Oshio
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Posts posted by Oshio
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Curious if this is a misprint or something common: on the quest cards I've got with the 'Eye' icon, about half of them have little white lines (almost like broken glass) running through the 'pupil'. None of the other quest cards have a difference like this. Curious if this is something that will be utilized in future quests or if it's just a misprint. Anyone else have this?
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Zambo said:
I'm really confused by this post. You can't "play for hours without engaging troll" because you keep staging one card from the deck and you'll have to send Heroes and Allies out to quest every turn to prevent your threat from increasing. Meanwhile, stuff like Misty Mountain Goblins, Dul Guldur Orcs and Wolf Riders come attack you, so you have to handle them, too. All the while your threat automatically increases at the end of every turn. And there's no reshuffling your deck; once it's gone, it's gone.
I suggest you revisit the rules; sounds like you're getting a lot of them wrong.
You can, he just didn't mention the cards that let you do so, so I'll add to this a bit:
Basically spirit decks start with incredibly low threat, and you can continue to keep it low by playing The Galadrim's Greeting (SSS, Lower your threat by 6) and Dwarven Tomb (S, Pick up a Spirit card in your discard pile). Yes, you do still have to keep engaging monsters and questing, but if there is one thing Spirit does well it's quest, and only dealing with 1 card a turn isn't hard, especially when you can keep higher threat monsters in the staging area where they can get picked off by Dunhere(Spirit Hero, may attack monsters in the staging area and gets +1 attack when doing so). Finally, Will of the West (S, Shuffle your discard pile back into your deck.) effectively lets you continue to lower your threat 'forever', or at least until you want to finally engage the higher threat monsters. It does involve the right cards, but as the poster mentioned, with a smaller deck this isn't too tricky.
I suggest revisiting the spirit deck.
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So with the game out a week I'm sure a lot of obsessive deck builders like me out there have been experimenting a lot. So, what are your thoughts on 'best solo deck' so far? I think it comes down to Spirit/Leadership, Leadership/Spirit and Leadership/Knowledge.
Spirit/Leadership (otherwise known as 'play all the Rohan guys') is my current deck and is discussed in depth in another thread, but is my favorite so far. The ability to pull guys like Beorn and Gleowine with Stand and Fight is just awesome, and the threat reduction is incredibly powerful. I've got about a 75% success rate with this deck against the second scenario, and have yet to lose with it against the first (though I've come close!) I have yet to even make significant progress against the last scenario with any solo deck.
Leadership/Spirit is a bit different (using 2 Leadership guys + Eowyn), and is less combo-heavy. CS allows Aragorn to shop in either sphere and SoG added to that makes the resource engine in this deck stronger than any other deck out there. You can still use Greeting and Tomb to have killer threat reduction, but you lack one very important component that the other two decks have: card draw. In my experience this deck can run out of steam quickly, and you pretty much have to rely on Gandalf and Noble Sacrifice for cards. I haven't tested this enough to get some solid results, but it seems like a fairly strong deck.
Leadership/Knowledge was the first deck I created and tends to give you the best of both worlds: a great resource engine (though not as good as L/S) and a ton of card draw. You do run into an issue with threat, so despite her sheer awesomeness Berevor can seldom make the cut. But Knowledge has plenty of card draw without her and gives access to a ton of just really solid cards that compliment Leadership well. This has about a 60% success rate against the second scenario, and about a 90% success rate against the first. As with S/L, I don't even last through the first quest in the third scenario.
I've seen some 'tri-sphere' decks out there as well, but I just can't get behind that without some more resource pumping cards. Any other combinations out there that people have found to be reliable?
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faith_star83 said:
ah...nice deck. I had some similar thoughts when I tried to construct a deck the other day, but quickly realized that one core set doesn't give you enough powerful cards. I like the idea to have 3x Dwarven Tomb and 3x Saf = 6x ally recursion...guess I have to order two more core sets...
I got two myself. I really don't like the idea of buying a third simply for Dwarven Tomb, Unexpected Courage and Beorn, so I'm proxying them now. If they end up being must haves after a couple expansions come out I'll cave in, but for now the card pool is just so small that every decent card has to have 3x.
