The time has come to start a second version of this article, now that the original series is coming to a close in the 9th cycle. I noticed that over the 2.5 years since I wrote the original PtM article, many things have changed, including the length of my articles. So in order to properly … Continue reading Passage through Mirkwood
The community doesn't really like A Journey to Rhosgobel, and I tend to agree. While the community and I have our differences at times (The Hills of Emyn Muil is a decent testing quest, fite me), we both agree that A Journey to Rhosgobel wasn't the best scenario in the first cycle. The mechanics of … Continue reading Nightmare A Journey to Rhosgobel
Few quests were more divisive in the early years of the game than the Battle of Lake-Town. The epic fight against Smaug required a focused deck, and strategy sites like Tales from the Cards provided guides for how to bring the beast down. Battle of Lake-Town represents an earlier design philosophy of the game, where … Continue reading Fire in the Night
Here's a piece of trivia: Venom and poison are two different things. Briefly, poison is ingested or inhaled and venom is directly injected into a wound. Both can make you unconscious if they are severe enough. In this scenario, whether it's poison or venom, you want to make sure that you try not to find … Continue reading Flies and Spiders
Every cycle thus far seems to have a quest that almost takes a step back from the traditional adversaries and enemies and has you face the diverse dangers presented by the very nature and native wildlife of Middle-Earth. In the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle we have The Hills of Emyn Muil; the Dwarrowdelf cycle offers us … Continue reading The Mumakil
At the end of the first cycle, solo players were challenged like they had previously been during Escape from Dol Guldur. The final AP of the cycle gave them a quest that was very difficult to beat in true solo, but got easier with more players, as they got to share Gollum between players, reducing … Continue reading Nightmare Return to Mirkwood
With the new Wilds of Rhovanion Deluxe box taking a lot of inspiration from the original Core Set scenarios, a reworked version of Passage through Mirkwood was inevitable. The quest is the first one that any new player plays when they dive into this game, and it has a reputation of being the easiest quest … Continue reading Lost in Mirkwood
When fans of J.R.R. Tolkien are asked to consider what scene is the most iconic in his legendarium, Riddles in the Dark easily ranks among them. This scene has it all; mystery, suspense, an eerie setting, the creepy Gollum, and the hero of "The Hobbit," Bilbo Baggins. The game also contains all these, and a … Continue reading Dungeons Deep and Caverns Dim
There has been a pattern in this card game stretching right back to the Core Set. Well, perhaps I should be more specific, there are in fact several of these patterns. But the one in particular I am referring to is the removal of heroes from the player's control before the game ever begins. It … Continue reading The Long Arm Of Mordor
Every once in a while, the developers make a scenario that is radically different than usual. Quests like Foundations of Stone or Flight of the Stormcaller have separate staging area's, and quests like Steward's Fear have an interesting way to add replayability while also adding more loss conditions. Noticed any trends between those three quests … Continue reading The Temple of the Deceived
