Hey guys, got my box in yesterday (woo) so i'm gonna talk about and reveal some of the stuff thats in it for those that are still waiting patiently

Quest 1 - Flies and Spiders 

My own Ranking - 3 or 4

This quest isnt terribly difficult but can pose a lot of trouble to those that get behind quick.  Many of the enemies and treacheries "poison" your characters which really doesnt mean much unless they get as much poison as they do HP then they are "unconscious" which means they cant do anything until they are made not unconscious later in the game.  Doesnt mean too much to your big HP heros but your low 1 or 2 hp allies can succumb pretty easily to a treachery or 2.  The locations also seem to hamper characters that are poised like not letting them quest etc.

The quest has a normal stage 1 but then seperates the players into stage 2 and 3 almost like foundations of stone.  The first player gets bilbo but has all their characters "unconcsiocus" and have to use the bilbo resources to revive them and pass through the stage where they can rejoin the other players at stage 3 who are left to kind of just sit idely while the deck spits out lots of spiders at them until the first player and bilbo return to them.  Provides a neat little expereince in the same way that foundation of stone did as i mentioned earlier

Quest 2 - The lonely mountain

My own Ranking 7-8

This is probably the hardest of the three quests IMO.  Requires a lot of will power  to quest through not only the lonely mountain location which stays in play but mostly smaug whom essentially decreases the WP of questing characters by 1.  The quest has 4 stages but the first makes u skip the questing step which essentially just allows you to start the game with a free turn, the 2nd requires no progress but makes you make "burgle" attempts after questing succesfully.  the burgle attempt is not unlike the riddle mechanic in the last hobbit box.  if succesful you get a treasure from the mountain and can move onto stage 3, if unsuccesful smaug attacks you which blows.  You can stay in this stage and try and get more treasures but the longer you stay the more likely it is that you get more travel tokens on smaug which can make you go to stage 4 which is basically a penalty stage where the more aggresive smaug comes into play and you need to attack and quest past him to get back to stage 2.  If your content with moving on from stage 2 to 3 after burgaling succesfully the more aggressive  smaug comes into play anyway and you have to place more progress on the stage than smaug has HP to pass.  I dont feel like writing the equivalent of a book to describe the quest but i found it quite challenging because it requires a decent amount of willpower and attack strength.

Quest 3 - The battle of the 5 armies

My own ranking 5-6

A very unique if not complicated quest, it has 5 quest stages, the first of which is bascially just set up instructions.  Then you have stages 2-4 in play all at once with the first player choosing which one the player(s) will quest towards each turn.    What hurts is at the beginning of the game because each stage penalizes you if it has no progress tokens on it at the end of the turn.  Stage 2 makes you discard a random card from your hand, stage 3 is a battle and makes you put the top enemy in the discard pile into the staging area and stage 4 is a seige that makes you discard all resource tokens if there is no progress tokens.  To make matters more complicated there is a "boss" character who stays in the staging area, Bolg, who gives the first orc enemy revealed during staging surge.  Many of the enemies and a few unique locations remove progress tokens from the quest stages which makes it difficult to manage.  After all 3 stages have all progress on them, you can move onto 5 which simply makes you put out a "bodyguard of bolg" enemy for each player in the staging area and makes bolg engaged with the first player but hes not that tough, has 6 atk and 8 hp but we've all fought much harder

feel free to ask me any other questions about them…was gonna make another topic about the player cards but not sure i'm upto another small essay tonight

Hmmmm strange to say but i didn get exited about this box. Maybe im wrong but looks like the first box was more interesting.

Probably couse of HON this box looks like a step back. We got some cool and poweful player cards but quests didn sound interesting and challenge.

Anyway thank you a lot for explonation.

Pharmboys2013 said:

i'm not sure i agree on the first quest being a 3-4, though i'm not sure what i'd put it at.

having bilbo questing/attacking/defending all by himself, with stats of 1 (2 with sting), in addition to his resources being wiped out, is a receipe for rapid threat gain. you really have to have the ring on him, as well as sting, in order to be able to do much of anything - again, with the potential massive threat gain due to ring use and questing unsuccessfully (or not at all), etc.

it takes 6 turns to rescue all the heroes (not counting any allies you may have had!) or 3 turns and 3 additional threat, in addition to whatever the encounter deck/questing unsuccessfully throws your way.

it really requires some successful management and pre-planning so the bilbo player can survive. losing all of your heroes and allies and resources and being left with only bilbo is (very) difficult to overcome.

Dain Ironfoot said:

RRRRRRRRRR lucky guys have it already!!!

Dain Ironfoot: I can see how I may have underestimated the difficulty of that section; my opinion is likely biased because I've been playing the quests with two players. Myself with a dwarf deck and my roomate with a spirit and tactics deck. When my roomate got stuck on stage 2, he would first free Beregond who usually had a spear of the citadel and unexpected courage attached whom could fend off the spiders till Legolas was free and could then kill them and help with progress. Some threat would be eaten in the beginning but he had the spirit cards to lower it and be safe

Pharmboys2013 said:

Sounds like we using the same combinations of heroes in 2 player game. 1 deck is dwarf: Dain/Thorin/Ori. Second deck is: Beregond/Legolas/Eleonor.

