While searching for Gollum in the Anduin valley, you recieve word that a group of Trolls have come to the Carrock. As this area is under the watch of the Beornings, you seek out their leader, Grimbeorn the Old, and discover he has already set out in a rage. You follow, hoping to find him before he confronts the Trolls.
This quest starts off with deceptive simplicity as the focus of Mission 1B is simply to travel to the Carrock in order to find Grimbeorn. The Carrock location card itself starts off in the questing area but you can't actually travel to it until you complete Mission 1B. Once you do complete Mission 1B, by collecting 7 progress tokens, you automatically travel to the Carrock.
Thematically, this simply represents you travelling to The Carrock. Easy enough right?
Well, not quite. This wouldn't be LoTR LCG if the quest was that easy! However, I'll save my specific comments on that for later!
You approach the Carrock, and find that the Trolls have been watching you from the top of the rocky river landmark. As you approach, the Trolls close in and attack!
The quest only has 2 missions so is relatively short in that sense (compared to many other quests I've played which often have 3 missions). Mission 2B only requires 1 progress token to complete. However, the mission cannot be completed if there are any Troll cards in play. As you can probably guess from the mission intro, you actually get ambushed by four Trolls so in essence, Mission 2B revolves around you surviving that ambush and fighting off the four Trolls.
Which is no easy feat! Even just one Troll in this game has been enough to give players nightmares and there are a ton of blog posts out there around how to defeat the Hill Troll in Journey Down the Anduin. And here you find yourself facing off against four trolls at the same time - all of whom boost each others stats!
Assuming you manage to defeat the trolls, the Quest basically ends and you win.
Quest thoughts
I mentioned before that Mission 1B is deceptively simple. My first time through, I had no idea of what was waiting for me so pushed through to Mission 2B quickly. I promptly got my rear end handed to me by the four Trolls.
The key to winning this quest is to use the time during Mission 1B to get ready for the trolls. Realistically, your deck is probably going to struggle to deal with four trolls unless you specifically prepared for it and the game helps you by providing Grimbeorn as an ally - provided you can find him. And finding Grimbeorn in the Encounter Deck is actually the real main focus of Mission 1B.
Grimbeorn, in addition to his amazing stats, also has a massively useful ability in that he doesn't exhaust when defending against a troll. This allows you to use him to defend against the trolls attack and then use him again, together with some of your other characters, to kill off the trolls one by one.
There are two ways to find Grimbeorn. You can get lucky and draw him directly from the deck. Alternatively, there are three Bee Pasture location cards in the deck which, if you can clear, allow you to pull Grimbeorn from the deck directly. Even after you pull him from the deck, you still need to put 8 leadership tokens on him so you need a lot of leadership resource generation as well! As you can see - getting Grimbeorn isn't easy but he is so good that he is totally worth the trouble.
All in all, this was a massively fun quest with some really nasty encounter cards which really force you to change your tactics (and hope for luck!) in order to win.
Showing posts with label Lord of the Rings LCG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lord of the Rings LCG. Show all posts
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Lord of the Rings LCG - Hunt for Gollum
Gandalf has requested your assistance in the search for the elusive creature known as Gollum. Your search begins in the Anduin Valley between Mirkwood Forest and the Misty Mountains. You make your way along the banks of the Anduin River, a likely place for Gollum to find food.
The quest starts off really thematically in terms of the mechanics. As you start your search for Gollum, if you quest successfully, you draw 3 cards and keep 1 of them. This card is in addition to the card per player you draw as part of the questing phase which means that you are burning your way through the encounter deck.
Mechanically though, this really works well as it really feels as if you are searching for something in the encounter deck.
While making the staging area more dangerous, it does have a minor advantage in that you can possibly dump really dangerous encounter cards. Overall, not sure if its a net positive or negative from a difficulty point of view but I love it mechanically.
Rumors have led you to the eaves of Mirkwood Forest, where the Woodmen whisper of a new terror in the night...
Mission 2B on the other hand feels really odd. The story has you going to Mirkwood Forest. However, mechanically, the only difference with Mission 1B is that you draw an extra encounter card at the beginning of the mission. This is counterbalanced by the removal of the extra card per questing phase that was present in Mission 1B.
This is further exacerbated with Mission 3B which has no additional story beats but simply introduces an additional mechanism where only Heroes who previously found a Clue to Gollums location can quest. Thematically, this could have been really interesting if the story supported the mechanics. However, the story fails hard.
In effect, you spend the entire quest searching for Gollum. You never actually find him but you spend all 3 missions searching for him - and without any story beats, the quest ultimately falls flat and feels boring.
Extra Cards
Despite the failure of the quest itself, I am glad that I bought this adventure pack. The pack comes with some extra cards - some of which are extremely fun and useful.
To start with, you get Bilbo Baggins whose power lets the first player draw an extra card. I used this ability to create a new deck focused on deck draw which has been extremely successful even with the limited cards that I have.
In addition, this adventure pack introduces a new type of card called Songs. The Song of Kings, which is available in this pack, gives the hero it is attached to the Leadership resource icon. This is pretty cool in that you can give it to a non-Leadership hero and he ends up with the ability to pay for cards from 2 different pools. When couple up with Steward of Gondor, which grants 2 extra resources per round, you can build a deck that is extremely flexible in paying for whichever card you happen to have in your hand.
The quest starts off really thematically in terms of the mechanics. As you start your search for Gollum, if you quest successfully, you draw 3 cards and keep 1 of them. This card is in addition to the card per player you draw as part of the questing phase which means that you are burning your way through the encounter deck.
Mechanically though, this really works well as it really feels as if you are searching for something in the encounter deck.
While making the staging area more dangerous, it does have a minor advantage in that you can possibly dump really dangerous encounter cards. Overall, not sure if its a net positive or negative from a difficulty point of view but I love it mechanically.