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I played 2 more games with the deck. The first was against the same scenario and while my start was solid (Tomb, Greeting, Steward) it was missing a Stand and Fight. Still, with Steward, I decided to keep it and played. I managed to gain control of the board very quickly, but after several turns I still hadn't drawn a Stand and Fight. I had just about every other card I needed in place and even Sneak Attacked with Beorn at one point, but the darn SaF wouldn't show up. Finally, after many turns of lowering my threat, keeping under the radar and finishing the quest in all ways other than killing the Troll, I dropped a Gandalf for his card draw and drew it. The next turn was amazing as I spent all my accumulated resources, completely owned the board and quickly finished the game. My score that game, 6, was not as good as my first game, but still obviously solid.
Learning to play the deck is important, as you can essentially tread water forever until you get the cards you need. Cards like Gandalf and Dwarven Tomb all have different awesome applications, and choosing the right ability at the right time is key.
Next game I decided to step up and play Scenario 3. Theodred was prisoner, I drew a bunch of Leadership cards and got slaughtered lol. So...that is most definitely not a single player option. I'll keep trying though!
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Entropy42 said:
Why is Steward of Gondor on Eowyn nasty? It doesn't seem like its better on her than on any other hero.
It is. I more meant, in this deck, Steward of Gondor on a Spirit hero is incredible. Maybe not moreso on one hero or the other, but this deck + lots of resources = a beating.
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Cabello said:
Hey guys, just did a two player run through all three quests. this was using the blue and purple decks. I have three core sets but at this point have only just brought all the decks to have 3 copies of all the cards. between each quest we allowed ourselves one extra resourse phase before starting the new one. we had a total score of 53. Has anybody else tried this? how did you guys do?
Interesting. How tough was it? I'd expect it to be fairly easy if you did not reset what you had on the board, at least as long as you had a Spirit player in the mix to reshuffle your decks and keep threat low. Definitely sounds like fun though!
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You're right, it was turn 2. I didn't take notes so my memory of the game was slightly off. And I meant Unexpected Courage on Theodred...not sure what I was thinking there.
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First game with this updated decklist very much proved the rule that if this deck gets a good draw, you are in complete control of the game. My opening hand (without having a mulligan) included a Stand and Fight, Dwarven Tomb, Gleowine and Gald's Greeting. First card drawn was Steward of Gondor. First turn Steward on Eowyn is nasty. I literally had more resources than I could spend the entire game. Gleowine came out turn 1, I think Beorn was turn 4. I got a little overwhelmed with really low-threat enemies early and took some heavy wounds to Theodred & Dunhere, but after I dropped Beorn I was set. With that base in place (resource engine going, Boern out, Gelowine drawing me cards, Stand and Fight on Theodred) I focused on lowering my threat. My questing was going steadily - gaining a token or two per turn - and all that was really in the staging area was the Troll. At that point I managed to lower my threat to the high teens and took on the ogre, with the help of a Surprise Attack from Gandalf.
Things were a breeze from there as I had resources, low threat and a standing army. I blew through quest 2 in 4 turns, with only a single location left when I was done. My 2 cards drawn for quest 3 were the Necromancers Reach which I cancelled and an orc. I left the orc around for a few turns so I could drop the other two Gandalf's in my hand and lower my threat. Ended the game, after victory points, at -4.
This wasn't a typical game and I'm going to be testing a lot more. But when this deck works it's like a symphony of control.
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I decided to branch off from the "Journey Along the Anduin: Single Player (score: 3!!!)" thread and create my own, for fear of completely highjacking that one. Due credit goes to Iron-On Ghost for coming up with the idea of building a deck around playing out of sphere characters from your discard pile utilizing "Stand and Fight". Decklist below, followed by discussion:
Heroes (25 Threat)
Theodred (L)
Dunhere (S)
Eowyn (S)
Allies - 21
3x Wandering Took (S)
2x Lorien Guide (S)
2x Northern Tracker (S)
3x Snowbourn Scout (L)
2x Faramir (L)
3x Beorn (T)
3x Gleowine (K)
3x Gandalf (U)
Attachments - 9
3x Steward of Gondor (L)
2x The Favor of the Lady (S)
2x Celebrian's Stone (L)
2x Unexpected Courage (S)
Events - 20
3x Stand and Fight (S)
3x The Galadharim's Greeting (S)
3x Dwarven Tomb (S)
3x A Test of Will (S)
2x Will of the West (S)
3x Sneak Attack (L)
3x Valiant Sacrifice (L)
Thoughts
The main idea of the deck is to use Spirit's powerful recursion ability to pull key out of sphere characters from the discard pile (where they have been discarded to fuel Eowyn's ability). Leadership backs this up with a very powerful resource engine (Theodred and Steward of Gondor), the very strong Sneak Attack (which can be used for the now popular Gandalf combo or Beorn if you lack Stand and Fight) and Valiant Sacrifice to help with the decks primary weakness: lack of card draw.
