Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

[TetNak]

As I understand it, the game is easier the more decks you use, as well.

[Vardaen]

It scales with more decks, you draw more foes each turn, generally the bad guys are based on X = the number of players in the game, so it isn't a run away, but I believe it does work out in your favor with more folks, 4 seems really a good number.

[TetNak]

I have only played a couple times. I've been playing the FFG's SWs LCG lately.

[Vardaen]

I found a nice free Threat Counter app for Droid, just searched Lord of the Rings Living Card Game. Also AEG has put out their first droid app as well, it is basically a mobile version of The Oracle, a DB of cards, a deck builder, and some other stat stuff, check that out. Unfortunately it costs 4 bucks and isn't free like The Oracle is.

[Vardaen]

So to continue the blogging of our games. Last night we had a 4 player game.

Me, JP, MV, and Eil.

We switched it up some last night.

Me - Lore/Spirit (The healing cancel deck that Bren normally was playing)
JP - Tactics (Eagles and Ranged Attacks)
Eil - Leadership (Aragorn, Sentinels and quest power)
MV - Lore (This was a new all dwarf librarians. It had a great trick where it could draw tons of cards, and then discard them for quest power and it worked!)

We played the third adventure from the core set last night.



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...

This adventure has 4 big things going on. First is right off the bat one hero is taken prisoner and is flipped over and can't be used. We drew Brand for this from the Tactic's deck, it hurt us, but it would prove non-fatal in the end. Actually I think it was an okay one to have picked since that deck was all Tactics so we didn't loose a unique resource producer.

Second is there is a Nazgul later on and you can't win unless he's dead.

Third there are 3 objective cards, Map, Key, and Torch that you have to have to get into the tower and out of the tower. Each one does something bad to the guy that has it (Can't attack/defend, damage every round, threat every round).

Fourth is the players, as a group, can only play one ally total each turn! THAT hurt, we had to ration who got to play an ally, and weight the bonuses of each one. I think I played 2 allies the whole game cause of that.

So we started out okay, everyone settling in, and then we had a hiccup right off the bat, we lost a Quest by like 7 points. That pushed us up to the point where we were attacked by lots of things. People were getting hurt, we were having a hard time questing, only managing a point or two here or there, and then Ungoliant's Spawn showed up and hit us for a bad threat again. We were in the high 30's low 40's really early.

BUT we managed to finally press on and find our prisoner. That brought us to the 2nd stage, and Brand returned to us, and so did the Nazgul, but a perfectly timed Ranger Spikes somehow held the Nazgul to the Staging Area at -2 Threat and we were able to let Bard shoot at it from far away!!! Yeah! Not having to engage it. We pushed through stage 2 fairly quickly. I had grabbed two of the three objectives and JP grabbed th third damaging Legolas every turn.

Then stage three. We had to have all three objectives, kill the Nazgul and get 7 quest points, but we could finally bring out unlimited allies. Orcs were going to attack us lots every turn, but we basically did a turn quest.

Here we had the winning card. MV had about 14 cards in his hand....

He dropped 20 quest on his own. Total we quested for 42 points against 20, so we over ran it with 22 points and only needed 4 at that point!



JP thought we had lost it in stage 1, but we managed a win. I did happen to loose Denethor along the way.

Everyone was in the mid to high 40s on threat, we lost Denethor, but had 15 victory points. About 9 turns or so: 188 points total. Not bad! Next time, we Hunt Gollum!

[Vardaen]

I totally forgot about this, but last week when we played we had three us waiting on JP to show so we pulled out the PoD GenCon adventure "Siege of Osgiliath" and were defeated in a matter of rounds. I think by round 4 we either were all at 50 threat or most of our heroes were dead. Maybe that's why I erased it from my memory.

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This Saturday we managed another game, this time Brennor, Eilandor and myself (and a house full of crazy kids!)

The three of us continued our Hobbit Saga adventure:
https://brennor.dyndns.org/rpg/Forums/v ... tml#241447

We were not using Hobbit themed decks however, but since the 'three' of us had won the first stage of the Hobbit we decided that was close enough and put in the three treasure cards: Glamdring, Orcist and Sting. This adventure is neat for it has 2 different encounter decks, the firs tone is all about climbing the High Pass, fighting Giants and avoiding boulders. The second is Goblin Town, fighting the Great Goblin and lots and lots of goblins.