Rumors have led you to the eaves of Mirkwood Forest, where the Woodmen whisper of a new terror in the night...
Mission 2B on the other hand feels really odd. The story has you going to Mirkwood Forest. However, mechanically, the only difference with Mission 1B is that you draw an extra encounter card at the beginning of the mission. This is counterbalanced by the removal of the extra card per questing phase that was present in Mission 1B.
This is further exacerbated with Mission 3B which has no additional story beats but simply introduces an additional mechanism where only Heroes who previously found a Clue to Gollums location can quest. Thematically, this could have been really interesting if the story supported the mechanics. However, the story fails hard.
In effect, you spend the entire quest searching for Gollum. You never actually find him but you spend all 3 missions searching for him - and without any story beats, the quest ultimately falls flat and feels boring.
Extra Cards
Despite the failure of the quest itself, I am glad that I bought this adventure pack. The pack comes with some extra cards - some of which are extremely fun and useful.
To start with, you get Bilbo Baggins whose power lets the first player draw an extra card. I used this ability to create a new deck focused on deck draw which has been extremely successful even with the limited cards that I have.
In addition, this adventure pack introduces a new type of card called Songs. The Song of Kings, which is available in this pack, gives the hero it is attached to the Leadership resource icon. This is pretty cool in that you can give it to a non-Leadership hero and he ends up with the ability to pay for cards from 2 different pools. When couple up with Steward of Gondor, which grants 2 extra resources per round, you can build a deck that is extremely flexible in paying for whichever card you happen to have in your hand.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Lord of the Rings LCG - Ninjadorg fan made content
As I've mentioned before, I've been playing Lord of the Rings card game recently and been having an amazing amount of fun with it. The game does a fantastic job of bringing the world of Middle Earth to your tabletop using nothing but cards. This is especially true for those who are serious fans of Tolkien (this isn't actually me as I've only read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) as the developers have done a really good job of turning theme into mechanics.
However, what brings the game to life for me is the opportunity to go on a grand quest over several different games - with each game building a different chapter in that quest. You can see some of that in my previous posts about the game on this blog. I had some difficulty getting the Adventure Packs for this game so while I was still hunting for them, I decided to try out some of the fan made scenarios on BGG (and really, there is an amazing amount of fan created content for this game).
I started out with ninjadorg's fan made scenarios. Ninjadorg has created an amazing amount of content for different games and is a really well known member of BGG so his scenarios seemed like a good starting point for fan made content.
Overall, he has done a really good job of coming up with interesting twists to create interesting scenarios. And throughout this, he was able to weave an ongoing story into each mission so that the overall story develops as you progress through his scenarios. This is a really good way to entice players to keep playing through the scenarios as you want to see what happens next.
Ninjadorg has also managed to explore the gamespace really well. His first scenario is actually really basic and easy. However, with subsequent scenarios, he really mixes things up well and introduces different twists in the mechanics to make that scenario interesting and challenging.
I really have to give kudos to Ninjadorg for coming up with a set of interesting scenarios that come together to make up an interesting story while at the same time introducing new challenges for your decks to face.
However, what brings the game to life for me is the opportunity to go on a grand quest over several different games - with each game building a different chapter in that quest. You can see some of that in my previous posts about the game on this blog. I had some difficulty getting the Adventure Packs for this game so while I was still hunting for them, I decided to try out some of the fan made scenarios on BGG (and really, there is an amazing amount of fan created content for this game).
I started out with ninjadorg's fan made scenarios. Ninjadorg has created an amazing amount of content for different games and is a really well known member of BGG so his scenarios seemed like a good starting point for fan made content.
Overall, he has done a really good job of coming up with interesting twists to create interesting scenarios. And throughout this, he was able to weave an ongoing story into each mission so that the overall story develops as you progress through his scenarios. This is a really good way to entice players to keep playing through the scenarios as you want to see what happens next.
Ninjadorg has also managed to explore the gamespace really well. His first scenario is actually really basic and easy. However, with subsequent scenarios, he really mixes things up well and introduces different twists in the mechanics to make that scenario interesting and challenging.
I really have to give kudos to Ninjadorg for coming up with a set of interesting scenarios that come together to make up an interesting story while at the same time introducing new challenges for your decks to face.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Lord of the Rings LCG - Escape from Dol Guldur
The Lady Galadriel of Lorien has asked you to investigate the area in the vicinity of Dol Guldar. While doing so, one of your allies was ambushed by Orcs, captured, and is now held in a dungeon cell...
As with Anduin, the last quest in the core set does not start off easily. One of your heroes starts off captured - which basically means that you can't use him/her and you don't get any resources from him. Depending on which hero gets captured, this could put a serious dent in your efforts. The quest itself involves you going in and rescuing your trapped hero before escaping from Dol Guldur.
In the first mission, you have to sneak into Dol Guldur itself. This means getting 9 progress tokens and capturing one of the 3 objectives.
It's also the first time in the game where you really benefit from playing with 2 decks instead of just 1. With just 1 deck, you only have 3 heroes and the loss of one hero is equivalent to a third of your force. A major blow. On the other hand, with 2 decks, you have 6 heroes and the loss of one hero, while a blow, is not anywhere near as significant.
It the loss of that hero that makes the first mission such a challenge. This is compounded by a limit of only 1 ally card being played each round so it isn't easy to cover the loss of that hero with ally cards. This is possibly not a huge issue if you are playing 1 deck as you probably couldn't afford more than 1 ally each round anyway but if playing 2 decks, this really slows down your progress as you have to carefully consider which ally to put into play.
No major twists beyond the above - but in fairness, the loss of one hero can be devastating depending on which hero gets captured.
