Besides Northern Trackers band such...

Do cards like South Away, Thrors Map, Mariners Compass or Gahn-Buri-Gahn are able to skip travel costs?

South Away, Thror's Map and Ghan-Buri-Ghan, as well as West-road Traveller, Strider's Path and The Hidden Way allow you to bypass travel costs. But beware, the Mariner's Compass just replaces a location in the staging area, it will not work with travelling.

Thank you.

I misread the compass. Thanks for pointing that out.

Thror's Key is also a way of avoiding travel costs.

Note that none of these effects (adding tokens or skipping travel) work on locations which are immune to player card effects.

38 minutes ago, rees263 said:

Note that none of these effects (adding tokens or skipping travel) work on locations which are immune to player card effects.

I believe Hidden Way actually works on Immune cards, as the text granting them immunity is generally on the card itself and thus inactive while not in play. As ever, immunity issues are tricky, though.

That's fair, I wasn't considering The Hidden Way when I wrote that (always an exception!) despite the fact I've been playing it a lot recently.

If I'm right there aren't all that many Immune locations which get shuffled into the deck anyway?

53 minutes ago, rees263 said:

If I'm right there aren't all that many Immune locations which get shuffled into the deck anyway?

Not all that many, no, but there are certainly some you'd be happy to pull with The Hidden Way, like a Warg's Den in Wastes of Eriador.

54 minutes ago, sappidus said:

Not all that many, no, but there are certainly some you'd be happy to pull with The Hidden Way, like a Warg's Den in Wastes of Eriador.

Couldn't find it in the FAQ, but I'm sure there's a ruling: what if we take the opposite situation - you play The Hidden Way but the active location is immune? My recollection is that you can't move the active location so you end up with both as active, but I can't find anything backing this up. What's the official resolution?

22 minutes ago, rees263 said:

Couldn't find it in the FAQ, but I'm sure there's a ruling: what if we take the opposite situation - you play The Hidden Way but the active location is immune? My recollection is that you can't move the active location so you end up with both as active, but I can't find anything backing this up. What's the official resolution?

There are older rulings about this sort of thing that went along with what you're saying, e.g.,

But this is hard to square with this newer line from RR Active Location :

Quote

There can only be one active location at a time.

There are some quests which override this via Golden Rule, but I think it's a stretch to say Hidden Way does too—I think the whole effect just fails if the existing active location is Immune. That said, obviously there is that older ruling, sooo.

So, each card which "makes a location the active one" (out of the regular traveling opportunity) is not traveling, but "magically" being at the new location. Thus, no travel cost. (But still effects which trigger when a location is active, or are "after a location becomes active).

This is nice, but a bit different to engaging an enemy. As far as I remember, even a "put that enemy on play, engaged with a player" counts as engaging. Or an player card, which lets you engage an enemy outside the usual engagement phase - that enemy still triggers any effect which is bound to engaging. Or am I wrong ... the whole time?!

40 minutes ago, Flrbb said:

This is nice, but a bit different to engaging an enemy.

Yes. Yes, it is.

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