Side Quest: Arkham Horror

Departing the realm of Middle-earth, I took a detour tonight into the world of H.P. Lovcraft's Cuthulu Mythos. Even before it's release, Arkham Horror: The Card Game was receiving positive press and speculation that it heralded the downfall of Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. The same designer (Nate French, along with Matthew Newman this time) took five years of lessons and combined them with a theme that is arguably more popular these days with the gaming crowd (at least publishers seem to think so). Now that is has been released, the word on the street is that Arkham Horror is indeed a strong contender for the title of best cooperative living card game published by Fantasy Flight Games.

My first impression? This is a fantastic game. The art does not appeal to me as much as LotR, and it has been years since I was into Lovecraft, but the gameplay itself was highly enjoyable. The designers directly state that they are looking to bring an RPG feel to the table and they succeeded. While not an open-world game, you are responsible for decisions that will not only impact the success or failure of the scenario but what that success or failure looks like. I found myself deciding between achieving a beneficial task or holding insanity at bay for my investigator. Either choice seemed positive and I had no idea which would have the bigger impact on future scenarios. That was exciting and refreshing: Having a list of available options that color the outcome of the quest instead of simply leading to a clean victory or defeat. Another positive was that the start deck I used was actually usable and able to defeat the introductory scenario (a sore point with LotR's own core set that frustrates 10/10 new players).

So has Lord of the Rings: the Card Game been made obsolete? No. I am not the first to state this, but Arkham and LotR are both very different types of games and neither should directly replace the other. Arkham does show lessons FFG has learned in designing living card game which would be great to see retroactively implemented in LotR. In fact, as has also been pointed out by others, you can see how different elements of Arkham were tested out in LotR over the past year (such as the travel mechanic of Temple of the Deceived and the how the ability on Galdor of the Havens is almost identical to the standard mulligan rule in Arkham). The basic fact in favor of LotR's continued existence is that, from what we hear, it is still making FFQ cold, hard cash. What I do think Arkham brings to the surface is the need for an LotR reboot. Five years of lessons can be used to make a smoother, more immersive experience. A way can be found to encourage more frequet social play (if not on a competitive front). And a re-boot allows new players an entry point into a game that has now grown very costly to complete.

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and Arkham Horror: The Card Game are both very welcome parts of my game collection. After I take time to discover the full Arkham core set, I have a feeling I will be quickly adding this to my LCG subscription and begin spending my game time hopping between the rich lands of Middle-earth and the mysteries of realms beyond.

Fellowship 2016: The Siege of Annuminas

Victory on the fourth attempt!


11/11/16 @ The Wizard's Chest

For my first Fellowship Event this year, I headed down to The Wizard's Chest in Denver. The greater Denver area has a fairly consistent LotR scene, including a Friday meet up at the Wizard's Chest. Their attendance for last year's event went above and beyond the amount of kits they reserved (a problem they accounted for this year), so a good size group was likely this year. 15 players showed up, splitting into five different tables attempting the Standard Game Mode.

That's me in the (bottom right) corner, 
That's me in the camera glare
Loosing my ability to bounce elves

The Deck

My usual tendency is to go into a quest as fully blind as a I can. Being that this would be a multiplayer event with time for only a few attempts, I decided to take a few quick peeks and keep my ears open for community advice. The need for healing stood out so I started thinking along those lines. The interaction between Hero Elrond and Dunedain Remedy intrigued me and seemed to have a lot of possibility for multiplayer (spoiler: this was an all-star in both attempts). On a separate note, I had been playing with some Silvan bounce decks. It hit me that both archetypes could likely be merged, especially with Galadhrim Healer. Now I could bring the needed healing, but in what should be a fun shell that could  help with questing and (hopefully) taking out and enemy or two.

Silvan Bounce House of Healing

Heroes
Celeborn
Elrond (Shadow and Flame)
Galadriel (Celebrimbor's Secret)


Allies
Naith Guide x3
Orophin x1
Galadhrim Healer x3
Galadhrim Minstrel x3
Ioreth x1
Warden of Healing x2
Galadhrim Weaver x3
Defender of the Naith x2
Gandalf (Core) x2

Attachments
Dunedain Remedy x3
O Lorien! x2
A Burning Brand x1
Light of Valinor x1
Mirror of Galadriel x3
Unexpected Courage x1
Nenya x2

Events
A Very Good Tale x3
Feigned Voices x3
Sneak Attack x2
The Houses of Healing x1
The Tree People x3
A Test of Will x2
Dwarven Tomb x2
Fair and Perilous x2

RingsDB Link

Attempt #1

Knowing we were looking at over 12 people attending, I was hoping to get in a game of Epic Mode. How often are you going to have a chance to get 12 LotR players together at one time? But most tables were hesitant to take on what they anticipated would be a higher difficulty before they became familiar with the quest. I can understand and respect that. And if the Epic Mode is more intense than Standard Mode, we likely would not have had much of a chance. Our table barely got going on our first attempt before we threw in the towel. The main issue here were two decks misfiring, one of which was mine. Elves were very much not bouncing. I basically just contributed a Dunedain Remedy. We still gave it a valiant attempt, with one player defending just about everything the deck could throw at him. Once his defender bit the dust, that was our signal to re-start.

