I haven't posted on here for an age, but I feel like sticking my two oars in on this topic.  I attempted Into Ithlien 6 times in a 2P game and we got beat in every game.  We won on the seventh attempt but I don't think either of us got any satisfaction out of it because this quest simply isn't about tactics or strategy.  We won because we were lucky to avoid all the crap cards.

Now I'm not one of these who believe this is a game of pure luck.  But thinking back to some of the difficult older scenarios, especially the likes of some in the Khazad-dum pack and following expansions, I remember having a lot of trouble at times but I felt that when I finally beat the scenario, it was because I'd adopted a winning strategy with a well built deck, and thereafter could consistently beat it more often than not.

I didn't get this feeling at all with Into Ithilien, and my partner agreed.  So we were dreading cair andros naturally… but after a few defeats and adjusting our decks and strategy… we won and can now consistently win and that nice fuzzy feeling of satisfaction is back because I know that it was us that beat the scenario and not Lady Luck.

Into Ithilien is simply an ill-designed scenario, and it baffles me how lots of players (mostly the old-timers, 'experienced' players, funnily enough) refuse to accept this.  Is it denial? I dont know, but I do know  FFG can't always get it right which is to be expected.  They've done some brilliant scenarios and some duff ones, and this is the latter.  But if anybody claims to be able to beat this scenario more than 50% of the time in a 2P game, please post me your decks and let me know what I'm doing wrong   

GrandSpleen said:

Heh, you underestimate those decks. I urge you to try them. We've still yet to have a game where I got the combo out later than turn 3. And Blocking Wargs barely hurts me because usually only Thalin I'll send questing here. There's some brutal enemies that will kill some of my friend's heroes but as long as, in that timeframe, they don't lose all 3 heroes and get fully knocked out of the game we can come all the way back.

That deck is stupid.

I'm with you on this one, Stenun. The new lead designer has me questioning whether or not I want to continue with LotR. I play multiplayer in a three or four-man group and the quality of the scenarios has taken a noticible turn ever since the designer switch. It's not the difficulty that bothers me. Everybody likes a challenge to break the tedium. The new designs greatly favor one, maybe two players. The mechanics used are simply not fun. Stamping Surge and Doom on more cards certainly adds difficulty but nothing dynamic or interesting. Archery is new but all it does is unavoidable damage. Battle and Siege are interesting changes that we were excited about until we played the last scenario of EoN in which you have enemy cards that can one-shot the best defenders currently available and make questing during a Seige laughably difficult, especially if you have a seven encounter card (even after a cancel) Surge cascade in a three player game.

I'm all for difficulty. However, I'm much more for balance and playtesting. I remember remarking to one of the FFG employees at Gencon that the Laketown scenario we were playing was flawed because the Tactics sphere had absolutely no use at all. The employee didn't seem phased and I don't blame him, there are plenty of trolls out there that don't offer much in the way of constructive criticism but I was disappointed that something as major as that slipped right by and into a printed scenario. Going to stick with the game for now but I really don't want to hear, "So, is anybody having fun with this?" asked at the table again. It was very disheartening.

Hauptmann said:

I know this is off-topic but I couldn't help but comment on this.

I never actually noticed this problem because I treated Tactics like it didin't exist until Heirs of Numenor expansion.
But how ironic is it that the sphere that represent Battle-Strength is absolutely useless in slaying the last firebreathing dragon.

Ellareth said:

It's not. You need boatloads of attack to take down Smaug. Tactics is very good at that.

I don't understand the assertion that Tactics is useless in Battle for Lake-town. That's simply untrue.

"It's not. You need boatloads of attack to take down Smaug. Tactics is very good at that.

I don't understand the assertion that Tactics is useless in Battle for Lake-town. That's simply untrue."

I'll settle on saying that if you use Tactics for Laketown, you are shooting yourself in the foot. With a very large calibre bullet. Every version of Smaug is immune to player card effects. That eliminates the all-powerful Feint and any and all direct damage effects from attachments and events. Smaug has a maximum ammount of damage he can take per quest phase, 6,12, and dead, respectively. There's no point in piling up Tactics allies as you're going to be racing to get to the last phase of the quest to kill him and the average 0-1 they're kicking in just doesn't cut it. Utilize solid questing characters and healers to manage burn damage and use attachments from other spheres, primarily leadership, to overcome Smaug's large numbers. Honestly, Tactics would add very little outside of waiting until phase three to have the chance to do its job properly. Even The Old Thrush works off of a discard mechanic, so you'll want card draw which Tactics has little outside of Foe-Hammer and that requires you to kill an enemy, who in this scenario is simply Smaug.

