Unoffical FAQ (and suggested answers) thread....

By pumpkin, in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

pumpkin said:

35. Because of the Dungeon Jailer I need to place an Objective back into the deck,

1) What happens to the Encounter card attached / guarding it?

2) What do I do with it once the Objective card is later revealed from the deck?

1. Only unguarded objectives are returned to the deck. If the objective still has a Encounter card, both remain in the staging area.

2. Follow the instructions on P. 24 of the rule book. The objective card is placed in the staging area and the next Encounter card is turned to guard the objective due to the guarded keyword.

I looked through this whole thread and didn't see where we got the answer to #35 part 1: how do we know only unguarded objectives are returned to the deck?

Also, the three objective cards say to return them to the staging area when "detached". Does this mean they would never go in the discard pile, even if the hero carrying one died for example? Or is that not going to count as "detached"?

kirkbauer said:

I looked through this whole thread and didn't see where we got the answer to #35 part 1: how do we know only unguarded objectives are returned to the deck?

I agree. There is no such rule.

kirkbauer said:

pumpkin said:

35. Because of the Dungeon Jailer I need to place an Objective back into the deck,

1) What happens to the Encounter card attached / guarding it?

2) What do I do with it once the Objective card is later revealed from the deck?

1. Only unguarded objectives are returned to the deck. If the objective still has a Encounter card, both remain in the staging area.

2. Follow the instructions on P. 24 of the rule book. The objective card is placed in the staging area and the next Encounter card is turned to guard the objective due to the guarded keyword.

I looked through this whole thread and didn't see where we got the answer to #35 part 1: how do we know only unguarded objectives are returned to the deck?

Also, the three objective cards say to return them to the staging area when "detached". Does this mean they would never go in the discard pile, even if the hero carrying one died for example? Or is that not going to count as "detached"?

This is partly from a thread on BGG where Zambo answers the questions as above and partly based on the definition of unclaimed.

I think if the hero dies they go back to the staging area; the only time they go to the discard pile is if dungeon jailer comes along while they are unclaimed and in the staging area.

pumpkin said:

Adam said:

Another Thalin question. His text says "When revealed BY the encounter deck" -- I hate to nitpick, but I am honestly confused by the word "BY" here. It seemed to me to imply the encounter deck must have agency, while my questing companion interpreted it to mean "from the encounter deck."

So the question is: If the player searches the deck for a card (i.e. pulling out the boss spider from one of the quest cards), does this trigger Thalin's ability? According to the rules, he is still considered to be committed to a quest, so that's not in question. But it seems to me the spiders are being revealed BY the players (or perhaps BY the quest deck) but not BY the encounter deck, as per his text.

Not sure what was the intent. Seems like if it was how I played it that it could have been made more clear (i.e. when revealed during the staging phase). I would guess I was being too nitpicky, but on the starter quest, I figured better to play the ruling that makes it harder rather than easier.

Personally, I'd go with it meaning "from". If FFG really wanted these sorts of specific nuances to be realised from the cards, the rulebook would have been 200 odd pages long to fully cover all the different card wordings and what their exact interpretation was supposed to be. IMO!

When I play I try and intepret the card in the simplest, most obvious fashion, rather than honing in on a specifc word, so in my games Thalin deals damage whenever a card is placed in the staging area during the quest phase regardless of how it got there, provided he is questing.

Thanks for the answer. That makes sense. One detail though, if I remember right, it wasn't during the quest phase. We have completed a quest using Legolas's ability, and the next phase caused us to search out and bring in two spiders. Thalin is still considered "questing" even though it isn't quest phase, if I remember right, so I assumed his ability still triggered in other phases.

if detached, and that's the case with dead heroes, objectives go back to the staging area - the skeleton guy also mentions that (forgot the name) in his shadow card text...

I would like to think, that guarded objectives are not moved back into the encounter deck due to dungeon jailer - like this:

Dungeon Jailer "I'm gonna take a look after the objectives!!!!!!!!!! Arrgh! Anybody guarding the Shadow Key?"

Orcs of Dol Guldur: "Us, us, us!!"

Jailer: "ok, good! Gandalf's Map well hidden?" Takes a peek at a certain location "Ok, well buried! What about Dungeon Torch? NO! Nobody guarding it - back to the encounter deck you burning piece of **** wood, ofc :DDD

The wording seems to suggest this: a guarded objective is NOT claimable "raise your threat by 2 to claim XXX, when IT IS FREE OF ENCOUNTERS. therefore, an objective can only be unclaimed (in the sense of Jailer) when it is claimable, but has not been claimed yet due to a tactical decision, or whatever. a guarded objective is not claimable and therefore not unclaimed, but guarded.

