Prince of Dol Amroth, Forlong, Sword of Morthond are all examples of the sort of thing that could/should be done with Outlands -- because they don't boost other Outlanders, they do nothing to ramp up the arguably overpowered core mechanic, and if you're using resources to play those *instead* of the non-uniques you're going to come out behind. Gondor/Outlands uniques would have unimpressive base stats but a useful ability -- and a discard ability would be fine, since Men of the West would work with them (and now Knight of Belafas helps them out). The goal wouldn't be to ramp up Outlands, but simply to provide more Outlands options in the form of allies that might be useful outside an Outlands deck.

While there's been little explicit Outlands support since Heirs, a few of the recent attachments might be of interest to Outlands deck. Although the "warriors" and "knights" get no keywords other than Outlands, Squire's Helm, Round Shield and Valiant Determination can go on any ally, Warrior Sword can go on Knights of the Swan, and Ancestral Armor can go on Warrios of Lossarnach.

To be honest, though, Angbor would be a phenomenal choice for Sword of Morthond. His readying ability would mean that he could quest really well, and then hit really hard.

On another note, what would the Oathbreakers' contract be? It could be interesting to have a contract that flips when you hit 40 threat. Maybe you have to raise your threat by 2 at the end of the round until you get to flip it.

Oathbreakers contract can be something that makes you jump through a couple of hoops and then rewards you with a big token ally. (Which then gets immediately discarded by a wild treachery/shadow effect.)

On 9/12/2019 at 3:57 PM, Amicus Draconis said:

Technically the twins could quest, though you would need readying for them, as their innate ability only works, when they attack/defend. And who is Halbeard supposed to be? Halbarad, Treebeard?

There is a leadership mount which readies your hero when you engage an enemy. Luckyly, it is restricted xD

And I ment Halbarad....

@Felswrath

Your list of allies is missing 1 that Im surprised hasnt been mentioned yet; ally Denethor! Nice to finally have a use for him, he will be good to see in the opening hand!

The new hero unfortunately doesnt really help the gondor spirit allies like damrod or the lampwright, but she looks real good in a gondor/rohan deck anyway, and making denethor useful is quite a feat.

She is just what Gondor needed;a low theat quester who can help early game willpower.

2 hours ago, MikeGracey said:

@Felswrath

Your list of allies is missing 1 that Im surprised hasnt been mentioned yet; ally Denethor! Nice to finally have a use for him, he will be good to see in the opening hand!

The new hero unfortunately doesnt really help the gondor spirit allies like damrod or the lampwright, but she looks real good in a gondor/rohan deck anyway, and making denethor useful is quite a feat.

She is just what Gondor needed;a low theat quester who can help early game willpower.

You're right Denethor would be useful. I would say that she definitely makes Damrod better. Now you can play him for free, have him quest for 1, and then discard him for his ability.

You can even give her the Scout trait with Fearless Scout and bring out Firyal to not only get the 3 extra willpower but her awesome ability as well which I think you'd be able to trigger.

When an enemy is put into play engaged with you, do “after an/this enemy engages you . . .” Responses trigger?

I would then apply the same logic to entering play committed to the quest and “after you commit a/this character to the quest . . .” Responses.

30 minutes ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

When an enemy is put into play engaged with you, do “after an/this enemy engages you . . .” Responses trigger?

I found a response from Calab about this here... https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/92528-sam-gamgee-and-the-prancing-pony/#entry896667

• "Any time an enemy ends up in your play area, engaged with you, it has engaged you and you have engaged it. It doesn't matter if it comes from the staging area, the encounter deck, discard pile, or even out of play: if it ends up in your play area, it has engaged you. And if that enemy's engagement cost is higher than your threat, Sam's ability will trigger at that time."

So I'm guessing when Firyal enters your play area committed to the quest you should be able to trigger her response.

So based on the packs released, it appears we are getting master cards in each pack. Not only that, but they appear to be sphere-bleeding... leadership with willpower, spirit with defense...

Since all but one spirit and one tactics card spoiled in this pack, and since Wrath and ruin has a spirit master card... we could safely guess that this pack has a tactics master card. Any guesses on what it does? Is it an attachment? Maybe a healing one?

7 hours ago, player3351457 said:

So based on the packs released, it appears we are getting master cards in each pack. Not only that, but they appear to be sphere-bleeding... leadership with willpower, spirit with defense...

Since all but one spirit and one tactics card spoiled in this pack, and since Wrath and ruin has a spirit master card... we could safely guess that this pack has a tactics master card. Any guesses on what it does? Is it an attachment? Maybe a healing one?