Finding a hidden entrance to the dungeons of Dol Guldur at last, you attempt to make your way through the caverns beneath the hill, searching for your imprisoned friend. The denizens of this labyrinth stand in you way, while the jailors protect the prisoner.
After sneaking into Dol Guldur, you have a chance to rescue your trapped hero. This happens as soon as you put any progress onto the main mission. Rescuing your trapped hero is massively important as, the moment you rescue him/her, you get to use that hero from that point on. In other words, this lets you get back up to full strength to face the rest of the quest. Mechanically, you need to get 15 progress tokens and collect all 3 objectives to proceed to the last mission in this quest.
Naturally, the mission isn't as straightforward as that.
The moment you rescue your trapped hero, the jailer is awakened and enters the staging area. And when I say jailer, I don't mean the pitiful guard they left at the dungeon. I mean the Nazgul of Dol Guldur. This is a massively nasty beast!
The Nazgul of Dol Guldur adds 5 threat to your staging area. If you don't engage him, trying to quest past him is extremely difficult. However, he also does 4 damage and has 3 armour and 9 health - so trying to defeat him in combat isn't easy either! Even worse, if you draw a card with a shadow effect when he attacks, he gets an insta-kill of 1 of your characters. At this juncture, the only appropriate response is - OUCH!!
Granted, you don't actually have to kill the Nazgul to get to the last mission - but with a staging threat of 5, you probably find that you need to engage him simply so that you can actually make quest progress. The only positive thing is that he only engages you if you have a threat of 40 so at least you will probably be able to pick and choose when you want to engage him.
Given how dangerous the Nazgul is in combat, it shouldn't be a surprise to learn that I didn't engage it until I could play the Gandalf ally card that round.
Following a thread of sunlight you discover a cavern opening leading out through the side of the hill. Stationed outside the cave-mouth, however, is a large group of orcs.
After rescuing your trapped hero, all that remains is getting out of Dol Guldur itself. This last mission is relatively easy. All you need to do is get 7 progress tokens. Provided that the Nazgul is not in play at that point, you win the quest.
The main twist in this last mission is that an Orc Guard comes out every round. However, the Orc Guard is really more of an annoyance than a real threat. It only has 1 attack and 1 hit point so it's easy to defend against and/or kill. With that said, if you have other enemies that you are facing off against, the addition of that Orc Guard can be extremely annoying as you simply run out of characters that you can use to defend and/or fight the Orc Guard.
I suspect that the main threat in this mission was supposed to be the Nazgul itself as you can't complete the mission unless the Nazgul is not in play. Effectively, this means that you have to defeat the Nazgul sooner or later. In practice though, the high threat of the Nazgul meant that I always dealt with it during the second mission. This effectively resulted in a little of an anti-climax as this last mission always ended up being rather easy as all I had to do was go all out in getting 7 progress tokens. I could quest with every character I had and not worry about defending as I wouldn't need to go through the combat phase if I could get 7 progress tokens right off the bat.
Quest thoughts
Despite the anti-climax, this is another really fun quest with loads of thematic cards.
The way the game handles one of your heroes being captured is inspired. Literally losing one of your main heroes at the start of the quest immediately puts you on the defensive and also really makes you think about the construction of your deck. Bear in mind that losing a hero also slows down your resource pool so having expensive cards in this quest can simply mean that half your cards can't be played as you never have enough resources.
It also makes you think about which heroes you should take to the quest. I have been playing this quest with the decks I used to defeat Anduin but if I were to build a new deck, I would build a deck with all weak heroes so that it is hard to be critically impaired by the loss of a major hero. Hopefully, the reduced starting threat will give you enough time to get more allies onto the board so that you have a solid group of characters by the time you start facing off against the enemies in the game.
Interestingly enough, this means that out of the 3 quests in the core set, arguably 2 of them involve you picking "weaker" heroes to have the best chance of success in the quest. This is actually really clever design to make you think about your deck construction instead of simply auto-picking the "strongest" heroes.
As with Anduin, the last quest in the core set does not start off easily. One of your heroes starts off captured - which basically means that you can't use him/her and you don't get any resources from him. Depending on which hero gets captured, this could put a serious dent in your efforts. The quest itself involves you going in and rescuing your trapped hero before escaping from Dol Guldur.
In the first mission, you have to sneak into Dol Guldur itself. This means getting 9 progress tokens and capturing one of the 3 objectives.
It's also the first time in the game where you really benefit from playing with 2 decks instead of just 1. With just 1 deck, you only have 3 heroes and the loss of one hero is equivalent to a third of your force. A major blow. On the other hand, with 2 decks, you have 6 heroes and the loss of one hero, while a blow, is not anywhere near as significant.
It the loss of that hero that makes the first mission such a challenge. This is compounded by a limit of only 1 ally card being played each round so it isn't easy to cover the loss of that hero with ally cards. This is possibly not a huge issue if you are playing 1 deck as you probably couldn't afford more than 1 ally each round anyway but if playing 2 decks, this really slows down your progress as you have to carefully consider which ally to put into play.
No major twists beyond the above - but in fairness, the loss of one hero can be devastating depending on which hero gets captured.
Finding a hidden entrance to the dungeons of Dol Guldur at last, you attempt to make your way through the caverns beneath the hill, searching for your imprisoned friend. The denizens of this labyrinth stand in you way, while the jailors protect the prisoner.
After sneaking into Dol Guldur, you have a chance to rescue your trapped hero. This happens as soon as you put any progress onto the main mission. Rescuing your trapped hero is massively important as, the moment you rescue him/her, you get to use that hero from that point on. In other words, this lets you get back up to full strength to face the rest of the quest. Mechanically, you need to get 15 progress tokens and collect all 3 objectives to proceed to the last mission in this quest.
Naturally, the mission isn't as straightforward as that.
