27 replies to this topic

[RobbyStark]

what do you think about the difficulty of the quests? me and my friend duo'ed massing at osgiliath and we were disapointed that it was too easy. what quests should we play now?

[Tragic]

depends on what pool you are using. The quest get a lot easier as the expansions go on and on. Massing was very hard but beatable back before Khaz.. it is now a nearly at a 80-90% win ratio.. this is the ay of things.. and why the "nightmare" mode is out in the first place.

[Tiandes]

The difficulty scaling relaly depend of your style of play. As a solo player it can gets pretty hard.

For example, The Heirs of Numenor quests are pretty tough for a general solo deck!

You really need to make some adjustments cause going from questing to battling or sieging is brutal when you don't see it coming!

I ran a secrecy outland deck up unitl Watcher in the Water where those Tentacles hit me hard, I needed to change, going from 2 heroes to 3.

[RobbyStark]

and why the "nightmare" mode is out in the first place.

is there a way to get nightmare quests on octgn? what are the hardest custom quests available?

[Booored]

in general if people say LoTR is to easy they are playing the rules wrong. The nightmare decks will show up in octgn and lackey when they do. If you playing in octgn then u should record it so we can tell u what ur doing wrong.

[RobbyStark]

in general if people say LoTR is to easy they are playing the rules wrong.

I dont know the guy above you said that massing at osgiliath has a 80% win ratio, and that's supposed to be the hardest quest, right?

also how do I record a game?

[Booored]

no it is not even close to the hardest. Use like camtasia or somthing

[RobbyStark]

no it is not even close to the hardest.

ahhh noo you dodged the question! which one is the hardest then?

[Jhaelen]

I dont know the guy above you said that massing at osgiliath has a 80% win ratio, and that's supposed to be the hardest quest, right?

It _may_ have been the hardest back when it was released at GenCon.
Scenarios that are more difficult include the Battle of Laketown, Shadow & Flame and all of the scenarios in the Numenor box.
Personally, I feel the Ithilien quest of the Numenor box to be the most difficult. It all depends on your deck, though.

[Booored]

he meant that YOU win 80% of the time.. not that the encounter deck wins 80% of the time.

[Tiandes]

in general if people say LoTR is to easy they are playing the rules wrong.

I kind of agree with you, but not on the fact that LOTR is too easy but on the fact that a lot of people posting their decks seems to all pretend they found "THE DECK" that can beat it all easily.

I'm kind of doubtful on that, either they play wrong or they are very lucky. Just take Tracker1's "Outstanding Outlands" deck on FantasyFlight forum, he runs Beravor and still draw 2 cards with it whle it has neen reduce to 1 with the FAQ.

Just taking HoN quests, you can't easily beat all three scenario with the same deck, you need to make some adjustments. Going from Battle keyword to Siege keyword is brutal.

Plus, almost all cards have shadow effects, meaning you must run a lot of cheap allies to block the attacks or you can't survive long that cut off a lot of metadeck archetypes.

Sure, you can customize a deck for each quests, but then that just means LOTR is challenging enough that you need to adjust your style of play to match the difficulty of the game. That is not the game being easy, it's just you being clever.

As for the "ONE DECK" it is still to be seen in my own opinion.

[Booored]

Yes, the vast majority of people play the game incorrectly... .. .

Just take Tracker1's "Outstanding Outlands" deck on FantasyFlight forum, he runs Beravor and still draw 2 cards with it whle it has neen reduce to 1 with the FAQ.

FAQ 1.4 - Page: 2

Beravor

Should read: “Action: Exhaust Beravor to choose
a player. That player draws 2 cards. Limit once per
round.”

The errata was ONCE PER TURN not 1 card a turn.

[Tiandes]

oh...

wow, well I'll start running Beravor again then... thanks!

[Jhaelen]

I'm kind of doubtful on that, either they play wrong or they are very lucky. Just take Tracker1's "Outstanding Outlands" deck on FantasyFlight forum, he runs Beravor and still draw 2 cards with it whle it has neen reduce to 1 with the FAQ.

Is that the same guy from the videos on YouTube playing an Outlands deck against the Battle of Laketown scenario?
If so, he also got some of the scenario rules wrong, although, admittedly, his mistake made it more difficult than it actually is.

I have to admit I'm a bit annoyed by the (too) hard, recent senarios. First, I have the impression they started to tune them to work best with one player while in the past they worked better with two players. I cannot see how anyone might ever hope to win against some scenarios with four players.
Second, I also feel you are pretty much forced to adjust your decks to have a chance against a new scenario. In my case this has lead to me spending more time with deck-building than playing the actual scenarios, and frankly that's not my idea of fun.
I'd much rather try different approaches against a scenario with a couple of staple decks, that rarely change, knowing that all of them have a chance to win, even if some are better against a particular scenario than others.

