Wallenstein said:

I see the very big guns as scenarios in and of themselves, with each Quest card possibly representing a stage of the encounter.

Sisyphus said:

Great idea; a fight with a Balrog could definitely be a quest in itself.

rings said:

Yes also at site 5 you can play Balrog from your hand or your discard pile with -6 cost.

On the other hand Glamdring,Sting,Frying Pan and Power According was an auto win against Moria.

I think this license is the same one that Cubicle-7 has for their One Ring RPG.

If so, this game can use any place, item, character, or creature from..

Hobbit & Appendixes

LOTR & Appendixes

The upcoming One Ring RPG is even set during the same time-frame.

I'm 100% sure you will see the Balrog etc.

But anything else you want from The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Children of Hurin, or the 12 volumes of History of Middle Earth are off-limits!

BeardFan said:

Sub in the word "character" for hero and you've got yourself a difficult yet still winnable scenario.

qwertyuiop said:

If you think losing a character is bad, wait until you try the necromancer scenario in the starter.

Frog said:

If that's so, then I can see why they'd want to exhaust those before moving onto anything else.

But surely the rights for the Silmarillion are going to be cheaper than those for LOTR? and well worth it if the game proves to be popular in a year or two.

Besides, who doesn't want to have Feanor as your Hero? 4 or 5 for Attack, Defence and Willpower, but with a card text of "every time you use Feanor, deal one point of damage to one of your other heroes"... or something like that, not got it figured out yet, just convinced that a deck full of Noldur would be cool.

Mighty Jim said:

No mate forget Silmarilion.C.Tolkien owns the rights and nobody can use Silmarilion except him.

servant of the secret fire said:

Yes, the Tolkiens themselves are notoriously unhappy about all these games and there's no way they will ever sanction a game based on stuff they hold the copyrights for.

Oh, now did not suspected that this topic would become so big.

You know what would be great - a Deluxe expansion for Christmas 2011.

I bet we'll be seeing a deluxe expansion before then, probably October - November to get the pre-holiday season bump.

I like taking the discussion in this direction - what would you like to see for Deluxe Expansions?

I've seen someone here suggest a Hobbit quest line as a deluxe expansion which would be, to be quite honest, amazing. You could have a de-powered Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo, and Thorin as your main three Heroes, and the possibilities for ally would be huge.

I'd also love to see some battle-specific questlines. I know it's probably outside of the time line, but as an example, a deluxe expansion walking the players through the different phases of the Battle of Helm's Deep would be amazing and fun to basically try to hold out until morning when reinforcements come through.

Yeah, the Hobbit would be neat. Part of me thinks they'd want to tie such a release into the movie's release, but I'm not sure how far ahead they have the game planned. Sooner would be better in my book.

I'm thinking we'll really want a big batch of player cards, whatever the theme is. It seems like we really don't get a lot in the adventure packs. I'm thinking maybe they'll do an expansion based around a specific culture like Rohan, Gondor, Elf, or Dwarf since the Adventure Packs are geographically oriented.

Narsil0420 said:

I had the same thought: The first cycle of Adventure Packs centers on Mirkwood, and if this hints a the concept of the game, we can expect more regions be dealt with future adventure pack cycles.

I expect the first deluxe expansion at the end of Mirkwood cycle, which would be around October?

I think the "Hobbit" theme will be too resourceful: They won't be using it up on a single (deluxe) expansion I'm afraid. Rather I expect either a culture themed expansion or maybe a bigger questline, featuring one big "monster" quest (e.g. mines of moria).

ClydeCloggie said:

Oh I see, so who owns the rights for LOTR / THe Hobbit, if not the Tolkiens?

As far as a big expansion goes, I hope they'll keep a decent balance in the cards - The AGOT deluxe expansions have only focused on one house, which makes things a bit skewed until the equivalent comes out for another house. I hope we don't see for example just a "Lore" expansion, or a "tactics" one. Something for each sphere is they way to go.

Mighty Jim said:

Warner Bros has the rights and if a company wants to make a game or a movie they must take the licensce from WB.

As for the expansions i hope that too.In most games as time goes ideas are poorer and the only think they add is bigger numbers and more broken cards and the game loses interest.

I would be suprised if that was true, unless they were using movie stills.

Usually the rights are per product - toys, movies, books, etc. WB for sure owns the rights to publish the movie (and they can sell those right, they have been sold before), but I sincerely doubt they own any other rights. I.e. they don't have the book publishing rights, nor the right to produce Hobbit toys. Unless - again - they are using movie scenes/stills then WB would have to sign off on it, on top of the Tolkien estate.

(Just a little background, I was a banker for a few gaming companies until last year)

Doesn't FFG own some gaming Hobbitt rights already? For board games?

Me and my horrible English.... .

WB has the rights for the movies and for games based on the movies.WB owns the rights for The Hobbit the movie and can make a game for The Hobbit.Games Workshop expanded the licence from WB and they can use Hobbit for their miniature game.

FFG on the other hand can use the licence from the books and thats the reason why they cant have Aragorn,Gandalf,Gimli,Legolas etc look like the characters in the movies.

And WB only owns them because they bought out New Line Cinema who owned the movie rights since they are the ones that made the movies.

Anyway, getting this topic back on topic.

I agree we will likely see a large box expansion after the first cycle, that is exactly what happened with Warhammer Invasion. After the corruption cycle Assault on Ulthuan came out.

Lcg's tend to have different versions of the heroes or heroes are allways the same?I mean at later expansions we may have a different Aragorn with different abilities and stats or the first Aragorn is the only Aaragorn we will get?

Desipher's card game had many versions of every character and minion.Does this huppens at Lcg's?

Yes AGoT has several versions of a number of the major characters.

Toqtamish said:

Thanks mate.

I'd really like to see a "guarding the shire" scenario. Helping the Dunedain keep the ring safe. The final stage could be trying to keep the black riders out of the shire.

I'd love to explore some of the areas of conflict that The Lord of the Rings hints at, but doesn't get to directly. Things like issues up at Dale and the Iron Mountain, the events in the south that send the people (along with Bill Ferny) migrating through Bree, border skirmishes down towards Umbar...that sort of thing.

Scoob said:

I really like that idea. I'd love to see Harad, Angmar and the far North. ICE did a great job of stuff like that with their games.