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William Lindsey
United States
Marion
Indiana
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I just got clobbered at The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, trying the second scenario single player with the attack deck. I don't think there are enough allies in this deck to get through this scenario. I let the initial Hill Troll damage Gimli so that he could fight back stronger (the four damage was worrying, but I was able to attach some armor that upped his hit points by 4), and I was able to destroy him. The problem was that I was never able to commit heroes to questing, and so I made very little progress. I might have been unlucky in the enemies that came up, and there was a location that came up (Wastelands, I think) that required 6 progress, but most of my time and energy was spent fighting off the enemies. Finally, the questing did me in and my threat got too high, when I only had 3 progress on the main quest.
Maybe a different deck would make this easier, or maybe having more players. My next try will be with two decks (I'll stick with attack, and maybe lore). This might be better, but at this point, I don't see how this quest is possible without some good luck.
Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:01 pm
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William Lindsey
United States
Marion
Indiana
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My wife and I just celebrated our second anniversary by traveling to Indianapolis and touring the city. While we were there, we visited the amazing Arsenal Game Room. The man working there was very friendly and helpful. There were a few people playing Magic upstairs, and there was an RPG session going in one of the rooms downstairs. They have a selection of board games that are freely available to try, so we decided to give Luna a go.
The set-up took quite a while, as there were quite a few moving parts. At this point, I wasn't sure if Melissa would take to it at all. She is great with complicated systems (she has a PhD in math), but complexity for the sake of complexity frustrates her. With all the pieces, I thought this one might be too much.
We were in for a pleasant surprise, though. All of the parts worked together quite seamlessly. The actions on the seven islands seemed natural once we read through the rules. Using the people to fill up the temple worked well too. We had to refer to the rules a few times, and we forgot a rule through most of the game, but mostly we just sat down and played. And that is how a game is supposed to work.
In the game itself, Melissa seemed to be ahead for most of the game. She used the book favor to good effect and was able to expel a few of my people from the temple. She also used bribery favors well to jump way ahead on the temple path and expelled two of my people at the same time. Meanwhile, I was building shrines on the islands, and also gaining new people whenever I could.
When we got to the last few rounds, she started to run out of useful things to do, and I was able to use my people advantage to good effect. We forgot throughout the game that we could use people from any island to move the councilors up. There were multiple times that we just left people active. Anyways, in the last round, Melissa spent all of her people moving the councilors up, and I built another shrine and got the last temple token. The Moon Priestess and the Acolyte were both on the same place, and Melissa didn't think I had anybody there (he was hiding behind the priestess), so she didn't leave her person active on that island. This cost her five points at the end (I got the five points for the priestess that she didn't think I'd get).
When we totaled the points, I ended up winning by one. As with all of our games, wins and losses don't really count the first few times we play.
This game is quite interesting. The complexity is really well done, so that it becomes secondary to the flow of play. I feel that there are many paths to victory; Melissa and I followed completely different paths, and we still were only one point away from each other. I hope I'll have the chance to try this one out again.
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William Lindsey
United States
Marion
Indiana
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My wife and I just finished playing a game of The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. We were attempting the "Passage Through Mirkwood" scenario, using the pre-constructed Leadership and Spirit decks. This was my third game, so the flow of the game is starting to become natural, and I'm slowly learning what the cards effects are.
We started off quite well, taking care of the first quest card without too much hassle. After completing it, we only had a few damage scattered around on our heroes, and there was only one location and one enemy (total threat 5) in the staging area. Unfortunately, that enemy was Ungoliant's Spawn. Melissa had been very industrious using Eowyn in quests, and Dunhere to attack enemies in the staging area. I got caught in a web on the first turn, and I chose Theodred to be crippled by the condition for the duration of the game. This hurt us a lot throughout the game.
Eventually, we started to accumulate locations, and their threat was way too much to ignore. Melissa had a few Lorien Guides (always place one progress on the current location) that were helping us out, but I was hoping that she would come across the Northern Tracker (place one progress on each location on the staging area). We were unlucky that she never did.
After Dunhere had dealt a few damage on Ungoliant's spawn, I chose to engage it, and sacrificed one of my allies to destroy it. At this time, we also had two Dol Guldur Beastmasters and a Chieftan Ufthak in our staging area. At the same time, my threat level was approaching 35. So I played a Sneak Attack from my hand to bring a Gandalf card into play, and used it to deal 4 damage to one of the enemies, which she then was able to destroy with Dunhere. I also engaged one of the others, and with Gandalf's help, I was able to defeat it (sacrificing one of my allies for defense). We also eventually managed to get rid of the third enemy.
At this point, we were working towards the final stage of the quest (Beorn's Path this time), and we had 8 progress tokens towards it. We decided to go all in and try to finish it by committing most of our characters towards the quest. Melissa even brought Gandalf into play in the Planning phase. We reveal the first card and it's the Driven By Shadow card, which adds one threat to each enemy and location in the staging area. This would have caused us to fail the quest, so Melissa decided to play a A Test of Will card, which canceled the effect. The second card we drew? Ungoliant's spawn, of course! This has a when revealed effect giving -1 willpower for everyone committed to the quest, which caused us to fail by 5. Plus, we couldn't win the game when this card was in play. And all of our characters were exhausted, so it was able to just attack at will.
Overall, this is quite a fun game, and I'm looking forward to exploring the different types of cards. I think I'm going to enjoy creating my own deck to play with.
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William Lindsey
United States
Marion
Indiana
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We just finished playing a four player game of Brass, which I won 130-114-104-103. This game really intrigues me. I never feel like I have enough time to finish everything I want to do. So this time I focused on building as many level 2 and 3 buildings in the canal phase, and then building my two ships in the rail phase.
