I’m keeping this brief.
There should have been at least two posts about my stay with Nathan and our LoTR campaign play.
But at the moment I’m in extreme pain with my right arm. A pain that inflicted me for the last two days of my stay with Nathan and still does.
I think it might be a trapped nerve.
What it means is that I can barely move my right arm at the moment without some pain.
As soon as it improves I’ll be back to a normal service.
I know the LoTR lcg has been out for a few years. Plus the revised core set that I have has also been out for a couple years too. But still I feel that for this play through of the revised core set campaign (mine and Nathan’s first time playing it) I should give the old SPOILER ALERT! warning.
If you intend to play through the campaign included in the core revised set and prefer not to have anything spoiled then avoid this post and join me in another post.
Just remember that was a SPOILER ALERT! You have been warned and if you continue reading this post (which I hope you do) and it ruins your enjoyment of the campaign then it is on you.
Ok let’s get on with the post.
As hinted in my long winded ramblings justifying giving a spoiler alert above this is the first time Nathan and I have played through the campaign mode that comes with the core revised set. It’s also the first time Nathan has played the LoTR lcg, and my third time of playing the opening quest of the campaign Passage Through Mirkwood.
Passage Through Mirkwood is the recommended introductory scenario for new players. Which considering my other two plays of the game were introducing new players to the game (including myself) it made sense to go with the official recommendation each time.
However this third time was different not only because we were playing it in campaign mode, but because of the decks used.
“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…” Flies and Spiders, card 119
For this campaign we are using the Leadership & Spirit deck, and the Lore & Tactics deck from the Learning to Play Guide of the core set.
I’m playing the Leadership & Spirit deck, that has the following heroes: Aragorn, Théodred, and Éowyn. Which means Nathan is playing the Lore & Tactics deck with Legolas, Beravor, and Denethor as it’s heroes.
According to the Learning to Play Guide the Leadership & Spirit “deck excels at putting allies into play and contributing lots of willpower to the quest.” Whilst the Lore & Tactics deck is a “deck should be used to provide additional card draw and handle most of the combat.”
Hopefully we can remember our decks strengths as we play the scenarios in the campaign.
At least using these decks I don’t have to perform any mental gymnastics to explain Galadriel being in the party of heroes battling through Mirkwood.
“King Thranduil has assigned a guide, Mendor, to assist you in your passage through Mirkwood Forest.” Mirkwood Paths – Part 1, card 129
If Mendor gets defeated, aka killed we lose the scenario. Just a little extra pressure to start with.
“The nastiest things they saw were the cobwebs; dark dense cobwebs, with threads extradionairly thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them. There were none stretched across the path, but whether because some magic kept it clear, or for what other reasons they could not guess. – The Hobbit” Flies and Spiders, card 119
Our parties made their way south through Mirkwood following forest paths dispatching the odd forest spider as they dropped from the trees.
Such an early attack of opportunity from a spider managed to do serious damage to Aragorn after I had leant heavily into the decks main questing focus and had no one to defend with.
We were or I should say that team Legolas were already engaged with Ungoliant’s Spawn when we had to choose which path to follow.
To give me a bit of variety from my previous two plays of this scenario we went with the other card that I hadn’t played before, 3B Beorn’s Path.
We had to defeat Ungoliant’s Spawn before we could complete the quest itself. Which was slightly different from the other path.
If we had gone the other way we would have won a round quicker but I wanted to keep things fresh for me. So we quickly finished off the wounded Ungoliant’s Spawn. Freeing up my team of heroes to throw everything into completing the main quest. Luckily some ally powers allowed this to happen.
“The forest is dangerous, but that was beyond what one might expect to find.” Mendor seems shaken. “I fear something is not right in the land. I shall continue to travel with you.” Mirkwood Paths – Part 1, card 129
Our reward for successful competing this first scenario was to add a copy of the boon Mendor’s Support to our decks. Plus Ungoliant’s Swarm to the encounter deck.
Nathan liked his first play of the game. Although he thought this introductory scenario was on the easy side. To which I countered it was aimed at introducing players to the game. So it was never going to be really challenging.
