schmoo34 said:

See I found this pretty funny because we'd been struggling for a while with Foundations of Stone with 2 players. Our two Dwarf decks couldn't make it through after repeated plays. Just to be different we tried it with a Rohan and an Eagle deck (built on a "Eagles are rubbish" dare) and made it through first time! Then those two decks sailed past Shadow and Flame as well.

I think it's easy to get stuck in a mindset of what's good and not, and this restricts you trying out new things.

But even if you are sure some cards are rubbish there's no reason you can't at least try them. See it as a challenge… take a bad strategy and try and make it as best you can. Play the early, easier scenarios. This way you're getting repeated use out of both 'bad' cards and early scenarios that are just too easy for your good decks to bother with.

Morph said:

This.

Deck building for me is the essence of the game. Developing single and multi sphere decks of different varities and strengths is, for me, the most enjoyable aspect of the game.

My friend and I play 2 player. I have never played the game 1 player before. We have come across adventures that have been so difficult we couldnt imagine how we were going to defeat them. But each time we sat down and either tweaked the decks we were using or came up with a different combo altogether, and eventually overcame.

I have seen no personal evidence that one sphere is essential to winning, or is necessary to defeat most adventures. Although we usually play two spheres each. Finding card combos either within your personal deck, or in concert with another deck, is what really makes this game fun.

Given the incredibly high number of variables, FFG has done a steallar job with balance. And Keep the difficulities high. Nothing dissappoints me more than beating an adventure on the first try.

That, as a huge fan of co-op and that's how it works. The LotR baord game, Arkham, and this. Maybe there sould be a "tutorial" encounter, but after that it should be hard to win. A co-op game that isn't exactly almost too hard is a boring game, and as anyone who plays co-op games knows, the game gets easier so you need expansions to ramp up the difficulty. A good expansion for this game should seem almost impossible on the 1st play through. then you build your decks paly a few more times, it's still hard. Then, well you know how to win and you go what's next. Look at the Arkham page there is no shortage of "too hard" posts but there are 10x as many let's make house rules to make it harder posts

In response to schmoo34's comments only about 5-10% of cards being usable.

You make some good points. Some cards are simply almost always better than others, and some cards are chaff. For instance, I've never played Beorn's Hospitality, so this would qualify for me as wasted money/space, as you mention. However, I feel that compared to other games LotR: LCG has far fewer of these sorts of cards than other card games (such as Magic's many of versions of Grizzly Bears), because in some scenarios they can find a home and even be great. If I read you correctly, it bothers you that for a scenario only certain cards are good. To me this is a strength of the game because it encourages you to:

-Use cards that may not be good in a general sense, but are in a specific scenario (I feel that Elanor fits the bill here, to some degree).

-See if you can beat a scenario with tools not built specifically for it. It's a lot of fun to try location-heavy quest like Emyn Muil w/out Northern Tracker. Give it a try.

You mention using only 50 or 100 cards out of a collection of 1000, and this is boring to you. May I suggest not using only the best of the best? Lorien Guide instead of Northern Tracker. One can beat the scearios without ONLY using the top cards/spheres. Your win % may not be quite as high, but being a good player will do much to balance this out. I'm no master at this game and have won difficulty level 7 scearios with many of these sub-optimal cards, playing single-hand solo, with a win ratio in the neighborhood of 50%. If you're looking for that deck to get you in the 90%+ win ratio then perhaps your card pool would be more limited, as you mention.

Yes, perhaps Spirit is the strongest sphere (it could well be for a majority of the scenarios), but the nature of the game doesn't require balance between the spheres, although they should be roughly comparable. I feel the spheres are becoming closer in power the more cards are released.

Power-creep is pretty inevitable in card games, and it's impossible to have hundreds of cards that will be balanced for more than 20 unique scenarios. Deck-building ccg's (lcg's, tcg's, whatever) are not to everyone's taste.

Allso I would like to say that Hobbit scenarios seems to be very possible to solve with core and both Hobbit expansion cards. With core and only one of those Hobt scenarios it is going to be too difficult. Allso it is better to have 3 treachery changelin cards in each plaing deck.

I've been playing the game since it came out, have every single expansion and POD and I'm very close to quitting the game because of the difficulty level.

It feels like at one point the quests were more on the easy side and now the pendulum has swung to being way too hard. I don't mind tweaking my decks, but I honestly do not have the time to take them apart and make brand new ones for every single quest. I also like playing games with four decks and feel like the quests are terrible at scaling up and down in terms of difficulty.

My husband and I play together and we've already tried modifying the rules and we still find it too difficult. There needs to be a bigger variety of quests for different kinds of players. The quests should be on the easier/average difficulty side with variants to make them more challenging for those who want higher difficulty. As someone mentioned, I think the hobbit expansion was the sweet spot for the game, not too easy, not too hard.

Also, the development of the spheres and the keywords have been really uneven. Rohan has pretty much been forgotten for example and it is nearly impossible to have a spirit only deck. If they have POD quests, why can't they also make POD cards for the spheres? I would gladly buy them. I am more than willing to throw my money at Fantasy Flights if they do this, because frankly, I have more cash than time.

