key Neutral cards to help with making sure I can get the Troll Key in the unlucky case it gets put in the Discard pile if it comes up as a Shadow Card (e.g. Shadow of the Past, The End Comes). The strategy I use is to avoid completing 1st quest phase until a Troll Camp comes up and I have enough allies to help with questing and defending against the trolls (cheap allies make good troll fodder). Then as soon as I complete the 1st quest phase I travel to the Troll Camp (I used to avoid doing this as I wanted to ensure I didn't explore it and lose it from play, but then I realized a better strategy is to travel to it so that the threat level in the staging area comes down significantly and the first few rounds during the 2nd quest phase you don't really need to worry about over questing and exploring it anyways). I then try to bring down the trolls one at a time to make it managable removing the sacks and leave the last troll alive until I have the troll key and have explored the troll cave. With this approach I was able to improve my win rate, but it still took me quite a few more attempts before I successfully found the treasure (when I changed my strategy to travel to the troll camp right away that helped a lot). My last game had an epic ending - the Troll Key was the 3rd last card in the encounter deck and I was in danger of discarding the last encounter card before I was able to explore the troll cave but I was able to use "The End Comes" to shuffle the encounter discard pile pack into the deck to allow me to find the treasures. Never found a good use for the card until now!

I use a dwarf deck and heroes Beorn, Thorin, Nori and Bilbo to stick with the Hobbit theme. The only non-hobbit ally I added was Arwyn so that I could use Elrond's Counsel for some extra threat reduction relief.

Any suggestions for a card list to complete the first quest?

I have the core, the first Mirkwood cycle of decks, Khazad-Dum, and the Hobbit saga expansion.

Thanks!

peterstepon said:

It feels like the Dwarrowdelf cycle is a must to survive the Hobbit quests with regularity. You'll find some of the other dwarves from the Hobbit in that cycle, too, I believe, so I picked the cycle packs up despite not liking the theme of the Dwarrowdelf quests.

At the very least get Erebor Battle Master, who is +1 attack for each Dwarf in play. He's in The Long Dark.

The funny part about my recent play-through (which makes use of this deck) is that my threat was so high I ended up engaging the Trolls from hardest to least instead of the other way around, but that was alright because I had so many dwarf allies in play that there were plenty of sack targets other than the Battle Master. Card draw from Ori provided me with enough Khazad! Khazad!'s and Goblin-Cleavers and Dwarrowdelf Axes that the Battle Master ended up one-shotting each troll to the awe of Gimli and company.

I think engaging from most-HP to least also allowed me to one-shot the trolls one after another, because I lost one dwarf ally to blocking each turn. I only just made the kills each time. I don't recommend this methodology, though.

It sounds like your deck worked really well, the battle master does make the final fight a lot easier.

I'm a bit confused how you managed to take on the trolls one at a time if your threat was so high, surely they would all have engaged you together i.e. on the same turn, adding 4 sacks (1 of which you could remove with Bilbo and a Troll Camp). Unless I've been playing it wrong, the only way to optionally engage them 1 at a time is to have your threat below 23.

Memetix said:

It's actually CaffeineAddict's deck, not mine (and the link to it got messed up somehow in my previous post; here's the actual link, unless I've messed up the URL again).

The most enemies that can engage you at a time is two: one is optional and your choice, the other forced. Take a look at the engagement rules again; I was forced to engage a Troll, the highest threat one possible that was still at or under my threat (which was in the 40s, so it had to be the biggest, hairiest one). But only one. Otherwise the game would, indeed, be extremely, extremely hard.

ArachneJericho said:

I wanted to add a clarification here: that's the most enemies that can join the possibly monstrous cadre currently beating your party. If I hadn't one-shotted the biggest troll, the next biggest would have joined him on my next turn, and on the next turn after that, the smallest one. I could have indeed three trolls beating on me, it just takes three turns to accumulate them.

ArachneJericho said:

This is very wrong. Check the rulebook again, page 16:

"Once all players have made an engagement check, the first player makes a second engagement check. Players continue making engagement checks in this manner until there are no enemies remaining in the staging area that can engage any of the players."

So if your threat was at 40, all 3 trolls are engaging you (assuming you are playing solo obviously).

I am playing solo, but rather than one deck I am playing 2 (Simulating 2 players). I actually replicated the 2 decks on the back of the over hill, underhill booklet which use the cards from the core and the Saga edition.

Here are some thoughts,

I think I rushed through the first quest phase too fast. I need more cards to engage the trolls

This feels like a refined version of "Conflict of Carrock", start slowly, build up an army and keep your threat low, then move in to engage the trolls. Probably using Gandalf from the Core would be a good way to reduce threat, as well as other threat reducing cards.

Gimli will probably be my MVP with a suit of armor, since he will be able to dish out enough damage to kill the trolls very quickly.

You need lots of allies in play to act as defense fodder against the trolls

The one thing that really really bothers me is Tom (the Troll's) special ability, that Trolls can only be attacked by one character at a time. This would make the game a nightmare because it would take teamwork to destroy the Trolls in the first place (having 3 attack one for instance). I can understand not being allowed to use attachments, otherwise using "Forest Trap" would make this too easy. Attacking one at a time means that their health can only be bled slowly. If anyone can clarify this I would appreciate it.

wlk is right - all three trolls will engage you when our threat is too high. There is no restriction to the number of enemies that can engage you.

peterstepon said:

Well, I only play solo, but I think the same strategies should apply to two player games. When playing this scenario I usually try to keep my threat low enough so that I only have to fight one of the trolls at a time. I think everything else will not work, no matter how good your deck might be.

My first deck was built around Dáin as the main defender, pimped up with some Dunedain Warnings, Chain Mails and Arwen. The troll killer was Erebor Battle Master, who had an attack value of 7-10 with all these dwarves in play. So the plan was to delay the second stage until I had EBM and enough dwarves out, but not delaying it too long to avoid a fight with two trolls. Khazad-Khazad and Heavy Stroke are nice cards that help EBM to kill the trolls with one single blow. Instead of EBM you might also use Gimli + Citadel Plate.

My second deck was spirit/lore with the aim to play as many cheap allies with much WP as possible. Westroad Traveller, Erebor Record Keeper, Escort from Edoras, Arwen etc. Some of them got sacrificed to the trolls, the others allowed me to quest like the wind so that I gathered enough progress to complete the adventure before the trolls could even blink.

Btw, both stragies also work against S&F.

In your case I'd say that you should combine these two with one player defending (and perhaps attacking) and the other one questing. Remember you don't need to defeat the trolls, as the sunlight will take care of them once you have enough progress.

Re: Gandalf - I used the new version but it was quite counter-productive in this (in fact in all three) scenario which is why I dropped him. The old Gandalf might help, but since FoS I don't use him anymore. If you want to use him though, you probably should add Grave Cairn to your deck. Play Gandalf with Sneak Attack (or with Born Aloft) and use his ATT for one of your other characters.

wlk said:

Wow, thank you for the correction! My eyes are bad obviously, and now I am quite deservedly and duly embarrassed. (Not to mention losing that game!)