I actually liked the core set recommended deck. It was fun to play with. And played well to it’s strengths. Nathan didn’t seem to have any problems piloting his deck. So that to me says that these are great decks for new players.
Getting pretty excited that I’m spending a few days with Nathan this week.
Which means I need to decide which games I’m going to take with me for the visit.
So this morning I went through the collection via the bgstat app and tagged the games I’m planning to take with me.
Except for the two roll and writes I know Nath will enjoy the theme at least of the remaining games.
Obviously he’s played War of the Ring, and Marvel Champions before and enjoyed playing them.
But I think he’s going to like the remaining games to.
Friday was once again a Fenland Gamers club night.
I got a chance to play Outlive with its expansion for the first time in about five long years.
When I last played Outlive in 2018 the expansion was a mere twinkle in the games designers eyes.
Marcin got me picking the expansion up for him at UKGE this year for him. So I most definitely hadn’t played the game with the expansion.
I was keen to play the game again.
It was great playing this post apocalyptic worker placement game after such a long time.
I came last, so not even first loser. But I did some cool stuff. I had fun.
After a morning taking Mum to get her new glasses adjusted, and installing a new Wi-Fi router (could have done without that small expense) I picked up a handy game or two to play with Dave as I left the house to meet him.
Which is why we ended up continuing the trend started by Outlive the evening before by playing Eminent Domain.
Eminent Domain is another game that last got played in 2018.
I do like Eminent Domain. But this deckbuilder does not get nearly as much play as it deserves, as the gap between plays proves.
We did waste a bit of time setting up. Working out what cards were what. And for me refreshing my failing memory with the rules, as Dave playing the game for the first time learnt them. But that’s the drawback of picking up a game that I hadn’t played in a long long time.
After narrowly losing to Dave I introduced him to the roll and write genre with Trek 12: Himalaya.
This is a fun introductory roll and write I think with just enough challenge to keep more experienced players engaged.
I did managed to summit our first mountain, narrowly failed the second mountain by 2 points, and was not close on the third and final mountain.
With me getting points for the first two mountains, and Dave claiming points for the third. We ended the expedition a draw.
However I had other reasons for introducing Dave to roll and writes. The next ones I want to play with him are Three Sisters and Motor City. Yep we will be going from the safe paddling pool where Dave has just dipped his toes in the water to dropping him in the deep end!
Splish, splash!
I spent a very enjoyable few hours today round Jeff’s playing LoTR themed games punctuated with a delicious bowl of chicken and mushroom curry.
We started our gaming with War of the Ring the card game.
Jeff played the free peoples of Middle Earth. Whilst for a change for me from the last couple of plays I’ve had I was the minions of Sauron.
Mordor won in the end by a narrow couple of points.
Jeff was a little unsure of the game and thought he needed a few more plays to decide. But he thought it had potential.
Our second game after a break for lunch (the chicken and mushroom curry washed down with coffee) was LoTR the living card game revised core.
We played the introductory scenario seeing as it was Jeff’s first time with the game.
Luckily Jeff had done some homework and had watched a couple of YouTube how to play videos. So no teaching required.
Jeff chose the starter decks for our play and went elves, leaving me dwarves.
I’ve already written about this introductory scenario so I’m not going to repeat myself here.
Suffice to say the combined might of the dwarves and elves won.
Unsurprisingly Jeff really liked LoTR LCG. I had a strong suspicion he might. After all Jeff loves Arkham Horror LCG and they are similar mechanically.
Which reminds me the previous evening John and I met up and played Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
John played Obi Wan, whilst I went with Ashoka against Ventress. We played at the padawan difficulty (3 missions).
Even though the game was brutal against us and beat us (we needed another two turns minimum to win) Jonathan enjoyed this implementation of the pandemic engine.
I have had two gaming sessions with two of my oldest and closest gaming friends. Who these days I don’t get to game with as often as I’d like. So to get to spend quality time with them sharing great games was a Summer highlight.
You’re sure of a big surprise.
“The nastiest things they saw were the cobwebs: dark dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them. There were none stretched across the path, but whether because some magic kept it clear, or for what other reason they could not guess.” The Hobbit
Well maybe the spiders weren’t that big a surprise. Given the abundance of cobwebs. However the other monsters we came across were.