Honestly, the game has become less fun and less thematic as time has gone on. I play to have fun, and while I don't mind working for my wins, playing the latests quests feel like I am beating my head against the wall.

PadmeSkywalker said:

this would be a problem for player cards as they are non compatible…unless you sleeve then it would be easy to tell what was coming in your deck next. this isnt a problem for pod quests where they dont interact physically with your own cards

rich

As someone who bought the game for solo play and gets to play two player once in a blue moon, what I have to help with the difficulty without houseruling, is to use the optional in the rulebook which says not to draw shadow cards. For those of us who play solo and don't like the harsh difficulty this actually helps balance it just a little bit.

One thing is for certain: You Can't Please Everyone. This game will be deemed as too difficult by some and even too easy by a few.

For me, sure it's tough (I only play solo) but it's very simple to put into effect house rules that simplify things to a degree. One that I've used in the past is the option of taking an extra mulligan (or two…), or choosing one card from the deck for my opening hand. These sort of variants are certainly less game-changing than playing with no shadow effects or an extra hero. Also, when I win the scenario I'll go back and beat it without the extra mulligan or one free card or whatever, now that I've got a handle on it. (However, lately I've been trying to just playing things straight). The only quest that I haven't had success with this is (suprise) Escape from Dol Guldur--to "beat" it solo I used 4 heroes, chose the captive, AND chose a card to have in my starting hand (even then it wasn't easy!).

I currently play 2-player as much as possible because I feel it is the sweet spot for this game, but I frequently play solo simply due the busy lives of myself and my friends. When I play solo I almost always play "double-fisted" (I control two decks) because the true solo game can be extremely luck based. I should say, however, that I've been experimenting with ways to make the true solo game more fun. I've tried playing without shadow cards but I find that they are increasingly a critical part of the story of each scenario and removing them makes the scenario too different from regular play. The other tricks I've tried are to start with more resources than normal (+1 or +2 or +3 depending on the scenario) and/or starting with more than 6 cards in my initial draw. These changes give the solo player a little boost from the start but don't effectively change the nature of the game. The problem is that victory is still very much dependant on luck of the draw from the encounter deck. Another modification I've tried is one that I saw on BGG. Start with 4 heroes instead of 3 and use the average threat of the 4 heroes. This is a huge power increase which makes the game significantly easier in solo play and I recommend it for those of you who find normal solo play just too difficult to be worthwhile.

In general, if the game is too hard for you to enjoy, there's lots of little tricks you can to make it easier. I know this doesn't help those who plan to play at conventions or organized play, but when you're at home there's nothing stopping you from tweaking the rules to get the kind of game experience you want.

I would much prefer if FFG keeps the game difficult. It's a lot easier to use houserules to make the game easier than it is to make it harder. FFG needs to do a better job at providing alternative rules for easier play, especially for beginners trying to get into the game this late in the game's development.

I hope that FFG does not make anything easier. The theme and difficulty of the game right now are awesome right now, in my opinion, and if they made anything easier I would not buy it. That is the whole point of these types of games. If it is too easy, then a lot of people are not going to like it and are not going to invest in it. If it is hard, but still beatable, then that's what makes people like the game.

If some of the scenarios are too hard, then nothing is forcing you to play them. Go on to a different one. But all the scenarios have been beaten, and they are all possible, otherwise they would not have been released. I haven't beaten all the scenarios yet, and I definitely haven't beaten the Heirs of Numenor quests. But a whole cycle is coming, based on Heirs of Numenor type quests, and every single adventure pack will have more cards that make the previous ones easier. Don't give up on the game, thinking it's too hard, because they wouldn't make a game that isn't possible. If you need help on certain quests, use the forums. There are a whole bunch of people on here that will help if they can.

Oops! In my last post I suggested a way to make the solo game easier by using 4 heroes and the average threat of each. Wrong! (this is what happens when I start posting while completely exhausted and a busy toddler climbing over me).

What I meant to say is use 4 heroes and the starting threat is 3 times their average threat. ex. [ (7+10+8+12) / 4 ] x 3 = 27.75 = 28 starting threat. This gives the solo player a significant power boost and the game is much easier but it still doesn't resolve the inherently luck based nature of the solo game.

Some cards are better than others, that's always the nature of nearly any game (not just those with deck construction). However, some people have different play styles and cards that you write off, might be key components in the strategy employed by another player.

Who said Eagles were rubbish? Because they are…. against some quests. The Hills of Emyn Muil is a very simple quest that I can destroy in a few turns with a good Spirit deck, but can't get anywhere against with my Eagles. And yet, I can beat all of the Heirs of Numenor quests with the same Eagle deck.

There are some very good decks posted on the strategy forum here or on CardGameDB.com, try out one of those and see how you do. Also, if you're not confident with a deck, try it out against Passage from Mirkwood in the core set. It's a good tutorial quest as it isn't overwhelmingly hard, but does present the basic challenge array (needing to get Progress Tokens, dealing with enemies, having Treachery cards and Shadow cards that can be unpleasant surprises). If your deck doesn't get bogged down there, then try it out on a level four quest. If you lose, then consider why you lost and if there's a way to tinker your deck to compensate for why that happened.