We played:
Me - Spirit/Lore - Quest/Anti-Location Deck
Bren - Lore/Spirit - Cancel Encounter/Healing Deck
Eil - Tactical - Ranged/Eagle Deck

The first stage of the adventure is actually a rest and pit stop at Rivendel, where we just got to go fetch our 3 treasure cards and put them into play. Legolas had Orcist, Dunhere had Glamdring, and Bilbo of course had Sting.



Setup: Shuffle the Over the Misty Mountains Grim and Western Lands encounter sets into one encounter deck and make it the active encounter deck. Then, shuffle the The Great Goblin and Misty Mountain Goblins encounter sets into a second encounter deck and set it aside, inactive.

When Revealed: Each player may search his deck for 1 treasure card and add it to his hand, then shuffle his deck. Advance to stage 2A.

After a refreshing stay in the House of Elrond, Bilbo and his companions resumed their quest for the Lonely Mountain. But to reach Erebor, they first had to climb the high pass over the Misty Mountains. We dove right into it, questing quickly as there were two Stone Giants out we had to fight, luckily between Bard's Greay Yew bow and Dunhere's base ability we were able to attack the Giants before they engaged us, and we killed one off in a few rounds. The deck mostly was Bouncing Boulders, Birds, and Giants so we did alright. It did seem to take us a while to get up to speed but we managed alright killing a few giants, and avoiding being killed too quickly. I think we did about 4 turns however until we did a quest push and finished the stage.



That flipped the decks, and all the giants went away and out came the Great Goblin and his minions. NOW we were in trouble. Needing 20 quest, and having 4ish goblins attack us a turn was brutal. The locations in the deck stopped us from attacking unless we spent resources from Bilbo so it was difficult to take out the rampaging hordes of goblins, but we managed. We managed meaning Denethor died, then Dunhere and Glamdring died, then Brand died. We were all down to 2 heros each, the Great Goblin was dead, and we had finally made a dent in the quest, but the goblins only get more vicious when you kill the Great Goblin off -- revenge!



Our threat was up in the 40s, and Brennor lost Elenor, but played a Gandalf to bring him back down. Eil had a nice Eagle army that was helping and we were able to kill goblins off pretty good, even using Sting to stab one right in the belly. Our locations were being handled so things were looking possible, then tragedy struck and Brennor lost Elrond! That was his last hero... no wait! He had Bilbo too, and luckily Bilbo was a Hero and so Elrond's death didn't end the game for us by removing Bilbo from the game too. Bilbo passed to me, and Brennor was out, completely, but we pressed on. We all out Quested once more, managed to push through the caves, and BLAMO we won!

I'm not really sure how we survived. It was about 10 rounds total, 188 Threat I think was the number (with 3 people that's really high) all of us were in the mid 40s, but we did it!

Next time our trio takes on Golem and the Riddle contest, and are out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire.

[Vardaen]

Note: I split this topic since all we talk about on here is LotR LCG, might as well isolate it.

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We played another set of games last night, 4 games in fact.

Having finally completed all of the base set adventures will everyone we moved on to new things. It was myself, Eilandor, MadVlat (for 2 games) and Brennor (for 2 games).

The decks we have built are starting to becomes 'our' decks and we don't have much need to mix up who uses what when there are only 4 of us.

Game 1:

Me - Rohan/Spirit & Lore
Eil - Ranged/Tatics
MV - Dwarves/Lore

We haven't really played us three so this was an interesting combo. We started off on the Adventure Path of the Dwarrowdelf arc, The Redhorn Gate.



"Tonight we shall be on our way high up toward the Redhorn Gate. We may well be seen by watchers on that narrow path, and waylaid by some evil."
–Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

When some of Middle-earth's greatest heroes volunteer to escort Arwen to Rivendell, their voyage through The Redhorn Gate becomes the start of an epic new journey that will take them through bone-chilling snowstorms and hordes of enemies, into the twists and turns of the entire Dwarrowdelf cycle.

In this one you get Arwen as an ally card that moves between player 1 as turns cycle. This adventure is all about the mountains, and you have to travel through them collecting victory points along the way before you can actually finish. If Arwen dies, the game is over. We started off alright, facing wargs and orcs along the way. Early on we found the Dimril Stair which dropped our threat by 11 !!! This was cool.



Unfortunately part of the final stage was when someone's Quest drops to 0, they die. That happened to alot of people because of the card Snowstorm. We were not far from victory when a real blizzard hit, two Snowstorms in one round, killing everyone with a base Quest of 2... including Arwen! That was that, game over. We lost.




Just then Bren arrived....

