For those that may not have seen it, the remaining cards from Land of Sorrow have been spoiled on Reddit :

Smoke and Think is a lot of fun, nice to see some development of the pipe-subtheme. In the right deck, I suppose this will effectively grant 1-3 resources for an Action, which is good... but cards are sometimes as precious as resources (which is why not all decks with Ld and Gondor heroes run Wealth of Gondor). Still, Spare Pipe is a great Event-fishing attachment, and if it grabs a Smoke a Think it's at least paid for itself with the +1 HP for free.


Bilbo's Plan is better than it looks, I think. Most decks, especially Tactics decks, can often pull and kill all the enemies each round, especially in multiplayer, while locations can tend to pile up. The worst thing for combat-capable decks is to sit there without enough staged enemies and wasted characters readied with nothing to block/kill. This event allows you to (1) dilute the Encounter deck by putting the discard back into it (or rehunt for an objective / player encounter that has gotten discarded), (2) potentially filter out some bad treacheries/location, (3) maybe clear a location, and (4) ensure there is an enemy in the Staging Area. This can help set-up Dunhere, T-Eomer, T-Bilbo, and all the many other cards that key off of having an enemy staged. It's probably worth it just as fairly reliable location-control for combat-focused decks, but will be especially helpful in setting up those heroes/cards that want enemies in the staging area.

1 minute ago, EBerling said:

Smoke and Think is a lot of fun, nice to see some development of the pipe-subtheme. In the right deck, I suppose this will effectively grant 1-3 resources for an Action, which is good... but cards are sometimes as precious as resources (which is why not all decks with Ld and Gondor heroes run Wealth of Gondor). Still, Spare Pipe is a great Event-fishing attachment, and if it grabs a Smoke a Think it's at least paid for itself with the +1 HP for free.


Bilbo's Plan is better than it looks, I think. Most decks, especially Tactics decks, can often pull and kill all the enemies each round, especially in multiplayer, while locations can tend to pile up. The worst thing for combat-capable decks is to sit there without enough staged enemies and wasted characters readied with nothing to block/kill. This event allows you to (1) dilute the Encounter deck by putting the discard back into it (or rehunt for an objective / player encounter that has gotten discarded), (2) potentially filter out some bad treacheries/location, (3) maybe clear a location, and (4) ensure there is an enemy in the Staging Area. This can help set-up Dunhere, T-Eomer, T-Bilbo, and all the many other cards that key off of having an enemy staged. It's probably worth it just as fairly reliable location-control for combat-focused decks, but will be especially helpful in setting up those heroes/cards that want enemies in the staging area.

Im not so sure I like this card myself. I always felt that shuffling the discard back in is a bad thing (like those quests in the harad cycle that keep making you reshuffle it). I like the advantage of seeing a nasty card (or 2 or 3 or 4) in the discard and it helps me know what is coming. And it just seems that most quests have a few 1 threat surge type enemies that will almost certainly make this card whiff. A 3 threat enemy could certainly be helpful but 2 threat or less just doesn't seem good. And you have no control over what comes either. I don't know, just my thoughts.

Whether or not you want to reshuffle discard depends on the situation. If you haven’t seen Southron Support come out yet and the encounter deck is 2/3 empty, seems like a good idea. But anyway, that’s just a feature of the card, not its point. I doubt it will see much play. I could imagine putting it in with tactics Bilbo— I think this is the first in-sphere card that supports his want of having an enemy in staging. Also good for tactics Aragorn, use it when you’ll have him ready with nothing else to do.

2 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

Whether or not you want to reshuffle discard depends on the situation. If you haven’t seen Southron Support come out yet and the encounter deck is 2/3 empty, seems like a good idea. But anyway, that’s just a feature of the card, not its point. I doubt it will see much play. I could imagine putting it in with tactics Bilbo— I think this is the first in-sphere card that supports his want of having an enemy in staging. Also good for tactics Aragorn, use it when you’ll have him ready with nothing else to do.

Right and that is true, I just find that most quest nowadays theres always bad cards in the discard pile. And everywhere.

Worth noting (though you probably know this already) is that while the card in nice for Bilbo his ability alone wont let you play Bilbos plan (unless your attacking with him...) because the enemy has to be attacked and destroyed.

It prob won't see much play but perhaps there is a deck that can make it good. Tactics Aragorn is a good idea

14 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

Whether or not you want to reshuffle discard depends on the situation.