The moment you rescue your trapped hero, the jailer is awakened and enters the staging area. And when I say jailer, I don't mean the pitiful guard they left at the dungeon. I mean the Nazgul of Dol Guldur. This is a massively nasty beast!
The Nazgul of Dol Guldur adds 5 threat to your staging area. If you don't engage him, trying to quest past him is extremely difficult. However, he also does 4 damage and has 3 armour and 9 health - so trying to defeat him in combat isn't easy either! Even worse, if you draw a card with a shadow effect when he attacks, he gets an insta-kill of 1 of your characters. At this juncture, the only appropriate response is - OUCH!!
Granted, you don't actually have to kill the Nazgul to get to the last mission - but with a staging threat of 5, you probably find that you need to engage him simply so that you can actually make quest progress. The only positive thing is that he only engages you if you have a threat of 40 so at least you will probably be able to pick and choose when you want to engage him.
Given how dangerous the Nazgul is in combat, it shouldn't be a surprise to learn that I didn't engage it until I could play the Gandalf ally card that round.
Following a thread of sunlight you discover a cavern opening leading out through the side of the hill. Stationed outside the cave-mouth, however, is a large group of orcs.
After rescuing your trapped hero, all that remains is getting out of Dol Guldur itself. This last mission is relatively easy. All you need to do is get 7 progress tokens. Provided that the Nazgul is not in play at that point, you win the quest.
The main twist in this last mission is that an Orc Guard comes out every round. However, the Orc Guard is really more of an annoyance than a real threat. It only has 1 attack and 1 hit point so it's easy to defend against and/or kill. With that said, if you have other enemies that you are facing off against, the addition of that Orc Guard can be extremely annoying as you simply run out of characters that you can use to defend and/or fight the Orc Guard.
I suspect that the main threat in this mission was supposed to be the Nazgul itself as you can't complete the mission unless the Nazgul is not in play. Effectively, this means that you have to defeat the Nazgul sooner or later. In practice though, the high threat of the Nazgul meant that I always dealt with it during the second mission. This effectively resulted in a little of an anti-climax as this last mission always ended up being rather easy as all I had to do was go all out in getting 7 progress tokens. I could quest with every character I had and not worry about defending as I wouldn't need to go through the combat phase if I could get 7 progress tokens right off the bat.
Quest thoughts
Despite the anti-climax, this is another really fun quest with loads of thematic cards.
The way the game handles one of your heroes being captured is inspired. Literally losing one of your main heroes at the start of the quest immediately puts you on the defensive and also really makes you think about the construction of your deck. Bear in mind that losing a hero also slows down your resource pool so having expensive cards in this quest can simply mean that half your cards can't be played as you never have enough resources.
It also makes you think about which heroes you should take to the quest. I have been playing this quest with the decks I used to defeat Anduin but if I were to build a new deck, I would build a deck with all weak heroes so that it is hard to be critically impaired by the loss of a major hero. Hopefully, the reduced starting threat will give you enough time to get more allies onto the board so that you have a solid group of characters by the time you start facing off against the enemies in the game.
Interestingly enough, this means that out of the 3 quests in the core set, arguably 2 of them involve you picking "weaker" heroes to have the best chance of success in the quest. This is actually really clever design to make you think about your deck construction instead of simply auto-picking the "strongest" heroes.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Lord of the Rings LCG - Journey down the Anduin
Emerging from Mirkwood Forest with an urgent message for Lady Galadriel, you must now make your way south along the Anduin River in order to reach the forest of Lorien. As you leave the forest behind, you notice that you are being pursued, and thus quicken your pace...
Unlike Passage through Mirkwood, Journey down the Anduin, the second quest in the Core set, does not start off easily.
As you approach the location of a small raft stashed on the riverbank, a fearsome Hill Troll emerges from behind a grouping or rocks, and attacks!
Yup! Right off the bat, you are facing off against a Hill Troll!
It has a ton of hit points so isn't easy to kill. It can also do 6 damage with each attack so it can kill most heroes and allies in one hit. Lastly, the Hill Troll will engage if you have a threat of 30. Which isn't actually that high - so unless you deliberately picked weaker Heroes, it's entirely possible that you will be facing that Hill Troll on your first or second turn!
Interestingly enough, this actually means that your best chance of success in this quest is to actually start off with weaker Heroes. The lower starting threat gives you a couple of turns to build up your forces before you engage the Hill Troll and success or failure fully depends on you using those initial turns to setup to defeat the Hill Troll. In this regard, from the cards in the core set, it's pretty critical to have Gandalf in your hand as, without his help, it's significantly more difficult dealing with the Hill Troll.
After defeating the Troll, you are able to board the raft and embark upon a river voyage. As you depart, your enemies pursue, harassing the small vessel as you attempt to navigate the river...
As your enemies harass the raft, it is difficult to maintain balance and effectively fight them off.
The second mission is actually really fun albeit really nasty if you aren't set up properly. To progress through this mission, you need to get 16 progress tokens. The main challenge from this mission is that you are drawing an extra encounter card each round. Luckily, any enemies you encounter won't engage you on their own although you can still engage them.
The extra encounter card means that it is difficult to make quest progress as the staging area fills up quickly. More importantly, some bad luck in drawing encounter cards can location lock you and make it impossible to collect progress tokens via questing.
In this regard, Northern Tracker and Legolas are tremendous assets. Northern Tracker lets you put progress tokens on locations even without travelling to them. This is great for helping to clear locations from the staging area which helps mitigate the risk of location lock. Meanwhile, Legolas gets you 2 progress tokens each time he gets a kill. This is immensely helpful as those 2 progress tokens aren't hampered by any threat in the staging area.
The ongoing harassment from your enemies has forced your raft to the shore, and you must now confront their ambush head on. If you survive this attack, the path to the Golden Wood should be open before you...
