Category Archives: LoTR

LoTR LCG: Fellowship of the Ring

LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, LoTR LCG Saga

I had this idea that this series of posts will look at playing the three sagas that make up the telling of the Lord of the Rings. At the time of writing this initial post only the first two sagas, Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers have been released. So hopefully by the time I get to the end of The Two Towers the third and final saga The Return of the King will have been released.

There is a good likely hood of that being the case as my intention on playing these sagas is to play them first with Nathan. I want to share the experience of playing through the scenarios for the first time with him. Luckily we start our journey through Middle Earth next week when I visit him.

The background stuff

I own the Revised Core Set, The Dark of Mirkwood scenario pack, two of the starter decks (dwarfs and elves), and the two sagas mentioned above. Which means I have none of the earlier released material. I’m coming to this from playing the sagas for the first time.

In a previous post I’ve described how I began what has now been a four decade long love affair with the books.

Yes there are paratexts I have used for these posts. The most obvious ones are the original books by Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. But at one point or other in my life I’ve also read Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion. Plus a couple of biographies, JRR Tolkien A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, and J.R.R. Tolkien Author of the Century by Tom Shippey.

There are also the BBC radio plays of both books, plus Tales from the Perilous Realm. The later has The Adventures of Tom Bombadil which which was not included in the original radio play. I’ve also at some point listened to the CD J.R.R. Tolkien: An Audio Portrait and a CD I have somewhere of Tolkien reading extracts from his books.

I’d be amiss if the Peter Jackson movies were not mentioned here also, particularly the extended editions. I also can’t forget the 1979 animated movie by Ralph Bakshi. Which I do have a soft spot for. After all it’s one of my earliest memories of being introduced to Tolkien and Middle Earth.

Oddly enough I only subscribe and watch one Tolkien/LoTR based YouTube channel, and that’s Jess of the Shire.

DISCLAIMER: Some of these paratexts are fresher in my mind than others. Also I’m not in anyway claiming to be anything more than a fan. In no way shape or other am I claiming to be an expert. There are far more knowledgeable people out there than me.

Before I go any further I should give a SPOILER ALERT! As I write these posts I’m not sure where there are going but I’m pretty sure they may touch on spoilers for this campaign. It’s not my intention to ruin the surprises, twists and turns that the campaign has for anyone. So if you don’t want to run the risk of me doing that for yourself then please avoid this series of posts.

For this dramatic playthrough of the Fellowship of the Ring campaign I’ll be using the starter decklists as given in the expansions rulebook.

FFG Starter Decklists

As a brief aside although the Revised Core set supports up to four players. I do feel that it is primarily meant to be a two player experience. This is based on the fact we have a deck list for two decks to be played. That more than two players just take the cards for a single sphere of influence seems a bit of a cop out and lazy to me.

The two deck lists in this expansion (see above) help reinforce this feeling that the designers see this as a two player game.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining. This is mainly how I play the game. It’s either with Nathan when I visit him. Or with one of my friends. I’m not a solo gamer (although I like the idea). And I haven’t played or thought of playing the game with more than two players. Although if I were it’d be a three player game.

Before I close off this initial post I should point out that the LoTR Revised Core set ended up being my game of the year for 2023.

The next post in this series will be the start of our journey through the Fellowship of the Ring saga and the scenarios I get to play with Nathan on my visit to him. See you then.

Mirkwood Paths #1 – A Passage Through Mirkwood

Campaign, father son gaming, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, Mirkwood Paths

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.

‘T was in the darkest depths of Mordor

Game day, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, star wars

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.

If you go down to the woods today…

game night, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR

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.

How I’m choosing expansions for the two lcgs in my life

Champions, expansions, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, Marvel Champions

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.

A pleasant surprise

Dragonbane, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, new arrivals, RPG

This morning I got an unexpected delivery. I had zero knowledge about it. So I was curious to find out what was in the box.

Back at the start of the year during the whole WotC OGL fiasco Free League were taking post Kickstarter preorders on their Dragonbane box set.

Feeling a bit miffed at WotC at the time I took a look at it and decided to throw my money in its direction. And then promptly forgot about it.

Then around April time Free League sent a remind to people on their mailing list announcing the closing of preorders. I couldn’t remember if I’d preordered or not. I couldn’t find an email confirmation and there was no response from Free League when I contacted them to see if I had.

So I assumed I had not gone through with the preorder for whatever reason at the time. And thought nothing more of it.

Jump forward to UKGE. Before the show I had a plan to pick up some of the Free League bits I wanted like stuff for Vaesen, The One Ring, and Twilight 2000. And yes Dragonbane if it was there was on the list.

But the Amen-Re deluxe edition, and the luxury poker chips killed off that plan.

So I was very pleasantly surprised when I opened the package this morning to find a copy of Dragonbane inside.

It more than holds up to the high standard of the other box sets that Free League puts out.

You can get a free QuickStart on DriveThruRPG.

Tomorrow will see the arrival hopefully of a new living card game I’ve decided to get into to. No I hear you I don’t play Marvel Champions regularly enough. So why am I getting into another?

The whole LoTR MtG set, and the War of the Ring the card game got me yearning more LoTR.

So I investigated the LoTR card game by FFG. I knew there had been a revised edition released a couple years back. Which meant you didn’t need two core sets to play up to four players. Plus they were reprinting sets under the new model of a character box and a campaign box. Plus some of the more harder to get and out of print sets were getting this treatment.

So I caved and ordered the new revised core set, two of the four starter sets (dwarf and elf), plus the mission pack.

That should be enough to get Nathan and me started.

Who knows I might find the odd player at home too.