And what do you think of the other cards?

The lore event seems correct in an Haldan deck. A sort of conditional but potentially much more powerful version of secret path.

The dwarf ally feels quite strange to me. Cost is prohibitive if you play for it, effect good but 3 cards discarded are equal to dain effect for a worse payback. Sphere seems wrong as for the most the dwarf discarding mechanic seem set in spirit and to an extent in tactic. Yes stand and fight exist to a reason but still. Stat are good for a non unique character no doubt but the cost is so high if you can't cheat it into play.

I forgot the new Dale ally. I need to think more of him and try in real life before telling. Cost is fair for the stat. The ability is ok and help compensating the initial cost. If you pay it discounted then he sure is good but not sure he will make into all Dale decks considering the great allies Dale has now.

27 minutes ago, Halberto said:

And what do you think of the other cards?

The lore event seems correct in an Haldan deck. A sort of conditional but potentially much more powerful version of secret path.

The dwarf ally feels quite strange to me. Cost is prohibitive if you play for it, effect good but 3 cards discarded are equal to dain effect for a worse payback. Sphere seems wrong as for the most the dwarf discarding mechanic seem set in spirit and to an extent in tactic. Yes stand and fight exist to a reason but still. Stat are good for a non unique character no doubt but the cost is so high if you can't cheat it into play.

For me I like to load one location up with attachments, travel to it with south away to reduce my threat, put on elfstone, and be able to draw a pile of cards for more elfstone targets.

That lore event seems to be a miss for me. It seems like mostly loading up with attachments on one location since you only travel once a round is better than spreading them out. Of course one resource for essentially a boost of 2 willpower isn't a bad deal...

The dwarf is bonkers, essentially free readying to attack and defend with a 3 and 3 ally? His cost is high. He and wiglaf are a mighty pair of allies. Hopefully you could cheat them in or play them with steward. The mining mechanic is spread among spirit, leadership, and tactics now though...I'd prefer if this guy was in the former spheres actually. A thorin dain deck with another hero like the dwarf who gets tactics and spirit icons would be great

I'm disappointed we didn't get a card that would benefit from being discarded in a dwarf miner deck, like Hidden Cache and Ered Luin Miner.

16 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

I'm disappointed we didn't get a card that would benefit from being discarded in a dwarf miner deck, like Hidden Cache and Ered Luin Miner.

Yeah that's what I was hoping for the most out of this pack.

I'm hoping it too, but it have to be a card designed only for a mining dwarf deck, in order to make a clear distinction between this archetype and the swarm dwarf archetype, who still have the most powerful cards, and enjoy the actual mining cards like ered luin miner.

I think there will be a problem with a large amount of dale allies if we keep getting more. There aren't a lot different Dale builds, so some allies will sadly just see less play as the more powerful ones take up slots in every deck.

10 hours ago, GrandSpleen said:

Thror's Ring would work very nicely with Vilya, imagine both of those cards putting attachments and allies into play...

Or each other.

44 minutes ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

I think there will be a problem with a large amount of dale allies if we keep getting more. There aren't a lot different Dale builds, so some allies will sadly just see less play as the more powerful ones take up slots in every deck.

Or each other.

Just include every dale ally there is like a man.

3 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

I'm disappointed we didn't get a card that would benefit from being discarded in a dwarf miner deck, like Hidden Cache and Ered Luin Miner.

I’m a little afraid of that frankly. I feel there is going to be a very fine line with mining between under and over powered. (But then Dale is basically bonkers now already so...)

20 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

For all that says the new guarded card is so poweful I disagree. Guarded is a mechanic with many drawback. You have to deal with another encounter cards, and that is a really big deal to me. They aren't good beginning cards, since it is usually already difficult to dealt with the encounter cards of the setup and the turn 1 while you play only a few ally/equipment.

In my experience this is not as bad as it seems. The early game is where my threat is low enough to handle one enemy at a time. And the threat of location lock is far away. I more often play them on turn 2 or 3, after having improved my game state a little.

As for the deck needing to be designed specifically for the guarded cards; My wife and I currently are using two. She has Glamdring, and I have the necklace. We built our decks before they were released, but we both do have multiple Noldor discarding effects. So if we get guarded cards and the staging area is already too intense, they are not dead cards in our hands.

Once again this is just my personal experience with guarded player cards. I haven't played any nightmare scenarios with them.

I

It's too early to really tell but I would expect guarded cards to be similar to player side quests.

