♫ Eric Herman ♫
United States
West Richland
Washington
I like elephants. I like how they swing through trees.
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I received F&F in the mail yesterday and had to get in a solo session last night. I had already read the rules and was ready to go, so I decided to go with a three character game. I did make the mistake once early on of forgetting to draw a new Foe when drawing an activity tile first on a turn, but I also made the mistake of drawing a new Foe when drawing an activity tile after an event tile, so that balanced out, and I was more careful from that point on.
At first, I was thinking, gosh, this really is a lot more difficult... It seemed as though I barely made it through Bree, and with four Foes still out on the board, there was no way I'd be skipping over Moria and Lothlorien. That was just as well, as I needed those extra cards. From that point on, the scenario boards went pretty well, and I seemed to be drawing a higher than expected number of activity tiles, but that meant that the Foes kept coming out, and there were some close calls where I was barely able to remove the 8th Foe by the end of a character's turn.
I couldn't skip over Helm's Deep and Shelhob's Lair, either, so this was going to have to be a long and probably very difficult route to victory, but early on in Shelhob's Lair the Foe deck ran out, so I was able to forget about the Foes from that point and focus on getting through the scenario in good enough shape for Mordor, which I did.
I was excited to see how things would go in Mordor, but early into it I realized how it seemed kind of silly that I was now able to avoid the Foes altogether, even though seven of them were sitting there in front of me (they just sit there and I get to say "nya nya nya nyaaa nya!" for the rest of the game?). And I also realized that it might actually be a much easier victory for me if I just destroyed the rest of them. It would require a few dice rolls and I'd have to survive at least long enough to pass the turn to each of the players, but indeed, that worked and I won with a military victory. Frodo unfortunately rolled to move three spaces and was taken over by Sauron, so that wasn't good, but Middle Earth was saved and hobbits everywhere could safely play Guitar Hero II in the comfort of their shire without fear of further trouble from Mr. Evil-Pants Sauron.
So I won, but after it was done and I was putting everything back in the box I regretted that I didn't just continue on and see if I could have won by dunking the ring into Mount Doom. I felt like the military victory was just too easy and very anticlimactic after that perilous journey I'd been on. For a game like this, I don't necessarily care so much if I win the "game"... I want the drama of the experience. It felt like there was this great epic movie where they had set up this great ending in Mordor but were running out of film stock and so instead of a terrific dramatic ending, there was suddenly a black screen with text that said: "And in Mordor, the Hobbits destroyed the rest of the Foes and everyone lived happily ever after... THE END".
Now, reading some of the threads here, I have discovered the Black Gate card, designed to fix, or at least help, with this exact problem. I still don't think I would ever want to go for military victory, though, even with the Black Gate involved. I'm not even really a fan of the Lord of the Rings books or films, but I love this game and have enough connection to the story to know that it really needs to end with the ring being destroyed on Mount Doom (or not).
So I'm wondering how those of you who play F&F deal with the situation. Do you use the Black Gate with/without military victory? Do you involve the One Ring and Watchful Peace cards as part of the mix? In any case, the addition of the Foes and the other boards and cards adds something, but not all that much, really, and on first impression (especially because of the weak ending, but not only because of that) I don't necessarily agree with the comments I've read that say that the base game is vastly improved with F&F. Those new things add something to the base game, indeed, but not necessarily something better. Anyway, I'll have to play it a few more times, with the Black Gate involved, for sure, and see how things go...
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I think this line's mostly filler
United States
Takoma Park
Maryland
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Yeaaah, the military victory really destroys the game, I think.
We don't use the Black Gate at all. We use the "Watchful Peace" effect when all Foes are killed: Sauron moves back three spaces, any further boxes are interpreted as in the base game (discard a card or die). This seems to strike a nice balance; it gives some much-needed breathing room if you kill all the Foes and somewhat balances out the fact that you waste turns you could use drawing cards to kill them, but it's not a game-breaker and keeps you from winning too off-handedly like you did. (Though we've never explicitly discussed it, now that I think about it, I guess we've also house-ruled that the shortcuts are no longer valid once all the monsters are dead, since we don't use them.)
