If he shows up, though, he's an ally with stats of a 4 cost ally, with an ability, for 1 cost in leadership, and actually no change to the encounter deck. It's not that bad, when put that way.

Or a 2-cost ally, if it's an Ent...

These quests were grueling. I try really hard to stick to theme as much as I can, so with two people our decks currently consist of Halbarad, Erkenbrand, and Aragorn (Tactics) on the first one and Haldir, Glorfindel, and Idraen on the second. After minor tweaks here and there and some hero changes (namely Beravor), we managed to trudge through the Intruders in Chetwood and The Weather Hills. But I don't think there's any way we'll be able to get through Deadman's Dike. I'll have to drastically change the decks for that one.

Although I really enjoy Halbarad's and Tactigorn's abilities, my overall feeling on them is that they don't really do much. I do appreciate Halbarad's questing ability, as with some buffs he can be pretty effective, but I don't think I've used his engagement ability even once. Aragorn's Response has helped in the past, but on average I only get to use it effectively once or twice a game.

Maybe they'll become more effective as the cycle brings us new cards.

The surge on Ranger of the North is really a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. I'm always happy when my staging includes a treachery which ends up doing nothing and gaining surge, and this is better than that as it has a positive effect and gives you an ally before going back to staging as normal. I just wish he had a shadow effect like Misty Mountain Eagle or Ithilien Guardian.

I actually don't mind seeing the Ranger of the North go as a shadow card. Especially in quests where the shadow effects are nasty, I don't mind knowing that I've diluted them. Although I would find even more use for him if he had a helpful shadow effect, even just 1 direct damage to the attacking enemy.

I kinda like it when a quest "forces" you to adopt a certain strategy, like healing for Weather Hills.

I've only been playing Chetwood so far, and it feels meh to mee. My Silvan deck got some easy wins, but 80 percent of the games I lost without having a chance from the start.

Feels to me like the only strategy here is to manipulate the encounter deck as often as possible as the outcome of the game depends heavily on the encounter cards that you're drawing. As long as you get locations you're fine. Otherwise you're screwed - badly!

ETA: Haven't used the new player cards yet, but I'm not very enthusiastic about them. Lots of them are useless for solo play and the Dunedain mechanics are not very appealing.

The second scenario is cool. Had to get uesd to the meachanics and gotbeaten with my Silvan deck several times. Then I replaced Celeborn with Halbarad who turned out to be very useful, once he was pimped with some Dunedain Warnings.

Halbarad LOVES Forest Trap btw.

Halbarad HATES shadow efffects like "ATT gets plus your number of allies in play"! WTF?!? Just whenI was stomping the encounter deck???