John Farrell
Australia
Aspley
Queensland
Averagely Inadequate
Buster Keaton from 'Go West'
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When I aquired this game in trade I did not suspect there was so much to learn! I have a habit of acquiring games without doing much research so they will be more of a surprise when I get them, and this was right up there. It took me two evenings to read the rule book...
 and then it was time to attack the Mirkwood scenario (solo) with the Leadership deck, as suggested in the rules. My first turn of my first play took forever, as I tried to work through the consequences of committing Aragorn to the quest. I managed to figure out that if I did that with the Son of Arnor I could decrease my threat, and then Theodred could do that and then Aragorn could attack the spider and if I travelled Gloin could as well... etc. It took a long time but by then I had a fairly good grip on how things were going to work. It seemed we were blessed by few shadow effects and not many bad monsters, so I had a relatively easy win running down the forst trail without seeing the Spawn anywhere.
I'm not really sure I played all of the rules correctly in that scenario, so after a long research session on BGG I returned the next evening to play the same scenario with the Leadership deck again. This time I got some nastier monsters, and had to fight a bit harder to get through, but I won and I think I played everything correctly this time.
 Of course the next step is to see what the other decks do, and I chose to go for Spirit next. Obviously the plan was going to be to quest Eowyn while Dúnhere fought off monsters and Eleanor protected the party... tell THAT to the Spawn of Ungoliant! I got hit by so many huge spiders that within a few rounds all of the heroes lay bleeding in the trees. Northern Trackers and Strength of Will are not so useful if there aren't any locations around. It was not pretty. Oh well, I think I got unlucky.
 I proceeded to the Lore deck. The heroes here are nicely balanced, with Denethor suited for defence, Glorfindel suited for questing, and Beravor adequate for fighting. Nevertheless things started badly and the threat built up before I could do much about it. A couple of spiders had come out and I couldn't quite get rid of them, and a couple of locations that Glorfindel was working on slowly. I played a Daughter of the Nimrodel to keep my heroes alive, and desperately threw down both Forest Snares to stop the spiders hurting me, and then the Spawn of Ungoliant arrived. This was not pretty! However I realised that with Denethor's solid defence and Self Preservation he could defend against the Spawn every round, suffering only the effects of the shadow cards. As it turned out the Spawn didn't draw any cards with shadow effects so that plan worked perfectly. A lot of the Lore allies have 1 willpower, so I started playing those and questing with them, and indeed I did draw the treachery card which inflicts damage on questing characters and a couple of them died, but by then the machine was humming along and we rushed through the remainder of the scenario.
 Finally last night I played the Tactics deck. I knew from chatter here that it was going to be challenging, but it was really more like futile. The heroes are designed to deal with monsters, but I could barely draw one, I just drew lots of locations and the threat level skyrocketed. When the Spawn of Ungoliant came out I set Beorn upon it, which might have been a mistake in hindsight - I should have spent the resources on Thicket of Spears and Blade Mastery and so on and saved Beorn for the questing. Legolas's power worked only twice, but as it affects the quest and not the location, and I had 4 questing power against 7 threat from locations, I was unable to make any progress on any location and was crushed under overwhelming threat. For good measure I drew the Treachery card which added one threat to each card in the staging area, which was 4 locations at the time. Very very sad.
What next? I think I'll move on to playing with a full 50 card deck so I can exercise some of the synergies between the colours now that I understand them a bit. It seems to me that Spirit and Tactics between them should be able to make some sort of balanced defence against unlucky draws. This is a very cool game and I think I'll be experimenting with it for a while to come.
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Friendless wrote: Legolas's power worked only twice, but as it affects the quest and not the location, and I had 4 questing power against 7 threat from locations, I was unable to make any progress on any location and was crushed under overwhelming threat.
That isn´t right. Legolas affects the location if there is an active one! First active location, then quest!
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John Farrell
Australia
Aspley
Queensland
Averagely Inadequate
Buster Keaton from 'Go West'
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Oh good, thank you for the clarification. That might have let me hold out for another round.
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But very nice session report!
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Ronald Chavez
United States
Hacienda Heights
California
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Mine games are almost identical to yours.
five in and im just ready to start the deck building phase. I really do enjoy the game and find myself looking forward to the nights when I can play.
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Tom Howard
United States
Los Angeles
California
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Great session report - welcome to the game!
For any new player, I recommend checking out Rodney Smith's excellent WatchItPlayed series where he plays through this game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab_y6pFAF5s&feature=related
He uses the Tactics deck and takes on the 1st Scenario. The link above is actually to the 3rd video in that series (since the first couple vids are about the components, rules overview, and setup). Even as someone who was comfortable with the game, I found it nice to be walked through everything, which helps solidify all the rules. He takes his time with the 1st turn, then the pace begins to pick up after that.
Enjoy!
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Don Smith
Canada
Calgary
Alberta
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I'm having great fun playing this game (90% solo). Enjoy!
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John Steinbach
United States
Forest Grove
Oregon
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GeckoTH wrote:
I'll second this recommendation. Great way to familiarize yourself with some of the game's nuances.
Also, Rodney is probably the luckiest/cheatiest/best LotR player in the world  To actually win with the Tactics deck *while filming the playthrough for a tutorial* is pretty remarkable.
Anyway, nice report. Really digging the color-coded train cars.
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John Farrell
Australia
Aspley
Queensland
Averagely Inadequate
Buster Keaton from 'Go West'
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Thank you GeckoTH. I've been hearing about those videos all week but at work I can't watch them. Finally at midnight on Friday I got the chance to watch them with a nice glass of red, only to go to bed at 1am exhausted and drunk and still not having finished them all.
We need threat and defence emoticons, and why are there no meeples?
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Tom Howard
United States
Los Angeles
California
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Friendless wrote:
We need threat and defence emoticons...
Hah, a while back I actually uploaded images to be used as emoticons or play-by-forums...
Along with the existing Microbadges, you can get pretty much any symbol you'd want! 
     
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