The Dwarves Are upon You! A Middle-earth CCG Session Report

Our gaming was cancelled this weekend, so here was a different game I played recently.

Finally found some time to play some more Middle-earth CCG solo. I made a dwarf deck for a “2-deck game”, built around trying to gear up and slay a dragon (or two) and play some big point cards. Note, this is meant to be a dwarf deck; while I’ll be making some adjustments after this session, I’m not looking to mix in some hobbits or elves, however helpful they might be!

The Deck

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First couple turns were slow, just walking through steps to make sure I was remembering everything. I’ve played twice before solo and once 3-player, but they were all starter games without region movement and without the optional rules (as well as some of the other standard rules). Some things I had gotten use to, but there were a few things here and there that were new. I also made a few errors that I caught like forgetting I can only assign strikes on untapped characters (caught this only a couple of turns into the game, so not a big deal).

The solo rules in the book also leave a lot of unanswered questions about some effects, so I fudged some stuff. I mostly wanted to get the hand of the main rules; I’ll worry about the exactness of the solo rules later. I wasn’t using any especially weird or complicated hazard cards, so it wasn’t difficult just doing the most obvious thing.

A couple of turns in, poor Oin was already eaten by a drake. At least Gloin was able to join the party before they left Lorien and headed off to the Iron Hill Dwarfhold. We also picked up some lembas bread in Lorien.

Pallando popped in at Rivendell, and the following turn, Gimli joined him. There were now two companies running around. The main company recruited the Iron Hill Dwarves, then found some armor and Thror’s Map at the Wind Throne. Pallando unfortunately was wounded on the way to Moria.

Pallando had to head back for healing and Balin and Nori split off to group with him and Gimli for a safer tackle of Moria. The other company arrives in Mount Gundabad, but I wasn’t able to draw into anything they could play there! This is when I came up with an interesting idea.

I sent Kili off on his own since I had just enough general influence to break him from Dain. Kili’s mission was just to go back to Lorien and draw some cards! Thankfully, he found Orcrist so the other company over at Gundabad could play it. The other company had some issues at Framsburg. Nori had a partial corruption and got discarded with a fresh new scabbard I had just played. Two of the others were wounded. There are so many wounded now, I thought the photo was upside down!

Poor Balin then bites the dust in battle against a drake. After some recovery and a reshuffle for the exhausted deck, one team heads back to Moria to play a gold ring while the other team heads back to the Iron Hill Dwarfhold to drop off the Book of Mazarbul. But, it was too far to travel in one go, so they stopped off at the Lonely Mountain (not going in while Smaug was at home!).

I then spent several turns trying to get both teams back together so Pallando could use Ringlore on the gold ring. Since Balin died, Pallando is my only available sage, but the other company was carrying the ring! While Pallando’s group was at Lorien, Bofur joined up to replace the late Balin. Then, finally, both companies grouped together. But I have no ring to play! It’s somewhere in the deck, but I just hadn’t drawn it since adding it during the reshuffle from the sideboard.

I spent a few turns running one team around, trying to draw cards while the other company waited in the Dimrill Dale to play Ring Lore. But, the game was going long, I wasn’t getting to draw enough cards because of a certain dragon that had been in play most of the game, so I decided to call it.

Using the alternate scoring method, I needed Marshaling Points equal to 4 + double the number of turns. In this case, 16 turns meant that I needed 36 total points. Ended with 43 points (Kili’s weapon is worth 4 when held by a dwarf, the points got covered). I could have ended the game much earlier, probably as soon as I had reshuffled the deck, but I’m still getting the hang of things, especially deck-building, so I wanted to see how the deck ran and what things I might want to change for next time.

It’s very easy to get too ambitious with the deck and expect to do a lot more than you’ll be able to. I would definitely cut back on some of the hoard items and hoard-related cards. I think I might want one dwarven ring to start in the deck, then try and find a second later if possible? Sideboarding the ring is a little rough since, as was the case this time, I just never was able to draw it. I’d also like to make some adjustments to the hazard deck.

I also found that, even if in some cases borderholds won’t be needed by the deck for playing related cards, they can be useful as safe pit-stops when traveling long distances. The Iron Hills were pretty far away, and it would have been nice having someplace safer to stop at along the way to and from. A backup location or two for something like a ring might be good. Otherwise, the deck worked better than it did in the 3-player game.