LotR 58 - Hunt for Gollum (3)

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I was in Berkeley visiting a friend at a programming meetup, and stopped by CCB afterward for a quick game of LotR.

Our quest for the day was The Hunt for Gollum. I've played this single handed a couple of times and beaten it both times, possibly even legitimately. It seemed like the next thing to do. Since CC enjoys the game, I suspect we'll play a fair number of the quests. It also seems reasonable to do these quests in release order, so I'll need to build some decks for Escape from Dol Guldur.

In any case, we tackled The Hunt for Gollum using the same decks built for Journey along the Anduin. It went fairly well overall, especially after getting Beravor and Gleowine steadily drawing every turn. The Northern Trackers never came out, so we ended up dealing with relatively high threat through most of the game, as the X location came out twice to punish us with 6 and 8 Threat respectively.

We got to Stage 3 without CC having a Clue card, which was bad because he couldn't quest, and there were a lot of locations in Staging. I managed to deal with this with a Sneak Attack/Gandalf on the first turn, and playing Gandalf on the next. The an Evil Storm showed up, putting damage on the heroes with the Clues, sending the clues back to the Encounter Deck and cycling the quest card back to 2B. This time, CC was able to collect a clue card and with the amount of quest we had on the table, we blew through stage 2B…expect another Evil Storm showed up…which CC canceled with Test of Will. The next round, same thing: Evil Storm and amazingly, another Test of Will! So we got the win in the end, with my threat at 49. Very close game and I'm frankly surprised we won it.

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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.