Lord of the Rings 4 - Leadership in Mirkwood

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Game 4, playing Mirkwood scenario with Leadership deck again and normal difficulty. This felt like a win to me.

I seem to forget two important things during play:

  1. Advancing Threat Counter in Phase 7 Refresh, and
  2. placing Progress tokens appropriately during Phase 3 Quest.

Given that I managed to get both of the above more or less correct, I finished the game with 44 Theat Level, but did lose a hero along the way.

More things I'm not doing correctly include making sure the card text is appropriately executed during and after card play. Typically, the card text is pretty subtle for game play, but these subtleties add up over the course of the game, and missing a few of them could be enough to change the outcome, i.e., induce a loss.

Also, I'm only using the single deck of 33 cards which comes with a trait. If I raided the other trait decks to bump up my card count to 50, I'd probably do a bit better. I would have to manage traits though, which is a complication.

I'm looking forward to playing the other decks with the Mirkwood scenario.

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What to play next?

Deciding what to play next is always a tough call when faced with a closet full of games, all of which were purchased with intent to play. Here's one I'm dealing with the decision.

  • Something New: this means both something new to me and a game which has been published recently, within the last two or three years.
  • Something Classic: I've acquired a number of games properly considered "classic" which haven't yet been played. The current example would be PanzerGruppe Guderian.
  • Something Again: mastery requires constant practice, which means playing games many, many times to allow nuance to appear.
  • Something Vietnam: as I'm on a Vietnam binge. I don't have all the Vietnam games ever published, but I can say that I have a lot of them, and probably more than most people.
  • Something Obscure: as it's fun to poke around in the dustier corners of game design.
  • Something Different: break away from the same old publishers and try a game from one of the new kids on the block. Or, conversely, dip into legacy with a classic tried and true.
  • Something Light: once in a while it's nice to actually finish a game all the way through in one sitting, in an hour or two.
  • Something Heavy: if possible, it's nice to set up something big and complicated which can be left out for days or weeks or even months, for a leisurely stroll through a very large or long game.

There are surely many more ways to choose, but the above method keeps me busy enough, helps me get both breadth and depth into my play, and provides me with a sense of progress.

The odd man out

When there is an odd man out:

  • Have a solo game ready to play.
  • Keep score or advise on a game in progress.
  • Referee a game in progress.