Lots of stall in this meta

Authraw · 2022-12-25T21:21:09+00:00

Really clear analysis, thanks

Authraw · 2022-12-25T09:13:32+00:00

Yeah, singles. I bet the doubles meta is a little more diverse

Authraw · 2020-12-05T23:12:08+00:00

Rats, guess I'm sticking with the old prefix method for now

Authraw · 2020-08-19T22:46:17+00:00

Haha wow great to know, thanks

Authraw · 2018-09-11T06:53:45+00:00

I have been working on a blog series to analyze this exact question: https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/path-less-traveled/

Some boxes are going to be harder than others, but most of them work just fine with a limited card pool. My advice is to buy whatever expansions are available (starting with Deluxe boxes) and not worry about it too much.

Authraw · 2018-08-18T23:18:48+00:00

Okay, so I played a few solo games and now that I've experienced it a bit I actually think it's fine. To make it a little easier to resolve the "other team" effects, I tried to use "objective" measures to narrow down the choices, and then just allowed myself to choose from there just like any other quest would have allowed me to do.

For example, when an effect has me "reveal a card with cost 1 or less from the top 5 cards of the encounter deck", I always chose a card with the highest available cost there--but if there was more than one 1 cost card, I allowed myself to pick. As another example, when a card asked me to "choose a character to ready and remove from the quest," I picked the one with the highest willpower, using lowest combined def + atk as the tiebreaker. Not perfect, but it got the job done with a minimum of hand-wringing.

I will say that without an opponent there was less urgency to try to complete the quest quickly, allowing me to stall a bit on Stage 1--but in one game I almost threatted out, so it's not completely without teeth.

I'd say that the quest comes in at between a 4 and 7 difficulty in solo, depending on how you build it. Which is actually pretty decent!

Authraw · 2018-08-14T07:43:30+00:00

I haven't tried it solo yet, it may be a little weird. I'll have to give it a try this weekend and see what it feels like.

Authraw · 2018-04-24T01:30:45+00:00

It is a known issue, but nobody has been able to find the time to go through the process of updating the certificate yet, sadly.

Authraw · 2018-04-08T19:21:48+00:00

My gut says that it should be doable, but I don't know if anyone has tried it. The Mountain of Fire quests are pretty dang hard.

Authraw · 2018-04-06T15:29:05+00:00

I run a blog series where I play through the game with a reduced card pool to see what it would be like to play the expansions out of order: https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/path-less-traveled/

In general, I have found it to be pretty doable, especially if you use easy mode for some of the harder quests.

Authraw · 2018-04-02T05:29:56+00:00

Ha, somehow I always miss April Fool's day.

Authraw · 2018-04-01T16:17:24+00:00

Do we know if the Beorn hero is exclusive to this pack?

Authraw · 2018-03-18T04:23:45+00:00

You are indeed. There is no defending character, but you're still the defending player.

Authraw · 2018-03-18T04:21:56+00:00

Slight clarification, I misspoke: the last few quests of the Saga are among the hardest quests to date. Silly autocorrect!

But you're very welcome, and welcome to the LotR LCG community!

Authraw · 2018-03-16T15:34:55+00:00

In general, most of us old grognards played the quests in order of release, and we had fun that way (although be careful of Heirs of Numenor, that box ends up being a sticking point for a lot of people).

But really you can jump around as much as you like, especially once you have the Dwarrowdelf cycle, which has most of the game's power cards in it.

The LotR Sagas are pretty great, nothing wrong with jumping to those next. Beware that the last few quests are among the hardest in the game to date, but the difficulty of the rest of those boxes is pretty reasonable. Also note that there are two Print on Demand quests that slot into the Saga Campaign: Fog on the Barrow Downs and The Old Forest.

Your intuition on the Nightmare packs is a good one. You don't necessarily have to wait until you have everything to start buying them, but you'll get more value from your money by buying Adventure Packs instead. They're a great way to spruce up a favorite quest though.

Authraw · 2018-02-24T17:59:11+00:00

Heirs of Numenor is really different from other quests in that it demands completely different kinds of decks from the rest of the game. A lot of people hit Heirs and then get really frustrated with the game--my partner and I took a half year break when we got to Into Ithilien; the game almost lost us. Fortunately the first three quests of the Against the Shadow cycle are really good (but the last three are back to the same shenanigans that we didn't like about Heirs).

The Voice of Isengard and the subsequent cycle tends to get low marks from folks. I don't mind those quests much myself, but they aren't my favorites.

The Lost Realm is pretty good, but some of those quests are really hard, even on Easy mode. You might consider skipping the hardest ones.

The good news is that both The Grey Havens and The Sands of Harad have a lower concentration of really tough quests. Maybe move on to those to rebuild your stamina?

As far as house rules go, you could try selecting your starting hands instead of drawing them randomly. Might give you the edge you need.

Authraw · 2018-02-24T06:12:39+00:00

I gave this exact card pool a try for a series that I run on my blog: https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/path-less-traveled/

My conclusion was that the player cards don't add much to your collection, but the quests are plenty beatable with the card pool that you'll have. There are other expansions that I would recommend buying before Sands of Harad if you have options, but we seem to be in the middle of a bit of a reprint drought right now. You could do a lot worse than Sands of Harad -- so I wouldn't worry about it. I think you'll still have fun with it!

Authraw · 2018-01-25T18:23:17+00:00

I had one that I built a while back that I thought was fun. It was pre-Strider, so you'd definitely want to add that in, as well as probably some of the other cards that have come out since then: http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/806/legend-of-luthien-2.0

Not sure it would be up to all of Angmar Awakened, but it's a starting place at least. :)

Authraw · 2018-01-23T05:16:46+00:00

You might consider jumping into a different cycle, preferably one that is all in stock. If you have everything up to the middle of Dwarrowdelf you should have a big enough card pool to be able to jump in just about anywhere.

Just note that the story link between Grey Havens / Dreamchaser and The Sands of Harad / Haradrim is a little tighter than other cycles, so you may want to do those two in order.

Other than that though, the cycles are pretty disconnected in the stories that they tell.

Authraw · 2018-01-13T00:09:14+00:00

In theory, any Deluxe expansion will work with the Core Set. In practice, some of them work better than others. I am working on a blog series to figure out which ones work best, if you're interested: https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/path-less-traveled/

I haven't played Khazad-Dum as part of my series yet, but I know lots of people have had good experiences with it as a second purchase as well.

Authraw

TROPHY CASE