LotR 336-8 - To The Lost Realm We Go

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Won't be much here as I'm writing the day after. But these were good games and a nice change of pace as you will see. Recapping the previous cycle, The Ringmaker, we struggled mightily from almost the beginning, and were stumped by several quests including To Catch An Orc and The Antlered Crown. Both took multiple sessions to beat. It was a bit tiring.

Kicking off after a several week break…

Intruders in Chetwood

As usual with new quests, we rolled into this one blind expected to get our asses kicked. As mentioned that has been our usual experience lately. However, we found the FFG rating of "4" matched our experience, blowing through the quest in 6 or 7 turns. A welcome win!

Since that went so well, we jumped into the…

The Weather Hills

Flush with a first play win, we roll right into The Weather Hills intent on exploiting as much of our lucky streak as the cards will allow.

We didn't get a first play win with this quest as we botched up the rules and did a reset on round 3 or 4. We were too deep to easily retcon the current state.

The second time through we managed to get all the rules correct for the scenario, and worked out a win in 8 or 9 turns. Not quite a first play win, but maybe a first correct play win.

What is notable about these games is that neither of our decks really worked as designed. My Vilya deck never really got going, and Josh's Galadriel deck started really slow. These were fairly easy quests, and to be sure, we did get lucky on Encounter card draw all day long. It could have gone much, much worse, as evidenced by previous games.

In all a great start to Angmar Awakended.

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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.