The deck's secondary strategy is to capitalize on Spirit's threat reducing ability utilizing The Galadharim's Greeting, Dwarven Tomb and Gandalf (with or without Sneak Attack). Snowbourn Scout, Lorien Guide and Northern Tracker all help tear through locations, and Eowyn is a questing beast, especially when she's helped out with Celebrian's Stone and Favor of the Lady. Dunhere snipes enemies that can't attack you due to your lowered threat.
I've been testing the deck against Scenario 2, and one of it's greatest assets is it's 'set up time'. With only 25 starting threat you have several turns to prepare for the inevitable Hill Troll, and by the time it comes you often have a means of dealing with it within 2 turns. Though you may have to take a threat hit or two, it's fairly easy to get yourself back down into the 20's and lower with the resources in the deck.
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Sky:
Have you played a lot of TCG's before? I don't want to sound snarky, but if you have you'll know that a mechanic has to be seriously abusive before most companies even begin talking about issuing errata. Just look over to the Warhammer: Invasion forums, which finally (after almost a year) have been able to get the game un-broken. Allowing you to play a few cards from the discard pile for full cost does not even come close to abusive. I think that once the deck is finely tuned, it MIGHT be able to win 60/40 against Scenario 2.
And, to quote page 27:
"A tournament deck must contain a minimum of 50 cards. Additionally, no more than three copies of any card, by title, can be included in a players deck. Within these guidelines any combination of allies, attachments and events can be used in the player deck."
And, later, under advice,
""A player should also make sure that all the cards in his deck belong to a sphere that maches at least one of the heroes' resource icons, lest he find himself with a dead card he cannot hope to play."
There is nothing barring a player from doing so, so the deck works. As others have said, the question isn't 'can you include an out of sphere card', it is 'Sneak Attack work out of sphere', which we have come to an almost unanimous conclusion that it does.
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After thinking about it, ensuring it worked and playing around with some cards, I think this deck works best splashed with Spirit, namely Theodred.
* Your resources are much more stable, as mentioned earlier. Between SoG and his own ability you more than make up for losing the 1 Spirit per turn that Elanor provides.
* Celebrian's Stone is awesome on Eowin.
* Snowborn Scout is really good and can still be played turn 1. He synergizes well with Spirit's 'anti-location' theme. Also, in a pinch, you can buy Faramir 'honestly'.
* Most importantly, it allows access to Sneak Attack. This not only hands you the awesome Sneak Attack/Gandalf combo, but allows you to Sneak in the allies that might be clogging up your hand if you don't see early Stand and Fight's.
* One last thing: you have super Rohan-trifecta flavor!
I've put together a prototype now and will post results in a separate thread. Sorry for the highjacking
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Quick question: are you able to use Sneak Attack to play a character from a sphere not represented by one of your heroes? I would think yes - the cards do not mention otherwise and the rules don't seem to contradict it - but the fact that they use extra wording on Stand and Fight to allow it to be used on any sphere makes me question it. Thoughts?
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Oh I forgot another possible change to that above decklist: add Theodred instead of Aragorn. Your threat is still super low, he singlehandedly fixes your resource problem with his ability and SoG. The only thing you're missing is more card draw, which can still bring the deck to a crippling halt.
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Ahzrab said:
Well Eowyn can die and it only works once each round. If you consider this combo broken, then what's with Aragorn and Celebrian's Stone?
Or Steward of Gondor + Anything
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I took this idea one step further and built a full 50 card deck. It's a lot tricker as it's harder to see your key cards, but it's actually a very solid deck. Like all things in this game (for now at least) it is dependant on luck to an extent: a horrible draw from the shadow deck or your own deck will undo you, but I think it is fairly consistant.
