apparently its been released but havent seen it yet at my FLGS or online sources. ANyone have it and play it yet? Thoughts?

The upcoming section still lists it as expected by the third, where did you find out it was released?

Grey Company guy Matthew says on their facebook page that his FLGS has it and he is picking it up today.

https://www.facebook.com/thegreycompanypodcast

The upcoming section still lists it as expected by the third, where did you find out it was released?

It's out on friday.

Though there's always some stores who sell it 1 - 2 days early.

There should be a few chaps by now who got it.

Well, in any case, Matthew, if you're reading this, spoil the cards as soon you get them! Take a crappy picture with your cellphone, whatever, just spoil the cards please! At least the unknown player cards, boons, and whatever cool encounter card we get.

There are no unknown player cards left, sadly.. All have been accounted for.

Are there suggested deck list for 2 players, and what heroes did they use if so?

I am really curious if Gandalf is one of the heroes in the decks, and if they represented all the fellowship members in the two decks. If Gandalf Hero is in one of decks then either Gimli or Legolas is not represented.

The only other combination to have all the members of the fellowship represented in the two decks is if they use Gandalf ally instead.

There are two suggested deck lists, i dont have it on me, but I know the Gandalf hero is one with Merry and Fatty for a spirit tactics deck.

That's not very thematic....

Does anyone actually use Fatty? I have never even bothered to try, curious if he is actually viable...

I just picked up my copy. If I have some time later I will spoil a few of the encounter cards. This weekend I will be adding text for all of the encounter cards to Hall of Beorn Card Search, but I don't have time to do that right now. The art is absolutely amazing, by the way.

Cool! Looking forward to it. And yes, the art so far that I've seen in totally awesome.

Thanks so much Beorn, its always you that comes through for the community first!

Can't wait to browse through the various cards while I wait for my copy to hopefully arrive late next week or early the following week. The art thus far is indeed absolutely amazing. I'm really enjoying different versions of wargs, trolls etc, gives us much more variety amongst each type of enemy both visually and mechanically.

Does anyone actually use Fatty? I have never even bothered to try, curious if he is actually viable...

I used him when I played through Black Riders because I wanted to stay thematic. Frodo is pretty much better in every way, but there is value is a spirit Hobbit with 7 threat. He ended up being my main defender with a Hobbit Cloak and Ring Mail or two. I only used his ability once or twice when there were some high threat black riders in the staging area and we would have otherwise failed to quest.

I used him same as Teamjimby, in a playthrough of Black Riders. It's hard to justify including him in the deck, but once he's in the game I find him very useful. I used his ability several times, but obviously you can't use it with abandon due to the threat cost.

I also used him when making a pair of decks, each of which really wanted Frodo. Since Frodo was in use by one, Fatty went into the second. Didn't use his ability at all while running those decks, so he was really just filling a role (needed hobbits for pipes!).

Can anybody already owning physical cards, please, confirm or (much better) deny that Wizards Pipe is a 3d render? I mean the art.

I use Fatty rather frequently, he even made it to 1.31% of my highscores. I think he is very good to play with because he always makes you quest succesfully and pass quest cards/locations if you fall a little short. Offcourse whenever you play him some threat reduction might be obligatory but I dont think that's an issue. My favourite deck containing Fatty is a Dwarf deck with Nori and Thorin. It runs very good and has very nice willpower. Whenever I don't intend to use his ability, his 2 (3 Arwen) defense makes him a decent defender. I think he is very decent to play and doesn't need a complete deck to be build around him like Caldara. You only need some reduction mechanic, which in my case ended up to be Nori. At last Fatty gets stronger if you play high multiplayer games, so it think it isn't that strange a lot of players leave him in the box because his use in solo/two player games is very limited.

There are two suggested deck lists, i dont have it on me, but I know the Gandalf hero is one with Merry and Fatty for a spirit tactics deck.

Wow, really? Fatty? I thought for sure developers would try to create something to fit the theme of the scenarios. Fatty, to Rivendell and Mines of Moria? I hope that this was just forced by the limited number of player cards that can be printed each saga, and that in the next saga we'll see new versions of Legolas and Gimli to make building two thematic and viable decks for playing the full fellowship as allies and/or heroes through these scenarios.

I'm a bit disappointed with some of the choices that the developers have made for player cards in Road Darkens. Also I like the Idea of boons, but having cards limited to the saga, and taking away from space of normal payer cards is a bit of an annoyance, since they are pretty much coasters for 99% of my LOTR playing, It's even more bothersome that they are one use cards for the whole campaign. Thematic and fitting the story, yes! But, in terms of me feeling like it adds to my enjoyment of the game for the money I've spent. I'm not sure, leaning towards no, but I guess I'll have to see how it plays out. Having a card sitting around in my deck for 10+ scenarios seems like a waste of deck space, but maybe it will be the thing that turns a scenario around, who knows?

I hope the scenarios are amazing though.

Can anybody already owning physical cards, please, confirm or (much better) deny that Wizards Pipe is a 3d render? I mean the art.

How are we supposed to tell exactly?

Look at it closely. Can't you tell a brush stroke or painting apart from 3d model?

Trololo, the art was done by Tiziano Baracchi, the same who did Tactics Boromir, hero Denethor, Thorin, Bag End, etc. You don't expect "brush strokes" from his illustrations, as he is a strictly digital artist. i doubt he used actual 3d to make this one, it's just that his art is normally extremelly photorealistic. If you complain about this one, complain about all his other works.

I ordered online and it's supposed to arrive today.

Got a box today at local shop in Montreal. There is no much more player cards, just those already spoiled and bunch of Boons.

First impression - Very good art for encounter cards.

Trololo, the art was done by Tiziano Baracchi, the same who did Tactics Boromir, hero Denethor, Thorin, Bag End, etc. You don't expect "brush strokes" from his illustrations, as he is a strictly digital artist. i doubt he used actual 3d to make this one, it's just that his art is normally extremelly photorealistic. If you complain about this one, complain about all his other works.

Complain? I was asking, because all images of this card I've seen are of extremely bad quality and I can't tell anything for sure. And man, what's wrong with your logics? Even if I didn't liked one of his works it doesn't mean I should automatically dislike his entire gallery and, more of it, complain about them! Lol.

By the way, you won't believe me, but digital art has brushes and therefore brush strokes. You can clearly see their influence on the Boromir's ally art.

You seemed very judgemental about it. Maybe you weren't complaining per se, but you clearly supposed this was a 3d render and then said that it's the worst form of art or something like that (which I'm not sure about). This is certainly not my favorite piece of art or my favorite artist, but it looks just fine in my opinion, even if the only images of it we've had are of pretty bad quality. The reason I said that last part is because this one doesn't look much different from the rest of his works (again, speaking from what we've seen), so if you think this one is bad, pretty much all of his other works would look bad.