What better way to end a quest than with an epic brawl! This last mission in the quest basically sees you being attacked by a swarm of enemies. Questing at this stage is only relevant to the extent of minimizing threat gain (and remember, you die if your threat hits 50). Progress in the mission itself is reliant on you killing all enemies!
Nothing too tricky in this last mission - its basically a straight up brawl to end the game.
Quest thoughts
This is a really fun quest. It's also quite difficult as you need a party with good questing ability to deal with Mission 2 as well as good combat ability to deal with Mission 3! Which is a great setup as it means you really think about how to setup your deck. I initially took on this quest with the party I had from the first quest and got TPKed immediately.
However, once you recognise that threat management is critical in this mission, with the initial Hill Troll as well as some encounter cards which punish you if your threat is over 35, you can build your deck differently to give yourself the best chance of victory. Which, naturally, is exactly what I did. My subsequent two games, with a customised deck purpose built to defeat this quest, managed to pull off consecutive wins.
I also love one of the location cards in this quest. Banks of the Anduin is a location card that recurs each time you clear it. Which is a brilliantly thematic way of showing your journey down the Anduin itself.
Overall, a fantastic quest which shows the importance of deck construction if you are looking to defeat the quests this game throws against you.
Unlike Passage through Mirkwood, Journey down the Anduin, the second quest in the Core set, does not start off easily.
As you approach the location of a small raft stashed on the riverbank, a fearsome Hill Troll emerges from behind a grouping or rocks, and attacks!
Yup! Right off the bat, you are facing off against a Hill Troll!
It has a ton of hit points so isn't easy to kill. It can also do 6 damage with each attack so it can kill most heroes and allies in one hit. Lastly, the Hill Troll will engage if you have a threat of 30. Which isn't actually that high - so unless you deliberately picked weaker Heroes, it's entirely possible that you will be facing that Hill Troll on your first or second turn!
Interestingly enough, this actually means that your best chance of success in this quest is to actually start off with weaker Heroes. The lower starting threat gives you a couple of turns to build up your forces before you engage the Hill Troll and success or failure fully depends on you using those initial turns to setup to defeat the Hill Troll. In this regard, from the cards in the core set, it's pretty critical to have Gandalf in your hand as, without his help, it's significantly more difficult dealing with the Hill Troll.
After defeating the Troll, you are able to board the raft and embark upon a river voyage. As you depart, your enemies pursue, harassing the small vessel as you attempt to navigate the river...
As your enemies harass the raft, it is difficult to maintain balance and effectively fight them off.
The second mission is actually really fun albeit really nasty if you aren't set up properly. To progress through this mission, you need to get 16 progress tokens. The main challenge from this mission is that you are drawing an extra encounter card each round. Luckily, any enemies you encounter won't engage you on their own although you can still engage them.
The extra encounter card means that it is difficult to make quest progress as the staging area fills up quickly. More importantly, some bad luck in drawing encounter cards can location lock you and make it impossible to collect progress tokens via questing.
In this regard, Northern Tracker and Legolas are tremendous assets. Northern Tracker lets you put progress tokens on locations even without travelling to them. This is great for helping to clear locations from the staging area which helps mitigate the risk of location lock. Meanwhile, Legolas gets you 2 progress tokens each time he gets a kill. This is immensely helpful as those 2 progress tokens aren't hampered by any threat in the staging area.
The ongoing harassment from your enemies has forced your raft to the shore, and you must now confront their ambush head on. If you survive this attack, the path to the Golden Wood should be open before you...
What better way to end a quest than with an epic brawl! This last mission in the quest basically sees you being attacked by a swarm of enemies. Questing at this stage is only relevant to the extent of minimizing threat gain (and remember, you die if your threat hits 50). Progress in the mission itself is reliant on you killing all enemies!
Nothing too tricky in this last mission - its basically a straight up brawl to end the game.
Quest thoughts
This is a really fun quest. It's also quite difficult as you need a party with good questing ability to deal with Mission 2 as well as good combat ability to deal with Mission 3! Which is a great setup as it means you really think about how to setup your deck. I initially took on this quest with the party I had from the first quest and got TPKed immediately.
However, once you recognise that threat management is critical in this mission, with the initial Hill Troll as well as some encounter cards which punish you if your threat is over 35, you can build your deck differently to give yourself the best chance of victory. Which, naturally, is exactly what I did. My subsequent two games, with a customised deck purpose built to defeat this quest, managed to pull off consecutive wins.
I also love one of the location cards in this quest. Banks of the Anduin is a location card that recurs each time you clear it. Which is a brilliantly thematic way of showing your journey down the Anduin itself.
Overall, a fantastic quest which shows the importance of deck construction if you are looking to defeat the quests this game throws against you.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Lord of the Rings LCG - Passage through Mirkwood
Mirkwood has long been a dangerous place., and recently one of King Thranduil's patrols has uncovered disconcerting signs of a gathering menace in the vicinity of Dol Golder. A party of heroes, controlled by the players, has been assembled to carry a message through Mirkwood, down the Anduin, and eventually to Lorien, to warn Lady Galadriel of the imminent danger.
And with that, the core set of Lord of the Rings starts off the Shadows of Mirkwood adventure path. The core set itself only contains the first 3 quests in the adventure path - the remaining 5 quests being released via expansion packs. I'm still playing through the core set but so far, I already know that I will be buying more, more, more!!
Just so you know, the text in italics is taken directly from the game.
Passage through Mirkwood
The first quest, Passage through Mirkwood, sees you build out your party of heroes to take a warning to Lady Galadriel. This quest sees you travelling through, as the quest title suggests, Mirkwood forest.
You are traveling through Mirkwood forest, carrying an urgent message from King Thanduil to the Lady Galadriel of Lorien. As you move along the dark trail, the spiders gather around you...
