Council of Elrond

Does anyone have experience with solo play testing techniques? I like deck building. But I am having difficulty play testing the deck. Currently I am playing one of the Challenge Decks against my own deck. However, it just takes too long to track my opponent's hazards and resources in addition to my own. I could spend an hour or more and only be a few turns into the game. And it's easy to be confused.

I have been thinking to split and swap the hazard and resource portions of the deck. Say, play my resources against the Challenge deck's hazards, and the other way as well. I could play 4 or 5 card hands on either side, similar to a solitaire scenario. Of course, this leaves out the interaction of my own hazard long events, and any interference by opposing characters. But at least the games should be shorter and it'd be more manageable to keep everything in order.

Then I would need to track turns vs MP progress to see how successful the deck is. Any suggestions or insight would be appreciated.

CDavis7M wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 7:04 pm I have been thinking to split and swap the hazard and resource portions of the deck. Say, play my resources against the Challenge deck's hazards, and the other way as well. I could play 4 or 5 card hands on either side, similar to a solitaire scenario. Of course, this leaves out the interaction of my own hazard long events, and any interference by opposing characters. But at least the games should be shorter and it'd be more manageable to keep everything in order.

That's actually what the official solo rules suggest.
And that's the way I play.

I have found a better play testing method and I I posted about on the Facebook group.

The problem with using the 5 card handsize is that it doesn't reflect normal 8-card gameplay where you can choose to hold on to more resources, or more hazards, to set up combos, or because of bad card-draw, or bad flow, etc.

So what I do instead is that I just play my deck against another preconstructed deck, usually one of the challenge decks, sometimes with modifications. You can modify the deck to have the hazards you expect to face. Fallen-gandalf.net and meccg.net have more hazard deck examples.

But of course, playing an actual game is way too time consuming. What I do is maintain my "opponent's" hand using my judgment and then fake everything else happening on their turn:

• Opponent's Organization Phase: Play new sites for my opponent's companies based on the resources in hand (you don't even need to find the site if you know the site path and draw).
• Opponent's Long-event Phase" Play any long (or permanent) events using judgment.
• Opponent's Movement/Hazard Phase: Move and draw cards as normal, but fake playing hazards. I only ensure that the hazards are playable but don't bother implementing the effects. I might also fake playing resources using the opponents hand (cancellers, boosters, etc). I typically don't even bother to tap or wound characters. I just skip to the site phase.
• Opponent's Site Phase: I estimate whether the company would have been able to have an untapped character after the automatic attack and the hazards I faked. This is the only point where I might roll a dice for the opponent, and only if it's not clear. Usually I just play the resource or I don't without rolling. If I do roll it's against how "bad" the hazards and automatic attacks were. Just pick a number. (maybe if there were few strikes, low prowess, maybe a 4 or 5 is fine, but if there were several attacks, maybe a 9 or 10 is needed).
• EoT: I just discard and draw as normal.

So you can get through an opponent's turn in a few minutes, especially if you don't actually play the sites. You can realistically get through most of a game in half an hour.

There is also a less "realistic" method I also use that's even faster. It's good for a trial run of a deck. You draw 8 cards as normal but I don't have an opponent's deck, I just fake play the hazards against myself, not even really checking playability against my actual companies. I just discard 1-3 hazards depending on their general playability. I still decide whether I would have been able to play a resource but it's not a big deal. This method lets you go through an entire "game" in basically a few minutes. I only use this method once or twice to see what happens.

Chris,

Here is how I do play solitaire games (taken form a 2007 post in the meccg.net forum) and also test my decks (sometime replacing the hazard side with that from other decks). Keep in mind I have done so only for METW-only decks. Anyway here we go:

I use my deck normally, start with my initial company and draw 8 cards.

Long events stay in play two turns. At the end of the turn I tap the long events, and if they are already tapped I discard them.

Whenever I move to a site I first draw the cards as a hero player, keeping off the side the hazard cards. I then draw the cards as a hazard player, keeping off the side the resources and characters. This is to simulate the fact that during the movement/hazard phase you sometime draw cards that you cannot immediately use.

At the end of the m/h phase, I take all the cards off the side in my hand and reconcile. When reconciling my hand, I must discard a resource card before I can discard an hazard card.

At the end of the turn phase, I try to discard a resource card as well.

When testing my deck, I count only half of my kill MP, unless I am trying out only my hero side of the deck.

[An alternative way to draw and discard cards in the m/h phase is to place directly under your deck the cards you would normally place off the side according to my previous rule.]

Have fun, Marc

Hi Sarma, just for clarification: which cards do you keep off the side: the ones you already have in your hand or the ones you draw during m/h phase.Thanks Uwe

Hi there,

I put off the sides the cards I draw during the M/H, depending on whether I'm acting as myself or my opponent.

Marc

Hi Marc, thanks for that. Uwe