Which has nothing to do with announcements, but whatever floats your boat.

Which has a lot to do with announcements, silly. And it says "a few" not "few" which is very different in English.

Your hatred for me would make you say any nonsense against me, so I wont even bother.

joezim007, it doesn't weakens the threat lowering ability because it lowers the threat by the printed enemy threat.

I love how Secret Vigil's ability to lower the threat of the attached enemy by 1 has a pro and con side.

Pro: If the enemy is in the staging area still, then it will help with questing.

Con: It weakens the threat lowering ability by 1, which is a great way to balance it and prevent it from being too strong for Tactics, but still is a con in the players' eyes.

It actually lowers by printed threat.

Edit: ninja'd

I hadn't noticed that Tactigorn lost sentinel somewhere along the way. Curious change.

Yeah, I wondered what the reason for that was, also. Perhaps it's considered a balance for a powerful ability? Although the Lore version has a pretty darn powerful ability in its own right... Anyway, I don't think the Tactics Aragorn ever had Sentinel on him (that I noticed). I proxied him a couple of months back for a run at the Saga expansions and noticed that he did not have it then.

Yeah, I have the Aragorn image I saved from the initial preview article (in August), and there's no Sentinel keyword.

Oops, missed that "printed" key word. Hmm. That seems a bit too strong now. 3+ threat enemies are not uncommon, so this is generally more powerful than Galadhrim's Greeting (in multiplayer at least). Granted, it still has a limited effect for individual players' threat levels, so it won't drop any one player substantially. I kinda liked the -1 threat reduction, but then again, cards like Ranger Spikes would also affect the threat reduction, which would suck.

Oh well. I'm not gonna complain. Boromir will be happy with this card for sure.

Oops, missed that "printed" key word. Hmm. That seems a bit too strong now. 3+ threat enemies are not uncommon, so this is generally more powerful than Galadhrim's Greeting (in multiplayer at least). Granted, it still has a limited effect for individual players' threat levels, so it won't drop any one player substantially. I kinda liked the -1 threat reduction, but then again, cards like Ranger Spikes would also affect the threat reduction, which would suck.

Oh well. I'm not gonna complain. Boromir will be happy with this card for sure.

I am not sure more powerful is the right word. It is a greater threat reduction the Greeting, but it is a bit more conditional. Greeting can always buy some time for a player at 49. This requires some planning to do so. If a shadow card increases threat to 49, that player can't be saved with this, but they can be saved with Greeting. In addition, it requires an enemy to be out, not exactly rare, but in some scenarios isn't guaranteed either. Further, that enemy must be a good choice, meaning it has to allow attachments and be engageable/killable. These trade offs lead to a potentially bigger threat reduction. Pretty neatly balanced to my eyes.

Secret Vigil is what Power in the Earth should have been.

Woohoo! Lost Realm and Treason of Saruman are on the boat!

THE TIME APPROACHES!

Both these tactics cards are great.

But man! Secret Vigil is a auto-inculde for 3-4 player games.

I've been away for a few weeks, but now that I have access to internet I just saw these spoilers. Secret Vigil is of course great, but I'm not a big fan of Tireless Hunters. In solo it seems pretty worthless, especially since it's a combat action. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see no use for it in solo, except for engaging a few boss enemies.

I've been away for a few weeks, but now that I have access to internet I just saw these spoilers. Secret Vigil is of course great, but I'm not a big fan of Tireless Hunters. In solo it seems pretty worthless, especially since it's a combat action. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see no use for it in solo, except for engaging a few boss enemies.

It does discard the shadow card though, which is something.

"...Tireless Hunters is PERFECT for two handed players like me for when that one annoying enemy slips through and engages the wrong deck and you don't have sentinel set up on your uber defender yet. Simply slam Tireless Hunters down and that one enemy that slipped through will instead engage the combat deck and lose its shadow card too..."