Another good point. There are plenty of quests (especially in the first few cycles) that have one or two just dreaded cards (usually Treacheries, like Exhaustion, Master's Malice, Southron Support, Sleeping Sentry, and the list goes on). Canceling these cards is ideal, of course, but even if you have in-sphere canceling with your deck more ways to save having to use them is better. In this case, shuffling the discard back in can help re-dilute the chance of seeing those "cancel or lose" type of cards.

But yea, the real perk of the card is to give a little possibility for location controls while killing enemies (which you are doing anyways). Still, it probably only really shine in decks with heroes and cards that key off of staged enemies or want an enemy in play in the Planning Phase for full benefit (e.g. allies that deal damage when played, eg Descendant of Thorondor).

The "most appealing" usage I can think of Ld-Eomer in a deck with Tactics sphere. Without Fastred, it's rare for him to leave enemies in Staging because he's not conducive to a Secrecy Build. Slap Spear(s) of the Mark on him and now you can play Bilbo's Plan to hopefully clear a location (progress will be hard to place with Ld/T as two of the heroes) and put an enemy into Staging for Eomer to slap the enemy next turn while he quests. Even then, if the card whiffs on discarding a location, it's probably a lateral move at best. Dunhere with some Spears of the Mark could try and Bilbo's Plan, clear a location, and then kill the new enemy before next round.

I am still laughing hard for the trait Archer coming back right at the end of the game in a call back to the Core Set

The end comes is probably considered the worst card in the game. All it does is shuffle the discard back in, which is mostly not helpful. There is that chance where you can attempt to dilute the encounter deck but that may or may not help you anyway.

But I do like EBerlings suggestion with Dunhere.

Yes, not only does The End Comes *only* shuffle the deck back in, it's conditional, you have to have a dwarf leave play.

If we had a card that shuffled the encounter discard pile back in, and did nothing else, and was not conditional in any way, I suspect it would be used in some scenarios. Wouldn't be popular, but wouldn't be considered useless either.

Red book of werstmarch is great. More than great. It will improve dramatically ally hobbits archetype, making him viable in most quests. And it power up all hobbits on the board, regardless of the controller. Expansive but worth it and repay itself in a couple of turn.

56 minutes ago, Halberto said:

Red book of werstmarch is great. More than great. It will improve dramatically ally hobbits archetype, making him viable in most quests. And it power up all hobbits on the board, regardless of the controller. Expansive but worth it and repay itself in a couple of turn.

It's gonna propel my hobbit-only fellowship contract deck to new heights.

54 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

Yes, not only does The End Comes *only* shuffle the deck back in, it's conditional, you have to have a dwarf leave play.

If we had a card that shuffled the encounter discard pile back in, and did nothing else, and was not conditional in any way, I suspect it would be used in some scenarios. Wouldn't be popular, but wouldn't be considered useless either.

Im not so sure about that. I dont think the condition of a dwarf leaving play is what makes the end comes terrible. Its the main effect of the card the makes it bad.

While I was playing through the Haradrim cycle I noticed a lot of encounter quest cards and encounter cards in general were making players shuffle the discard into the encounter deck and discard until... Whatever was revealed. This was an annoying feature that bothered me because all those bad cards that I discarded previously (hello southron champion) are now back in the deck.

Bilbos plan shuffling the discard back in is not its main affect, but I do think its a negative one.

30 minutes ago, MikeGracey said:

This was an annoying feature that bothered me because all those bad cards that I discarded previously (hello southron champion) are now back in the deck.

See it backwards, perhaps you have a thin encounter deck and you know there bad things lurking around for possibly the next quest phase (perhaps you put quite a few bad cards down there with Lore Denethor). Shuffling a lot of encounter cards at your choice could be a good way to lessen the risks. Basically what I am saying is that it's not necessarily a negative effect, it could be positive too (probably averageing on neutral)

Yeah, it's not really the most exciting argument. We're just saying that casting a discard reshuffle as a negative effect is only a half-analysis.

52 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

It's gonna propel my hobbit-only fellowship contract deck to new heights.

What do you say? Frodo or Sam as holder of the Book?

There are a couple of situations described in MDuckworth83's review of The End Comes on RingsDB that apply to Bilbo's Plan (which gets around the main problem with The End Comes -- it's stupid Dwarf-leaves-play restriction):

Quote

Basically, what this card does is function as a means to shuffle the encounter deck. This can actually be useful in the following situations:

1. You have scried the encounter deck and see several rounds of terrible options coming your way. Maybe you are almost location locked and the next few encounter cards are locations? Perhaps you are saturated with enemies and you see two more enemies coming your way. Maybe that game ending treachery is in the line-up and you don't have a A Test of Will yet? Of course this assumes you have a means of scrying, and thus combos with Henamarth Riversong , Rumour from the Earth , Scout Ahead , Palantir , Denethor , and my new favorite scrying tool, Interrogation .