Army of dwarfes do they crazy job and gondor deck remove threat cancel threachery and provide good questing on siege. In my opinion this is most powerful combo in 2 player game now. Can beat all scenarios (HON and Dragon still quite difficult)  but other is chidren garden.

Glaurung said:

im intrigued to hear how the new player cards are implemented into your Thorin and Company deck. For multiplayer I've replaced Ori for Bombur. I love activating Thorin's power on turn 2 (assuming record keeper is in opening hand) and Bombur provides a more reliable defender rather than using Dain in emergencies and potentially sacrificing his ATK bonus by having him exhaust.  I also think you'll love king under the mountain; it's grown on me every game

Pharmboys2013 said:

King under the mountain is very cool! But in the tournametns now Thorin company will destroy all other decks. They didn make errata for this deck???

Out of curiousity, what would u have them errata from it? The most effective thing would be to nerf Dain which is still almost a shame because he would go from one of the most used heroes to one of the least used I would figure

Out of curiousity, what would u have them errata from it? The most effective thing would be to nerf Dain which is still almost a shame because he would go from one of the most used heroes to one of the least used I would figure

Pharmboys2013 said:

Hmmmm listen if we have a tournament now the player who will use Thorin company deck will win 90%. Cose no any other deck now in metagame not so fast, powerful as this deck. In first 2-3 rounds i  wil play 5-6 aliies, draw half of my deck, lot of attachments on heroes and just run trhough to the end.

i dont know any other deck who can do same effective play. Just look some of my videos on you tube with this deck and you will understand. there is no alternative to answer the power of this deck for now.

Dwarves with Dain crazy powerful questing, attacking. there is a lot of recources acceleration: We are not idle, Steward of Gondor, Thorin. Crazy draw: Legacy of Durin( cose most of the cards in deck is dwarves allies is mean: play card to draw card) and Ori and Daemon runes. Lot of Allies and A very good Tale also very helpful to bring more and more every round.

If you lucky in the first round you can put 3 allies on the table and next round you can draw 2 cards every round and get more recources and play lot of allies every round and all of them +1 will and +1 attack. Gandalf and sneak attack easy to get this combo cose you have a very good draw. Which deck can do alternative? Maybe Elrond with Vilia? yes maybe but Elrond deck is so slow he need much more time to bulid up so dwarves will win the game already at the moment when you start to use Vilia power.

If they want make a fiar tournaments they need to fix a lot of players cards or we will see Dain decks against other Dain deck tournaments which is kind of boring.

Glaurung said:

To be fair, Dwarrowdelf Cycle was the only proper Cycle we have so far, Since Mirkwood Cycle doesn't have a delux expansion to go with it.
When we get complete HoN + Against the Shadow Cycle in the fall, hopefully Gondorians would be equally strong as Dwarves in a unique way.

Ellareth said:

quite true…not to get off topic but i'm really looking forward to what hero choices we see for the 3 out of the 4 AtS AP packs that werent already spoiled.

Ellareth said:

I don't think they'll be quite as strong, since the two Hobbit SEs are rather dwarf-heavy as well. They will gain some substantial ground though, one would hope.

I gave this scenario a try solo, and stage three is very difficult.  I had an army of Dwarves out and all of a sudden all of them were unconscious, and only Bilbo is left.   He is in in a tough situation, since he loses all his resources, and he may have to defend cancel damge with the ring and try to aquire resources to free heros and allies.  I was not using a Dain deck, but I think the transition to stage 3 will not be an easy one to overcome.  If you have drawn a lot of your deck, and have allot of allies in play, Bilbo will have a lot of work to do.  When Heores start getting free.  It may be tough to rebuild the dwarf army, especially if you do not have a lot of cards left in your deck, and if Unique allies are in play, you will not be able to get new the same unique ally to replace them.   I'm looking forward to hear how the dain decks do.

In terms of multi player I have not tried it, but I assumed when the first player creates his own staging area that other players can not use ranged or sentinel to help out.  It does not say so specificaly on the card, but the flavor text supports this idea.  Are the players all alone like foundations of stone, or can there still be interaction?

THinking about an errata for Dain, I would suggest that his abillity can either be used for questing or attacking the player has to choose which one at the end of the planning phase.   At least a player would have to plan which may be more useful that round.

Glaurung said:

As someone who's played an Elrond-Vilya deck a lot, I agree: I know my deck can handle most quests and might be able to come close to a dwarf deck in terms of overall win %, but will be slower.

From what I've seen of your "Thorin's Company" build, it's a very fast and proactive deck - e.g. high starting threat and no threat reduction, but relies on its raw explosive power to overwhelm the scenario regardless of what is thrown at it. An Elrond/Vilya deck (at least the build I use) is more reactive, and seeks to neutralise the encounter deck while it builds up its engine and eventually grinds out a victory. The scoring and Race against the Shadow rules both favour speed so the dward deck will have the advantage.

On the other hand, it might also mean that the dwarf deck also loses more quickly when it does stumble, but that won't matter much if it hardly ever loses :)