[Tracker1]

This is a complicated game, and it's easy to make mistakes. I find that many of the mistakes i'm making actually make the game harder than it is since if im unsure of something i always lean towards the more negative outcome. I correct these errors by trying to keep up to date wtih different threads etc.

For the few videos i made i watched each of them afterward and posted any mistakes i observed while i was playing, and was happy to get feedback if i made more. I even had to remake a whole video becausei spotted one error.

It's really hard to say if this game is hard or easy, becaues so much of it comes down to the deck you are using. All the scenarios could be hard if your using the wrong deck. If you tailior a deck for each scenario many of the quests become easy.

Not including the nightmare packs, I think the most difficult scenario in the game is Into Ithillien right now, even for a deck tailored specifficaly for it, it is still a real challenge, it never really feels easy to win. Dol guldur will probably always be on this list.

After playing that oulands deck i made, i went back and beat all the quests pretty easily (except dol guldur). I got bored with that, so i make new deck that is very good, beats many quests but not all, interestingly it did beat Dol Guldur once. this new deck makes game real challenge and fun again. I'll post deck later today.

I would not say that all people who say the game is easy have the rules wrong. This may be true for some people just starting out, but after the basic rules are mastered the people who say the game is easy may just put more time into good deck building strategies, which further demonstrates the importance of this site.

[Tiandes]

@Tracker1

I wasn'T aiming at you specifically, it'S just that I'm running an outland deck that is similar to yours (I run Elrond instead of Beravor, meaning I have access to Vilya and Unexpected courage, pretty much the only difference with the inclusion of 3 Imladris instead of Envoy).

It's just that after cruisng pretty much all the quest, even Into Ithilien, I didn't have an easy time the first couples of tries with Siege of Cair Andros. 1 realy bad hand draw even with mulligan and the other a really bad encounter draw early on (the one making you chose 1 sphere and dealing 3 damages to all other characters from the spheres, this one is brutal in an outland deck!).

But last night I manage it pretty easily with a very good score under 70.

By the way good job with all your posts and videos. At least you are explaining your style of play when posting a deck.

As for playing wrong, I don'T know, I'm still skeptical cause for 1 guy like you there's 10 guys posting decks without explanation and claiming they cruise easily trough all the quests while after a quick look at their decks you can find numerous flaws for specific quest.

[RobbyStark]

I have to admit I'm a bit annoyed by the (too) hard, recent senarios.

I think it's more interesting when it's really hard than when you can beat everything consistantly with the same deck. it's good that they have the quests ranging from very easy to ''so hard people are complaining about it''

ithilien kicked me and my friends butts, gonna try again until we make it or until our friendship falls apart.

[Tiandes]

Just out of curiousity, what do you find particularly difficult with Ithilien?

The starting setup with Ithilien Road as an active location enabling all ennemies to engage you if you can't explore it?

For me, it's the reason I found Siege of Cair hard, the starting threat of 6 in the staging area and the fact that you want to quest each locations in the order so they don't get "killed", meaning you travel to the 1 threat location leaving 5 threats in the staging. Plus, if you don't quest enough that big ugly guy (even the weakest one attack for 3 meaning you kill the first location if you go undefended) you just revealed, that usually wouldn't bother you for at least 2 turns, might engage you right away cause it's not rare to have a jump of 3-4 to your threat total after the 1st quest phase.

[RobbyStark]

Just out of curiousity, what do you find particularly difficult with Ithilien?

I can't say right away we only tried it once.

[Tracker1]

I find Ithilien tough. The ithillen road is,a hurdle to overcome early, but, blocking wargs errataed is still pretty bad, i think its shadow is even worse. If you defend with a 1 hp ally, and you get blocking wargs then you get an undefended attack. The hadrim elite forced attack from staging area and shadow for an additional attack is pretty bad. The spider with low engagment cost can be a problem and even the bat will do two damage two questing hero and remove the hero from the quest. Not to mention Mumak showing up early on. The encounter deck can hit hard and fast. Yes, all this can be overcome, but I've never found it easy. Its even harder in multi player. The worst card is southern support. In a 4 player game if you get this card and cant cancel it it will add 4 hadrad enemies to the staging in addition to normal staging. Its pretty much game over at that point.

Another one that scales really bad with the number of players is Druadan Forest. My group of four never made it past the 2 nd round on a number of attempts, but solo i've only lost a a few times on numerous games and deck builds.

Siege of Cair Andros i've never had an issue with, as long as im playing the right deck for it.