Hi, I'm fairly new and played some 4- 5 times, and only with my buddy.

He has the core set and we agreed to collect the game together, so I bought Kazad-dum and started on the Dwarrowdelf cycle, while he's collecting the Mrikwood cycle to increase our cardpool.

Anyway, long story short, I actually had some time on my hands one night and sat on the sofa eyeing my expansion. I really wanted to play and thought: what the hell, I'll give it a go. And so I did. I made a deck with the expansion, and the 3 APs I own (WitW, FoS & SaF) and started the "into the Pit" quest. I really thought I didn't stand a change without the core set spirit cards and my very limited cardpool.

But what do you think? I made it! barely, Bifur died and Glorfindel & Elrond had 1 hp left, but I won. Who whould have thought?

I had a vey good & fun 1st time playing solo, and am itching to do so again :)  and, I'm now getting the core set btw :P

Wow, that's awesome, way to go! You definitely have some of the best heroes in the game at least!

The core set is handy because of things like rules and tokens. But if you already know the rules and can proxy in tokens/threat counters, then it certainly isn't a necessity, provided you've amassed a card pool from other sources.

Even so, it's handy. Some of the most reliably *good* cards are from the Core, but I've never been in the camp that said you needed two or three copies of the core just so that you could have extras of those good cards.

I've been managing to play four person games just fine, with only a single core set since the game first came out.

gatharion said:

Yes I used pen and paper to keep track of the the tokens, threat, dmg and what not. It was a hassle, so I figured that when I wanted to play alone I would need the core set anyway as I missed some improtant cards I used multiplayer. So I got it yesterday, and I'm gonna play alone tomorrow again :)

I just felt so proud and needed to tell the world that gives a **** about this game (thus here) I beat a quest with such a limited cardpool being a newbie and all, and thinking I needed a core set to play or win. ^_^

I agree it's playable with 1 core set though, we did so with 3 players. 2 sets does increase options, as we can all multicolor spheres more easily now.

Oh and narsil: thanks! I picked to Aps based on the heroes, not the timeline ;)