there are 3 of each card in the pack. He is refering to the total possible number of eagles in a deck right now being 3. Probably too skimpy a number for the event card to be useful yet.

Bilbo gives one real advantage and that is card draw. When you are looking for rangers, he helps a lot. Did in the win anyway.

There was one card that I thought was a bit of a game hoser. At the start, you draw a number of cards to the staging area to match the number of players. One of the cards we drew in two games, forget the name, was the one that required you to give up one resource or exhaust a hero. Since you do not get resources until after this startup phase, the way the rules are worded, all heroes were exhausted. This happened twice. One game, which I did not count, we just reshuffled the deck and started again as it was not worth it. The game can get ahead of you and by turn 3 in 2 games we had threat of 30 and 27 respectively.

Kauzu said:

I personally think the spirit cards that lets you search for a Rohan ally does not yet have a sufficient card pool to be worth playing.

I've played one game with Hunt for Golum so far. I decided I would use Bilbo as he's the new Hero even thinking that he would be far too weak. I played him with Aragorn and Theodred using the new lore ally and song card so that he could have a leadership icon. I also put Celebrians stone in and a handful of spirit cards including Dunedain tracker who adds progress to all locations in staging area.

I got very lucky in my first hand to pick up steward of Gondor and the song card both of which I put straight onto Bilbo. I walked the game. His ability to draw 3 cards along with Gleowine coming out a little later was just awesome. My only problem really was that to clue cards went into the discard pile as a result of shadow cards drawn in combat and then twice had to remove clue cards in play meaning I had to reset back to 2b twice before I was able to complete 3b. The only thing by the end that would have cost me was if the monster whose text is +1 threat for each ally in play until the end of the round. That was the only thing that could have given me a problem as it would have given it a threat of about 15 by the end of the game

I'd agree with you on the Rohan card not being particularly useful yet either. Both will only be good if a significant number of their trigger keywords come out in future expansions.

Bilbo is interesting as a hero. I didn't have a preview event anywhere nearby so I haven't played with any of the new cards yet, but Bilbo's ability always functioning and essentially being free makes him an interesting character. The problem is he just isn't good for much else without attachments.

Horsa is that card a treachery? If so it will be a reason I keep Eleanor in my support deck.

Bilbo is better than he looks in solo. He shines in 3 to 4 player games. Granted you have to build a deck around him to protect him, but giving you that extra card draw is pretty impressive. He is also significantly easier to protect in 3 to 4 player games as well as offset his high threat with some threat reducing cards from the other players. He can help to prop up decks that don't have a significant amount of card draw on their own, or enough card draw to keep up with the amount of resources the deck is generating (I'm looking at you Steward of Gondor).

We thought he would be pretty weak as well, but he really helps generate cards. His effect is also a lot of fun, drawing extra cards is always awesome. I feel like his threat might be a bit high, because he probably shouldn't be any higher than Beravor, but he is way better than he looks.

That card is super nasty as later in the game it still takes the resources off of heroes that are exhausted. So it hits those already exhausted characters as well. That thing is mean.

By the end of my game I'd run out of a draw deck but it was OK as they were all in hand. The only thing that could have gone better for me really is to have picked up celebrians stone earlier than I did.

The only other thing I really have to comment about the scenario was the lack of real monsters in it. Lots of locations *nasty ones at that* but not enough monsters to fight.

I agree whole-heartedly. The scenario is fun and the locations and events are pretty nasty, but the lack of any monsters that present any real challenge are what hold the difficulty back.

noosphear said:

Aren't there the guys who blow up with a number of objectives or something? I thought they're supposed to be a real challenge at that.

There's a monster with 6 health and attack 2, defence 2 with the text +2 attack for every clue card in play. But as there were rarely any clue cards in play in my game as they kept getting discarded it wasn't an issue. And I just fed the cannon fodder to it anyway before killing it with Aragorn and silverdale archer over the course of two turns.

Thanks.

Why do you play that Silverlode Archer? He seems rather poor to me...was your experience different?

Actually he's better in multiplayer as he has ranged and so can be very useful. He just happened to be in my deck

lleimmoen said:

Those guys are the only challenging monsters in the game and they aren't always challenging. Clues aren't out and about every time and since they don't have any effect after they attack (like the Hill Troll) you can just throw weenie guys at them and keep them at bay until you can kill them. In order for them to be absolutely a killer you have to catch them with a couple of clues out and zero answers, which in multiplayer doesn't happen very often.

The goblins that add a ton of threat by making you discard the top cards of your deck are awful (particularly in multiplayer) but once you survive their When Revealed effect they aren't a threat at all.

spirit said:

I played a 2 person game today (Sprirt/Leadership and Lore/Tactics decks) against the new scenario, easily beat it the first time and struggled in the second game but did end up beating it in the end. We were in fact up against all 3 monsters at the same time with +4 attack each and then again after we expired the encounter deck with the +6, Gandalf and Gimli saved us.

So my first experience with the new adventure deck went like this:

4 player game at the Hunt for Gollum preview event at gaming store

By the third round, three players' threat went beyond 50. The "first player" token never got back around to me!

