Hello all! I inherited a relatively small collection from a friend, built a few decks recommended from RingsDB and played through the core set scenarios a few times. In other words, I'm a relative noob who generally understands the game. I've also been gaming for years, so I usually pick things up quickly.

My friend and I decided that we'd approach LotR LCG by playing through the Saga Expansion for the actual LotR trilogy of books. We cracked open Black Riders with him playing a combat oriented deck and me playing a questing/support deck. And... I don't get the Hide mechanic at all. Specifically...

1. When does the test occur? When the card is revealed and added to the Staging Area during the Quest Phase? Does the test also occur when
2. If the test occurs when the card is revealed and I've already committed most of my Heroes/Allies to a Quest, am I going to more or less auto-fail?
3. Can my buddy commit Heroes/Allies to the test or is it just me?
4. What is the penalty for failure? What is the benefit of a success? I may be dense, but I read the rules a couple of times and can't find anything. We just played it by largely ignoring the mechanic and ended up fighting what felt like WAY too many Nazguls.

Thanks for the help.

1. The test occurs when the card is revealed.

2. If you have no heroes/allies you can commit to the hide test, your only hope is that the hide test will only flip treachery cards, so that the sum of threat is zero.

3. Only the player who revealed the Hide test can commit characters to the test.

4. The consequences of succeeding or failing are based on cards in play -- for example, each of the quest stages will cause Nazgul in the staging area to engage a player that fails a hide test, and every Black Rider will make an immediate attack against an engaged player after a test is failed (and they happen in that order, so failing a hide test when a Black Rider is revealed will cause it to engage and attack the revealing player).

However, if there's no Nazgul in staging or Black Rider engaged, and the player that reveals Crawling Towards Him has no questing characters (combat deck), you can fail that hide test with impunity. The same is true of failing hide tests when trying to travel to Stock Road or Buckleberry Ferry -- unless there's a card around that specifically punishes you for failing hide tests, there's no consequence from failing (other than failing to travel to those locations).

1. I'm sure this is answered in the rulesheet. Yes, the test occurs when the card is revealed.

2. Yes, if your characters are exhausted for questing, you can't commit them to a Hide test.

3. No, Hide tests are made by the player who revealed the card.

4. The penalty for failure is found on the cards: "When a player fails a Hide test, each Nazgûl enemy in the staging area engages that player. (Trigger Forced effects after resolving this effect.)" "Forced: After engaged player fails a Hide test, Black Rider makes an immediate attack." "When Revealed: If you have failed a Hide test this phase, remove each character you control from the quest." "When Revealed: Attach to a hero. (Counts as a Condition attachment with the text: "Limit 1 per hero. Forced: After a player fails a Hide test, discard attached hero.")" The benefit of success is that all those things don't happen.

Edit @^: Technically the Stock Road and Bucklebury Ferry only say the first player has to make a Hide test, not that they have to pass it. I've always interpreted that you travel regardless but failure carries the usual problems based on other cards in play.

You are correct, it simply says "make" a Hide test. So if there are no other cards to punish you for it, those tests can be failed with impunity.

1 hour ago, dalestephenson said:

1. The test occurs when the card is revealed.

2. If you have no heroes/allies you can commit to the hide test, your only hope is that the hide test will only flip treachery cards, so that the sum of threat is zero.

3. Only the player who revealed the Hide test can commit characters to the test.

4. The consequences of succeeding or failing are based on cards in play -- for example, each of the quest stages will cause Nazgul in the staging area to engage a player that fails a hide test, and every Black Rider will make an immediate attack against an engaged player after a test is failed (and they happen in that order, so failing a hide test when a Black Rider is revealed will cause it to engage and attack the revealing player).

However, if there's no Nazgul in staging or Black Rider engaged, and the player that reveals Crawling Towards Him has no questing characters (combat deck), you can fail that hide test with impunity. The same is true of failing hide tests when trying to travel to Stock Road or Buckleberry Ferry -- unless there's a card around that specifically punishes you for failing hide tests, there's no consequence from failing (other than failing to travel to those locations).

Thanks! I think that last bit is what so thoroughly confused me. Failing the Buckleberry Ferry Hide test didn't seem to do anything... I guess because it didn't! Haha.

Given that the Black Riders have a fight value of 5 and that you can only declare one defender, I guess a failed hide test usually means that someone is going to die? It doesn't seem like most Allies (or some Heroes) can absorb a 5 damage attack and live!

Yep-- if you can't survive the attack, you'd best Hide. Plan on winning those tests.

It is really hard to win all the hide test during the scenario. By hard I mean it almost never work :/. And if it is sad to sacrifice one (or usually two because you need to do it again next turn) allies before to be able to kill this black riders it became totally insane when there is two or three on the staging area. At the end I find it more easy to kill every black riders one by one and go slowly to the quest. It is sad because it is the opposite of the spirit of this quest.

But in fact most heroes survive to a 5 attack when they can defend. Not among hobbit (only frodo and tom can) but beregond, Beorn, boromir, aragorn, amarthuil, gandalf, elrond and only some name amond all the ones who can block it. And that is when they have not attachment.

Hobbit cloak+Sam is my favorite way to tank a Nazgul. Barliman Butterbur is great too, if you're playing all Hobbits.

It is still only 4 defense so he will be damaged. And next turn you have to keep him in defense in order to block the Nazgul so you are stuck until you beat him, and that is not really easy with hobbit. I agree that playing hobbit on this adventure is a good story but you would be better with big tanky heroes.

Just Hobbits is my preferred way to beat this quest, actually. Merry is quite capable of killing Nazgul in one round with the help of a Dagger of Westernesse and an ally or two. Plus, a little healing or another +1 defense isn't too hard to come by for Sam, depending on your card pool.

Fellowship Frodo lets you use Frodo's Intuition to top it all off, giving you all the card draw you need to ensure you're able to pull it off reliably.

May be frodo's intuition was the thing that miss me (I don't play the baggins/ring-bearer cards) because I have several hobbit decks that I play against various quest but this one is not fit for those decks.

This is the only scenario in the game for which Fatty Bolger is a thematic inclusion. He was in my campaign originally That also meant I had to keep him in the party all the way to Rivendell, or suffer a permanent +1 penalty... so in my version of events, Fatty got to sup at Elrond's table.