It had seemed such a simple task that we’d been asked to do.
“You are traveling through Mirkwood forest, carrying an urgent message from King Thanduil to the Lady Galadriel of Lorien…” Passage Through Mirkwood scenario LoTR LCG
Our party delivering this urgent message would have been an unusual sight, nay even a surprise to anyone coming across them on the road.
It’s not often you see dwarves and elves traveling together. Old animosities put aside for this most urgent of tasks.
Yes Dave (elves0 and myself (dwarves) were playing the two starter decks that I bought alongside the revised edition of the core set.
As this was a learning game we were only doing the recommended introductory scenario Passage Through Mirkwood.
Considering that the elves starter deck has Galadriel as one of its heroes I’m not sure what mental gymnastics to perform that explains her presence.
But blanking out this anomaly worked for me.
As our party of odd comrades made their way through Mirkwood by following the Old Forest Path, passing through the odd Forest Gate, and ascending the mountains of Mirkwood. We encountered the odd spider and party of orcs. But these were easily dispatched.
I don’t know if the encounter deck was being kind to us. But until the last quest card it did seem quite easy. We had single appearances of creatures. Which we fought successfully. At one point there were two scary looking threats in the staging area. But we were able to put facing them off as we had not amassed enough threat for them to engage us.
We’re these starter decks too powerful for this introductory scenario?
Our final hurdle was to find and defeat Ungoliant’s Spawn.
Luckily we found Ungoliant’s Spawn very quickly.
That when revealed ability of Don’t Leave The Path was a great aid in doing so.
However it was joined by forest Spiders and a King Spider.
Things had suddenly got much tougher.
But luck was on our side Gandalf final appeared and did some damage to Ungoliant’s Spawn. Our dwarven and elven allies were falling like flies as we battled to take out these spiders.
But eventually axe and bow managed to dispatch the eight legged freaks attacking them.
I really enjoyed Lord of the Rings LCG. It struck me as a less complicated Marvel Champions. But just as fun.
Resources are a big thing in this game and often you find you don’t have enough to play the cards you want to.
I think 2 players is a nice number to play this type of co-op lcg with. We know I’m not a solo player.
It was quick to pick up the flow of the game. Which I liked.
Obviously I love the theme of the game. And I’ve discussed my history with Tolkien and Middle Earth in a previous post or two.
Dave also enjoyed it. And after a discussion and showing Dave the campaign rules he’s happy to start a campaign. But he had one proviso. That we play on the expert setting where the hero health carries over between games and does not reset. I’m up for that.
So after I have exposed Dave to Marvel Champions we will start the core set campaign.
Yesterday DHL delivered the Lord of the Rings the Card Game Revised Edition (that’s a bit of a mouthful so let’s shorten it to LoTR the card game) along with the two starter decks and scenario pack for it. Plus the final scenario pack I was missing for Marvel Champions and two more hero packs.
So how did I decide what I was going to order for LoTR the card game for my initial dive into it?
Unlike the majority of content creators that are really into these games my advice will differ. Where as they usually go with how they rate each expansion, and recommend based on that and/or difficulty. My decision process is slightly different.
Let’s face it LoTR the card game has been around for a long time now. There are a lot of expansions for it.
Luckily FFG simplified things for new players or those wanting to get into the game a couple of years back when they updated the core set with a revised edition. Plus they announced their plans going forward for the game.
A lot of the expansion packs were hard to get (mainly as they were out of print), miss one in a series for whatever reason and that buggers up that series.
So in this iteration of LoTR the card game they were going to gather the expansions that make up a series into two boxes. One with just the hero decks, and the other just the campaign cards. Players could then just buy the part they were interested in.
But even with the reprints and new way of getting them you still have to decide what to buy.
Obviously a big impact on the decisions I made were decided by budget. In an ideal world where money is no problem you’d just buy everything there is. But we don’t live in that world sadly. And last time I looked at my bank account I hadn’t had a big lottery win either.
So I was trying to maximise my bang per buck that fitted within my budget.
