https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/3/3/escape-from-mount-gram/

Man, this must be one of the poorest player card spoilage I can remember. Also, 2nd pack and still no hero spoil

True, the most exciting part for me was when they mentioned Tactics getting some ent related cards...

Not sure if this new victory pile thingie is going to work with me. Sounds a bit overly complicated and takes a lot of card spots for solo players.

Edit: the artwork on "Keen as Lances" is awesome though

It was a poor card spoilage, true, but we can't expect every spoiler article to be so excellent. It reminds me a lot of the Three Trials announcement. We mostly got Noiseless Movements and Leaf Brooch, which is pretty much the same happening here. I don't know, I kinda liked this article and these victory display mechanics. And I will say that I really like the art on these cards, especially Keen as Lances and Distant Stars. Looks like we're getting more "abstract" or "poetic" themed player cards and not just tracking and fighting, which I'm all for. The only negative thing I'm gonna say is that so far on the story, it seems that all these Dúnedain guys are good at is getting captured!

I'm kind of glad they aren't spoiling heroes yet. Celeborn and Galadriel were much less exciting after we knew they were coming for months.

I think I like where they are going with the victory pile mechanic. It's not viable for solo, but in 3-4 player games I could see having one deck dedicated to neutering the victory display. I've always wanted to try a Mirlonde/Pippin/Bifur deck that used Out of the Wild to it's maximum effect. That deck has the potential to be very effective, especially if it can reduce threat to stay in secrecy with cards like Keen as Lances.

I'm also tentatively excited about the new Ent cards, although I hope they don't become too strong. Booming Ent can already be really good.

Almost more interesting: The Upcoming page has been updated and The Lost Realm and Treason of Saruman are still "on the boat". I guess this means that they we will not see them for another 2 weeks at least

We'll have to see how far the Victory Display thing goes. I'm always keen on new mechanics especially if they enable new archetypes. I agree that right now it doesn't appear to have a place in solo.

I bet you liked this part of the article:

"... Goblin invaders swept down from the mountains and made their way into the Northfarthing before they were turned back in the Battle of the Green Fields, where old Bullroarer Took struck the Goblin leader's head clean off his shoulders with a single blow from his wooden club."

I LOVE THIS!

I would have loved actual content of course, instead of spoilers about all the APs to fill the gap, but I think Caleb and Matt do too, so I wont go on that boat. (see what I did there, due to my lack of English grammaarr!)

I'm not sure if I want to be the lore-victory-display-manipulation player, but it seems cool. At least Keen as Lances is freaking powerfull.

But, man! This lore-sidestep is awesome! Let's play some Golf while escaping the goblins. I freaking, freaking love this! I never knew about this particular Mountain and I love to see an article from Derek or Master of Lore about it.

Ent-related cards are also a good thing to hear about! I'm also pretty excited for the Ranger cards, but there wasn't really anything about them.

I bet you liked this part of the article:

"... Goblin invaders swept down from the mountains and made their way into the Northfarthing before they were turned back in the Battle of the Green Fields, where old Bullroarer Took struck the Goblin leader's head clean off his shoulders with a single blow from his wooden club."

But, man! This lore-sidestep is awesome! Let's play some Golf while escaping the goblins. I freaking, freaking love this! I never knew about this particular Mountain and I love to see an article from Derek or Master of Lore about it.

Roger that!

But, man! This lore-sidestep is awesome! Let's play some Golf while escaping the goblins. I freaking, freaking love this! I never knew about this particular Mountain and I love to see an article from Derek or Master of Lore about it.

Roger that!

Cool!

Wow! So excited for Mount Gram. It's one of the most intriguing places in middle earth to me, and it seems so ready for an adventure. I've always thought that a LOTR RPG session centered around Mount Gram would be so fun.

As for the player cards, thumbs up! I always like to see new types of cards and strategies!

Why are people saying this strategy won't work in solo play? I am genuinely curious.

You go through roughly a 1/4 of the encounter deck you would playing solo versus in a 4 player game, so the chances you have to recycle the encounter deck because it ran out are way lower. The whole putting locations into the victory display for discounts or whatever still works, but to this point that strategy hasn't really justified itself in my opinion.

Exactly. The value of removing cards from the encounter deck is proportional to the number of times you go through the deck. In solo you might never reshuffle the deck, so a card like Leave No Trace doesn't do much. Meanwhile in a 4 player game you may go through the deck 2-5 times (especially if you remove many cards from the deck), which means you get to dodge those removed cards several times.

Well, i hope they open a way to play it in solo. Maybe the hero in the pack will enable it. In any case, another card that will be amazing with this archetype is The Door is Closed!

Im excited about the prospect of trying a super victory display manipulation deck. It definitely seems like it would be better in multiplayer, but I wouldnt completely rule it out in solo without a bit of testing.

I also like that Keen As Lances could be included in all the other decks as long as you have one deck that focuses on the victory display, and each time anyone plays it the cost to play future copies goes down.