2. Speaking of Denethor , it actually combos really great with him and this might be one of the most compelling reasons to use this card. The reason is that due to Denethor 's ability, you often end up getting an opportunity to bypass really difficult cards and move them to the bottom of the encounter deck. This tends to result in a heavily stacked, nasty "last 5 cards" of the encounter deck when you get to the bottom. The End Comes let's you bypass these and start fresh with a newly shuffled encounter deck. This also works when you have a treachery or other effect "search encounter deck and discard pile for.. then shuffle" effect that shows you that the remaining 8 cards left at the bottom of the deck aren't the ones that you hope to face.

3. Occasionally, there are cards in the encounter deck that got discarded when you didn't want them to. The one that comes to mind is Ranger of the North , but this can also apply to objective allies, objective attachments, or maybe just a particular location that you would rather see in play that not. The End Comes gives you the means to shuffle these back into the encounter deck once discarded.

4. This one is the most quest dependant, but certain quest effects actually trigger off of cards in the encounter deck discard pile. The most obvious example of this are Deadman's Dike with it's dreaded "Cursed Dead" which triggers all other copies to come flying out of the discard pile when revealed. With this card you can reset the discard pile.

There are quests (for example, the first Hobbit quest) where a card shuffling the deck back in would be useful, just in case you haven't got the treasures yet and don't want to accidentally "win" the quest without them. The End Comes would be a rarely used sideboard card, but it would be a viable sideboard card. However, the dwarf-leaves-play is a dealbreaker.

In this case the shuffle back in just makes the card near-guaranteed to hit an enemy, but hitting an enemy is no guarantee of hitting a location. The odds of it hitting successfully should be calculatable before the quest, and will vary enough that it still looks like a sideboard card to me.

4 minutes ago, Alonewolf87 said:

What do you say? Frodo or Sam as holder of the Book?

Sam's an ally in my deck, which uses Frodo(Le), Folco, and Tom Cotton. Frodo would get it.

Frodo's a better target overall because his ability requires a resource.

Just in case help me see if I am interpreting correctly how Bilbo's Plan work:

After shuffling the encounter back and discarding card until I discard an enemy if there is a location in play with threat equal or lower than that of the enemy I can add the enemy to the staging area to discard the location. But I could also leave the enemy in the discard pile if I don't want to make the "switch" (or if there is no valid target).

Correct or wrong?

I have a question. The last part of Bilbo's Plan says: "Add that enemy to the staging area to discard a a non-unique location with threat equal to or less than that enemy's threat."

It's written like a cost--->effect (pay X to do Y). You can't pay a cost to do an effect if the effect would not change the game state... so, if there is no appropriate target for the effect of that phrase... Do we not add the enemy to the staging area?

I think that's just beyond wishful thinking and I'm sure you still have to add the enemy. But I'd like to hear where my reasoning is wrong.

4 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

Frodo's a better target overall because his ability requires a resource.

Indeed they seems to work hand in hand.

That's what I think -- you are *not* required to make the switch. The card merely causes shuffle and discard-to-enemy -- chosing to add that enemy to staging is optional, even if possible (which it might not be).

Which makes this card a *little* more attractive against a quest where you hate the enemies -- if the remaining deck is enemy heavy, shuffle them back in, discard to one of them and leave it in the discard where it belongs! It might be handy for Shadow of the Past after all....

5 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

I have a question. The last part of Bilbo's Plan says: "Add that enemy to the staging area to discard a a non-unique location with threat equal to or less than that enemy's threat."

It's written like a cost--->effect (pay X to do Y). You can't pay a cost to do an effect if the effect would not change the game state... so, if there is no appropriate target for the effect of that phrase... Do we not add the enemy to the staging area?

I think that's just beyond wishful thinking and I'm sure you still have to add the enemy. But I'd like to hear where my reasoning is wrong.

I'll go further, since it's written like a cost -> effect you don't have to do it even if there *is* a valid target. Frankly, if you add to the staging area *every time* whether you can discard a location or not, this would be the most terrible player card ever released since the original Raven of the Mountains.

Red Book of Westmarch is sweet, and as a global boost you can now construct your four-hobbit-ally-deck fellowships. Move over Dain Ironfoot, Hobbit swarm is coming!

I think if you decided to trigger the response you do have to resolve every line, unless that line says “you may.” It would be awkward if you had the option of skipping a line that doesn’t say “you may.”