How do you think this return to secrecy has been so far? I know there are not many spoilers (at least not around anymore) but what are you expecting? What do you think secrecy needs the most to become viable? To me, what would help a lot is more threat reduction, either permantent or temporary. An event like "Action: Choose two heroes. Until the end of the round, these heroes do not contribute their threat to your threat total (reduce your threat by the two heroes' combined total until the end of the round.)", that would do it perfectly IMO.

I am also excited to see the return of Secrecy. It has always been underrated, in my opinion. Timely Aid is one of the most powerful cards in the game, and it has saved me multiple times, even after my threat has risen above the Secrecy threshold. I agree the threat reduction would be helpful, but it seems that the designers are being careful about new forms of threat reduction. The recent threat reduction cards like Smoke Rings tend to be very conditional. I am curious to see how Galadriel changes decks. Having a guaranteed offset of the per-round threat increase seems pretty powerful.

For me, the biggest boon to Secrecy so far has been the Hobbit heroes, along with cards like Dagger of Westernesse and Bill the Pony from The Black Riders. It will be interesting to see what other support Secrecy gets from The Ring-maker cycle. It seems natural that some of the Silvan cards will work well in Secrecy decks, in addition to their own archetype.

Yeah that does sound good, I think the largest difficulty is keeping your threat at that low 20 to make use of your Secrecy cards. Permanent threat reduction is great but too powerful or expensive so really we need temporary threat reduction to make use of Secrecy after your threat is high. With that you could have one round to play a bunch of secrecy cards as your threat is temporarily lowered because right now once your threat gets too high those Secrecy cards are worthless.

In general, I would like Secrecy cards to remain playable in non Secrecy decks but give you that extra bonus to make Secrecy worth trying to keep. Dunedain Wanderer is a bad example of Secrecy since he cost too much and won't be in non Secrecy decks while Out of the Wild is a good example for a nice card worth 3 cost but is awesome to have discounted.

I like the spoiled Noiseless Movement as it can be good in any deck but especially good in secrecy and the Leaf Brooch looks really powerful and great for secrecy also but above all I really want some temporary threat reduction!

We need a global noiseless movements like advance warning, for secrecy. Make it cost 4 and gice secrecy 2. Lore of course. And yeah as I said, temporary threat reduction will be the thing that'll make secrecy viable.

I think Dan really hit on it with the Hobbit heroes, but more than anything, I'd like to see more Secrecy-friendly heroes. Secrecy construction feels a bit restricted at the moment, and having more heroes to choose from with 6 or 7 threat would be helpful. They don't have to be supermen like Glorfindel, but could have some abilities that are useful for Secrecy.

The problem is that Low Threat heroes are fantastic for ALL decks.. not just secrecy. I think we need more secrecy cards to make the deck design investment worth it, but I would not like to see a influx of low threat heroes as they will just go into the other decks and increase their power 10 fold.

I agree with booored, low threat heroes does not equal secrecy friendly heroes. There can be secrecy friendly heroes that work best in secrecy mode but don't necessarily have low threat. I'd still welcome more lower threat heroes in the future though,, that have no more than 9.

I'm for more viable archetypes and certainly Secrecy is one of those. As Dan said Hobbits opened up Secrecy, but I would like to see it work for two hero decks as well. Put another way, I always thought that Elladan and Elrohir were supposed to be lead in heroes for Secrecy with their combined threat of 20, but obviously that didn't work. I hope that at some point it does.

They have to be very careful not to make secrecy go overpowered. It has potential to be very, very powerful. The developers are treading lightly with good reason. Some of the cards that are already out, as has been mentioned, are quite powerful. The secrecy cards being far less useful after your threat goes up is the thing that balances the archetype. If there is an easy (or even just available) way to get around that and play secrecy cards for reduced cost anyway, it could very quickly become overpowered.

I think there are going to be some interesting Galadriel secrecy builds, since she can maintain threat below the threshold for as long as you want. And the silvan synergy there might be fun.

But, for solo play, I'm not sure that's enough. The best secrecy build I've ever used is incredibly strong. About on par with Elrond decks, because of Timely Aid, Elf-stone, and some serious resource manipulation effects. (You can also splash in A Very Good Tale, but I'm not convinced it's worth it any more.) The build is basically those cards with a lot of expensive allies. Theodred, Glorfindel, and Bifur as the heroes.