Attempt #2

Silvan's were firing on attempt two! Almost every round featured some level of elven shenanigans. In fact, everyone's decks seemed to be doing well. A little too well, actually. By decimating any enemies that showed their heads, we made traveling to the copies of Gate of Annuminas in the staging area impossible. Not a huge issue as long as enemies were decimated, but rough on the threat if we kept an enemy or two engaged and flipped a good number during the staging step. In the end, despite the strengths of our decks, threat is what did us in. The nice thing is we were able to handle any enemies the deck threw at us, which was satisfying. Once again, a very strong defender with action advantage was a crucial piece of the success we had (paired with other defenders and some strong attackers). But with that the event drew to a close and I barely had enough energy to drag my defeated bones back home.


11/29/16 @ Haunted Game Cafe

The Haunted Game Cafe up in Fort Collins, CO, is the store I began building my Lord of the Rings: the Card Game collection through. The very first LotR community event was a preview of The Hunt for Gollum which I played at Haunted Game Cafe back in the day. They then began a subscription service which is still going on. We were able to get three players together for another round of Standard Mode attempts!

The Deck

Healing was a definite need during the first two attempts. And we had some great success dispatching any enemies foolish enough to come across our path. But location lock was a problem, as were the unforgiving treacheries that popped up. My goal this time around was to focus on helping more with our location problems through questing and direct progress, while keeping the healing sub-theme and adding a few ways to deal with treachery cancellation. (Note: I totally missed that Halfing Bounder needed a completed side quest to trigger it's effect, but we actually had one towards the end of our winning trip, when the bounder did his best work).

Run

Heroes
Arwen Undomiel (The Dread Realm)
Eowyn (Core)
Erestor (The Treachery of Rhudar)

Allies
Ethir Swordsman x3
Glorfindel (Flight of the Stormcaller) x1
Lorien Guide x1
Rhovanion Outrider x2
The Riddermark's Finest x3
Ghan-buri-Ghan x2
Ioreth x1
Ithilien Tracker x1
Quickbeam x1
Robin Smalburrow x2
Warden of Healing x3
Wellinghall Preserver x2
Treebeard x1

Attachments
Silver Harp x3
Thrors Key x3
Windfola x1
Asfaloth x1
Explorer's Almanac x3
Thror's Map x1

Events
A Test of Will x3
Strength of Will x3
Will of the Wext x3
Secret Paths x3
The Evening Star x3

Sets Used 
Core Set
The Hills of Emyn Muil
The Long Dark
Foundations of Stone
Over Hill and Under Hill
Heirs of Numenor
On the Doorstep
The Steward's Fear
The Antlered Crown
The Treason of Saruman
Across the Ettenmoors
The Treachery of Rhudar
The Dread Realm
The Grey Havens
Flight of the Stormcaller
The Drowned Ruins
The Flame of the West
Temple of the Deceived
A Storm on Cobas Haven

RingsDB Link

Attempt #3

The first couple of rounds honestly had a feeling of "Not again; this quest is brutal." I guess the previous attempts left a mark! But things started looking up rather quickly. While not giving the city any extra defense the first round, we were able to keep up with only modest threat increases and continued making our way through the quest. Questing was rough, though, even with my deck contributing 20-23 willpower for most of the final half (not amazing, but decent enough). What got us here was city damage. We seriously only needed 2-3 more strength on the city to have a victory in the bag. Rough to get so close and fail, yet encouraging that the end had been just within sight. Our evaluation was that we needed one deck to stay dedicated to attack & defense with the other two questing with as much power as they can.


Attempt #4

Taking our analysis from the last attempt, one player opted to bring a dwarven army to the table. This would likely help with our questing needs, but also be able to provide some strong attack if needed. We quested for all we were worth right off the bat, allowing us to get some needed strength onto the city. The rest of the attempt proceeded in a similar positive fashion to the third one. The quest tried to throw it's usual bag of tricks at us, but we usually had an answer (thank you, Halfing Bounder) or were able to suck up the effect. When we were towards the end of stage 3, I was waiting for that sudden turn of fate that would signal another defeat. But we ended up in a "Do you want to kill that guy or want me to kill him?" position of strength and attempt #4 ended in a sweet victory!

The Recap
 
The Siege of Annuminas does not pull any punches. You need to quest hard, but your questing heroes can easily be damaged. Enemies are either huge, small with downsides (attacking instantly or surging), or mid-size with archery. Or huge with archery. And taking care of enemies is good (and needed), but location lock is very real here. In a sense, most quests end up sounding the same ("The locations are tough! The enemies are tough! The stages are tough!") and it can be hard to capture the nuances that truly make one quest a breeze and another a nightmare. Anuminas is definitely the latter. As for solo play? That is going to go on the far back burner!

But what about the fellowship? Grabbing a few other players and tackling a beast of a quest, trying to work out the puzzle of victory, is always a blast. Without a lot of multiplayer opportunities in my world, Fellowship Events are a welcome addition to my life no matter how punishing the quest is.