Tried to play once with my son and we failed miserably. From my read of the forums, it sounds like one mistake was choosing tactics, but I also have a basic setup question. At the start, 1a says to add the Forest Spider and the Old Forest Road to the staging area. Does this count as the two cards from the encounter deck for the first round or should there be two more cards added to the staging area during the questing phase?

Thanks for help with this stupid question?

There should be added two more cards in the quest phase.

If you have only the Core set, mono tactics is a no go... Even now, with all the expansions/AP's available, it is difficult with mono tactics.

Thanks so much for your help, Carlos!

if you are playing with two decks, try one deck with Lore and the other with tactics, you should be able to make it easily

Well, mixing Tactic and leadership (aragorn + theodred + legolas) and the second one should be lore/spirit (eleanor + eowyn + beravor). We managed to deal with the 3 core stories without too much difficulties with only the core cards.

If you are still having a hard time with the core set of player cards, you can always decide to not deal shadows to enemies. (As stated on page 27 of the core set manual under the "basic game" bracket.). That's what I did until I bought more cards for the game.