u/them0use

I'm a relatively new player, but when the reprints went on sale I grabbed the Dream-Chaser and Ered Mithrin campaigns, plus the EC character expansion and the Elves and Dwarves starter decks.

I started on DC and although I sailed (heh) through Voyage Across Belegaer now I'm on Fate of Numenor and it's been kicking my ass consistently. The lost islands mean you always have a minimum of four threat to overcome before any baddies come out, with an encounter card that puts a third one out making a minimum of six, and it only gets worse in the second phase. And then on top of that most of the enemies can tank what any one of my characters can do, and/or (usually and) destroy anything I've got in one or two attacks.

NGL it's getting to the point where it's frustrating enough to not feel very fun, but I'm trying to treat it as a deckbuilding challenge. I started with the Elves, which seemed thematic but maybe wasn't a good choice because although Galadriel + Nenya can help with threat control there aren't a lot of combat heavy hitters and there are a lot of low-cost cards which for some reason this scenario seems to hate in particular (lots of "if the bottom card of your deck costs 2 or less, bad things happen")

I've swapped out Haldir for Elrond to get some extra flexibility, and added some healing cards, but it's not enough. It would be nice to stick with elves for thematic-ness, but maybe that's just the wrong approach.

I would welcome any advice, or even just validation that this is another Along the Anduin situation where even though it's only the second in the campaign it's supposed to be punishingly difficult.

Not quite pickling I know, but I am hoping folks here can help. I am trying to make homemade tabasco and misread the recipe. I don't know _how_ I misread it, because I thought it was weird that it had you just put peppers and salt in a jar without water, and eventually I went back and checked the recipe, and of course it did say to ferment it in brine. I must have just been up too late or something, Idunno.

Anyway I now have this week old jar of peppers, onion, basil, garlic and salt with no extra water. The jar doesn't "burp" when I open it, nor does it smell "yeasty", but it also doesn't smell bad or rotten, just like some nice peppers and onion.

So, is this salvageable? Will I end up with something viable for a fermented hot sauce if I leave it as-is, or if I add brine now? Is it at least likely to be safe for a non-fermented sauce? Any advice would be very welcome!

https://preview.redd.it/yhzys43k9clh1.png?width=1496&format=png&auto=webp&s=32ae1f116843c0b00b301a9a9d38ed0ee56defd0

https://preview.redd.it/j9kqrwfl9clh1.png?width=1496&format=png&auto=webp&s=4615c870d71fbb71022d71cf4f981911152942b6

After my post a couple of days ago I tried making a custom deck to try and having another go at Journey Down the Anduin. None of this counts because I realized too late that I'd only been putting out one encounter card per round instead of two during the second phase, but just getting to that phase was better than I'd done before so I pushed on.

When I got to the third phase (with 48 threat 😨), Ambush on the Shore says to reveal two encounter cards, skip staging, and I win when all enemies are defeated.

Well I did that, and both cards were treacheries that did a lot of damage but I had heroes standing at the end, so... did I just win (cheating aside)? Or am I misunderstanding something?

A related thing that confuses me is that the setup side of each phase has four encounter set icons on it, all of which I've been using to populate the encounter deck, but the B sides only have the one; does that just mean this quest is part of that set, or am I handling encounters wrong?

Thanks again for everyone's help!

First off, much appreciation to everybody here. In the past year I've happened upon good deals on used copies of LOTR LCG and Pathfinder ACG, and my experience of both has been enhanced by their communities here on Reddit.

...that said, I'm stuck. And stuck so bad I feel like I must be missing something.

I'm playing solo, using the recommended decks from the manual (maybe my first mistake?) and the scenarios that come with the base box. I blew through the intro scenario no problem, but am on probably my 5th attempt at the "intermediate" scenario, getting absolutely smashed each time no matter what faction I play. I was thinking, if it would be an interesting exercise for someone here I'll post a pic of where I'm at and what I am thinking, and maybe if there's some big obvious thing I've got wrong someone here can set me straight.

So, here's my current situation:

<record scratch> yup, that's me...

So ok, I'm playing Lore which is the only faction I've had any luck with entirely because of Forest Snare, which was suggested in an old post I found here about handling the Cave Troll, and which I was fortunate to draw early allowing me to nerf it. But now I'm still engaged with Gol Dulgur Beastmaster, and I just hit 40 Threat so Harsh Adder is also coming for me this turn.

So I'm dealing with:

• 3 threat + whatever is about to be revealed in staging (the last two turns were both +3!)
• 7 incoming damage (13 with "trample" if I hadn't snared the troll!)
• 9 total health + armor for the baddies, not counting the troll

And I have:

• 7 total Willpower
• 6 total damage I can deal
• 4 characters able to soak between 0 and 5 damage each without dying

The mechanic I'm struggling with the most is that, unless I've seriously misunderstood the rules, each of my characters can contribute to managing exactly one of threat, soaking damage, or dealing damage, and that's without using any tap abilities. One of my take-aways from this is that I want to have as many characters on the board as I can get, but if I play Hammersmith early he loses a lot of utility because I figure I should save him to get my Forest Snare(s) back later, so I've basically just got Gleowine in reserve, who contributes almost nothing stats-wise.

Here's what I'm thinking for the next turn:

• Spend 2 to bring out Gleowine
• Spend 1 from Glorfindel to heal him for 1
• Spend 2 to put Self Preservation on Glorfindel and tap it to remove the other 2 dmg
• Commit Glorfindel and Daughter of N to the quest and hope whatever is about to enter staging doesn't add more than 1 Threat
• Either also commit Gleowine to the quest, or tap him to draw a card (probably the former since I did Gandalf's Search earlier and there's nothing that'll be of immediate help coming up)
• ...and here's where things start to get frustrating. I have a couple of options for how to handle combat, and they both leave me feeling like surviving the turn is only prolonging an inevitable loss from hitting 50 threat, which will be hastened by the Adder's attacks:
  • Use daughter of N and Gleowine to soak the monster attacks. Both die. Then use Denethor and Beravor to do two whole damage to the Adder or Beastmaster. No chance of eliminating either monster, so next turn I'll be in the same sitation only with no damage sponges
  • OR defend with Denethor and Beravor so they each take 1 damage, but then I do no offense as the number of monsters coming for me continues to grow

So, am I thinking about this wrong? Do I need to start deckbuilding to actually have a chance? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!