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.