Heck, I just got the game and I'm already hoping for an expansion. Reason: not enough famous Characters: no Galadriel, no Elron, no Tom Bombadil...well, i can understand how ol' Tom didn't make it in--he didn't make the movie either, though Peter Jackson had hoped to put him in--but to not have Galadriel or Elron for the heroes to interact with: that I really miss. Of course, they may be found in encounter cards; I haven't played the game yet. But still, it would be nice to have them as stand-up Characters--I miss them and had been hoping to seek them out in Rivendell and Loth-Lorien.

But having read the rules and looked over the components, I have to say this looks like one of the best games I've seen in this genre, ever. Well done, Corey and Christian.

And I'd still love to see Tom Bombadil in the game!

I think the lack of "famous" characters is because this is supposed to be the "untold" story of the 3rd age.

For expansions, it seems like the could dream up new quests, plots, missions, and put it all in a box the size of the Warrior Knights expansion.

Hope so! This is a great game!

TK

There is an encounter card for Enedwaith/Eriador that mentions Tom in the flavor text: It's in the Old Forest and named "A Merry Fellow".

There is also an event card called "Iarwain Ben-Adar", which is the elvish name of Tom Bombadil. And another event card is "Lady of the Golden Wood", which is Galadriel of course. Interestingly though, she is only ever named once in the game - in the introduction. Even the "Lothlorien" haven encounter card only mentions Celeborn.

I very stronlgy suspect she might make a stronger appearance in an expansion.

I second any request to have expansions.

One of the thing is missing and could be addressed into an expansion is allowing players to interact with each others a bit more, especially for the Finale.. Having one player doing the fight and the other(s) watching from the side is not fun for all the participants...

I was hopeing for the expansion to have seperate combat decks for the minions. The fact that the minions have the same combats as monsters dont make much sense. In addition, I think the minions should also have life pools to determine thier health. As for the heroes in the expansion they should have more than just 2 starting quest to choose from... maybe like 10 for each hereo, then pick 3 out of 10 to keep. Then when you complete 2 out of the 3 of the starting quest you can pick 2 out of 5 advanced quest. This would make the game more replayable as well. You could pick the same heroe many times and never do the same quest. And how about a better way to do the mission cards. Most of them are way to easy. Lets make it a real acomplishment to get those done, lets earn them. Make a mission to have all heroes have 7 or 8 favor, instead of 5 collectively between all heroes. If you cant get 5 between all heroes than you deserve to loose and never play again. This is a good game but has potential to be great. Much like War of the Ring was a good game, but the expansion made it GREAT!

The game definitely needs more missions and quests; one advanced quest per character is just dull and the limited missions seems to make it too easy to counter each teams' goal.

Plus, a more interesting finale, like the Epic Combat Cards in Arkham Horror, would be a welcome addition.

I would like to see something similiar to Kingsburg expasion – I mean a modular pack from I can choose what to use.

Definitely NEW RULES FOR FINALE.
Also new cards for existing decks (peril, shadow, encounters, events, plots, missions - harder, quests - harder), a few new monsters, and heros.

Nice addtion would be some kind of mechanics (new cards, maybe missions) that allows Sauron to search Plot deck.

I agree on all accounts. My friends and I LOVE this game, but find it needs more. Main things it needs more of is Missions; Characters; and Starting/Advanced Quests. Also, the Finale mechanic could use a bit of reworking.

I also think it would be cool to add a mechanic for a 5th player, this 5th player would on Saurons side and could control the minions using a new mechanic. Heck, they could even make it so the minions played similar to the heroes and you could have 2 sauron players controlling a few minions each.

This game definitely needs an expansion to include more peril and corruption cards, more quests, perhaps specialised minion combat decks.

Not to mention it would be nice to have a two player variety that increases the turn length for two player games so that the Fellowship move their marker only one space and the enemy have special cards to deal with that kind of game. At the moment 2 player games are very imbalanced and dont run very well.

It definitely needs a better ending - fighting the dark riders is not nearly exciting enough - maybe the witch king would be better as he comes so late into the game he is hardly used at all. He should definitely be made more use of in the finale. The finale would also be far better as well if you had to keep your hero and the enemy in their final game state before they do the final battle - its just too gamey removing all their damage etc. And also the rule to defeat the minion- means all Sauron can do is play defensively - there no point attacking at all as the hero has far too much health to be defeated. This should be changed to enable defeating of the hero (although obviously story wise there would need to be some significant reason why defeating the hero would enable the dark side to gain a significant advatage in middle earth - perhaps the fianl battle should rope all the heros into one big fight against the witch king and his men for example).

I would also like the possibility of bringing in characters on the enemy side through corruption - for example being able to bring in new minions as Saruman and Theoden etc if they are highly corrupted would be a good idea. The heroes should be able to perhaps buy in more characters for consulting with or something using favor or by successfully exploring a certain area and these new characters should be more geared to providing magical items or abilties etc not favor.

Also favor runs very short in some games if the cards go against the fellowship, there should be some way of getting more favor for example certain going to Havens or certain areas on the board such as the Shire should give you automatic favor as a reward for travelling out of the way - it would open up the game more as well instead of having it concentrate around Mordor.

Just some ideas.

Nats said:

You playing 1-Hero or 2-Hero 2-player games?

Nats said:

If there is little Favor on the board, you have to chance encounters for them. I don't think Heroes should have an automatic Favor-bank anywhere, they do need to earn them somehow, not just moving to a location. And you can already take the Dark Path for Corruption + Favor .