The basic premise of the deck is simple: utilize spirits amazing threat reduction to keep yourself under the radar while questing with their powerful questers (Eowyn, Northern Tracker and Lorien Guide.) Discard all of your 'out of sphere' guys to fuel Eowyn's ability, then bring them into play with Stand and Fight. Use Dwarven Tombs and Will of the West to get your Stand and Fight's back. Dwarven Tomb can also be used to re-use Galadhrim's Greeting. The most powerful part of this deck is that you have more control over the game than with any other deck I've played. You keep your threat low, snipe bad guys with Dunhere, avoid nasty cards with Eleanor, Test of Will and Hasty Stroke. I beat the second scenario fairly easily the first time I played this, though it (barely) beat me the second time, mostly due to the second Hill Troll cropping up right at the beginning of quest 2 right around the time I ran completely out of cards due to not seeing my Gleowine.
The most obvious shocker is how many out of sphere guys are here. Honestly there isn't much else to fill the deck up with and it works pretty well. Even if you only see 2x Stands and 2x Tombs, that's 4 very powerful guys you can put out. Gandalf is also essential for his threat reduction and utility. All these guys are getting discarded to Eowyn anyway, so they are serving another purpose as well.
Heroes (not the greatest combo, but **** it's nice to start with such low threat)
Eowyn
Eleanor
Dunhere
Allies
Lorien Guide x3
Northern Tracker x3
Wandering Took x3
Out of Sphere Allies
Gandalf x3
Gleowine x3 (Yes he's unique, but it's worth it to find him.)
Faramir x3 (See above)
Beorn x2
Daughter of Nimrodel x3
Attachments
The Favor of the Lady x3 (All goes on Eowyn)
Unexpected Courage x3 (All goes on Dunhere)
Events
Stand and Fight x3 (Key)
Dwarven Tomb x3 (Key)
The Gladhrim's Greeting (Key)
Will of the West x3 (Allows the deck to theoretically work infinitely)
A Test of Will x3 (Always nice to have 1 of these in hand + 1 extra resource available)
Hasty Stroke x3 (Same as above)
Light in the Dark x3 (Kind of useful to buy yourself an extra turn to reduce your threat or get rid of a guy once your threat is reduced below his level...but I certainly wouldn't have 3x in here if there was a better card available.)
Strengths:
* Allows you to utilize several very powerful key characters from other spheres without having to worry about the resource crippling dual-sphere decks suffer from.
* Spirit threat reduction buys you much more time than most decks, allowing you a few extra turns to get your combo's in place. Once you have a strong established base, you can theoretically reduce your threat forever and be untouchable while still dealing with threat buildup through your awesome location-killers and Dunhere.
* You start out with an awesome quester right away, ensuring you won't suffer from any early game threat bumps.
Weaknesses:
* Like all decks that are not Lore, this suffers horribly from a lack of card draw. Gleowine is very necessary, but the deck really needs something else. This game could really use a neutral Gleowine-like character.
* If you get a crappy draw, you're in trouble. The mulligan rule helps that a lot, but sometimes you'll end up with a hand full of out of sphere characters and nothing to do with them. Though you have a few extra turns to deal with that because of your low threat, it can still kill you if the shadow deck gets a good draw.
* The deck is fairly expensive. This isn't that big of a deal - 2 turns is worth a Beorn, and this deck isn't putting characters out as fast as other decks, instead relying on fewer, more powerful characters. But it is still expensive, and honestly only Leadership has a great resource engine.
Possible Changes:
* Swapping Eleanor for Aragorn. You lose a major advantage (your starting low threat) and you are open to a turn 2 Troll attack unless you draw well, but you gain a major resource boost with the attachements he can bring in. Aragorn works best here because of his 'gain the spirit icon' attachment, but theoretically you could bring someone cheaper in just to unlock Steward of Gondor + their 1 resource guy.
* Swapping Eleanor for Berevor. This is a more viable option in my mind as your threat isn't nearly as bad (27) and Berevor singlehandedly solves your card draw problem. She can also purchase Gleowine turn 2 'honestly', and makes Daughter of Nim make more sense. But your Spirit resources take a pretty sizable hit, as it now takes a solid 3 turns of production to get Beorn out, and it makes it much harder to 'save' a couple resources for your cancellation cards.
