You are, of course, free to post wherever you want, but because the original purpose of this thread is to collect rulings in a pretty clean way for posterity, I do want to politely suggest this other thread for further discussion of Setup issues:

Coulda sworn I reproduced this ruling @Seastan got back in 2018 somewhere in the forum, but I can't find it… So:

Gamling reads: Response: "After a Rohan ally you control is discarded from play, exhaust Gamling to return that ally to your hand." My question is if a non-rohan ally has gained the Rohan trait via Nor am I a Stranger, and gets discarded from play, can they be returned to your hand with Gamling?

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No, you cannot. When a character leaves play, you immediately discard all attachments from it. After the ally in question has left play, it no longer has the Rohan trait; therefore it is no longer a valid target for Gamling.

Something I've been wondering as I've played a Saruman deck is if close call:

Doomed X.
Response: Cancel X damage just dealt to a hero.

works beneficially with Saruman's staff:

Action: Exhaust Saruman's Staff to (choose 1): Reduce the X value of the next Doomed X event you play this phase by 2, or search the top 5 cards of your deck for a Doomed event and add it to your hand. Shuffle your deck.)

Obviously the instinct while playing would be "hey I want to cancel 3 damage, I'm going to tap the staff, play close call and pay 1 doom because its reduced by 2. However the way its worded if taken as read would imply the staff would reduce the value, thus also reducing the benefit making the staff totally pointless to use.

Just in case someone was thinking otherwise I asked for a clarification about the interaction of Messenger of the King with heroes like Folco or Mirlonde

Courtesy of @Mortendall on the CotR Discord, a clarification re: Under the Ash Mountains. As it has not released in, say, the U.S. yet, I will edit the ruling slightly to minimize quest spoilage for those who haven't played it.

There is a player elimination condition listed in the rulesheet as being checked only at the end of the round. But the quest cards phrase it in a way that could be interpreted as: if the condition is satisfied at any time, the relevant player is eliminated. However, Caleb clarified:

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The text " If a player [redacted] , he is eliminated from the game " is part of the Forced Response that only triggers at the end of the round. It is not a separate passive effect. It's only in bold font because we traditionally put our game loss conditions in bold font.

Sorry for the confusion. Hope you enjoy the scenario!

Cheers, Caleb

@hone on the CotR Discord got the following ruling… This is not a new thing, really, but it does provide modern reinforcement of an ancient ruling ( further discussion ) that stated each refers to 1 or more (and not 0).

The query concerns a location, Tombs of Carn Dûm, with a travel cost: " Travel : Deal 1 shadow card to each Undead enemy in play to travel here." Must there be an Undead enemy in play for the group to be able to travel to this location?

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Yes, you need at least 1 Undead enemy in play to travel to Tombs of Carn Dum.

This one's a pleasant surprise—I thought the ruling would go the other way. Yay for ally Radagast!

Can you use resources from ally Treebeard or ally Radagast to pay to prevent ally Wilyador's Forced discard?

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Yes, you can. Wilyador’s effect does not specify a type of resource or that it must be from a hero, so you could spend a resource from Radagast or Treebeard.

Cheers, Caleb

This is kind of a confirmation of something that was in the original rules, but not explicitly stated in the RR:

Can you declare an attack against an enemy with 0 characters you control?

This can matter if all of your characters are exhausted, and your partner has a Ranged character with readying: the answer to the question determines whether an enemy you have engaged can be attacked once or twice by said Ranged character.

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No, you cannot declare an attack without an attacker. Assigning an attacker and declaring an attack are intertwined.

Cheers, Caleb

On 8/11/2020 at 12:28 AM, sappidus said:

This one's a pleasant surprise—I thought the ruling would go the other way. Yay for ally Radagast!

Can you use resources from ally Treebeard or ally Radagast to pay to prevent ally Wilyador's Forced discard?

So how about Keeping Count? Can the resources on Keeping Count be paid? And how about Ranger of Cardolan and Hidden Cache?

7 hours ago, kainveus said:

So how about Keeping Count? Can the resources on Keeping Count be paid? And how about Ranger of Cardolan and Hidden Cache?

Good question. If one asked Caleb, I do see an out for him disallowing Keeping Count resources for paying… Heroes, as well as allies like Treebeard, collect resources into a resource pool, whereas Keeping Count merely gets resource tokens placed upon it. Spending may (or may not) require paying from a pool—I don't see an obvious place in the rules that specifies either way for things like Wilyador (though you do have to pay from a pool to play cards).

I would recommend not asking, heh.

Courtesy of @ The Purple Wizard on the CotR Discord (& his friend who actually asked):

In a Bond of Friendship deck, if Bombur is one of the heroes and you start off with five dwarves, can Oin count as the Tactics hero?

Caleb said:

No you cannot. You put your heroes into play all at once before the game begins, so you cannot take card abilities into account when choosing them.

Not sure if this was recorded for posterity here… Wrath and Ruin's 1A text doesn't make it clear whether the Makeshift Fortification made active can be from the initially chosen set of locations in the staging area, or not.

On the CotR Discord, Caleb himself said:

The Makeshift Fortification comes from the encounter deck. In a 4p game there should be 4 non-unique locations in the staging area after setup. Sorry that wasn't more clear. I can see it now that it's been pointed out.