The quest actually starts off pretty easily as you would expect with a quest ranked as 1 star difficulty. For reference, later quests can go up to 7 stars in difficulty (or possibly even higher in later expansions). Granted, there is a forest spider that you immediately need to deal with. With that said though, the first location you can travel to actually readies one of your characters so you can quest and immediately reuse one of your heroes to deal with the spider. Beyond that, the first mission of this quest is fairly standard with little in the way of surprises beyond the cards in the encounter deck and collecting the 8 progress tokens to complete this mission is fairly straightforward.
As you move through Mirkwood, hounded by spiders, the forest path forks before you...
And with that, the core set of Lord of the Rings starts off the Shadows of Mirkwood adventure path. The core set itself only contains the first 3 quests in the adventure path - the remaining 5 quests being released via expansion packs. I'm still playing through the core set but so far, I already know that I will be buying more, more, more!!
Just so you know, the text in italics is taken directly from the game.
Passage through Mirkwood
The first quest, Passage through Mirkwood, sees you build out your party of heroes to take a warning to Lady Galadriel. This quest sees you travelling through, as the quest title suggests, Mirkwood forest.
You are traveling through Mirkwood forest, carrying an urgent message from King Thanduil to the Lady Galadriel of Lorien. As you move along the dark trail, the spiders gather around you...
The quest actually starts off pretty easily as you would expect with a quest ranked as 1 star difficulty. For reference, later quests can go up to 7 stars in difficulty (or possibly even higher in later expansions). Granted, there is a forest spider that you immediately need to deal with. With that said though, the first location you can travel to actually readies one of your characters so you can quest and immediately reuse one of your heroes to deal with the spider. Beyond that, the first mission of this quest is fairly standard with little in the way of surprises beyond the cards in the encounter deck and collecting the 8 progress tokens to complete this mission is fairly straightforward.
As you move through Mirkwood, hounded by spiders, the forest path forks before you...
The second mission of Passage through Mirkwood is really more like a placeholder than a real mission. Requiring only 2 progress tokens to complete, you often only spend 1 round before you move onto the last mission.
The trail winds into one of the darkest, most tangled parts of the forest... You sense that a foul, dark presence is hunting you, and you move quickly in an attempt to avoid its evil.
Which brings up the first real point of interest about Passage through Mirkwood. There are actually two different Mission 3's for Passage through Mirkwood and which specific mission you deal with is random. This represents the choice of path you took in the second mission and is a nice thematic way of giving you some variation in the first quest.
Beorn's Path - You attempt to follow a secret, hidden trail to avoid the enemy.
Probably considered the easier of the 2 available options for Mission 3, this mission sees you needing 10 progress tokens to progress. This is relatively straightforward task albeit requiring several rounds to complete. The slight wrinkle to this Mission is that you can't complete it if Ungoliant's Spawn is in play.
Which is very interesting from a thematic point of view. Your team is trying to escape from Mirkwood Forest using a secret trail before they get noticed by Ungoliant's Spawn - one of the nastier creatures in the encounter deck. If you can do so, great. However, if you do get noticed by Ungoliant's Spawn, then it will hunt you and you need to deal with it before you can leave.
In the lore, Ungoliant is a massive spider deity (I think) and one of the oldest entities in Middle Earth. Shelob is probably the most famous of Ungoliant's spawn - Shelob being the massive spider that accosted Frodo and Sam in their quest to destroy the One Ring.
Don't leave the Path - The shadows grow darker, and you realise that a foul presence is aiming to draw you from the path. You must defeat it to pass this way.
It should be obvious by now but the foul presence hunting you is the aforementioned Ungoliant's Spawn. Ungoliant's Spawn is a pretty nasty creature that can potentially kill off an hero or ally with each attack. At the same time, it has a pretty high defence and 9 hit points so it can take a lot of punishment.
And you have to kill it.
Quest thoughts
All in all, as expected for the first quest that players will encounter, Passage through Mirkwood is a relatively simple quest that most players should be able to defeat relatively easily.
There aren't a whole lot of wrinkles with the quest design and a fairly straightforward approach is often enough to complete the quest. Half the time, all you need is solid questing ability. In the event where you need to deal with Ungoliant's Spawn, the use of Gandalf together with other allies is often enough to deal with Ungoliant's Spawn in one round.
Granted, there will be occasions where a run of bad draws will make things tough for you (such as drawing Ungoliant's Spawn before Mission 3 or having to encounter Hummerhorns - the other nasty enemy you might face in the encounter deck). However, overall, it's a relatively simple mission as evidenced by the fact that the mono-sphere decks in the core set can all beat this Mission.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Lord of the Rings LCG - the spheres
So, last week, I talked about Lord of the Rings LCG - the new card game that I'm currently addicted to. This week, I'm going to talk a little bit about how the spheres (ie deck types) in the game differ from each other.
I'll also be honest and say that, primarily, this is for my benefit so that I have a record of what each sphere is good at in case I ever forget. :)
One last caveat - I'm still learning the game so the notes below only represent my understanding at this moment in time. Don't take anything you see below as gospel!
Spirit
The rulebook says that the Spirit sphere is about the strength of a hero's will. And this is very clearly reflected in the deck makeup itself.
This deck is, by far, the best at questing, which uses willpower. Eowyn, one of the heroes, has a willpower of 4 - the highest of the heroes in the core set. Furthermore, her special ability allows you to discard 1 card in order to temporarily boost that willpower even higher when questing. When it comes to making actual quest progress - this sphere is hands down the best.
Other strengths of the deck include its ability to manage threat and treachery.
Threat is a measure of how dangerous you are perceived to be. If you have a low threat, you aren't considered dangerous and enemies will tend to leave you be in favour of attacking higher threat targets. Also, some event cards only trigger if your threat is high enough. Lastly, if your threat ever reaches 50, you are eliminated from the game.
