Did Passage Through Mirkwood two times. First playthrough used the standard purple deck (Aragorn and company with one core set) -- didn't make it. Second play through I custom built a purple and blue (from three core sets). Final score? 10. Would have been 8 if I didn't let my Aragorn take damage.

I'm finding the game to be fairly difficult, I can imagine that multiplayer would make things a little easier, but still hard. Definitely finding purple and blue to have the best combos. The ability to have card recursion and Sneak Attack on Threat Reducers like Gandalf and that one blue card definitely can get broken. Over the course of two turns I was able to lower my threat by a whopping 17 -- Not even the Forest Spiders would force encounter me.

Haven't tweaked much yet with red and green -- but I'm thinking green is really weak.

Game is hard because frankly...there's really not many options in the core set. Also, I am not a big fan of the way they distributed the cards. I originally bought 2 core sets so I could support 4 players -- but that didn't even give me 3 copies of each -- so I went out and got my 3rd core. I thought they would have learned that 3 copies of each card should be standard... I know they are going to release a revised core with 3 copies of each in the future or pull a Warhammer and release reprints of core cards in future big box expansions.

Hopefully I'll be able to play some multiplayer tomorrow...we'll see how it pans out.

I've only played with mono decks so far and some decks have faired better than others (leadership seems powerful, lore less so)

What do you refer to with regards to what FFG did with Warhammer and deluxe expansions? Did they use a deluxe expansion to bring the core set up to 3 of each player card from the core set? Which expansion?

hm...I can see how it would upset people who bought 3 core sets if there were some reprints in the future, but I thought about this, too and  would love it if ffg would steadily provide us with playsets of the core set cards by including one or two reprints in the adventure packs. :)

Leadership combos are great, but I didn't think Lore was weak at all! The card drawing engine + Protector of Lorien is sick! And also healing can be quite nice from time to time...I think all the spheres have their strengths. But I feel tactics is a bit on the downside when it comes to questing...it seems very weak against a location heavy run-through...

For the time being, it looks as though the Lore deck is good with control and support, but perhaps not so good with characters in combat. It certainly is begging to be mixed with another sphere that covers up it's weaknesses. On the Warhammer subject, I have all the packs and expansions and there is no reprint of core cards that I've seen.

How are you calculating your score?

I don't think "8" or "10" is possible, especially since Aragon alone will cost you 12  ...

 with threat reduction it is. i had a score of negative 7 with that deck

 with threat reduction it is. i had a score of negative 7 with that deck

We must be calculating score very differently.

As I understand it, you add the final Threat value of your dial, 1 for every wound marker on a Hero, and the Threat value (again) for every dead Hero.

Then you subtract any Victory Points earned from cards.

This would make the lower 30's a very good score. 

If you are starting with the 3 heroes from the Tactics deck, your score in turn 1 would be 29.  I don't think there are enough threat reduction cards in any possible combination in the game to get you to -7, even if you win in the first turn.

 that is exactly what i did. by the end of the game i had managed to reduce my threat dial to 1, then after netting out wounds and victory points i got that score

I think your score is mathematically impossible.  

Could you describe how that happened? 

What card did you use and how many turns did your game last? 

For example, at the end of the first turn alone, you have a score of 30 if you didn't take any damage.

What card let you drop 29 points of threat?

 gandalf reduces by five, and they have an even that reduces by 6, they also have an event that allows you to play an ally from your discard and another that lets you shuffle your discard back into your deck. this allowed me to play those cards many times. this is also with the standard deck from one core set vs mirkwood.

Cabello said:

If you play Gandalf 3x, that is only 15 Threat ... and you would need at least 3 turns to do it, which ADDS 3 Threat, so that is a net of -12.

The Elf card brings you to -17 (-6 + 1 more turn).  If you play it 3x, you are still at -27.

That isn't enough to even cover the 1st turn of the game in Threat, and would take at least 4 turns to play (probably more, I haven't even bothered to count the Resources needed).

in the game i played by threat did not go up hardly at all, then again it also took me a while to make progress for the first part of the game. it was a long game, but i had good control the entire time. i also had at least 9 points from creatures. but i played each of those cards quite a few times.

You are not understanding me.

It doesn't matter how your game went.  There is no combination of cards that will give a -7 score.

 you forget the one that shuffles your discard back into your deck, therefore the entire thing is recursive indeffinately

No, you do NOT reshuffle your discard pile into your deck.

See page 12 of the rulebook.

Even using the appropriate cards, I'm confident your score isn't going to happen EVER.

Either there was a mistaken in the calculation, or you are trolling me.