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Well, . . . I've only played with F&F once so far. It was a five-player game, and we did win with a military victory, but I thought it was perfectly satisfying. (We didn't have and didn't use the Black Gate variant.) The thing about getting the foes down to less than 8 is that a military victory becomes a bit more tempting, so you need to decide which type of victory to go for at that point.
Also, at one point we had a very hard time getting the last foes to come out. One way they appear is if your first tile draw is a "good" tile, and that just wasn't happening that often for us. So though we had the deck down to below eight, we still needed to get those last foes to show up so we could get rid of them. Between the time we got the deck down below 8 and the time we won, we lost four of our five characters to Sauron, so it certainly wasn't easy.
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Brad Miller
United States
Seattle
Washington
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We played this last night for the first time in three years. We've NEVER won with F&F. We didn't make it past Helm's Deep.
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Jeff Brown
United States
Colorado Springs
Colorado
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We don't play with the military victory, and we have won it the old fashioned way. It certainly is difficult but very satisfying.
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Alfred Das
Netherlands
's-Hertogenbosch
Noord-Brabant
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Grudunza wrote: ... reading some of the threads here, I have discovered the Black Gate card, designed to fix, or at least help, with this exact problem. I still don't think I would ever want to go for military victory, though, even with the Black Gate involved. I'm not even really a fan of the Lord of the Rings books or films, but I love this game and have enough connection to the story to know that it really needs to end with the ring being destroyed on Mount Doom (or not).
So I'm wondering how those of you who play F&F deal with the situation. ... You say you've read some threads, did you stumble upon this thread as well: Military Victory = Watchful Peace
www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/87400
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♫ Eric Herman ♫
United States
West Richland
Washington
I like elephants. I like how they swing through trees.
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Der Das wrote: Grudunza wrote: ... reading some of the threads here, I have discovered the Black Gate card, designed to fix, or at least help, with this exact problem. I still don't think I would ever want to go for military victory, though, even with the Black Gate involved. I'm not even really a fan of the Lord of the Rings books or films, but I love this game and have enough connection to the story to know that it really needs to end with the ring being destroyed on Mount Doom (or not).
So I'm wondering how those of you who play F&F deal with the situation. ... You say you've read some threads, did you stumble upon this thread as well: Military Victory = Watchful Peace www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/87400
Ah yes, and I think I'm going to try it with the bottom of the Foes deck consisting of One Ring on top of Black Gate on top of Watchful Peace. The One Ring seems like a nice bonus for having defeated enough of the Foes to run out the deck, initially... and then Watchful Peace as an added bonus/incentive for having defeated the extra Foes.
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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My first game of LotR was with the Sauron expansion. We made it partway through Mordor.
2nd game was only with the F&F expansion. Me and another hobbit died, but the other 3 lived to toss the Ring into the lava. The Military Victory option was on our minds, but it wasn't as viable as making it through the very end.
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♫ Eric Herman ♫
United States
West Richland
Washington
I like elephants. I like how they swing through trees.
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If I didn't articulate it well enough, I think what disappointed me afterward was that in the early stages of Mordor, it became obvious that I could win based on the Military Victory rule, but it wasn't remotely assured that I would succeed in destroying the ring in Mount Doom, so I wished I'd have at least tried that. No matter how it turned out, it would have been a lot more exciting and interesting than the procedural process of eliminating the remaining Foes one by one.
So it's not necessarily a problem with the game itself, even as it is... I can always opt not to go for the military victory. But in that case, it seems kind of blah that after you've been dealing with the Foe problem up to that point there might be some Foes just kind of sitting there doing nothing once the Foe deck runs out. I suppose that once the Foe deck runs out and I am safely under 8 Foes I could just discard them all and focus on the scenarios, which is essentially what I did through most of Shelhob's Lair and the beginning of Mordor.
I think the Black Gate does address that nicely, though I still don't think I'll allow Military Victory as an option. With One Ring > Black Gate > Watchful Peace at the bottom of the Foes deck I think it might be pretty cool...
