I will put them on imgur if you send the images my way!!

I see what you mean about the art on Enemy Pursuit Bullroarer! Pretty **** comical.

Go look for "Sands Second" now and you should find the images from the second quest. I'll get the third up later. Dinner time.

Thanks! Keep this up please!

Btw I like the art on enemy pursuit

All of the pictures are up on Flickr now. If you go there and search "Sands of Harad" you should be able to find them all.

All of the pictures are up on Flickr now. If you go there and search "Sands of Harad" you should be able to find them all.

You're a legend thanks so much for doing this for us all!

ill put the full pictures in this thread in a minute so everyone doesn't have to go trawling through flickr!

Wow, I love the art on these. I mean, I always love the art, but I'm really enjoying their take on Haradrim armor for some reason. The Southron Captain looks awesome.

Played through the first quest of this over the weekend. 3 player game, we got through it pretty well but there were some scary moments of nearly losing due to not keeping progress on the quest or a few brutal spikes in Archery dmg. Liked the theme though and it played out very well.

man so hyped for this. hurry up and come to NZ!

Just got confirmation my copy has shipped, so looking forward to giving this a good play through over the weekend.

Just a general observation on the box/cycle: I must say I find the desert and even Harad theme a bit underplayed, particularly on the enemies. The Umbar and the desert quest are cool, but the fact that we got yet another quest where the enemies are orcs is a bit disappointing. We se them everywhere, and I'm tired of them. They seem like an easy solution, and that's why the Grey Havens/Dream-chaser cycle felt so refreshing to me. I know the third quest is about the reach of Sauron's evil to Harad, but why not instead of orcs have another evil Haradrim kingdom that got already corrupted by Sauron (and we know there were likely many) attack the village? Or maybe even a tribe of "Half-trolls of Far Harad" as they call them in the books, depicted as some kind of desert savages mercenaries of Sauron? I don't know, I just think there are more creative enemies we could have had instead of orcs (and spiders in the third AP). And also we know the second AP will have orcs on wargs as the main enemies. That seems super boring and out of place for the Harad cycle.

Just a general observation on the box/cycle: I must say I find the desert and even Harad theme a bit underplayed, particularly on the enemies. The Umbar and the desert quest are cool, but the fact that we got yet another quest where the enemies are orcs is a bit disappointing. We se them everywhere, and I'm tired of them. They seem like an easy solution, and that's why the Grey Havens/Dream-chaser cycle felt so refreshing to me. I know the third quest is about the reach of Sauron's evil to Harad, but why not instead of orcs have another evil Haradrim kingdom that got already corrupted by Sauron (and we know there were likely many) attack the village? Or maybe even a tribe of "Half-trolls of Far Harad" as they call them in the books, depicted as some kind of desert savages mercenaries of Sauron? I don't know, I just think there are more creative enemies we could have had instead of orcs (and spiders in the third AP). And also we know the second AP will have orcs on wargs as the main enemies. That seems super boring and out of place for the Harad cycle.

It's not just the enemies that seem to be old but also some of the mechanics. For example, we have had encounter cards that remove progress from the quest since the core set. Overall, there does not seem to be too much novelty here. I think I'd rather skip this deluxe and cycle.

Hero Dwalin, after being absolutely useless for an entire cycle, is excited to see the orcs. Skinbark is making vacation plans for Harad.

Hero Dwalin, after being absolutely useless for an entire cycle, is excited to see the orcs. Skinbark is making vacation plans for Harad.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be all that negative. I mean, I'm still going to buy everything like a madman, it's just that I think there could have been more interesting enemy choices. However I'm very excited for the Black Serpent as we'll be fighting a Haradrim warlord, so that's cool. I wish though that we will go eventually to one of the Haradrim's capitals or a guarded castle. We never got that with the Dunlendings sadly, and I hope we don't just encounter them in ruins or the desert. I'd like it if they explored their big settlements. The village in the third quest looks cool though.

I'm going to argue that there are three new mechanics in the Harad box:

1. Temperature. It is used both as a combo Threat/Timed mechanic and as a way to scale the power of enemies. (I think they are really saying that the party is weakening.) You can't spin that counter backwards and the speed at which it increases does give a sense of desperation.

2. Objective Heroes.

3. Mounts for enemies.

(And I LIKE killing orcs.)

I was hoping that my comment would spark responses like yours, Bullroarer. Looking forward to read more of them. :-)

Regarding your points:

1. How is temperature really different from lowering your maximum threat as in Trouble in Tharbad?

2. Do objective-hero cards feel that much different from the occasional objective-ally card we have seen before?

3. Well, yeah, the idea is cool but really not that different from previous enemy attachments (e.g. for the Nazguls), is it?

Just a general observation on the box/cycle: I must say I find the desert and even Harad theme a bit underplayed, particularly on the enemies. The Umbar and the desert quest are cool, but the fact that we got yet another quest where the enemies are orcs is a bit disappointing. We se them everywhere, and I'm tired of them. They seem like an easy solution, and that's why the Grey Havens/Dream-chaser cycle felt so refreshing to me. I know the third quest is about the reach of Sauron's evil to Harad, but why not instead of orcs have another evil Haradrim kingdom that got already corrupted by Sauron (and we know there were likely many) attack the village? Or maybe even a tribe of "Half-trolls of Far Harad" as they call them in the books, depicted as some kind of desert savages mercenaries of Sauron? I don't know, I just think there are more creative enemies we could have had instead of orcs (and spiders in the third AP). And also we know the second AP will have orcs on wargs as the main enemies. That seems super boring and out of place for the Harad cycle.

Don't get me wrong I totally get where you are coming from and understand but I feel completely different.

The feel of the encounter cards in this deluxe (especially the locations and treacheries) is very different from what we normally receive especially the art. We see all sorts of interesting new effects such as the temperature and objective hero mechanics, willpower of defenders now mattering in certain quests which is a cool alternative to making them actually defend using their willpower like in the stone of erech, we see enemy mounts that become their own enemy once the rider is defeated, locations that discard the top card of the encounter deck and only add it to staging depending if its an enemy or location, we even get an enemy that you cannot declare defenders against which is something really neat and new.

I see where you are coming from in regards to the Orcs but I mean in the end they are ultimately Sauron's main type of warrior and follower. He literally has legions and legions of Orcs but somewhat limited amounts of any other fighter. Even during The War of the Ring he may have Haradrim and Umbar armies fighting for him but they are vastly outnumbered by the legions of Orcs he had. Harad is also pretty close to Mordor so it makes sense that it would be crawling with orcs and various servants or spies of the Dark Lord. I do agree it would have been great to see the "half-trolls" of Far Harad or something similar.

I feel like orcs definitely aren't "out of place" in this cycle considering its proximity to Mordor and the fact the vast majority of Sauron's forces were in fact orcs/goblins/uruks. I do totally agree that it would be nice to see some other new enemies and I hope that we do in fact see some in the last few AP's. We haven't seen spiders in forever either so as much as yes we have seen lots of them in the past we haven't seen them in a while so it is still something different from the last few cycles (no spiders since the first cycle and second cycles if you don't include Saga quests).