http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5003

Impressed with the new card dynamics. Ranger of the North looks very interesting. A bit like the rangers in Massing in Osgiliath. Great for small encounter decks like Into Ithilien.

Wow! They are really going outside the box with these cards. Shuffling player cards into the encounter deck? Very exciting!

Having trouble wrapping my head around Ranger Summons, but I need to read the article. I like what I'm seeing with Dunedain though. Sarn Ford Sentry is cute, even with the scar. Dunedain Hunter.... wow.

Read the article. Ranger Summons... wow again. I've been hoping to field a true Dunedain deck someday and now I can't wait for this cycle. (Of course I'll have to, predicting April '15.)

These card are interesting to say the least. Seems like the developers are challenging the traditional deck building paradigms again!

edit: Looks like the cards are designed against turtling again, which is good. Seems like strong aggro cards are par for the course in the new expansion. Fascinating! The hunted are now the hunters.

Hey they used my quote on the expert trackers card. I guess they do read the forums!

Very excited about this, the rangers of the north are my favorite archtype. Looks really interesting what they are do with them.

I wonder if there will be other ways besides the leadership event to get the RotN card in the encounter deck.

Sidequests sound great. A new type of encounter cards basically that add a deeper level to the otherwise mundane questing part of the game. Bonus victory points for our score-counting fellow players, additional strategy and complexity without feeling forced (like imho, battle and siege quests).

Player cards that don't take up deck space are similarly intriguing. The 50 card deck has been fairly restrictive in the past, but once again, thanks, to smart design by the FFG folks, we have a wholly new way of approaching deck building. And allies that are added to the encounter deck sound fun as hell.

Seems like we got our selves another winner here.

Sarn Ford Sentry is cute, even with the scar. Dunedain Hunter.... wow.

Even? A well-placed scar makes a beautiful face even more attractive, adds some spice, if you will.

P.S.: I like the new side-quest mechanic. Confused by victory points icon though. I hope they will leave it in old fashion, just a bold text.

Player cards that don't take up deck space are similarly intriguing. The 50 card deck has been fairly restrictive in the past, but once again, thanks, to smart design by the FFG folks, we have a wholly new way of approaching deck building. And allies that are added to the encounter deck sound fun as hell.

If you would read the article, you'll find that this out-of-deck card can be played only by using an in-deck card, so if you want to use those rangers, you'll need to devote deck space to the events that call those rangers, meaning nothing new from this viewpoint. What I'm afraid of is that now we get two cards which are essentially one, and this might lead to an effective player card count reduction in the expansion and adventure packs.

Really loving the art on these cards! Ranger of the North just looks awesome!

The side quests seem neat - explore them if you want but if you ignore them then you have to eat there threat. Really cool adn thematic (kind of like an RPG game where you can chose to do side quests or not)

The ability to add player cards to the encounter deck is neat.

You have to give credit - they are thinking outside the box here

Rally excited about this expansion. It seems that we will have a quest located in Chetwood after all which is a good thing. Looking forward to making ranger decks again and this time built around Dunedain trait.

Good.

There's a Signal keyword on Ranger Summons! I'm hoping this means we'll get some Signal synergy in the box.

But also the fact that encounter decks are getting smaller should make the summons more reliable.

And to top all of your comments, have you seen the "Mission card" on the first photo, with the bunch of other cards?

Seems like they are adding kind of a Campaign Mode right from the box. That's what they're saying on the Product page. Normally when they say that is because you have the chance to play the quests in one go, but now they seem to link them together, just like in Saga Expansions.

Wow! And I thought I was looking forward to Road Darkens...

yes, this is great... really great... theyve taken our requests for more 'open' quests and have come up with these side quests..im pleased to see this... sounds exciting

i echo other's comments also about rangers summons

Player cards that don't take up deck space are similarly intriguing. The 50 card deck has been fairly restrictive in the past, but once again, thanks, to smart design by the FFG folks, we have a wholly new way of approaching deck building. And allies that are added to the encounter deck sound fun as hell.