Totally agree Tireless Hunters is a great card to move enemies that have engaged the 'wrong' deck/player; whether lacking defenders or attackers, or they already have too many other engaged enemies or the player wants to get the best out of Galadhrim Bow or whatever. And would cover nicely for a lack of sentinel.

I do find it ironic that you will be able to use a questing Spirit deck... with a just touch of Tactics to attach "Secret-vigil" to an enemy before you "Ride them Down". Talk about role reversal ...or perhaps a Théoden led Tactics questing deck with a splash of Spirit?

Secret Vigil is what Power in the Earth should have been.

Like ...

reduce each player's thread by the attached location's printed .

Secret Vigil is what Power in the Earth should have been.

Like ...

Condition.

Attach to a location. Limit 1 per location.

Attached location gets -1 .

Response: After attached location leaves play as an explored location,

reduce each player's thread by the attached location's printed .

Yep, pretty much. I'm almost tempted to errata it myself, see what it's like.

It is easier to play something like that on a location, as it nearly always stays in play until planning phase. Most enemies with high threat are easy to kill or should be killed fast because of their high attack, so letting them stay until planning phase is another cost.

My 2 cents about Secret Vigil:

I think it is pretty balanced.

For Solo play it gives Tactics, for the first time (barring Gandalf of course), threat reduction which is just vital for a host of tactics-based decks - especially those reliant upon attacking the staging area(Forth Eorlingas!, Hands upon the Bow, Rangers with Tactics splashed in for weapons etc.).

On the other hand, it scales with the # of players so it gains in raw power what it lost in terms of granting access to a key ability.

The problem I have with this card is, as Glaurung said, that threat reduction was not supposed to be part of Tactics; in my opinion it becomes a problem of keeping each sphere unique while granting all of them access to key abilities (reminds me of color pie from MTG and all the issues related to it).

I think Tactics badly needs some additional support for solo play: no card draw, no threat reduction, very few resource acceleration, no questing power means it doesn't stand a chance against almost every scenario, while playing solo.

What leaves me doubtful is that its effect is very powerful for its cost: more often than not it will be 3 threat reduction for a cost of 1. Yes, you have to sustain additional costs, but it's still very good for a sphere that was not supposed to get threat reduction at all, until now.

I see an analogy with Ancient Mathom, which is a very good card providing an ability that its sphere would otherwise completely lack: in this case I think balance is achieved through making it the only (non-hero) card providing that ability for Spirit.

In the end, I trust the ability of the design team so I think it will end up being balanced.

Maybe, only one card about reduction threat in one sphere is like a card that can only 1 copy go inside a deck. You cant hope decrease threat effects as a plan, if you don't want to depend of a lot of lucky. So this card is occasional. Glaurung was ok in his comments.

I dunno...I see the value in keeping the spheres distinct, but also think that each sphere should have some kind of (maybe limited) response to each of the different types of challenges that the game commonly presents. Having each sphere have some form of thematically congruent card draw, resource gen, location management, etc provides variety for deck builds and playstyles. Of course, having each sphere maintain its specialty is important too. Otherwise everything gets diluted and same-y.

A difficult line to walk for sure.

I wouldn't like all spheres to be good at all things equally... but lets face it, till quite recently Tactics lagged a long way behind the other spheres in terms of soloing. So long as each sphere keeps, mainly to its traditional favour then i'm all for a little variety. Its not like tactics has a monopoly on combat

Spheres should have specializations that they alone are best at. But they shouldn't have a monopoly, they just get to do that easiest and get more cards for that specialization. Spirit is best at threat reduction. It has many ways to do so and it usually as easy as playing the card and go. Tactics having some threat reduction is a good thing even if they have to work for it (playing the attachment then killing the enemy).

If Tactics can't have threat reduction I don't think Spirit should have a hero with an attack higher than 2, or ways to do direct damage (Ride Them Down). Stick to roads guys in blue, only tactics can smash face.

As a solo player, I agree that all spheres should be able to do a little bit of everything, even if some things they can do very rarely and not as efficiently, if only so that they can be played mono-sphere in solo. I really like Secret Vigil for this very reason.