While it is true that the last two had sphere bleed, it's not to places that the spheres have not bled before. I expect the tactics Master attachment to increase attack. As for it's other ability I'm not sure. Perhaps decrease defense of enemies engaged with you?

Updated to Shipping Now. Expected US release date of January 10th 2020.

I think one card still remains unspoiled. Any ideas?

47 minutes ago, stimpaksam said:

Updated to Shipping Now. Expected US release date of January 10th 2020.

I think one card still remains unspoiled. Any ideas?

Judging by Hall of Beorn, it looks like there's only one known Tactics and one known Spirit card in CoU thus far. Wrath and Ruin had two cards for each sphere, a neutral card (Bombadil), and a Contract, which means City of Ulfast hopefully still has two cards yet to be spoiled (one Tactics and one Spirit).

I'm hoping there's more guarded cards this cycle, especially to help with Burglar's Turn. Given that, I'd like to see a guarded spirit weapon (to compliment Orcrist, Glamdring, and Durin's Axe), possibly Aiglos since it's mentioned in LotR and also had an ME:CCG appearance.

The tactics card could be the long-hinted-at Wilyador card, but here's hoping he appears later either as a Hero or in a pack with another Eagle Hero.

1 hour ago, EBerling said:

Judging by Hall of Beorn, it looks like there's only one known Tactics and one known Spirit card in CoU thus far. Wrath and Ruin had two cards for each sphere, a neutral card (Bombadil), and a Contract, which means City of Ulfast hopefully still has two cards yet to be spoiled (one Tactics and one Spirit).

I'm hoping there's more guarded cards this cycle, especially to help with Burglar's Turn. Given that, I'd like to see a guarded spirit weapon (to compliment Orcrist, Glamdring, and Durin's Axe), possibly Aiglos since it's mentioned in LotR and also had an ME:CCG appearance.

The tactics card could be the long-hinted-at Wilyador card, but here's hoping he appears later either as a Hero or in a pack with another Eagle Hero.

I will bet the tactics card is a master card. We had a spirit master in the first pack and will have a leadership master in the second pack.

The first pack has 3 attachments, allies, and events and it looks like the other packs may follow that format. So probably a tactics attachment master card and a spirit event.

Also I highly doubt we will get more guarded attachments. Caleb threw one in the pack to compliment the contract but I dont think he wants every attachment in this contract a guarded one... That would make deck building pretty boring as people would just use only guarded stuff with he burglars turn. Thats exactly what they dont want to do with these contracts...

1 hour ago, MikeGracey said:

Also I highly doubt we will get more guarded attachments. Caleb threw one in the pack to compliment the contract but I dont think he wants every attachment in this contract a guarded one... That would make deck building pretty boring ...

You may well be right, and we may have seen our last guarded card. But as far as what to put in the "Loot Deck," it's already pretty boring: 7-8 Guarded cards (depending on if there's a Hobbit/Sting or Dwarf/Thror's Ring), after which people seem to splash Citadel Plate, Ancestral Armor, Burning Brand, and a few of the other expensive/power items to taste). So the loot deck is already roughly 80% pre-built, in what I've seen so far. In my opinion, though, the interesting part of deck-building for the Burglar's Turn isn't the Loot Deck itself (which is boring already), but rather what you do with a 50+ card player deck and trio of heroes that cannot have any innate attachments, and in multi-player how the other deck(s) adapt to pick up the attachment slack of the Burglar. In this regard, I think it's the most interesting deck-building contract. since it not only radically changes the Burglar's deck but also the deck of the other player(s) involved.

So to that end, I don't think a few more guarded cards would undermine the interesting aspects of the contract. In fact, I think a few more quality guarded cards would go a long way to helping the contract be a bit more appealing.

Having played quite a bit with the Burglar's Turn contract, I'm pretty comfortable saying that it's the most underwhelming of the contracts so far (all of which my group have proxied and tried to some degree). Even in 3-Player, with the other two players devoting a portion of their deck to play attachments on the "Burglar" player's characters, I'd say the loot is "meh" at best. When actively slow-rolling quests as much as possible (e.g. lots of Threat Control and Side Quests), we've typically only claimed 4-6 loot cards per Quest (meaning for any given piece of loot, you have less than a 50% of seeing it appear during a game), and the most loot we have ever claimed in a game was 8 cards--just over half of the deck. When not building to explicitly slow-roll or when having fewer players with less chance of staging a location each turn, the loot becomes even less frequently claimed.