Adam said:

pumpkin said:

Adam said:

Another Thalin question. His text says "When revealed BY the encounter deck" -- I hate to nitpick, but I am honestly confused by the word "BY" here. It seemed to me to imply the encounter deck must have agency, while my questing companion interpreted it to mean "from the encounter deck."

Characters are not considered questing after the quest phase. rulebook p. 14 at the end: "characters committed to a quest are considered committed to that quest through the end of the quest phase..."

So the question is: If the player searches the deck for a card (i.e. pulling out the boss spider from one of the quest cards), does this trigger Thalin's ability? According to the rules, he is still considered to be committed to a quest, so that's not in question. But it seems to me the spiders are being revealed BY the players (or perhaps BY the quest deck) but not BY the encounter deck, as per his text.

Not sure what was the intent. Seems like if it was how I played it that it could have been made more clear (i.e. when revealed during the staging phase). I would guess I was being too nitpicky, but on the starter quest, I figured better to play the ruling that makes it harder rather than easier.

Personally, I'd go with it meaning "from". If FFG really wanted these sorts of specific nuances to be realised from the cards, the rulebook would have been 200 odd pages long to fully cover all the different card wordings and what their exact interpretation was supposed to be. IMO!

When I play I try and intepret the card in the simplest, most obvious fashion, rather than honing in on a specifc word, so in my games Thalin deals damage whenever a card is placed in the staging area during the quest phase regardless of how it got there, provided he is questing.

Thanks for the answer. That makes sense. One detail though, if I remember right, it wasn't during the quest phase. We have completed a quest using Legolas's ability, and the next phase caused us to search out and bring in two spiders. Thalin is still considered "questing" even though it isn't quest phase, if I remember right, so I assumed his ability still triggered in other phases.

sorry about that... my reply got lost...

characters are not considered as questing after the quest phase: rulebook p. 14 bottom end: "... characters committed to a quest are considered committed to that quest through the end of the quest phase..."

Thanks, I checked that exact line earlier, but apparently I don't know how to read. That clears things up, certainly!

Vyron said:

sorry about that... my reply got lost...

characters are not considered as questing after the quest phase: rulebook p. 14 bottom end: "... characters committed to a quest are considered committed to that quest through the end of the quest phase..."

so, should I set to 'ready' all characters committed to the quest after quest phase?

no - rulebook p. 14 at the bottom: Characters committed to a quest are considered committed to that quest through the end of the quest phase, unless removed from the quest by a card effect. They do remain exhausted once this step is complete

they remain therefore exhausted and can only be readied via e.g. old forest road, or unexpected courage

I'm almost certain that guarded objective cards do go in the encounter deck with dungeon jailor. A card that isn't eligible to be claimed because it's guarded is still unclaimed, and the jailer's wording includes all cards that are unclaimed for any reason, not just cards that are "unclaimed in claimable." There is nothing in the rules or the card text to indicate otherwise.

Kzer-za said:

I'm almost certain that guarded objective cards do go in the encounter deck with dungeon jailor. A card that isn't eligible to be claimed because it's guarded is still unclaimed, and the jailer's wording includes all cards that are unclaimed for any reason, not just cards that are "unclaimed in claimable." There is nothing in the rules or the card text to indicate otherwise.

If this were true (and it could well be, we wont know until we get an updated official FAQ) then the word "unclaimed" would be superfluous.

Therefore the assumption is that the word unclaimed is included to distinguish between cards that are guarded and cards that are not guarded.

No, I think the word unclaimed in this context simply means "not attached to a hero."

pumpkin said:

If this were true (and it could well be, we wont know until we get an updated official FAQ) then the word "unclaimed" would be superfluous.

Therefore the assumption is that the word unclaimed is included to distinguish between cards that are guarded and cards that are not guarded.

I agree that unclaimed means unguarded and not yet claimed. The Jailor card says "...shuffle 1 unclaimed objective card from the staging area back into the encounter deck." So that excludes objectives attached to heroes anyway.

yeah, that's what I posted before and I agree that it's the most sensible way to play... otherwise, the word unclaimed is indeed superfluous and dungeon jailer too powerful...

pumpkin said:

If this were true (and it could well be, we wont know until we get an updated official FAQ) then the word "unclaimed" would be superfluous.