If you would read the article, you'll find that this out-of-deck card can be played only by using an in-deck card, so if you want to use those rangers, you'll need to devote deck space to the events that call those rangers, meaning nothing new from this viewpoint. What I'm afraid of is that now we get two cards which are essentially one, and this might lead to an effective player card count reduction in the expansion and adventure packs.

I feel pretty confident the 2nd hero in the box will be leadership. With Aragorn tactics in the spotlight there will be no Dunedain leadership hero to play, unless we use core set Aragorn, but i bet the developers will give us the opportunity to play the Dunedain event to use Ranger of the north without relying on the older version of Aragorn, so we can play the new tactics version.

My hope is that the 2nd hero will have a threat of 7 or lower. So, if Idrean and Aragorn are paired we would be at 30 threat. Aragorn and Beravor would be 29 threat, and if new 7 threat hero were paired with Beravor and Idrean we would be at 28 threat. These all seem pretty reasonable to me. Or if they have a high threat there would be some discount based on controlling all Dunedain or Ranger heroes, or something like that.

If we get another threat 10+ hero a 3 hero dunedain deck may suffer.

Ranger of the North has no shadow effect, so it's possible to wiff with him. Or add Shadow of the Past, but that seems like a lot of work. He has decent stats though so it might be worth it.

Player cards that don't take up deck space are similarly intriguing. The 50 card deck has been fairly restrictive in the past, but once again, thanks, to smart design by the FFG folks, we have a wholly new way of approaching deck building. And allies that are added to the encounter deck sound fun as hell.

If you would read the article, you'll find that this out-of-deck card can be played only by using an in-deck card, so if you want to use those rangers, you'll need to devote deck space to the events that call those rangers, meaning nothing new from this viewpoint. What I'm afraid of is that now we get two cards which are essentially one, and this might lead to an effective player card count reduction in the expansion and adventure packs.

There is no reason for concern here since they will most likely be adding additional out-of-deck cards in the future. So maybe one could have e.g. 6 in-deck summoning cards but 12 out of deck. With recycling effects as they are, I still think that deck building will be a richer experience. Of course, we should wait for more info before coming to conclusions, but I am optimistic.

Notice how this summoning event specifically refers to the card title. Meaning it can't summon anything else. So it's one event for one out of play card. As for recycling, if you read the card text, this summoning event will not be placed into the discard pile - it is removed from the game, means no recycling allowed.

What I find interesting about this encounter deck ranger, is that it can be wasted through shadow (sparing you an unshadowed attack though) AND if he is destroyed, then he goes into the encounter discard pile and if encounter deck is reshuffled - you can hope to see him again (and be wasted by shadow again ).

The Ranger of the North will be good in 4-player games where you cycle the encounter deck, but pretty useless for solo IMO.

Rule clarification: When it says to shuffle the encounter deck, do you add the discard pile in or can you wait until the encounter deck is almost depleted before putting the Ranger in so you're likely to get him from a tiny remaining encounter deck?

Wow, just... wow.

These mechanics are really innovative and impressive. I especially like the encounter keyword on the Ranger of the North. I wonder if we'll see more "encounter" player cards we can shuffle from our set aside deck into the encounter deck? More allies, maybe even events and attachments you find in your way. It seems that for now we only have the Ranger of the North for this, since the Ranger Summons specifically mention this ally.

Also, I'm loving the idea of side quests. It's kinda like what I had been expecting for a while. I'd love if some of these side quests actually were alternate win-conditions, with "if the players defeat this stage, they win the game." Obviously thos would have to be hard to beat, but they kinda represent another turn or decision the party makes, which would be interesting, like those choose your own adventure books. Also, I hope side quests become a normal thing after the next cycle. I would definately like to see them often.

Would be cool though if some hero will have some set of out of play card associated with him. lol.

To me this looks like the best box yet:

Rangers themed? Oh yes please!

Side quests? Adding rpg like elements!

Playing all 3 quests in saga-like mode for a epic conclusion? = nerdgasm....

Side quests? Adding rpg like elements!

Have you seen an example of this side quest? It's a nasty condition that floats around and makes your life more miserable until you put enough progress onto it. Nothing rpg like in this.