I only was able to get a few buildings out in the canal phase: one port, two level 2 mills, one level 2 coal mine and one level 2 ironworks. This was a lot less than I hoped for; I only built 2 canals and was using mostly city cards to build. I spent a lot of time (including my first action) developing my stacks. I have read other people's session reports where they are able to get level 3 mills out in the canal phase, and I have no idea how this is even possible.
In order to flip my second mill at the end of the canal era I had to use my wife's port. The distant market had already been exhausted, so she wasn't able to flip her level 1 mill. I felt terrible for her, but it really was the only move. I almost didn't do it because it ruined her plans, but she convinced me that I had to.
I also took out a couple of loans right at the end of the canal phase, giving me a lot of money and letting me go first in the rail era. Jamie had left some coal on the board, so I built two rails first and then built some coal (that got flipped very quickly). After this, I focused on quickly expanding my rail network so that I was connected to Liverpool and the two ships there, and guaranteeing myself connection points at the end. The rest of the rail era was spent building up the income to build the two ships. I only took two actions in my last two turns, one of which was building a single rail for 1 point (the other was building the second shipyard).
Every time I play this game, I enjoy it more. The computations are not quite as involved as in Power Grid, which makes it flow better. The cards are not too limiting, but they restrict it enough that you have to be careful and plan based on the cards you're dealt. This gives it a nice balance between long-term strategy and tactics that I enjoy quite a bit. This play has convinced me to bump my rating up, and hopefully we'll get the chance to play it more.
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William Lindsey
United States
Marion
Indiana
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Hello, my name is Margaret. I am currently a novice living in the Abbey of Our Lady of the Woods. I am in training to be a nun. I work really hard, and I haven’t really connected with the five other novices living here. The Abbess and Prioress here push us pretty hard during the day; we spend much of our day studying scripture and reading commentaries written hundreds of years ago. Let me tell you, these are not fun to read! So when I heard that there was a copy of Harry Potter locked away in the library, I was immediately intrigued. It would be amazing to be able to read something just for fun! I planned for weeks to find myself a key to the library, and I was finally fortunate when the Abbess dropped her copy while we were meditating in the Outer Gardens. I quickly hid the key in the tree there, and decided that I would come back later that night when the Abbess and Prioress were sleeping. Then I would sneak into the library, grab the book, and sneak back to my cell. No problem, right?
That night, I nervously waited until the light in the hallway was put out. The Abbess made one final walk down the hallway, turned out the light, and went into her cell. So I quietly opened my door and snuck into the hallway. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the other five novices were already in the hallway! Apparently they all had similar plans for the night. Bernadette and Celeste told me later that they left their rooms every night! Sometimes, I can be really naive.
Anyways, we all ran away from the hallway. I ran into the chapel on my way to the tree in the outer garden. Theresa ran alongside me; she had hidden something in the storage room near the chapel. Somebody must have made some noise, because suddenly both the Abbess and the Prioress came out of their rooms! The Prioress started up towards the pharmacy (whew!) and the Abbess was coming to the chapel! I had to get out of there quickly. So I ran to the tree where I had hidden the library key, and I hurriedly pulled myself into the lower branches. It was not a moment too soon, because I saw Theresa run around the corner of the chapel and quickly press herself into the wall there. A moment later, the Abbess rounded the corner and saw Theresa standing there. She lectured Theresa for a minute on responsibility and following rules, and then told her to go back to her room. I held my breath in my tree, hoping that the Abbess wouldn’t hear my trembling. I’ve never broken the rules before, and I was tempted to run back to my room after the Abbess was out of sight. I took a few breaths to steady myself, and then decided to continue onto the library. I might as well grab the book before going back to my room.
The Abbess disappeared into the chapel, so I let myself down from the tree and I started running towards the cloister. I decided to go through the cloister and the adjoining scriptorium to the library. I didn’t hear or see anybody else as I ran through the dimly-lit cloister. The scriptorium was also dark and deserted. I stopped briefly by my desk to see if the nuns had left comments on my latest report. Unfortunately, they hadn’t yet.
I then used the key and went into the library, and Theresa was already there! I was trying to be as quiet as I could, but Theresa was singing to herself. The Abbess must have heard, because we heard the footsteps running outside in the hallway, and the door burst open! The Abbess was shocked to see me. “Margaret! What are you doing out of bed? This is the type of behavior I would expect from Theresa, but I never expected to find you here! Please explain yourself!” I couldn’t form words, I was so scared. I tried to mumble something about studying more, but I don’t think it was coherent. She said: “It’s okay, Margaret. I’m not going to punish you. Just go back to your room, and get some sleep.”
So Theresa and I started to head back to our rooms. Theresa winked at me, and darted off in the wrong direction. I decided then and there that I was already out, and the Abbess was probably not in the library anymore, so I should go back, grab the book, and get back to my room. So I snuck very quietly back into the library. Guess what?! Bernadette was in there already! It was a busy night in the library, apparently. I grabbed the book, but as Bernadette was grabbing Pride and Prejudice off the shelf, she dropped it. Immediately, the Abbess came back through the door and found both of us standing there. Her face fell as she saw me. “You know this means I’ll have to punish you, Margaret.” “Yes,” I replied meekly. I walked back to my room dejectedly, all thoughts of ever reading Harry Potter gone.
The next day, I had to spend the entire day in the kitchen washing dishes. That night, Bernadette knocked softly on my door. “We’re all heading to the garden. You wanna come?” “Sure!” I replied. I had a tough time the night before, but I had finally bonded with my fellow novices. What a good night!
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