From this, you can see that threat management is an important part of the game. By managing your threat, you can control when, and whether, you engage enemies. The Spirit deck has various cards which can be used to lower your threat and give you more time and options for how to deal with encounter cards.
Lastly, the Spirit deck includes options to let you cancel the effects of a treachery or shadow card when dealt from the encounter deck. Both of these cards have negative effects and the ability to cancel them can mean the difference between having your hero take damage versus having your hero die.
Lore
Lore is billed in the rulebook as the power of the mind and intellect.
From a mechanics point of view, Lore is really good at card draw. Thematically, this simulates intelligence by giving you more options. As with all card games, your options are heavily impacted by the cards you have in your hand. Card draw abilities give you a better chance of drawing the card you need to deal with the threat that is facing you.
Other strengths of this deck are healing. There are a lot of cards which can heal damage on your characters. Particularly critical as the death of a hero means that you will be getting 1 less resource per turn which in turn, impacts your ability to play any cards that you do draw. Alternatively, the healing ability an help keep your allies alive. Like all good fantasy stories, allies are critical - particularly as your 3 starting heroes will not be able to defeat the quest on their own.
Tactics
Tactics basically boils down to combat prowess and the ability of your team to hit enemies with swords, axes, bows etc.
From a mechanics point of view, this deck is probably the simplest to understand. Most of the cards are combat related - either allowing you to do a preemptive strike on enemies, increasing your damage/defence value or pumping up your hit points so that you can take more punishment.
Unfortunately, the nature of the deck also means that its a very poor choice if you are building a mono-sphere deck (at least in the core set). The problem is that it is very hard to quest using this deck. As a mono-sphere deck, your questing is almost wholly tied into Legolas ability to kill enemies (which grants quest progress). If you don't draw enemies or aren't able to kill the enemies you do draw quickly enough - events can quickly spiral out of control with defeat following soon after.
On the other hand, the nature of the deck also means that its a great complement to other decks if you are building a dual-sphere deck. For example, pairing Tactics with Spirit gives you the questing ability of Spirit together with the martial prowess of Tactics. Theoretically, this covers all your key bases while playing the game.
Leadership
Leadership is basically what it says on the tin - the ability of your heroes to lead and inspire others.
As you can expect, mechanically, there are a lot of cards which can be used to help other players. This can be in the form of defending for another player, attacking another players enemies or just helping other players with questing or resource generation.
That last point about resource generation is actually fairly critical. One of the decks key strengths is the ability to speed up resource generation (for either yourself or another player). Normally, each hero only gets 1 resource per round. With 3 heroes, this means that you often need to wait a round or two before you can use any of your high cost cards (which can cost 5 or 6 resources to play). As you can imagine, speeding up resource generation lets you put your more powerful cards into play quickly which can be critical. One of the missions in the core set in particular starts you off with a major threat and getting cards into play quickly to deal with that threat can be the difference between success or failure in that quest.
The last key ability of this deck is readying. There are various cards which let you ready your characters so that they can effectively act twice in each round. Normally, each character can only act once and that extra action - if used correctly - can make a huge difference by allowing you to continue clearing enemies from the board while still making quest progress or defending from attacks.
In the core set, this is actually one of the most powerful spheres. You would think that it would only really shine when playing with 2 players (given the number of cards which benefit other players) but in practice, even a mono-sphere Leadership deck did extremely well in the game.
I'll also be honest and say that, primarily, this is for my benefit so that I have a record of what each sphere is good at in case I ever forget. :)
One last caveat - I'm still learning the game so the notes below only represent my understanding at this moment in time. Don't take anything you see below as gospel!
Spirit
The rulebook says that the Spirit sphere is about the strength of a hero's will. And this is very clearly reflected in the deck makeup itself.
This deck is, by far, the best at questing, which uses willpower. Eowyn, one of the heroes, has a willpower of 4 - the highest of the heroes in the core set. Furthermore, her special ability allows you to discard 1 card in order to temporarily boost that willpower even higher when questing. When it comes to making actual quest progress - this sphere is hands down the best.
Other strengths of the deck include its ability to manage threat and treachery.
Threat is a measure of how dangerous you are perceived to be. If you have a low threat, you aren't considered dangerous and enemies will tend to leave you be in favour of attacking higher threat targets. Also, some event cards only trigger if your threat is high enough. Lastly, if your threat ever reaches 50, you are eliminated from the game.
From this, you can see that threat management is an important part of the game. By managing your threat, you can control when, and whether, you engage enemies. The Spirit deck has various cards which can be used to lower your threat and give you more time and options for how to deal with encounter cards.
Lastly, the Spirit deck includes options to let you cancel the effects of a treachery or shadow card when dealt from the encounter deck. Both of these cards have negative effects and the ability to cancel them can mean the difference between having your hero take damage versus having your hero die.
Lore
Lore is billed in the rulebook as the power of the mind and intellect.
From a mechanics point of view, Lore is really good at card draw. Thematically, this simulates intelligence by giving you more options. As with all card games, your options are heavily impacted by the cards you have in your hand. Card draw abilities give you a better chance of drawing the card you need to deal with the threat that is facing you.
Other strengths of this deck are healing. There are a lot of cards which can heal damage on your characters. Particularly critical as the death of a hero means that you will be getting 1 less resource per turn which in turn, impacts your ability to play any cards that you do draw. Alternatively, the healing ability an help keep your allies alive. Like all good fantasy stories, allies are critical - particularly as your 3 starting heroes will not be able to defeat the quest on their own.
Tactics
Tactics basically boils down to combat prowess and the ability of your team to hit enemies with swords, axes, bows etc.
From a mechanics point of view, this deck is probably the simplest to understand. Most of the cards are combat related - either allowing you to do a preemptive strike on enemies, increasing your damage/defence value or pumping up your hit points so that you can take more punishment.
