It’s been a quiet few months for the HOG bunch. The guys have been busy working, moving house, having babies and the rest of what adults get up to 🙁
I’ve been out of the loop working on my other passion, Humanity Ascendant – our Laser Tag LARP that ran in September and went extremely well.
Most gaming has been of the board gaming variety, including a lot of online Twilight Imperium.
I also recently started another run of Lord of the Rings – Journeys in Middle Earth with 2 of my daughters. We’ve completed the 2 campaigns in the main game box and recently FINALLY I got hold of a copy of the very hard to find Moria expansion.
Back to Middle Earth then…
So I’ve read a few reviews on the expansion and it said that there was a lot more to do, and choices were much more important. You now get a branching campaign, and added things such as corruption.
We’re only 3 sessions in (2 exploration maps and a battle map) but so far it has been a lot of fun. The first adventure we completed on the last possible turn!
So some mild spoilers ahead…
So we start off on in Mirkwood taking out spiders. Apparently they are up to something, and are carrying a glowing package wrapped in web.
We have Gandalf, Gimli and Eleanor as our characters. To start with we just start exploring…
As we open up the map we rescue an Elf, find a horse, uncover various treasures all whild fighting spiders and other bad guys. Eventually we discover their plot and thwart it…. barely! Not gonna spoil it though…
Choices Choices
At this point we are given 3 choices of our route forward… treaty with the Elves, pursue the Spiders or explore Moria for Relics. Guess what we did? Yes, of course we did – Gimli and Gandalf outvoted the more cautious Elf…
On to Moria!
So we first need to find our way into Moria. A largish but relatively straightforward route to the mountains is explored.
It’s all going well until we find the gate and try to unlock it.
Ambush!
It’s a tough fight but once Gimli arrives we are able to mop up and unlock Moria.
I didn’t take a picture of the whole mapped area for Moria, but overall this is a HUGE map and a lot of fun.
Ereanor, loot monster that she is, finds the relic room and goes looting. She instead finds a massive Worm!
We rush to her aid, and manage to fend it off. Once dead, it reveals a tunnel to the lower levels. And the Relic. So we move on to a battle map…
Smoke and Flames
At this point you’re probably thinking “they dug too deep!”. And you would be right! The Balrog, disturbed by our not-so-gentle traversing of it’s realm, bounds forward in anger.
It’s on. The thing is terrifying, hits like a truck, and dislikes Gandalf….
Somehow Gandalf survives and once again we fell a mighty foe… Until it jumps to it’s feet again. All we’ve done is annoy it!
We figure our only chance is to collapse the columns in the room. As the room starts to collapse we find a tunnel leading out. As the room collapses we slip into a long hallway. As we start to run from the collapsing halls behind us, we are pursued by ghosts that can go through the walls we are having to duck around! Once again it’s really really tough, but eventually we take out2 of the 4 ghosts and escape the halls.
We live for another day!
Thoughts so far
The expansion does not disappoint so far. Having a load of fun with it. Eleanor already has 3 corruption points, Gandalf is a lot of fun to play as a meddling so-and-so and the extra choices and more often award of title cards etc. all adds a lot to putting you more in control. Choosing your next adventure is a great thing too.
Looking forward to getting further into this, will report then 😀
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