Thoughts?
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Titan said:
Not at all, in fact, Legolas killed a bunch of enemies. He is one of the reasons the play area was cleared of them. But there were a ton of locations out. I had to keep exploring them, to lower the threat on the staging area. I had one Gondolin Blade on him, but never drew the other. Unfortunately, he mostly spent himself on the locations. But if he hadn't, my threat would gone up even faster.
Response: After Legolas participates in an attack that destroys and enemy, place 2 progress tokens on that current quest.
Unfortunately that doesn't work - per his card text Legolas only puts progress tokens on quests.
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The core set is as advertised: a core set. While I really, REALLY think it could have used 40 card decks instead of 30 and allowed for single sphere legal decks out of the gate, that wasn't what they decided to do. I would, however, recommend a second core set. Online you can get it for 20-something dollars and turning all those 2x cards into 3x is huge, not to mention giving you a couple of the powerful uniques. 3x is certainly overkill as there are only a few 1x cards, and even fewer that are worth including, but I've found the second to be worth it. Your mileage may vary.
On the plus side, there is some deckbuilding fun to be had with 2 sets combining spheres. Though there is certainly a resource disadvantage unless you are using Leadership (who has access to the uber powerful Steward of Gondor), it at least allows you to have some fun and start testing the waters.
The bad thing is we're not going to be able to have any major deck building for several months. I'm a little uneasy about the majority of each expansion being new quests...maybe every other expansion, but every single one? I would prefer more deck variety to more quest variety, and I'm really hoping they change their strategy. They have already said there will only be 9 new cards per expansion, and spread out among the spheres this is, on average, 2 cards per sphere, some of them bound to be unique. That's 1 expansion until a single sphere is playable using all of their cards, but many expansions before we have any real options. Oh well, after this arc they might re-examine their strategy.
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pumpkin said:
The_Big_Show said:
I've not managed to solo the Lore deck either. At present it's also just feels like a support faction in multiplay as well which doesn't make it all that interesting.
Thats how i feel about it too, it does seem like a great support deck.
I'm determined to give it another go solo though until i have managed to work out the specifics of the deck. Each deck has its own strengths and I'd hate to think any of them aren't viable in solo play
Tactics is not at all viable in solo play. If you have a LOT of luck with Legolas you can get through the intro scenario, but that's only if you're lucky, and it doesn't stand a chance in the other scenarios (not that any of the decks have good chances against them solo). Having 0 Allies with any willpower is just brutal. Hopefully a few expansions changes that.
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Forest Snare is ridiculous good, and is pretty much the only way I've managed to win Scenario 2. Yes, if a nasty monster comes out you have to let it beat on you for a round, but this will let you completely nullify it as a threat.
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Swapped in Denethor and, first game, ended up pulling a monster in the opening setup, then the required hill giant, then another monster when questing. It was brutal. So not only did my threat shoot right up past 30 turn 1 due to not having enough Willpower, I also had to face the Hill Giant and 2 friends. Theoden died, but I actually managed to put up some semblance of resistance, getting past the first quest card before finally succumbing to the onslaught.
I metaphorically flipped the table, but gave it another shot later.
Second game went much better and the card gods favored me with a very easy first few turns, allowing me to set up a sizable resistance by the time the Troll came. Though he took out one defender and bumped my Threat, I quickly Forest Snared him (such a great card) and rendered him helpless. The rest of the first Story card was pretty much a cakewalk, as I took my time setting up a solid ally base. Finally I finshed him off and moved on. The second story card started off good as well, but then the 'if you have 35+ threat, all of your guys take a wound' card came up and wiped out a few of my guys, which pushed me back a bit. But I had saved up some resources and managed to fill the board once more, forging past the second card and onto the third, which is blessedly easy in single player. Finished with a respectable score of 36 points, due to a Sneak/Gandalf during the last 2 turns of the game lowering my threat dial nicely.
So, after...um...5? games, I finally managed to beat the stupid second scenario. The third one is laughable for solo as you are automatically down a hero, but I may be masochistic enough to try it.
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Got 2 quick games in against the second scenario with the Leadership/Knowledge deck. **** that scenerio is tough for a single player, almost unreasonably so. With multiple players to handle things while that nasty Hill Troll is out you can keep your head about you, but with one you really have to scramble.
