LotR 143 - Conflict at the Carrock (4), Jump Drive (9)

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A colleague and I have seem to have a semi-regular thing going on with Lord of the Rings card game now. We're playing progression style from the beginning, more or less. We did advance past Escape from Dol Guldur after one play, we'll circle back to that later.

Today's excursion was Conflict at the Carrock, a scenario I haven't played in over 3 years, since before I started at my current job in fact. It's a classic stalling quest: stall as long as possible on Stage 1 to build up a board, then knock out the trolls as fast as possible. From my notes, I stalled using threat control to be able to engage the trolls one at a time.

This game went pretty well. While we did a very small amount of retconning, we didn't do anything which would appreciably "cheat" the game, everything was along the lines of "remembering" to do something from a previous phase.

I don't know how many rounds we played, but once the trolls came out, we were able to beat them in two turns. Pretty good game overall. My colleague did point out the grossly overpowered nature of both Steward of Gondor and Unexpected Courage.

We wrapped up the day with a game of Jump Drive, which I won with Galactic Trendsetters, I ended up with a bunch of them in hand.

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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.