Interesting rules question, taking my Grey Wanderer through the Sagas and I just finished Breaking of the Fellowship. I had a Sword-thain attachment on Gildor, since he has Sword-Thain attached does he count as a hero and can be captured? And if so does he become the hero version next quest?

If I didn’t have a Sword Thain, would I lose my only hero Haldir? And could I then still continue onto the next quest with a different chosen hero having to take the threat raise?

And last question, what if your grey Wanderer is Aragorn, does this campaign resolution whiff and do nothing against you?

Very interesting questions!

My thoughts:

Question 1 : I'm not at all sure about this, I think you could choose Sword-Thain Gildor as the captive. However I don't think you would automatically start with the hero version him in play as a hero for the next scenario as he wasn't recorded as a starting hero in the campaign log at the beginning of Breaking of the Fellowship. You could add and record him as a starting hero for the Uruk-Hai and he would become the captive. I think in this case you would not be able to use the Grey Wanderer for that scenario though, and you would have to sacrifice Gildor and take the +1 threat penalty to avoid being locked into having 2 starting heroes for the rest of the campaign.

If you don't choose to add and record Gildor as a starting hero I think you would be forced to choose one of your starting heroes to be the captive for the Uruk-Hai for the setup of stage 1A.

Question 2 : If you didn't have Sword-Thain in play I think you would have to choose Haldir as your captive. You could choose a new hero for the Uruk-Hai but you would have to take the +1 threat penalty from trading heroes, and if you wanted to continue using The Grey Wanderer whichever single starting hero you choose would become the captive for The Uruk-Hai.

I think this would be the same if you were playing with 2-3 heroes and replaced whichever hero you picked as the captive in the campaign card resolution of Breaking of the Fellowship (and took the +1 threat penalty for trading heroes)

Question 3 : I think for the last question if you had Aragorn as the Grey Wanderer you would just not record a captive in the log. I don't think it would really matter, as then I think for the Uruk-Hai you would be forced by the quest stage 1A to choose a starting non-fellowship hero as a captive if you did not have one recorded in the campaign log.

Question 1 -- At the end of Breaking of the Fellowship Gildor is clearly a hero and thus can technically be chosen. And since the campaign text for Uruk-Hai says to use that captive instead, you should follow that direction. Does that mean you can substitute the hero version? There is no provision I see in the campaign rules, outside of the breaks where you can alter the hero lineup freely, to ever *add* a hero, with the exception of the post text for Uruk-Hai, which instructs you to remove a hero if you have four heroes (another instruction that meshes poorly with a contract). Substitute yes, add no. It's not clear, to me at least, whether you could add another player to a campaign) although thematically, that's really what you should do for Road Darkens, then split the two players for Frodo and Aragorn paths.

Thematically, if Gildor was captured, then Gildor should be rescued -- but substituting the hero version instead of using the ally version seems a bit wonky since the (sword-thained) ally is what was captured, and the ally version is just as capable of mechanically interacting with the quest (by being Grishnakh-damaged) as a hero would be. But when rescued, he would still be any ally. However, if you were on your second Grey Wanderer, you could revive a fallen Grey Wanderer and now have two heroes active on your campaign log.

Question 2 -- without a sword-thain only Haldir could be captured, and there's no provision that I can see anywhere to add a hero to replace a captive hero, who is still in play, sort of. But I think you'd be thematically justified in using and applying the Grey Wanderer contract to fellowship Aragorn.

Question 3 -- if your Grey Wanderer is Aragorn you would have to replace him, whether he is the captive or not. Aragorn can't be the captive either, or you immediately lose. So even if your lone hero was Aragorn and he was the designated captive, I think you'd replace Aragorn with somebody, then have that somebody be the captive, using Grey Wanderer on the new hero.

Of course, if you're following Caleb's ridiculous moving of setup effects like contracts to *after* encounter setup, you can't play Grey Wanderer at all with one-deck solo, because you control more than one hero already. You could do it multiplayer as long as you're not first player.

Thanks for the help guys, I ended up going for what made sense and kept Goldie ally as the captured hero that way Haldir could rescue him as it seemed most thematically and mechanically correct.

And fair point Dale, but yeah we do not play with that weird contract timing ruling. We play what makes sense, trying to adhere to the rules and carry on from there.