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Alfred Das
Netherlands
's-Hertogenbosch
Noord-Brabant
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Grudunza wrote: Ah yes, and I think I'm going to try it with the bottom of the Foes deck consisting of One Ring on top of Black Gate on top of Watchful Peace. The One Ring seems like a nice bonus for having defeated enough of the Foes to run out the deck, initially... and then Watchful Peace as an added bonus/incentive for having defeated the extra Foes. That is exactly how I ended up playing it the last few times. At first I had the One Ring and W.Peace cards switched (One Ring last). The idea behind that was that the incentive to defeat the first wave should be high enough in order to prevent ignoring the foes as much as possible.
I'm still unsure about what is the best way to go. In any case, I encourage you to go ahead with your plan, it will make the game so much more thematic and rewarding.
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Bryan Stout
United States
Annandale
Virginia
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Like others, I play with the Black Gate, and don't use the military victory. I also like the "Military Victory = Watchful Peace" variant linked to by Der Das above. It addresses the complaint you have about ignoring the Foes once there're less than 8 left -- it gives you something to fight for when you defeat them all.
For those who cannot win against F&F, like Windopaene above, I often find it's because they are really hit hard by the 3rd Event in Bree, "The Nazgul Strike at Bree". Since Sauron advances one space for each uncovered space on the Hiding track, this can be devastating. If this is the problem, the answer lies in Sam's Character Ability card, "Valour". He can ignore any one Event by rolling the die and taking the full consequences. Indeed, it looks like it was designed specifically for a way to pass through Bree without too much damage from the Nazgul strike.
I'm a big fan of this game, but the part that doesn't feel quite right to me is that good play usually requires the "sprint through Mordor" strategy. The players horde their Travelling cards so they can barrel through Mordor in 2 or 3 turns, ignoring all else. Mordor should really feel like a marathon, not a sprint. This is one reason I made the "Minas Tirith" expansion, found here.
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♫ Eric Herman ♫
United States
West Richland
Washington
I like elephants. I like how they swing through trees.
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Another thing that I guess I should have factored in is that, per the optional rules, I could have lost the game when Frodo was overtaken by Sauron on the corruption track. But for the sake of my record (2-2 so far), I will opt not to opt for that optional rule for that game.
Bryan, your expansion looks terrific and I would love to try it out, though the printing of all the cards and boards and everything seems a little daunting. One question, though... At what point does the Minas Tirith board come in... after Shelhob? Or do you skip that scenario? The rules do not seem to specify.
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Bryan Stout
United States
Annandale
Virginia
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Grudunza wrote: Bryan, your expansion looks terrific and I would love to try it out, though the printing of all the cards and boards and everything seems a little daunting. One question, though... At what point does the Minas Tirith board come in... after Shelhob? Or do you skip that scenario? The rules do not seem to specify. I'm glad you like it!
You are right: it comes between Shelob's Lair and Mordor. It is not stated in the rules, but in the assembly instructions in the labels file.
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♫ Eric Herman ♫
United States
West Richland
Washington
I like elephants. I like how they swing through trees.
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Barliman wrote: You are right: it comes between Shelob's Lair and Mordor. It is not stated in the rules, but in the assembly instructions in the labels file.
Wow, so if you played that with F&F and weren't able to skip any scenarios in F&F, you could be talking about a very long game... which would be cool! It is an epic series, after all...
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Bob McMurray
United States
LaGrange
Illinois
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Barliman wrote: For those who cannot win against F&F, like Windopaene above, I often find it's because they are really hit hard by the 3rd Event in Bree, "The Nazgul Strike at Bree". Since Sauron advances one space for each uncovered space on the Hiding track, this can be devastating. If this is the problem, the answer lies in Sam's Character Ability card, "Valour". He can ignore any one Event by rolling the die and taking the full consequences. Indeed, it looks like it was designed specifically for a way to pass through Bree without too much damage from the Nazgul strike.
We prefer to use Gandalf's letter to summon "Defiance". This way "Valor" can be used to combat Saruman if needed or in Mordor. If Frodo isn't getting a ring on his 1st turn in order to secure Gandalf's letter that is a much better way to lose at F&F. However, we also like to try and get Bill the Pony if we can, if Frodo can utilize Tom Bombadil as a wild on the hiding track, as he is a "poor man's Athelas" in Moria.
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I like elephants. I like how they swing through trees.
