On the "Rules?" thread, there was a link posted to a French preview of the game. On that page there was a picture of the Shadow Key Item card, in French. I tried to do a rough translation of the text of the card and I thought it would be best posted in this thread.

Shadow Key

Item

Encounter. Restricted.

Action: Raise your threat by 2 to recover this item if no encounter is attached to it. When it is claimed, attach Shadow Key to a hero that you control. (Counts as an attachment. If this card is detached, return Shadow Key to the staging area).

Forced: At the end of each turn, the attached hero suffers 1 damage.

I just noticed ( I don't know why it took me so long...) a new Hero! His name is Dunhere and he was in a demo back in October. He's the third hero from the Spirit sphere. You can see the picture here:

So there is. I see him in that pic, looks Rohirrim almost. Hard to tell for sure.

You can even read the card text if you do a full zoom.

Look up Dunhere in the Lord of the Rings index and you'll find out even more!

On CoE found: Dunhere was lord of Harrowdale and nephew of Erkenbrand. He was captain of an Éored of the Rohirrim, and a valiant man in his own right. He fought in the First Battle of the Fords of Isen and the Second Battle of the Fords of Isen and met his death in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. He was buried with the other fallen Rohirrim in the great mound outside Minas Tirith.

I was looking at the french site and picked up a couple tid-bits. One is that Thorin and Celeborn are not in the core set, but they may come out in future adventure packs. Also they woman with dark hair and a cape (on the description page) is Eleanor from Middle Earth Quest! It looks like she might be one of the heroes in the core set! This is all per the guy that helped with the French translation.

Narsil0420 said:

Eeeeesh! I hated the generic characters in Middle-Earth Quest!

Frog said:

jhaelen said:

Pretty sure all 5 were made up and obvious clones of Aragorn, Gimili, Arwen, Legolas etc. The reason I can't stand them is that they are obvious clones and horribly named.

FFG does not have the license to grab characters from Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, History of Middle Earth etc.

But if any of them are mentioned, I'd be interesting in knowing the book and where they are referenced.

Double Post. I still can't believe how limited this forum is for editing/deleting etc. They really need to update the software.

Frog said:

Of course, throwing Arwen's name out there probably won't win you any fans ! Whatever PJ did with her had nothing to do with book-Arwen. As such, I prefer Eleanor = Eowyn. Also, Aragorn apparently lost his balls in his transformation into Beravor in MEQ .

Dam said:

Lolz! I forgot all about Eleanor aka Eowyn!

In Middle earth Eleanor is the name of a flower that grows around Lothlorien. Sam Gamgee names his daughter Eleanor after this plant. That's the only reference I can think of for that name in ME.

Just got FFG's summer 2010 release book and it's got a LOTR spread in it.

Includes picture of an Ally called Dead Marsh Hunter and an event called Dunedain Courage, plus an enemy that represents Wargs, but the actual title of that card is hidden.

pumpkin said:

Could you scan that in for us?

I can scan it but i have no idea how to get it onto the forum as a image, my forum powers are weak!

I can send it to someone as an email if i get an address? (I can just about manage that!)

pumpkin said:

Yes, there's a two side LOTR spread. But it does not show to much. And acording to it the core set has only 216 cards in it not 226 like it was said before.

ffgfan said:

That's the old number of cards. It used to be 216 and then they increased it to 226. I believe that's the final number.

Narsil0420 said:

I hope You're right. It would be better for us to have more cards.

ffgfan said:

Yer, it's old info as it still talks about 4 quests in the core set too.

Interestingly, the Dead Marsh Hunter card has a tree icon in the bottom right hand corner and I've also noticed that Gimli (from the preview page) has a hammer in his bottom right hand corner. Are these also old card styles, or are these icons that haven't had an explanation yet?

Just checked Gimli from the FFG preview on Hero's rather than the forum preview post translated from French and the hammer icon has disappeared on the FFG version of Gimli, so something seems to have changed there between initial concept and final product.

The tree icon on the Dead Marsh Hunter is the white tree of Gondor, so i reckon the icons used to represent factions (dwarf for hammer, tree for gondor) but in the latest card design this faction has simply be included in the trait list rather than as an seperate icon.

All irrelevant I guess, but what else have we got to talk about without any more news or a game that is released yet!

pumpkin said:

Yea, I have noticed too that there have been subtle differences in those icons. I have no idea that they mean, so the only ones that I have been putting in the database are spheres (lore, tactics, leadership, spirit). I would love get an explaination so I can have everything formatted the games release.

mason240 said:

Yeah, they did away with the icons in the final versions. we talked about this over at BGG. My theory is that it is harder to refrence an icon (like a horse head) than say "Rohan" in future cards, cards that will apply to certain sub-types. Like "all Rohan characters get plus 1 will"

Ok so the new avatar pictures are very exciting! I think they're showing us all the heroes from the core set. If you start from the front they're grouped together by sphere.

Leadership:

Aragorn

Theodred

(Old Dwarf) (any guesses?)

Tactics:

Gimli

Legolas

(Dwarf)

Spirit:

Eowyn

Dunhere

Eleanor

Lore:

Denethor

(Elf)

(Proud Woman)

Any guesses on who the unnamed people are?

Balin would be my guess for one of the Dwarves. Maybe Arwen is in there as well?