Unfortunately, the nature of the deck also means that its a very poor choice if you are building a mono-sphere deck (at least in the core set). The problem is that it is very hard to quest using this deck. As a mono-sphere deck, your questing is almost wholly tied into Legolas ability to kill enemies (which grants quest progress). If you don't draw enemies or aren't able to kill the enemies you do draw quickly enough - events can quickly spiral out of control with defeat following soon after.
On the other hand, the nature of the deck also means that its a great complement to other decks if you are building a dual-sphere deck. For example, pairing Tactics with Spirit gives you the questing ability of Spirit together with the martial prowess of Tactics. Theoretically, this covers all your key bases while playing the game.
Leadership
Leadership is basically what it says on the tin - the ability of your heroes to lead and inspire others.
As you can expect, mechanically, there are a lot of cards which can be used to help other players. This can be in the form of defending for another player, attacking another players enemies or just helping other players with questing or resource generation.
That last point about resource generation is actually fairly critical. One of the decks key strengths is the ability to speed up resource generation (for either yourself or another player). Normally, each hero only gets 1 resource per round. With 3 heroes, this means that you often need to wait a round or two before you can use any of your high cost cards (which can cost 5 or 6 resources to play). As you can imagine, speeding up resource generation lets you put your more powerful cards into play quickly which can be critical. One of the missions in the core set in particular starts you off with a major threat and getting cards into play quickly to deal with that threat can be the difference between success or failure in that quest.
The last key ability of this deck is readying. There are various cards which let you ready your characters so that they can effectively act twice in each round. Normally, each character can only act once and that extra action - if used correctly - can make a huge difference by allowing you to continue clearing enemies from the board while still making quest progress or defending from attacks.
In the core set, this is actually one of the most powerful spheres. You would think that it would only really shine when playing with 2 players (given the number of cards which benefit other players) but in practice, even a mono-sphere Leadership deck did extremely well in the game.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is an LCG published by Fantasy Flight Games. And its a damn fine game!
I posted in the past about some of the problems I had with Magic. Despite my specific problems with Magic, one of things I liked was the feeling of building your own deck from a pool of cards and then testing that deck against other decks. This is part of the reason why I have been enjoying Hearthstone.
Lord of the Rings LCG is another great example of a game which gives me that deck construction feeling while avoiding the pitfalls that Magic has.
Land as mana
As with Hearthstone, Lord of the Rings LCG avoids the issue with having land as mana by giving you 1 resource for each Hero at the start of each round (you normally have 3 heroes although this can depend on how you build your deck). If one of those heroes dies, then you don't get resources for that hero.
Again, this removes a major source of irritation from the game while still forcing you to consider whether you will have enough resources to play the cards you want to play.
Living Card Game
The LCG format which FFG have adopted differs from CCGs like Magic in that there is no random distribution of cards. If you buy the main core boxed set, you know exactly what cards you will be getting. Similarly, each expansion of the game has the exact same cards in it.
This removes one of my biggest complaints about CCGs. I hate the idea of buying booster packs in the hope that you get a useful card.
Co-operative
And this is where we get to what makes this game fascinating for me. Unlike other CCGs, Lord of the Rings LCG is actually a co-operative game. You build your deck and then take it up against a pre-built encounter deck.
This is a brilliant idea and frankly, I'm surprised that this hasn't been done more often.
Each pre-built encounter designed by the developers can be designed to have a different challenge. This also forces you to build your deck differently for each challenge as an "uber deck" is unlikely to be structured in the right way to beat a particular challenge. At the same time, the game is open enough that you will have different ways to beat that challenge. And the LCG format of the game means that you have the cards and options that you need to defeat the game - its just a question of whether you can build the right deck (well, you also need to actually play the deck and win with it).
Overall, another great game which I have only just started to get into. The game was first published in 2011 so there are already a million expansions and adventure packs that I can choose from. All I need now is time...
I posted in the past about some of the problems I had with Magic. Despite my specific problems with Magic, one of things I liked was the feeling of building your own deck from a pool of cards and then testing that deck against other decks. This is part of the reason why I have been enjoying Hearthstone.
Lord of the Rings LCG is another great example of a game which gives me that deck construction feeling while avoiding the pitfalls that Magic has.
Land as mana
As with Hearthstone, Lord of the Rings LCG avoids the issue with having land as mana by giving you 1 resource for each Hero at the start of each round (you normally have 3 heroes although this can depend on how you build your deck). If one of those heroes dies, then you don't get resources for that hero.
Again, this removes a major source of irritation from the game while still forcing you to consider whether you will have enough resources to play the cards you want to play.
Living Card Game
The LCG format which FFG have adopted differs from CCGs like Magic in that there is no random distribution of cards. If you buy the main core boxed set, you know exactly what cards you will be getting. Similarly, each expansion of the game has the exact same cards in it.
This removes one of my biggest complaints about CCGs. I hate the idea of buying booster packs in the hope that you get a useful card.
Co-operative
And this is where we get to what makes this game fascinating for me. Unlike other CCGs, Lord of the Rings LCG is actually a co-operative game. You build your deck and then take it up against a pre-built encounter deck.
This is a brilliant idea and frankly, I'm surprised that this hasn't been done more often.
Each pre-built encounter designed by the developers can be designed to have a different challenge. This also forces you to build your deck differently for each challenge as an "uber deck" is unlikely to be structured in the right way to beat a particular challenge. At the same time, the game is open enough that you will have different ways to beat that challenge. And the LCG format of the game means that you have the cards and options that you need to defeat the game - its just a question of whether you can build the right deck (well, you also need to actually play the deck and win with it).
Overall, another great game which I have only just started to get into. The game was first published in 2011 so there are already a million expansions and adventure packs that I can choose from. All I need now is time...
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