Anyways.
First game was a disaster. Though I got my first turn Stewart after a mulligan I really didn't have much else I could do. I threw a blocker at the Troll and quested with Ara-dred combo but by couldn't do anything for damage to the Troll. Though the board was generally under control, the Troll's spillover damage shot my threat up and I hit 50 by turn 3. There was no card in the game that could have saved me.
Second game was much better. I didn't pull a SoG but I did get a Sneak/Gandalf in my opening hand, so I opted not to mulligan. This time I gave Aragorn a first turn Protector of Lorien, quested with Ara-dred, and threw Aragorn in front of the Troll. Thank god I gave him that PoL because the Troll got a +1 damage shadow card, but Aragorn took the whole attack and lived. I don't recall what happened next turn, but my threat raised a little, I dropped a Gandalf and did a big attack to the Troll and killed him. I was pretty much tapped out and took a little threat hit, but not nearly as bad as the last game.
Things got smoother from there...I got out a couple Childs of Lorein and healed up, I got a decent card draw engine going and I got through the first part of the quest. The second wasn't too bad and I started making some progress. Finally I readied for a huge push to blast past the second part, complete with a double Faramir pumping, and...drew two Necromancers Reach. The board was almost completely cleared. I still got a bit of progress on the quest from Aragorn and Gandalf, but almost all of my support guys were down, and Theodred was gone as well. I took a risk and left one attack undefended that round and the shadow card gave them a huge boost, killing Berevor. In the space of 20 seconds I went from 'win was almost a lock' to 'Aragorn and 1 HP Faramir are alone against a horde of evil'. Needless to say I went down the next round.
Ouch.
I'm looking forward to trying my 2 decks together in two player, as I really think the second scenerio is miles harder for solo play. Will update later.
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I don't disagree with you on the 3+ cost lore cards, but unfortunately at this point there aren't a lot of better options. Gandalfs Search is not really in there to dump a lot of resources in, more to just speed up the deck a little bit, even if it's just dropping 1 extra resource mid game to cycle through. It will be one of the first cards cut when there are better actions available.
Interesting idea with Dark Knowledge, I will consider it. I'm going to run a few games with PoL, as I like the ability to dump my extra Uniques for something, but if I don't get much bang for my buck I'll swap it out for Dark Knowledge.
Knowledge has some good heroes, because I was honestly torn between all three. I finally settled on Berevor due to her card draw capabilities which are frankly just awesome, but I certainly see the appeal for Denethor. I think I'll have to run a couple of games with each and get some data on it.
Thanks for the input!Connor
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After playing a few games with the pre-constructed decks I, as a long time CCG player, couldn't stop myself from putting together a couple of decks. While solo-sphere decks are, eventually, going to be the most efficient way to go, right now it's physically impossible to build a tournament legal solo sphere deck. With all of the great things this game has going for it, this is my biggest complaint: I really wish they would have added another 10 cards per deck so that we could build a legal solo sphere deck with a couple of sets. After the first expansion comes out this should be possible, but we won't have many options...it's going to be a solid few months before we start getting some flexibility.
So, that being said, it looks like we'll just have to make due with dual-sphere decks. Dual sphere decks have the distinct disadvantage of having one sphere under-represented and only producing 1 resource per round, so tricks need to be employed to combat this. This problem interestingly makes Leadership the best sphere to team up with, as they can bring the uber powerful Steward of Gondor to the table, something that is a 3x necessity when playing a dual sphere deck in order to get your under-represented sphere up and running as quickly as possible.