They simply are not an option against some scenarios but totally fine in most. In both case they are not cards to be played blind of the board state.

I would love an hero with a set up effect for guarded cards similar to thurindir for side quest. It would them feel more strategic... it would feels at home in Dale trait too.

43 minutes ago, Halberto said:

It's too early to really tell but I would expect guarded cards to be similar to player side quests.

They simply are not an option against some scenarios but totally fine in most. In both case they are not cards to be played blind of the board state. 

I would love an hero with a set up effect for guarded cards similar to thurindir for side quest. It would them feel more strategic... it would feels at home in Dale trait too.

They have a point in common: in some case the side-effects is quite negligible (moment where the scenario take a break). I agree that a hero who benefit to set guarded card will be interesting.

Bilbo would be the natural hero to find Guarded artifacts.

1 hour ago, dalestephenson said:

Bilbo would be the natural hero to find Guarded artifacts.

It would be about time we get a new bilbo hero version.

To make him balanced and stiking with his current cost- Stat ratio he should be able to put in play a guarded card without triggering the guarded keyword...

5 hours ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

I think there will be a problem with a large amount of dale allies if we keep getting more. There aren't a lot different Dale builds, so some allies will sadly just see less play as the more powerful ones take up slots in every deck.

Or each other.

With the exception of wiglaf, who is his own interesting card, I feel like every dale ally we have gotten since the deluxe is overkill, it was massively powerful and these new allies I dont even use really

13 minutes ago, player1683311 said:

With the exception of wiglaf, who is his own interesting card, I feel like every dale ally we have gotten since the deluxe is overkill, it was massively powerful and these new allies I dont even use really

This new one is debatable. The allies we got in first two AP however were from good to great. Guardian of Esgaroth is among the best Dale allies i think.

Guardian of Esgaroth really likes his Wild Stallion.

@LordBird did you also pick up Fire in the Night? There are still a couple cards in that pack that haven't been spoiled: Quicker than Sight and Outmatched.

On 12/2/2018 at 1:58 PM, LordBird said:

I could have bought french version of Fire in the night (also on the shelves here) but since the english version is supposedly no more than a couple of weeks away, I passed.

@Seastan

4 hours ago, Seastan said:

@LordBird did you also pick up Fire in the Night? There are still a couple cards in that pack that haven't been spoiled: Quicker than Sight and Outmatched.

I did not buy it but I found someone who did. Don't have pictures but text is (my translation):

Outmatched: Attachment, Tactics, Condition, Trap. Cost 1

Play in your area unattached. If unattached, attach Outmatched to next valid enemy that engages you.

Response: After attached enemy resolves his attack, ready defender.

Quicker Than Sight: Event, Spirit, Cost 0

Return to your hand a Sylvan ally you control to cancel a shadow effect just revealed during combat.

15 minutes ago, LordBird said:

I did not buy it but I found someone who did. Don't have pictures but text is (my translation):

Outmatched: Attachment, Tactics, Condition, Trap. Cost 1

Play in your area unattached. If unattached, attach Outmatched to next valid enemy that engages you.

Response: After attached enemy resolves his attack, ready defender.

Quicker Than Sight: Event, Spirit, Cost 0

Return to your hand a Sylvan ally you control to cancel a shadow effect just revealed during combat.

Wonderful, thank you!

1 hour ago, LordBird said:

I did not buy it but I found someone who did. Don't have pictures but text is (my translation):

Outmatched: Attachment, Tactics, Condition, Trap. Cost 1

Play in your area unattached. If unattached, attach Outmatched to next valid enemy that engages you.

Response: After attached enemy resolves his attack, ready defender.

Quicker Than Sight: Event, Spirit, Cost 0

Return to your hand a Sylvan ally you control to cancel a shadow effect just revealed during combat.

The event seems so goooood for Silvan deck.

Outmatched is not bad but not for all (most) traps deck probably. Seems more useful for a tactic deck featuring Beregond and without access to better ready effect. We will see....

On 12/3/2018 at 8:38 PM, Halberto said:

It would be about time we get a new bilbo hero version.

To make him balanced and stiking with his current cost- Stat ratio he should be able to put in play a guarded card without triggering the guarded keyword...

Ok we really got a new Bilbo hero with the same cost-stat ratio....

And not bad at all too I would say.

On 12/3/2018 at 12:12 PM, dalestephenson said:

Bilbo would be the natural hero to find Guarded artifacts.

Boy you called it, the very next day we get our new Bilbo, and he is good against guarded!