What pushed us out was the Crows surged twice and we pulled some card that made us pull four cards from the Encounter deck, and then we pulled our normal four cards from the Encounter deck. Add in the Encounter card that makes you add +1 to any Threat in the Staging area and we were cooked. 36 Threat to our 18. We played out all of our hero's abilities that stop threat, etc but it wasn't enough. We were onslaughted, if that's a word! Our heroes were all fine, with minimal damage to any of them, we just couldn't handle the amount of Threat.

We were Ho-Hum on Bilbo, but consider this: that one extra card could have made the difference, considering that we were praying for Northern Tracker to pop.

Still love the game!

Sounds like Spirit will still be the sphere of choice after this release...

ClydeCloggie said:

Perhaps. I actually prefer Lore and Leadership but I see that Spirit has some totally decisive cards, like Norther Tracker, The Galadhrim's Greeting, A Test of Will or Unexpected Courage. These work all the better (or not any worse) in the multi-player (3-4) since none of them are unique, as opposed to aces like Steward of Gondor or Celebrian's Stone.

Off the new cards mentioned though, Spirit probably has the worst couple. Lore and Leadership again seem to score heavily with the Campfire Stories and Strider's Path especially looking very strong.

It seems also that this first expansion was a bit Lore-weighted, it got a Hero and the neutral card combo with the Minstrel.

The big thing here also is the search mechanic, Tactics, Spirit and Lore all have got a search tool each.

We played a 3-man team against the scenario at our prerelease. I used Tactics, and dealt with almost all the enemies by myself. I used Thalin to quest every time, so the Crows never surged.

My friend used Spirit, and kept playing Favor of the Lady on Eowyn, and took care of much of the questing duties with all his heroes and allies. When he played Northern Tracker and Lorien Guide on the 3rd and 4th rounds, we knew we'd eventually win. He saved us a time or two by using events to negate "when revealed" effects.

My son used Bilbo and Berevor (and Gloin, maybe?). He just kept giving us all cards to draw so that we could feed Eowyn's ability to make more progress on the quest. All Bilbo ever did besides that was questing. He's too weak for combat. Thankfully, the Orc encounter cards are not added to The Hunt for Gollum's encounter deck, so there was no Necromancer's Reach, which would usually be the bane of a questing Bilbo.

My threat reached 40 by the end, but the other 2 players each had a lower threat.

I really like the cards. I'm not using the Eagles search card yet, but hopefully we'll get some more Eagles cards soon to make that card useful. It seems odd to me that they'd include that "search top 5" card so early in the cycle.

Spirit is great for this scenario, but that's because it is location heavy. I feel that we're going to see more Quests that will allow a particular sphere to shine, but in the end I hope we get stuff that requires strong builds from multiple spheres.

It took our groups four games before we finally won one, and then we won the next two games. But sometimes they get close. The Wuest was harder when we didn't know what to expect, but after knowing what could come up (and what our win conditions were) we held back on playing cards so that we could battle certain effects from the encounter deck. At one point in our last (2 player) game, I had 15 cards in hand, lots of resources, two characters that were dual-sphere thanks to attachments, and no ally cards.I could control the encounter deck, but not the locations that kept piling up on us. We eventually won, but the first several turns it was just holding the line on the threat while I hopefully drew into my trackers and guides.

I do not remember what kind of card it was. Maybe someone else may. I understand that the expansion should be available to all by the end of the month. If I see the LGS owner, I will take a look at the cards and find out.

The additional card draw is very important I think and it seems others do too. In games of 4 players especially, there are several characters you set aside for special tasks without any real problem and he is one of them. On the game we won, on the final turn, the staging area had about 14 threat points and we had 30 to overcome it. The extra card draw made a contribution to that total and allowed me to get out cards I needed!

Being able to get through your deck to get to the cards you need is a very important ability in a game like this I think.

I do not remember what kind of card it was. Maybe someone else may. I understand that the expansion should be available to all by the end of the month. If I see the LGS owner, I will take a look at the cards and find out.

The additional card draw is very important I think and it seems others do too. In games of 4 players especially, there are several characters you set aside for special tasks without any real problem and he is one of them. On the game we won, on the final turn, the staging area had about 14 threat points and we had 30 to overcome it. The extra card draw made a contribution to that total and allowed me to get out cards I needed!

Being able to get through your deck to get to the cards you need is a very important ability in a game like this I think.

Bryon said:

They've included 3 different seach cards already whilst there's little to search for. The Minstrel seems by far best out of these since it searches the whole deck and is a very capable in questing. Moreso in this scenario which does not include Necromancer's Reach.

I played a second game of it today using a mixed Tactics *Legolas and Thalin* and spirit *Eowyn* deck. At first I thought I was going to lose because I'd chosen spirit as the lesser influence but I got northern tracker out on the 4th turn and that meant that the locations could cook off without too much trouble. I'm not sure if the quest card texts might make this a little too easy.

1b: When you quest successfully draw 3 encounter cards, choose 1 to put into play and discard the other 2.

2b: When you start the quest phase draw 2 encounter cards, chose 1 to reveal and discard the other.

This effectively allows you to look at the encounter deck and choose which you can most easily deal with. I also played it that Thalin's ability did not affect cards revealed in this manner though that may be something that needs clarification but as they are not *revealed by the deck* but instead chosen by the player I decided his text didn't apply.

I'm not sure if the ability to look at and discard cards from the encounter deck reduces the risks significantly but I think it does unless I'm missing something here.

Narsil0420 said:

I can see this becoming a staple card in 4 player games.