The Lonely Mountain Questions

By Bobbymcbobface, in Rules questions & answers

If Smaug the Golden is set aside when I advance to Stage 3, does he retain his progress? Also, can Great hall or other effects place progress on him while out of play, to make you go from Stage 3 to 4?

It's been forever since I actually played this quest, so take this with a grain of salt… But I believe that when Smaug the Golden is set aside by quest card 3A, since he is out of play, none of the effects that would place progress on him will actually do anything, as none of those effects refer to an out-of-play state—see the relevant RR entry . Nor should his Forced text be active while he is out of play anyway.

I don't definitively know the answer to whether he retains the progress tokens on him when he's set aside by 3A, although I suspect he does. But does it matter?

Edited by sappidus

For an illustrative comparison, Thing in the Depths has a quest card effect that places tokens on set-aside, out-of-play encounter cards… But it explicitly refers to those cards not being in play, so that's how it "works":

http://hallofbeorn.com/LotR/Details/Take-the-Ship-TTiTD