I think I have to agree with the Divine Number here. Secrecy is to powerful to be left unchecked. The threat level is a great natural weight for it.

What we need is a card that can enable secrecy but not making it a constantly available effect.. as in "always on". Which is what a influx of low threat heroes would achieve.

I had a quick think and very quickly knocked up a new hero type... Spy! I put a few other spy effects on it for fun.. but the espionage mission is the one I am talkign about. He has a high threat so, you still need to manage the threat like a normal secrecy deck, but his ability allows secrecy to function in mid game more often, as for most of the time secrecy is for fast early starts, due to the longer the game goes the higher your threat is.

Like the basic idea you got there Booored.

However the subversion mission wouldn´t work because it is an action to send him on the mission and to cancel a treachery (or the when revealed of a treachery?) would have to be a response.

Also I think the espionage mission is too restrictive on it´s own with only a 4 raise in the secrecy value and a limitation on unexhausting him afterwards (untap being the "magic" terminology )

But this is just minor nitpicking and easily corrected.

yeah, it would need to be a response. So Action / Response etc would be in the mission text and the "send on mission" would have no keyword as a constant effect.

Though I think the two turns is vital to stop secrecy power. If you can tap him each turn, and cast secrecy each turn then we are back to the same problem as a low threat hero. Maybe the increase needs to go from 4-6 or somthing.

@untap.. hehe.. well it is just a sketch

I agree with the temporary threat reduction. And I think it could be even simpler than that. It could just be a Spirit event, cost 0, with the following text: Choose a hero. Reduce the threat of the player controlling the hero by that hero's threat cost. At the end of the phase, raise the threat of the player controlling the hero by that hero's threat cost.

Yeah that does sound good, I think the largest difficulty is keeping your threat at that low 20 to make use of your Secrecy cards. Permanent threat reduction is great but too powerful or expensive so really we need temporary threat reduction to make use of Secrecy after your threat is high. With that you could have one round to play a bunch of secrecy cards as your threat is temporarily lowered because right now once your threat gets too high those Secrecy cards are worthless.

We already have Wandering Took + Song of Earendill.

As for an ability to put on an attachment or a hero (or even an ally) : "reduce your threat by [X] while this cards (or attached card) is ready".

Will let you at least the aplanning phase to play some secrecy cards. And it will be broken if it is an attachement on Glorfindel, but only because of Glorfindel... would be perfect on Galadriel.

We already have Wandering Took + Song of Earendill.

That combo is bull***. Any game effect where you can just point at the table and say "I do this X times" should be nurffed.

Hum... clever.

Would like to see one who get a different ressource icon or other things like that.

We already have Wandering Took + Song of Earendill.

That combo is bull***. Any game effect where you can just point at the table and say "I do this X times" should be nurffed.

Wouldn´t necessarily say every game effect where you "do it X times" but I´ll definitely agree that SoE would be better off with not being able to trigger off players effects.

it is not that you can do it "x" times.. it is that you can literally just point at the table and say "I do this 20 times" or 5 or w/e. There is no cost, no downside. You basically just point at the table and adjust the threat between the players as you like.. That is not cool imo.

Agent of Arnor (Ally) (Lore) Cost: 2

Dunedain.

Will: 1

Attack: 1

Defend: 0

HP: 2

Action: Remove Agent of Arnor from the game to gain secrecy until the end of the phase.

i like this one a lot.

I´m really liking alot of the ideas that are popping up from this discussion

Is it just me or secrecy right now would work better in a deck about secrecy AND doomed? You see, in many secrecy decks you can't actually keep your threat 20 or lower for most of the game. It's usually a few rounds, play your secrecy cards, get set up, and then you cannot go back down but you're still at 21 or so threat, that's very safe still and then you play your doomed cards which are pretty powerful too. Reset if using Loragorn. Has anyone so far tried this?

Yeah as mentioned above by Gizlivadi, Secrecy really is something for setting up and then you need another plan for the rest of the game where your threat is above 20, I often used Gandalf 2.0 but now Doomed cards also work making use of extra threat you can take. Loragorn of course lets you get back to Secrecy but his 12 threat sucks.

Should Secrecy be something you can only use at the beginning of a game? It does make sense to sneak around for a bit but then you start getting noticed and can't stay in secret..

The above card ideas are genius and I would love to see cool mechanics like that but instead it looks like FFG from today's article is sticking with simple reduction or bonuses on cards if your threat is 20 or less.