Now, I'll admit, the first time we ran through the scenario, I was playing Tactics/Leadership and had the delightful experience of realizing that the majority of my deck may as well have been blank. Switching back to Spirit/Lore at least gave me the satisfaction of pulling my weight and helping move the scenario forward. Please keep in mind, I'm speaking from a multiplayer perspective. Perhaps Tactics is the way to go for solo play.

If you find a Tactics strategy that works for you, go for it. I'm not saying its impossible. It may even be an interesting challenge to try it out some time. It just doesn't remove the fact that "Immune to player card effects," greatly limits what cards out of your collection you can effectively use and that's exactly the kind of game design that I feel greatly reduces a lot of the strategic creativity for players. Once options begin drying up and it is required to purchase more cards to fit the most effective cookie-cutter build in order to defeat a quest that was designed with increased static difficulty at the cost of unique/interesting/fun mechanics, I'm going to have to either take up designing scenarios as a hobby or move on to a different game.

Now a little off-topic: Anybody know the designer for Foundations of Stone? That's still my favorite and I want to give the guy a big, uncomfortable man-hug if I happen to run into him at a convention.

starhawk77 said:

This.

You know that stuff that adds to your own characters don't fall under the 'immune to player cards' thing, right? So you can still boost up your character's own attack/defense values for example.

If you are smart on this quest, you won't want to do much (or any) damage to Smaug most likely until the end stage, since there's stuff that will move damage from Smaug to Lake-town. So once you hit that last stage, you're going to need to do some major hits to take him down in a turn or two. This is EASIEST with Tactics because of their attack boosting & good ranged Heroes and allies like Vassals to join an attack from someone else. Not to mention all of the blocking you also need to do throughout the scenario because of some of the different Smaugs and treacheries. Beregond with Citadel Plate and certain other things like Winged Guardians are a godsend here in multiplayer.

There's certainly other ways to try and defeat the scenario but Tactics is FAR from useless or "shooting yourself in the foot".

Oh dear, here I go using the wrong word to poorly say what I meant to say.

"Useless" isn't the word I should've said, because as many mentioned you could boost your character's attack and defence.

However, boosting your attack is only useful in the final stage of the quest, and boosting your defence is only useful against one trechery card that makes you unable to declare allies as defender.

You need lore through out the quest because of deal 2 damage to all character trechery and card draw, spirit due to all those locations and nasty trecheries and shadows, and leadership has great selection of event and allies for chumpblocking (sneak attack + 6 x 1 cost allies), some resource boost and some shadow cancel.

While Tactics isn't completely "useless" (I'm sorry for my poor choice of word), it certainly isn't as useful as what some of the other sphere offers. Especially with cards like "For Gondor" that let's you do one big attack without having tactics sphere invovled (which is Tactics sphere's major, if not only, contribution to this specific quest)

Don't get me wrong, making Smaug immune to player card effect was a good choice, or else we would have another Shadow and Flame where we would just Feint -> Hama -> Feint -> Hama loop it for easy win, and Battle for Laketown is an entertaining challenging quest that I have no problem with. Just thought it was funny how unessential tactics was with dragonslaying.

Actually my dwarfs Dain/Thorin/Ori deck beat this quest withour any trouble. Also Pelargir. The bigest problem is last quest in the box. But i laos won coulple of times already. So even with old type decks is possible.

Glaurung said:

You've changed your tune!

GrandSpleen said:

GrandSpleen said:

I understand the idea of the new quest and change my strategy without change or tune my decks. So for solo now i can win almost every time when i play agianst Pelargir and Into Ithilien. But last one no! Very difficult!!!

Dwarves rules! Only one problem for them is siege. Dwarves in my deck didn have high defense.

Glaurung said:

I mean you changed what you are saying about Into Ithilien.  Earlier in this thread you were saying it was crazy difficult and that you were losing repeatedly (and loving it!).  Now you're saying that you are winning consistently without any trouble.  I wasn't able to come up with a strategy or a deck that could take this quest on without depending heavily on luck with the encounter deck.  Would you mind sharing your strategy?  I'd love to learn how to approach this thing, as it's still incredibly difficult for me to win!

GrandSpleen said:

Ok i got your point. But im not really good typer on the forum. But i will be happy to chat to you by the skype if you dont mind.

So send me personal message if you have a skype.