My copy of lotr finally arrived on the doorstep this morning (yay!) and so I got stuck in to have a couple of games. 1 question that I had from this was progress counters on Quests.

When you fully explore a location any remaining progress counters are placed on the active quest. However, when you reach the required progress tokens for the current quest, do they spill over to the next stage like the location cards. I couldn't find an answer from the rules, nor from looking on here. The way I played this was that there was no spillover - any unneeded progress tokens did not carry over to the next phase of the quest.

My other question was regarding action cards - I had Unexpected Courage attached to Dunhere, and used him to attack an engaged enemy, then exhausted Unexpected Courage to ready Dunhere to use him to attack an enemy in the Staging area (namely Ungoliant's Spawn for the win).

Is this legal in the current framework of the rules?

1) It is right in the rulebook on page 22 under Quest Advancement. They do not carry over.

2) Yes that is a perfect use for that card. Or use the character to quest and then ready so he can participate in combat etc. Although I am not sure how you killed Ungoliant's Spawn with one attack into the staging area but the idea is correct you can ready him and then use in another attack as you can declare more than one attack during the combat phase, as per rules on page 20.

Toqamish tells it correctly. Both these answers are in the Rulebook. I also agree with the difficulty of taking out an enemy in the staging area in 1 attack. There is a difference between 'attacking' and 'damaging' something. I believe that 'attacking' something, even outside normal engaged combat, is affected by the defence shield number on the target. Just 'damageing' is not. Just like the undefended damage done to the chosen Hero. For this reason alone, it is sometimes worth defending even if the enemy cannot attack. Virtually all Shadow cards are worse when undefended and a lot do nasty things other than add to attack. Ever had all your Heroes have to take 2 damage due to an undefended non-attack? Yech!!! Cheers!

Thanks toq.

As for the Ungoliant's Spawn thing. US had engaged me. It had taken 8 points of damage from previous attacks and forgoing the quest phase in an attempt to kill it, but alas treachery befell the party. I knew that another round would probably lose me the game (Threat too high), so I threw US back into the staging area with A Light in the Dark then used Unexpected Courage to ready Dunhere and attacked US in the staging area with his printed ability doing 1 point of damage and beating the quest.

It was a great combo, that worked at the time.

thats some great tactical thinking there

Lucky card draw and a long time staring at my hand and weighing up threat probabilities until it finally clicked. But thanks.