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Game 2

Me - Rohan/Spirit & Lore
Eil - Ranged/Tatics
MV - Dwarves/Lore
Bren - Control/Lore & Spirit

So with Bren we decided to continue The Hobbit Saga we started. We've been trying to play things in order or atleast with the same people in order. But ths Hobbit one we've had a hard time do this, and just want to play it out. Me and Bren have been in each of them, Eil has played all of them, but we had to sub in Amaris for him to win the first scenario. This time we added the dwarves/MadVlat to one of the adventures.

So Hobbit Saga: Over Hill and Under Hill, Adventure #3: Dungeons Deep and Caverns Dim
Having defeated the Great Goblin, the dwarves race down the side of the mountain to fight the Wargs while Biblo is stuck in the caves having a riddle contest with Gollem.

After killing the Great Goblin, Bilbo's companions fought to win their escape from the goblins. By the time they realized that Bilbo had been lost in the darkness, it was too late to turn back and search for him.

During the confusion, bilbo stumbled won a tunnel and into Gollum's cave. There the Hobbit had to outwit the creature Gollum in a dangerous riddle contest to discover the way out.

This was a really fun one, and an interesting set up. We had 2 staging areas going on at once. One was the dwarves fighting wargs and goblins, the other was Bilbo Riddling with Gollem. Some event cards had riddles on them, and you could do a riddle to help bilbo escape. You named a type, sphere, or cost, and then had to discard cards to try and match that all based on the riddle card itself. Fail 3 times and Gollem kills Bilbo. Towards the end we had 2 sure easy riddles, and we were able to use the One Ring for auto points and that let us save Bilbo and escape, at the same time the Dwarves had been fighting and were doing well.

The group, reunited had a hard fight/quest but since we had Bilbo back the danger of loosing was much less. Gollem ended up attacking, and Legolas and Bard killed him off. Unfortunately he was worth 0 Victory points which seemed weird. We won and escaped safely to the next quest. That ended the box set of the first Hobbit Saga! Wooo.



Victory (4 Players) 141 Points, 4 Turns

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Then MadVlat had to leave, so it was back to three of us, and we continued with the next Hobbit Saga: On the Doorstep. The first adventure in this one takes us into Mirkwood against the spiders there. We now have four treasure cards as well, Orcist, Glamdring, Sting and Bilbo's Magic Ring! Loading up the decks Bren draws both Sting and the Ring so he keeps them and turn one drops them on Bilbo making him darn impressive.

We one turned the opening stage, which was plain and simple, we marched through and smashed right on to stage two... oops! That was fast. Stage 2 is actually another interesting set up, player one (Eil at the time) gets separated. All his heroes go unconsciouce and can't do anything except Bilbo. We then are playing to different games. Bren and I are stuck fighting spider after spider (and our decks aren't great righting decks) and Eil ends up having to quest for 11 to find us once again, (his deck isn't a great questing deck). Basically it was reversed for optimal play for us.

The spiders poison you and if you get enough poison you are KOed and can't use the guy, that happend to us a bunch but we held on as Bilbo worked to wake up the other heroes in his group and quest quest quest. Thanks to Sting and the Ring Bilbo was able to do this much simpler than without those times.
Bren and I held our own in limbo waiting for Bilbo's rescue. He broke through and we joined together. Eil had 45ish threat at that point cause of the Ring, but it only took us 2 turns, once rejoined to escape the spiders only to be caught by the elves of Thanduil!

Another victory for us!

Threat: 115, Turn 9 (that one took a while but was actually pretty fast game play)

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Game 4 (We should have stopped at 3!)

Bren, Eil and I press on into the second of the On the Door Step Hobbit adventures. Now in Lake Town we venture through the Desolation of Smaug to Erebor and attempt to burgle Smaug's treasure and defeat the Mighty Dragon. Yeah... didn't happen.

Bad starts, a poor understanding of the mechanics of the adventure, the fact that it was just damn hard, and it being midnightish at this point making us all tired means we got our asses kicked.

Another fun mechanic, you can attempt to burgle a set of treasures from Erebor and you try not to wake Smaug the Golden who is sleeping. Unfortunately we didn't do so good, we grabbed the Mithril Coat easily enough. Then Smaug breathed fire on me killing my hero Dunhere in 1 blast. We press on trying to burgle more, but we start failing our quests, and Smaug belches fire a second time, it targets me again, down goes Glorfindel. I have 1 hero left now. We fail a few more Burgle tries and say screw it lets move on (cause its an option after 1 success). Smaug flies out and we start fighting him for real, he won't engage you normally but you can still attack him. The goal is to attack him while questing, when you have more quest than he has health you win! But he's bad ass, and we fail to quest at one point +14 threat to everyone. We all loose due to Threat going over 50! Smaug lays waste to us. Oh well, we'll have to try again.