The first thing you have to buy obviously is the revised core set.
I went with the mini expansion The Dark of Mirkwood. Which apparently follows on from the campaign in the core set. This mini expansion is the two adventures The Oath and The Caves of Nibindûm from the deluxe box set that FFG did. This is the first time they have been available since the out of print deluxe box came out.
This seemed a natural choice to make because it did follow on from the campaign I would initially be playing in the core set.
After that my budget dictated that the saga and campaign box sets were not an option. However looking at the starter decks also available I could possibly get all four. But in reality I could only justify two. But which two? I went with theme as the decider. I like dwarves and elves. So those are the two I went with. The remaining two I can pick up in the future sometime.
And theme is something I’ll becoming back to. As that’s an important factor in deciding my purchases with LoTR the card game and also Marvel Champions.
Being a fan of the books/movies/radio play my next purchase for the game to play with Nathan (assuming he enjoys his experience of it next week when he tries it) will be the start of the sagas that cover them, The Fellowship of the Ring. But I’ll get that just before my next visit to him.
In the meantime I’m hoping I can get a regular session set up with interested friends at Fenland Gamers both for LoTR and Marvel Champions. For that I’m going to go down the campaign path starting with Angmar Awakened once we have done the core set campaign and The Dark of Mirkwood. Budget at the time will decide if I get both the campaign and hero boxes. However the priority will be the campaign first followed by the hero box when budget allows.
For me this approach ticks all the boxes. With Nathan I get to experience the source material events that we both love. Then with my friends I get to explore more of the lore and Middle Earth with the campaigns.
But that’s the crux of the decision you have to make after the core set. Do I want to follow the books or explore more of the lore/Middle Earth?
When it comes to Marvel Champions and what to purchase after you get a core set my decisions are a bit easier.
Although my initial buy in to the game was purchasing my friend Gavin’s collection. Which was the core game, two or three of the campaigns, a few heroes, and a couple of the scenario packs.
My decisions are based on theme. Who do I want to play or go up against?
So when it came to filling the gaps in the collection I’ve bought based on my personal preferences. If I’ve been a big fan of a particular hero then obviously they are top of the list. With heroes I’m not fussed about dropping to the back of the queue. Or if I know a particular hero I don’t have is a favourite of Nathan’s then they also get priority.
How many gaps I fill at a time are just like LoTR determined by budget. I think at the moment I have six heroes from the current hero waves that I don’t have. However shopping around does allow that budget go a little further.
Eventually I’ll have everything.
But I want to be able with Champions to grab one of my favourite heroes, choose a villain I like and have them go head to head against each other.
My thematic root allows me to do that. Whether it’s a good match up or not is almost secondary. Which seems at odds with the advice all the more experienced content creators who live and breathe these games go with.
It’s like when they do their videos on which FFG lcg to buy. There is only one way to choose and that’s which theme do you like the most. No point buying one of the others, even if the game may be mechanically slightly better, if you don’t like the theme.
Now all I have to do is decide how my limited budget for this area of gaming gets split between these two lcgs in future.
There was no gaming over the weekend after Friday.
Which was probably a good thing really.
Although I really enjoyed my gaming session Friday. I think I needed it after Thursdays memorial for Nan. A weekend of gaming might have been too much.
Saturday I had to help a relative move Nans sideboard and bureau into their van when they eventually came to pick the items up. Which basically took the day out anyway as I waited for them to turn up. Boy does Nans living room look empty now without them there. However it does mean mum can move round the downstairs easier.
With stuff leaving like some of the furniture, pictures off the wall, the house is starting to feel less and less like Nans home. Is that a good thing? Maybe. It means mum can start to make the place feel more like a home for her.
Yesterday I did finish organising the final bits for Marvel Champions that I own. However I do need a better storage solution that will allow me to transport the game easier. Obviously I take it with me when I visit Nathan. But I am in the process of trying to organise a regular game or two of not just Marvel Champions but Lord of the Rings LCG. So that I can play some of the campaigns both the games have. But to do that I need a better storage solution for Marvel Champions.