The costs of Burglar's Turn are very high: having to give up attachments in one deck is a huge cost, since many of the best cards in the game are attachments (e.g. Steward of Gondor, Unexpected Courage, etc.). The contract also forces you to travel to locations, which is something most decks never seem to bother with usually, instead preferring to just clear out locations with progress tokens prior to traveling. So when burglaring you actually have to endure all those travel costs. If you're not flipping locations, the contract fails to do anything at all (a problem that is more pronounced with fewer players). The contract also fails to do anything if you travel and flip a unique attachment that is already in play, so if you want to use the Loot Deck as an opportunity to have an additional copy of an item that you also want to include in another player's deck, you risk shutting down the contract on some turns should another copy come into play first. so you can't use the loot deck to improve the reliability/efficiency of key unique items seeing play. Finally, the contract increases the quest point of locations for not just loot, but any attachments on the location. So if you want to use the contract to build synergy with other cards that attach to locations and all the player cards that trigger off of them, you start getting diminishing returns.


Don't get me wrong, the Burglar's Turn is still a very fun contract as-is, and I'll enjoy using it even if no more guarded cards or quality items drop this cycle. But I'd like to see a few more, like a Spirit Weapon analog and maybe something for Elves or Dunedain only akin to Sting / Thror's Ring.

1 hour ago, EBerling said:

You may well be right, and we may have seen our last guarded card. But as far as what to put in the "Loot Deck," it's already pretty boring: 7-8 Guarded cards (depending on if there's a Hobbit/Sting or Dwarf/Thror's Ring), after which people seem to splash Citadel Plate, Ancestral Armor, Burning Brand, and a few of the other expensive/power items to taste). So the loot deck is already roughly 80% pre-built, in what I've seen so far. In my opinion, though, the interesting part of deck-building for the Burglar's Turn isn't the Loot Deck itself (which is boring already), but rather what you do with a 50+ card player deck and trio of heroes that cannot have any innate attachments, and in multi-player how the other deck(s) adapt to pick up the attachment slack of the Burglar. In this regard, I think it's the most interesting deck-building contract. since it not only radically changes the Burglar's deck but also the deck of the other player(s) involved.

Thats a good point about the contract, choosing heros that aren't dependent on a certain attachment. I do think that while the contract will use most of the same attachments over and over(especially the guarded ones), the randomization of the order is actually a lot of fun! You never know what your gonna get but its guaranteed to be useful. Every time I travel to a location im excited to see what new attachment Im getting... The designers have made travelling pretty exciting with this card (since travelling tends to be not the most exciting part for most people)

This contract is less consistent than the others but its really fun and yes, you will be able to still win games with it.

The Burglar's Turn is probably best when used with decks that would normally run less than 15 attachments, and instead focus on allies and events. Although losing certain key attachments can be a real bummer, the draw and resource advantage of the Loot Deck will often make up for that. Personally, I'm in favor of anything that makes Steward of Gondor and Unexpected Courage impossible to play. It is a bummer that of the 14 Loot cards, ~10 will be essentially auto-includes. I haven't tested these yet, but I think the contract would work very well with heroes that favor allies: S Theoden, T Imrahil, Hirgon, etc.

I think I'll build a Burglar Rohan deck with S Theoden since many of the pricey artifact/item attachments can go on him. Then the main deck can have at least 30 allies. I doubt it will a very consistent deck, but it should be viable with some luck.

There is a playthrough on youtube by Mister Underhill of Foundations of Stone with The Burglar's Turn. The decks are really not suited for playing this quest with the item discarding on stage 3, but they managed to beat the quest in normal mode nonetheless.

Has anyone received their pack yet? I haven't received a shipping notification but gamenerdz has gone from "preorder" to "in stock" so I anticipate some people should be getting their packs soon... and then rendering this page pretty obsolete! (Except for our poor UK brothers... hang in there fellas)

The last two cards have been spoiled on hall of beorn fyi

It looks like neither this or Wrath and Ruin are out in the UK. This is getting ridiculous.

Can you pre-order from Asmodee's website? I received my pre-ordered copy of City of Ulfast yesterday. I do live in the US.

Is this the first cycle where FFG/Asmodee has given pre-order bonuses with each pack? I am loving the full art cards that come with the pre-order and I am making sure to sign up for each pre-order. If they keep doing this for all 6 packs, that will be 18 full art cards. That is two 9-card binder pages.

Just got my copy of City of Ulfast in the mail yesterday (mainland Europe, English edition). No sign yet of Wrath and Ruin, but at least I get to enjoy some new cards and a brand new scenario to play with. It has been a long time (since July) since I had some new content, not counting the GenCon pack.