So with 2 sets of the base game I started looking at spheres and what fits best together. While there are some obvious and powerful combos with Leadership and Tactics, I decided to pair Leadership with Knowledge to fill in some of it's weaknesses, namely lack of card draw and healing. This left me looking long and hard at Tactics and Spirit, which actually fit together quite nicely as well. So I built a couple of decks. Both have problems, though Tactics/Spirit has the most, mainly resulting from their complete lack of people. Also Horn of Gondor is a ghetto replacement for Steward of Gondor, but we make due with what we have. Here's what I came up with:
Leadership/Knowledge
1x Aragorn (L)
1x Theodred (L)
1x Berevor (K)
Allies (24)
3x Snowbourn Scout (L)
3x Guard of the Citadel (L)
3x Silverlode Archer (L)
3x Miner of the Iron Hills (K)
3x Daughter of Nimrodel (K)
3x Gandalf (U)
2x Faramir (L)
2x Gleowine (K)
2x Henomarth Riversong (K)
Attachments (10)
3x Protector of Lorien (K)
3x Steward of Gondor (L)
2x Forest Snare (K)
2x Celebrian's Stone (L)
Events (16)
3x Sneak Attack
3x Valient Sacrifice
3x Ever Vigilant
3x Gandalf's Search
2x Common Cause
2x Lorien's Wealth
Comments
Leadership is definitely the most 'wealthy' sphere and Knowledge brings an insane amount of card draw to the table, so they go together quite well. The spread of hero's is fantastic: Aragorn and Theodred work well together questing, while Berevor is a solid defender or a card drawing machine. Though there are a few uniques that have multiple copies (notably Steward), Protector of Lorien gives you something to do with the extras. Ideally you are looking to get Steward on Berevor ASAP in order to bump her production up and get the Knowledge side of your deck going. Plenty of solid combo's in the deck to mention here (Leadership is full of them), if you haven't take a look at this thread, it's a pretty decent look at some of the card interactions in this game's early life: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/644768/lord-of-the-rings-combo-compendium. There are also some crappier cards in the deck just by necessity, I would probably dump most of the action cards when better ones come along (aside from Ever Vigilant and Sneak attack.)
Tactics/Spirit
1x Eowyn
1x Legolas
1x Gimli
Allies (18)
3x Gondorian Spearman (T)
3x Veteran Axehand (T)
3x Horseback Archer (T)
3x Lorien Guide(S)
3x Northern Tracker (S)
3x Wandering Took (S)
Attachments (12)
3x Dwarven Axe (T)
3x Blade of Gondolin (T)
3x Horn of Gondor (T)
3x Favor of a Lady (S)
Events (20)
3x A Test of Will (S)
3x Quick Strike (T)
3x Blade Mastery (T)
3x Feint (T)
2x Hasty Stroke (S)
2x Unexpected Courage (S)
2x Rain of Arrows (T)
2x Stand Together (T)
Comments
First, the problems with the deck. The biggest problem is that both spheres are severely lacking in allies, especially inexpensive ones. There's no way I'd be using Northern Tracker (really really good but horribly expensive) or Wandering Took if I didn't have to, and I'd like even more allies in the deck. The fact that Tactics has 0 allies with any willpower is crap, hopefully that changes soon. It's going to be really tough to get the Spirit side of this deck going, but once you get a Lorien Guide or Northern Tracker you are really helping cover Tactics huge weak spot. Tactics also needs a solid defender ally that can actually block a couple of hits without dying, because Legolas and Gimli are attackers, period.
So, why even pair them together? Because even if you don't play a single Spirit card, Eowyn singlehandedly improves Tactics questing ability by leaps and bounds. Between her questing (and dumping your excess cards to boost her Willpower) and Legolas you should be able to quickly build up tokens without too much Ally support. Each hero has an item in the deck: Gimli has the Axe, Legolas has the Blade and Eowyn has the Horn (and Favor, to a lesser extent.) The Horn is mostly crappy, but if you can scrape up a few extra resource tokens out of it for Eowyn it's worth it. Hopefully something better comes along soon.
So that's what I've got so far, looking forward to what other people put together.
Disapointed with this
in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
Posted
ffgfan said:
Ok, so I got the game. I've played it a lot and after many sessions, discusions with my friends I must say I'm disapointed with it a little.
I thought it will be great becouse it's set in the universe created by Tolkien with famous characters and adventures.
First of all I thought it will be more challenging to beat all scenarios - I beat all tree in a row after the first play. I just needed to make a two sphere deck.
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If that is true (and if you're playing correctly) then it's fairly impressive: no one that I've seen on the forums has yet to beat scenario 3 with a dual-sphere deck due to losing one of your three heroes randomly. Beating it on the first try is even more impressive. What build are you using? Saying that you beat it easily leads me to believe you may have missed a rule or two, but I could be wrong!
As for the rest of the post, naturally there will be some people who don't care for the game, but from the reaction I've seen here and on BGG you are the minority.