So we book ended things, two losses on the outside, two wins on the inside. All in all a fun session and we made some headway in the quests.

[Vardaen]

The neat thing about this game is you can play it solo. So over the weekend I did just that. I put together an Outlands deck. All sorts of Allies from the outlands of Gondor, Dol Amroth, Lamedon, etc...

It is a Leader Ship (1), Lore (2) decks. Hirluin the Fair, Elrond and Eleanor. Starting threat 31, which is high, and one game I swapped Eleanor out for someone else just to lower the threat.



I started at the beginning, Core set adventure 1 Passage through Mirkwood. It took five turns and an ending threat of 36, so a total of 36 points and it was over. I felt like I crushed it. Had a dozen allies out, and was drawing lots of cards easily.

So I shuffled and tried a second time. It was a much different story. I managed a win, but with 49 threat on the combat phase of turn 8, a total point of 66 and a dead Eleanor and very wounded others.. The interesting thing about this deck is how it builds, each outland ally makes everyone bigger, but if you get the wrong ones out first, its hard to do things with. There are also allies of every sphere in here because Hirulin and Elrond both can pay for any sphere.

So having won the Core 1 twice I moved on to Core 2 Down the Anduin. I tried this one like 3 or 4 times, even switched the deck around, traded out hero, but the damn Hill Troll at the start, just made it so I never even reached Phase 2 of the quest. I 50 threated out just too many times. Then I gave up.

[Vardaen]

Tuesday again this coming week guys? Something else for dinner, Spedies and a salad? Getting sick of pizza.

Same time.

[Vardaen]

Well we had a few games last night. It was Eilandor and I at first since MV decided to go to Kansas City for SOME REASON.

So we tried a 2 player game, The Shadows of Mirkwood: (1) the Hunt for Gollum. This adventure you are trying to collect Clues of Gollum's whereabouts, while you travel about in the Anduin Vale near Mirkwood. The combat was light, but the locations were heavy plus some trecherys.



We played out Tactics/Eagle/Ranged and our Spirit/Lore/No You Can't Do That To Me decks. Probably a different deck other than tactics would have been good. We did alright at first, it wasn't too fast going but we were hunting and searching alot through the deck looking for clues, then we moved on to stage two, we did more clue searching but it started to get harder, and then something got away from us. The Old Ford card was a threat 8, and we just could not get over it, bottle necked at the ford Eil ended up hitting 50 threat! We managed to see 4 clue cards, but not actually collect any. I think it will be easier with a different more location/quest oriented deck like our Eowyn one.

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After the kids tore the house up Eil took his two home, and Bren came over with his two. We finally got to a second game around 10pm.

We continued our Hobbit Saga: On the Door Step, The Lonely Mountain. This was our second pass at this one.

Bren: Spirit/Lore - Quest/Anti Location
Eil: - Lore/Spirit - Cancel Deck
Me: Tactic - Ranged/Eagles

In this one you attempt to sneak into The Lonely Mountain without waking Smaug and burgle some dwarf treasure. We burgled 3 items before choosing to move on to the next stage instead of waking Smaug. We collected:



Then we woke the bad guy up! I can't find an image of him, but he's 6 Threat, 8 Attack, 8 Shield, and 20 Hit Points. indestructible , Immune to Player Card Effects, and if dealt a burgle effect as a shadow card he attacks again! We so had this, he woke up atttacked me. I played Feint, which looking back was illegal, but after sorting out the card and other stuff, didn't matter. We then shot him down in one round. We had managed to attack A Bare Patch to him, droping his armor to 5, then Bard the Bowman, WITH the Black Arrow, Thor's Battleaxe, Aid of the Eagles, and Great Yew bow lead the attack. (Legolas, Brand, and Dunhere w/ Thror's Hunting Bow), plus a buffed Eagle attacked back. We brought him to -1 HP.

According the quest when Smaug has less HP than Progress on the quest (1) he is removed from the game!

"I have saved you to the last..." Bard

After that it was a simple matter of just exploring the Lonely Mountain and questing against nothing big. We finished that off in a few turns easy. We took a total of 1 or 2 wounds the whole game.

NEXT, either the PoD Battle of Lake Town, or The Battle of Five Armies

Victory: 103 Threat, 9 Rounds