There are plans afoot for some gaming this week with Jonathan midweek. Followed by some gaming with Jeff.
I know what I’ll be playing with Jeff. That’s easy. War of the Ring the card game, and the Lord of the Rings LCG (arriving today).
With Jonathan the decision is a bit tougher. I’ll take Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Although I know the theme won’t appeal to him. The fact it is a “Pandemic” based game will at least pique his curiosity to try it once. Other wise I’m hoping he will bring games along that he wants to get to the table. I don’t think he’ll want to try Expeditions.
I’m looking forward to both gaming sessions. It will be good to game with them both again.
Last night saw Expeditions hit the table for the third time since it arrived.
I’m really enjoying the game. It’s fastly becoming a favourite of mine.
The game last night saw Julie, Dave, and myself exploring the frozen tundra.
The bgstat app randomly chose Dave as the first player. Which meant I got to choose first based on seating order.
This is how our chosen champions and mechs matched up after our choices:
I really need to try another champion next time I play. But it’s hard. Olga is the champion of the Rusviet faction in Scythe. And we all know how I feel about that faction.
Whilst setting up the tiles, I particularly thought how cool that the two tiles that gave workers were on opposite sides of the board, with all the card draw clustered in the middle. This was going to force a splitting of the mechs depending on the plans of the players. No grouping, congestion here.
It was another game where I only refreshed once and that was early on in the game. And if my memory isn’t failing me Julie and Dave refreshed about three times each. The rest of the time it was the tile or card ability that was used.
We also saw less use of the sweep action to reset the face up cards. Which meant we saw less of the deck. That meant less of the cards I like to get came out.
One thing I noticed at the end as I was boasting about my fourth and final glory star was how few cards I had left in hand. Not counting the two starting cards of the champion and their companion. I had two! The rest were either quests that I solved or items that had been to upgrade my mech.
My victory was pretty comprehensive. I was particularly happy with the ruthless way I triggered the end of the game. My last turn saw me block off the second boast tile stopping Dave and Julie from getting a third glory token out.
Now I did help/advise both work out their best last turn to maximise points gained.
It was at the end whilst packing up that Julie and Dave said that next time they knew to look for combos/synergies more.
Wait I told you that at the start. I pointed out during my early turns what I was looking for in a card! That I liked cards that gave me one of the main actions, such as move when I played it. It was particularly galling that Julie had said it as I told her, nah pointed to the cards that were out that fed into her mech ability of being able to use/get maps. Sadly I wasn’t able to do the same for Dave.
I ended up taking one of the cards seeing as Julie refused to act on my advice and go her own path.
I’ve played at different player counts now for each game, and I think it scales pretty well. Except when you have players inflicted with ap.
Turns are normally pretty quick, so little down time.
Although I think I’d max out the player count at four. I like that at the higher player count there is more blocking. Whether it’s intentional or not.
It was a fun evening and I loved that I got to share one of my favourite games to new players.
Wait did I just say it’s a favourite game?
Finally after at least a couple of years I have returned to the rewrite of the ranking code I wrote.
I got a new copy of the data from the bgstat app that I use to record my game plays. The app also the master list of all the games that make up my game collection. And syncs all of that info back onto the bgg website for me.
The point I’m making is this new data file is different to the one I originally got from the app some six or seven years ago. Back then it was just a csv file of the game plays.
Now its a json file that contains all the apps data. So not only game results, list of games, locations, tags, etc.
Luckily using Python as the language of choice for this project means there is a nice json library I can import in to do all the heavy lifting for me to read in and process the json file I have.
Sadly for me the json used by bgstats is not a simple format. It contains arrays within arrays! A nightmare to code to get to the information that I need for this project, even with a json library.
Now if you had asked me before I had started this second attempt at a rewrite that the bits of data analysis I’ve been picking up (different projects) would be of use here. I would of been a bit sceptical.
However using the pandas library I found out I could use pandas to extract these arrays within arrays to get the data I want into a dataframe.
Having the data in a dataframe opens up all sorts of cool data analysis stuff I can do.
So not only can I do the paired comparisons, and top 10 lists, but also produce stats that not even the bgstats app currently does.