So my son (7) and I have been loving our Dunedain decks, and stomping through quests. He goes crazy over Ranger Summons in particular, which we make work by simply waiting until the encounter deck is low on cards.

Yesterday, at the end of the combat phase, the encounter deck was at 0 cards. Ezra drew and played Ranger Summons, which made Ranger of the North) the guaranteed first card we drew questing. It was definitely a "Was that even legal?" moment.

Was it legal?

I see reason why it wouldn't be legal. Unless specified otherwise, you don't shuffle the discarded encounter cards into the encounter deck when that deck is empty except during the Quest phase. So in this case, you shuffled Ranger of the North into an empty encounter deck. Nice play!

Yeah, I did the same thing a while back while playing on OCTGN. I'd actually forgotten the encounter deck was empty until I went to put the Ranger into it, and realised that when it was revealed we'd be left with a completely empty staging area (because it could explore the one remaining location) and thus almost certainly quest to victory that round (which we did).

Nice!

I've held onto Ranger Summons until the encounter deck slims down to about 10-20 cards a few times to great effect but this is taking this to the extreme, very well done!

I was ready to write this one off, but as with all cards, you really have to play with it to start seeing when and how to use it.

Now I'm getting more anxious to get my box of this. I've always liked messing with the encounter deck, but the Ranger Summons adds a really cool new dimension to this.