Therefore the assumption is that the word unclaimed is included to distinguish between cards that are guarded and cards that are not guarded.

This doesn't make any sense to me. 'Unclaimed' to me distinguishes between Objectives that were claimed by a Hero and Objectives that weren't and as a result still sit in the SA. It doesn't need to distnguish between guarded and unguarded to have any meaning.

So just based on the actual card text and not making any assumptions about what 'unclaimed' interacts with guarded/unguarded, I see no other way than that Dungeon Jailor affects all Objectives not claimed by Heroes, regardless of their Guarded status.

ClydeCloggie said:

This doesn't make any sense to me. 'Unclaimed' to me distinguishes between Objectives that were claimed by a Hero and Objectives that weren't and as a result still sit in the SA. It doesn't need to distnguish between guarded and unguarded to have any meaning.

So just based on the actual card text and not making any assumptions about what 'unclaimed' interacts with guarded/unguarded, I see no other way than that Dungeon Jailor affects all Objectives not claimed by Heroes, regardless of their Guarded status.

Whilst I agree that logically, any objective not claimed by a hero is unclaimed, even if it is guarded, I certainly hope this isn't what they meant. What with EfDG being impossibly hard anyway, the thought of a guarded objective card being discarded due to failed questing, where it needs to be suffled back into the encounter deck, only to come out as a shadow card (yes, personal experience here!) makes me want to cry!

On a related question, how are people understanding 'quested unsuccessfully' on Dungeon Jailer?:

1) at least one progress token added?

2) will power equal or better than threat (i.e. no increase to player threat dials)?

The rulebook states (pg 14) "if willpower higher, players have sucessfully quested", "if threat higher, players have unsucessfully quested" but doesn't clarify sucess for an evens situation.

Personally, I'm playing option 2 (no need to make things more difficult!)

When threat and willpower are equal, the rulebook doesn´t say either "successful" or "unsuccessful" and so it is actually neither. And since the jailer ability activates from "unsuccessful" nothing happens.

Edit: and of course a card triggering from successful questing would not do anything either.

Felix said:

When threat and willpower are equal, the rulebook doesn´t say either "successful" or "unsuccessful" and so it is actually neither. And since the jailer ability activates from "unsuccessful" nothing happens.

Edit: and of course a card triggering from successful questing would not do anything either.

I agree...

If Legolas has the Blade of Gondolin attached to him and defeats an enemy, are all three progress tokens placed simultaneously?

The scenario is as follows: No active location existing, a quest card with two progress tokens missing for completion.

Is it possible then to place the two progress tokens from Legolas on the quest card, complete it, and place the remaining progress token from the Blade of Gondolin on the next quest card?

Since these are two distinct responses you should be able to do them in the order you choose. And since a quest with enough tokens should be removed immediately after the tokens are placed, you should then be able to place the blade tokens on the next stage. But I wont say that´s 100% certain.

This is great, thanks! I will bookmark this page in case I need it in an upcoming game... =)

Maggical said:

This is great, thanks! I will bookmark this page in case I need it in an upcoming game... =)

As i remember the rules:

1. After you have placed the required amount of tokens on an active location, you can place the remaining tokens on the quest card.

2. You can not take remaining progress tokens from a finished quest card to the following quest card.

Hope i got this right.

Greetings from Germany!

abersen said:

Maggical said:

This is great, thanks! I will bookmark this page in case I need it in an upcoming game... =)

As i remember the rules:

1. After you have placed the required amount of tokens on an active location, you can place the remaining tokens on the quest card.

2. You can not take remaining progress tokens from a finished quest card to the following quest card.

Hope i got this right.

Greetings from Germany!

That's correct except the argument is that the response on Legolas is a seperate response to that on the Blade card. Therefore you should be able to play one of the responses, then remove that quest card "immediately" then place the tokens from the other response on the next quest card.

So you can't split Legolas' 2 tokens across mutliple quests cards, but you could put the blades token on another quest card even though Legolas is using it.

1) What happens if you have no Heroes or Ally's left with which to defend an attack? Does one assign the full amount of damage to a single hero, in the case of Undefended?

2) Once a baddie becomes engaged to the player, and a Shadow card is dealt to that player, and the baddie isn't killed in the first round of combat, are additional Shadow cards dealt in subsequent rounds or just that first round.