HON is amazing. I really love it! Difficult and very very hard solo. And as i see encounter cards is 3 times more powerful in 2 player game.Really need to cooperate with your partner to win. this is just my trhough ( i still didn try 2 or more player game). Anyway HON is really what i waiting for!

Glaurung said:

Yeah, I'm a solo player and I just changed to play 2-handed.  I was worried this would make the quests too easy for me as I enjoy a good challenge and would be bored if I won most of the time.  Appears I had nothing to worry about - I am getting crushed by Peril in Pelagir and haven't yet attempted the other two.  Flipping over 2 cards from the encounter deck with the treacheries and enemies in HoN makes it very difficult (e.g. colloratoral damage becomes a beast).  I've avoided using a dwarf deck as I wanted to try some new cards (a little bored of dwarves at the moment having used them for all of Khazad-dum) but I may need to go back to them.  My Gondor and Eagles decks just aren't working for me.

Just beat Into Ithilien on the 5th try, solo and still with my Tactomir / Spirfindel / Loragorn deck.

I thought I had it in the bag when I quested for 20 willpower on 4b with just 1 threat in the SA, 15 needed on the quest, and threat at 29. But lo and behold, Watcher in the Wood raised my threat by 9, meaning the quest gained siege,  The Southron Company in the SA went to 3 threat rather than 1, and all of a sudden I was questing for 9 defense instead of 20 willpower. I LOVE the way the encounter deck can turn the game in the blink of an eye in this scenario.

Nevertheless, thanks to near-total board control I managed to slog it out for three more turns and finish the quest. Again with lots of wounds on my heroes (9) and threat in the 40s. HoN does not give easy wins away, it seems. 

Seriously, this expansion has pushed the game into stratospheric heights IMO.

On to Cair Andros! 

My fear is that in an effort to make the quests more difficult the solo player has become locked in to just a few choices.  The winning decks here and at BGG are holding a lot of Sporifindel and Loragorn.  I'm glad tactics is finally getting a little step forward, but let's not throw deck flexibility completely out the window.

Yeah, I know the irony.  I'm the guy that was trying to force my Three Hunters round peg into the Mirkwood square hole.  I'm not rushing to judgement until we see a few card packs, but I'm seriously afraid that the game is becoming "narrow minded".

Bullroarer Took said:

Well, there's always the fun deck; I'm very fond of my Family Trip deck (Elrond, Elladan, Elrohir on The Redhorn Gate).

And actually, thinking about it, the choice for a solo general purpose deck used to be quite simple: tri-sphere without Tactics. Now with HoN, Tactics is a must. Since I like Lore's allround goodness, that means having to choose between leaving out Spirit or Leadership. Current build has no leadership hero and is quad-sphere through Song of Kings, but it's definitely giving me more headaches than before.

In terms of heroes, you're right. I considered Eleanor and Beravor instead of Glorfindel and Aragorn, but for the same amount of threat there's just no comparison. 

Just remember how hard these quests are when someone asks you if they should buy this or Kazadum for their first big box expansion.

RGun said:

Just try my Dwarfs decks against HON. Peril In Pelargir i won once but was really close to lose. Second quest i dont have any chance to win(try maybe 5 times already). Last one i dont even try yet. Need to build up new kind of decks. Looks like 2 player game should be awesome!

Glaurung said:

I think you are right. It scales very well. There are cards that are just so much more potent in coop, but on the other hand it is really hard to build a solo deck that can do all things. We actually had a pretty hard time squeezing everything into two decks. We had our decks prepared for Pelargir but had to change them dramatically to stand a chance. We had hardly ever had to do this before. Now I want to tweek the decks so they can still beat some of the earlier quests but to win them all with one (or even two) deck(s) will soon be impossible, I feel.

Glaurung said:

And yeah, I can confirm, coop is rather great.

Just try the last quest…… Lost of course but……epic battle! Really love this chain of shadow cards! This quest is very difficult to play solo. FFG make a great job for now cose even 2 player game you must to play very carefull, cooperate with you partner all the time and really one or 2 mistaces can cost you all game. So now in my opinion game come to really cool level! Now the real game is begin!!!!