So last night my buddy and I were running my sniper decks (Smerry, fastred, Leomer + Argalad, Tilbo, Thalin) against The Thing in the Depths. We ran into a few rule issues that we tried to resolve to the best of our ability but I wanted to run them through the board and see what others think.

(Quick side note -- the dynamics, timing, and rule shenanigans is one of the most appealing parts of this game. It's so dense; once you think you've figured it out, more stuff comes up!)

1. Is the timing on the grapple keyword set up so that there's no opportunity to trigger responses? Smerry was our concern. His trigger is a response on the reveal of an enemy. We ruled that since it was a response upon reveal, there is an opportunity to reduce threat before placing the card face down. This also begs the question if there are other opportunities to play cards to kill/shuffle cards back in before grapple takes effect. Or ally gimli for that matter.

2. Both decks run a ton of guarded cards. If you play a guarded card that attaches to a location, can you play A Short Cut to immediately free it? Or is this move not kosher? We ruled that it probably isn't even though the language seems to allow it.

3. Did we ever get an official answer on Tilbo + argalad triggering the same enemy? We found a discussion on Mount Gundabad that talked about it but not an official resolution I don't think. Does it basically wash out or do you get a two for one? For example, if Tilbo targets a 2 threat enemy his willpower jumps to 3. If Argalad then drops the enemy down to 0, does Tilbo drop down to 1 or does he remain at 3? On one hand, the former is beneficial for threat fluctuation that could occur during staging, as tilbo fluctuates with it. On the other hand, it would obviously be nice to essentially swing a net 4 or even 2x where x is revealed enemies threat (if you hobbit pony tilbo up). Just wanted your thoughts on that. It hasn't come up before because we have either killed enemies with their abilities combined, or just targeted two different enemies. We ended up ruling that tilbo's willpower is fixed at the time he commits to the quest.

Thanks all!

1. I think you're correct. Regardless of what happens to the enemy afterwards, it was revealed.

2. I see no reason why that wouldn't work, since Short Cut does say 'enters play' rather than 'is revealed'.

3. Lasting effects from player cards do not recalculate. So once you trigger Bilbo, his willpower boost will not change regardless of wht else happens to the targeted enemy.

With regards to number 2, and I guess this applies for both enemies and locations, do enemies need to be defeated and do locations need to be explored in order to free the attachment... or is removing them from play enough, either through discard or reshuffling back into the deck?

Leaving play is enough.