Take a good look at the Palantir of Orthanc:

2 things to note: This attachment can only be played on Fellowship Aragorn... so even Fellowship Aragorn has his own special attachments, as if Aragorn wasn't already gifted with the most toys. More interestingly, though, is what you see in the bottom right corner: the victory points label is different than usual. Now the question is whether this is a special case (since it is a boon), or will they make all cards with victory points look like this from now on?

Side quests in TLR have this label as well. Maybe this is how they will do it for card in general from now on.

It's a victory points redesign, I take it.

Can I just say the Palantir is the weakest boon ever? Exhaust Aragorn to maybe get a chance to play a free Gildor's Council, then remove Palantir from the campaign forever?

It also does nothing in solo play besides discarding the top card of the encounter deck. I'll keep my custom version thank you very much.

I also noticed that the Palantir's ability plays off of Aragorn's willpower, which should be easy to increase with Celebrian's Stone, so the ability SHOULD always work. Not only that: Sword that was Broken can be attached to him and its ability will be passed around between the players, which would be interesting.

My best guess for wording on Palantir:

Attach to Fellowship Aragorn.

Questing Action: Exhaust Aragorn and Palantir of Orthanc to discard the top card of the encounter deck. If Aragorn's willpower is greater than the discarded card's threat, you may add Palantir of Orthanc to the victory display and remove it from the campaign pool to choose a player. That player reveals 1 less encounter card this phase (to a minimum of 0).

It's like a conditional Gildor's Counsel, but it specifies which player doesn't reveal the card (which is why I assume the minimum is 0 instead of 1). I assume that the choosing of the player is due to the fact that the encounter decks have started targeting the player that revealed the card instead of the entire group.

This is not a worthless card at all. It gives Aragorn a modified version of Denethor's ability. When you activate it, you discard the top card of the encounter deck! You only ditch the card if you wish to reduce the number of cards revealed. There are a number of ways to view the top card of the encounter deck, which you can then selectively discard with Aragorn. By itself, it's not as easy as Denethor, but it's a nice addition to Aragorn's own skills.

This is not a worthless card at all. It gives Aragorn a modified version of Denethor's ability. When you activate it, you discard the top card of the encounter deck! You only ditch the card if you wish to reduce the number of cards revealed. There are a number of ways to view the top card of the encounter deck, which you can then selectively discard with Aragorn. By itself, it's not as easy as Denethor, but it's a nice addition to Aragorn's own skills.

That's a good point. We were looking at how the entire ability plays out, but it says we MAY add it to the victory display, so this is actually a very powerful way to simply discard encounter cards. AWESOME.

I do not want to open a new thread, so throw it here: I was wondering if in Saga Expansion during the fight with the Witch-King on the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, designers introduce the rules, that only female characters can inflict damage and defeat the Witch-King (would be climatic).

I hope they don't that would be ridiculous.

I think its be fun and thematic , designers can put in this expansion Eowyn from Tactic sphere, and we must be put some female Hero / ally into decks.

Well, we'd have to make sure how thematic it is. IIRC, the fact that Eowyn was a woman was more of a "poetic" justice thing as opposed to the actual reason she could break the curse, since it was Merry and his enchanted sword that broke the Witch King's invulnerability and thus Eowyn could deliver the final blow. I'm not completely sure, though.

Gizlivadi you can have right, I find this in Wiki: " Merry stabbed the back of the Witch-king's knee with a Dúnedain dagger which bore enchantments deadly to the Witch-king. Éowyn then thrust her sword into the void between the Witch-king's crown and torso. Her sword shattered but the Witch-king's clothing fell to the ground and he vanished with a wailing cry.

Wouldn't a hobbit dwarf or an elf or even the Istari also be considered "not men". So it would include only Rohan, Gondor and Dunedain?

Maybe well get eowyn as a quest hero. I for one like theme

Maybe well get eowyn as a quest hero. I for one like theme

I hope not. I also hope this case is going to be resolved as the other times during the saga (example: instead of capturing Merry and Pippin by name, uruks capture 2 heroes of players choice, etc.).

Maybe well get eowyn as a quest hero. I for one like theme

I hope not. I also hope this case is going to be resolved as the other times during the saga (example: instead of capturing Merry and Pippin by name, uruks capture 2 heroes of players choice, etc.).

That will be really fun for the solo player.

But this is already in the game.

If the character needed to be female (or not human), then how would they handle many of the non-unique allies who are difficult to distinguish, especially gender-wise. Just because a picture shows a male or female, shouldn't mean anything. I guess, I don't really care how they work this out, as long as it's somewhat thematic. Honestly, they could skip this one bit of this battle and be fine.

But this is already in the game.

We don't know that it's going to work the way you are spelling it out. The Three hunters didn't actually rescue Merry and Pippen themselves and didn't see the two hobbits for a long time after the hobbits escaped from the orcs. My point is simply that the captives (who could be anybody I agree) aren't necessarily captive heroes ala Escape from Dol Guldur.

My point is what were strict in the books becomes abstract in this saga, more or less.

Agreed.