What I Played Today: April 24

Lord of the Rings, Rift

I tried to pass the second mission of Lord of the Rings a few times, with some combined decks. The first attempt, I died literally the second turn. THE SECOND TURN! That’s just vicious. I almost won the second time, only dying when I get hit really hard by a threat jump to over 50. Of course, I realize now that I had forgotten a rule, so that doesn’t even count as a true near-victory. The third time, I made it quite easily to the last stage, keeping my threat low, and able to cast double Gandalfs at the start to take out that bastard hill troll, when things went south when the last two monsters I needed to kill spike-damaged Aragorn, killing him, and I got stuck with a really awful card, Wolf Riders, who immediate attack if it is revealed as a shadow card, then run back to the top of the deck. In any other situation, not that big of deal, you get one unexpected attack, and then they go into the staging area. Except here, where the staging step is skipped, so every turn I was getting hit with this unwanted monster attack. Considering I was already out of useful cards, I was doomed. (Even worse was that I thought that all I needed to win was draw a Gandalf, he would solve everything. So I draw the Gandalf, celebrate, and then realize, oh wait, I still can’t do this, and I lose. Screw the Wolf Riders, is what I’m saying.)

Also played some more Rift, I’m not sure where I stand here. I don’t want to go into any dungeons, which seems to be where the content is leaning. I’m always super confused why they show off the things they do different, but they never do them differently enough. They have auto-grouping enabled for world events and just regular outworld questing if the players want, but they don’t have an easy teamup for their instanced dungeons? Hell, WoW has that, and you are actively competing against them. I don’t want to sit through the process of asking people over the chat to join my group and yadda yadda. I don’t want to sit through that. Just throw me together with some buffoons and let’s do this.