My favorite part will be swapping Thorin Oakenshield into Quickbeam. I just can't decide if I want him to say:

"It was me inside that Dwarf all along! And I would have gotten away with it too if not for you meddling kids!"

or

"This isn't even my final form!"

Hahaha love the shenanigans with this card.

If you replace an exhausted hero with this, would the hero that takes its place be ready? I assume yes, since the carp doesn’t specify, and cards enter play in a ready state.

6 hours ago, GrandSpleen said:

If you replace an exhausted hero with this, would the hero that takes its place be ready? I assume yes, since the carp doesn’t specify, and cards enter play in a ready state.

I'm guessing based on the theme of the card that the new hero would also enter play exhausted... but then again you throw out any semblance of theme when you do what General_Grievous did up above... 🤣 So who knows.

15 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

That makes sense, but it's a thematic fail not to be able to swap out Spirit Eowyn for Tactics Eowyn!

I'm house ruling that you can swap. They're different heroes. They just have the same name.

Any leads on the unknown Leadership or Tactics card in Under the Ash Mountains?

47 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Any leads on the unknown Leadership or Tactics card in Under the Ash Mountains?

The tactics card is Northern Bowmaster.

Dunedain - 1 cost

0 Will

2 Att

0 Def

1 Htp

Ranged.

Rest of his ability isnt 100 percent spoiled but pretty sure it says discard him unless you're engaged with an enemy.

Leadership one is Valiant sword.

Attach to Noble hero. Gains +1 att(2 if threat is 40 or higher).

39 minutes ago, MikeGracey said:

The tactics card is Northern Bowmaster.

Rest of his ability isnt 100 percent spoiled but pretty sure it says discard him unless you're engaged with an enemy.

I believe it's "you cannot play northern bowmaster from your hand unless you are engaged with an enemy."

2 minutes ago, player3351457 said:

I believe it's "you cannot play northern bowmaster from your hand unless you are engaged with an enemy."

Ok actually I hope your right! That would be much better than what I thought it was.

I take it that Tactics Beorn is excluded from this "player card effect" sadly. 😥

Beorn isn't immune while he's out of play, so you should be able to swap into him, though at 12 threat not a lot of heroes can swap into him.

I think I'm going to house rule that MotK threat raise counts as the threat for one of those heroes for this card, because the idea of running MotK Beorn, invoking his +5 attack, then swapping into his bear form (hero card) before he goes away would be so fantastic thematically. Especially if you can do it during Battle of Five Armies.

Especially if you are playing Leadership Thorin and trade him out with Beorn right before he croaks!

@Emilius It’s real.

Unfortunately, with the new announcement, the latest update has the release of this pack in may. Maybe some retailers got it early and can still fulfill the order.

With help from a few community members from Europe, we got a full set of player cards to discuss and I share my first thoughts on the quest by looking at the encounter cards. I have compiled my thoughts in this article, which will hopefully entertain you all enough while you are staying inside for the weekend: https://visionofthepalantir.com/2020/04/04/first-impressions-under-the-ash-mountains/

Anyone know of any retailers who ended up getting this that ship to the US?

4 hours ago, programdude said:

Anyone know of any retailers who ended up getting this that ship to the US?

Same question with Canada haha

Not that I know of at this moment. Local shops are now selling the pack here since today. I'm not sure when US, UK, or Canadian shops will start selling them. Keep refreshing their inventory online. If it turns out to take very long, I might be able to ship some copies overseas, but that would only be for those that are impatient enough.

Asmodee Canada is closed as a non essential business. So no new product until businesses re open.

It's the same with Asmodee UK

By the way with the cutting down your decks to 40 cards, discarding card at the end of each round, no shuffling cards from the discard pile and the ticking clock of losing as soon as your deck is empty this quest seems quite brutal, especially for decks with powerful draw engines (Erestor, Cirdan, some hobbit decks)

So now they've pushed the released to June. If they keep pushing the releases forward the one year hiatus will be over by the time the last pack is released. 🙂

On 4/8/2020 at 9:47 AM, Alonewolf87 said:

By the way with the cutting down your decks to 40 cards, discarding card at the end of each round, no shuffling cards from the discard pile and the ticking clock of losing as soon as your deck is empty this quest seems quite brutal, especially for decks with powerful draw engines (Erestor, Cirdan, some hobbit decks)

Having played the quest several times today and not getting past stage 1 in any of them does confirm this. The quest has you discard cards really quickly. It also starts you off with one of 4 nasty side-quests, and a tough enemy that limits your progress per round to 5. You need to go to the side-quests to lower the number of cards you discard at the end of each round, but that does also mean you lose rounds of progress that could have gone on the main quest.
Not to mention the other deadly enemies in this quest. The Patrol that starts in play has Hill-Troll level stats, but has a higher defence and will make 2 attacks against you in the round you engage it. There are 2 copies and a location that fetches them when it is explored (as they don't go to the VD). With side-quests forcing you to travel and limiting damage on enemies to 4 per round, it feels very unfair to solo players, as there is no chance to get through the quest fast enough while discarding cards and having to fight off these big enemies (Trolls, Nameless Things, Werewolves, etc).
It's a very brutal quest, but I would imagine it to be easier in higher player counts, as one player can engage the patrol and the rest can quest hard to get through the 25 quest points on each quest card before the decks dry up.

I have not acquired this quest yet, but could you not just build a deck with more than 50 cards to buy extra rounds?

54 minutes ago, Amicus Draconis said:

I have not acquired this quest yet, but could you not just build a deck with more than 50 cards to buy extra rounds?

During setup it has you discard cards from your deck until you're down to 40. Then it prevents you from using events to shuffle cards in your discard pile back into your deck.

If anyone hasn't tried it yet, I would recommend (since I don't have the pack yet) to play dwarves against this. They get benefits from underground locations ( hello Bombur) but also can make great use of an attachment that kinda sucked until now.

Dwarf Pipe