Hmmmmmm not so sure about the whole victory display manipulation thing just yet.

As it exists now there are four cards that go together, Out of the Wild, The Door is Closed, Leave no Trace and Keen as Lances.

x3 copies of both out of the wild and leave no trace seems crucial as you essentially want to play at least one copy of each early game removing a nasty location from play and putting it in the victory display along with leave no trace as well as putting a nasty treachery or enemy into the victory display with Out of the Wild so that you have at least 3 or more cards in your victory display to be able to play Keen as Lances as cheaply as possible and so that you have a few especially nasty encounter cards in your victory display and can cancel any additional copies of these cards that appear with The Door is Closed.

Scout Ahead whilst also a part of this combo/archetype is limit 1 per deck so is very unreliable.

All this seems like a little too much work for way too little pay off to me....

You can cancel a few nasty encounter cards, if you are lucky and have put them in your victory display and then they appear a second time.... what if no other copies of the nastiest enemy you specifically put in the victory display ever appear and instead only come out as shadow cards? Complete waste. Also if the locations you remove with Leave no Trace do not appear a second time they also cannot be countered by The Door is Closed. Keen as Lances will hopefully only cost one resource or even none as if it costs more than 1 its first effect is useless (add two resources to a hero). 1 or 2 cost to reduce threat by 4 is not bad at all and one cost to draw 3 cards is also pretty nifty. So long as you don't need the resource option you only need 3+ cards in the victory display worth no victory points to make Keen as Lances worthwhile. Also Keen of Lances powers itself up as well as it is added to the victory display yet is worth no points so makes other copies cheaper.

As well as this with Leave no Trace you got to avoid a nasty location early on and with out of the wild you removed a nasty card that may have entered staging and ruined your day. Without secrecy out of the wild costs a whopping three resources however... As much as these cards have the potential to come together I really don't see it being very reliable or often enough to be worthwhile.

Essentially there just aren't enough cards yet for this to be very powerful or useful in my opinion especially for solo play like others have mentioned in which you do not cycle through the encounter deck anywhere near as fast as multiplayer/two handed. Also if you aren't in secrecy Out of the Wild costs way too much. If you haven't used as least a copy or two of Out of the Wild or Leave no Trace then Keen as Lances costs too much and is useless. As for The Door is Closed, I find it to be the weakest card out of this archetype thus far as it can easily fail or never be playable even in games in which you have successfully played both Out of the Wild and Leave no Trace, the nasty cards you put a copy of in the victory display may just never appear again or only appear as shadow cards. Unless they add a few more cards that are more flexible to this archetype and soon I personally don't think I'll bother trying it out, at least not without secrecy which I don't really play. I guess one idea would be to add in cards to a deck featuring this archetype/combo that allow you to look at or even order the top few cards of the encounter deck like Palantir and Risk some Light giving you a little more chance to actually use The Door is Closed effectively.

Loving the new art and encounter cards, just a little bit eh on this new mechanic thus far but have high hopes for it and that we are given a few more cards that make it more worthwhile/powerful.

That neutral card is bless! We got some really cool ideas in this cycle…

Dunno about the victory display mechanics, but I am really excited by the quest! A prison break in a mountain dungeon full of goblins...Sounds super fun!

Another great use of all of these victory manipulation cards is to grab that horrible treachery card (just about every quest has one) and guarantee you won't have to deal with it. Might be viable in solo play if we get some affordable and repeatable options. It might mean you can skip out on A Test of Will and build more decks without Spirit.

I also think that Distant Stars could potentially be a very strong location control card.

Cost of 0 and you must exhaust a Ranger or Scout (hoping character, if Hero my entire opinion of the card will change) and you can discard (not shuffle back into the encounter deck so its gone for good until/unless you reshuffle the encounter deck) the current location and choose any other location from the encounter deck (both must be non unique).

Some of the shennanigans I am picturing are pretty powerful.... In Morgul Vale for example you could remove something awful like Morgul Vale and replace it with Morgul Road in order to get that last point of damage on the Nazgul.

In The Ring Goes South lets say the active location is one with a nasty effect when explored based on the damage counters on it and it has racked up many damage counters, simply discard it and choose a new active location.

Say you are in Khazad-Dum and a Dreadful Gap pops up and has progress points of 10+ because your party is so large, discard it and put something with far less progress points in its place.

Also gets around Rauros Falls as you can travel there but then on the following turn before questing discard it and place another location as the active one avoiding all characters being forced to commit to questing.

It could also be super handy for The Stewards Fear as you can remove a nasty location with a high underworld value and replace it with a much tamer location and still explore it during questing to put a resource token on the quest stage (while at stage 1 or 2).

The only issue is whether you must exhaust a hero or any scout or ranger character. If it's only heroes absolutely no interest whatsoever as I use high stat and threat cost heroes and a hero action is utterly invaluable and not to be wasted on something like this. If it can be any ranger or scout I think this card will be an auto include in my sideboard for more location heavy/nasty quests.