I know the errata states that Thalin's ability kicks in before any "when revealed" effect or "Surge" takes place.

So the Eastern Crows die as soon as they show up.

That is all well and good.... but what about their Forced effect?

A strange situation occurred the other night when we had two Eastern Crows left in the deck.... they were simply rotated and killed every Quest phase and we never got to recycle the Encounter Deck as a result, since Thalin was questing all the time... I mean... I don't mind, because we killed that scenario. No new Locations or monsters could come out at all. They were all "locked" in the Discard and Thalin's questing ensured they stayed there.

Is that really the way they were meant to be played?

We tried to find some support for the notion that the Crows were not "defeated" if they were killed by Thalin's effect, but we couldn't find any... then we tried to find some support for the idea that you didn't mix them back into the Encounter deck until the End of the Encounter Phase... but we couldn't find any such support either.

So basically... if you have Eastern Crows in the game... and they are not lost/discarded as Shadow Cards or such... this will happen every time you have a Thalin questing like there was no tomorrow?

Any thoughts?

/wolf

GhostWolf69 said:

This has come up before, but I don't think that FFG has ever addressed it. Although the Surge effect never goes off (like you said), there is nothing preventing the Forced effect of the crows, so that is triggered when they are hit with the 1 damage. It seems that both Thalin and the Eastern Crows are functioning as intended the way you were playing it, but unfortunately, when the situation you experienced happens it seems to create a somewhat game-breaking loop.

So far this is the only one that I'm aware of, but like I said, I don't think that FFG has brought up how to address this situation. Sucks, but hopefully we won't run into combinations like this too often... and, as someone who has never played Thalin (at all), hopefully the Eastern Crows/Thalin combo doesn't occur too often; that would get lame really quick.

Lightdarker said:

Thank you for the answer.

I think I will house Rule that this Particular Forced Effect will take place at the End of the Phase when it is triggered.

...Of course the problem could still come up if you have only two players and both Crow Cards are rotated.... but that should narrow the chances down for the situation to come up at least, and I don't think it would break anything else. (not in a big way at least)

/wolf

I had this happen to me the first time I played a two player game of Journey Down the Anduin. My friend and I just decided to have Thalin skip questing for one round in order to keep the game interesting.

GhostWolf69 said:

Just consider yourself lucky

jhaelen said:

Well... we murdered the Scenarion (Hunt for Gollum) and ended with a score of 75 for Two players. I think that is prettyg good.

BUT... it was boring as hell. My co-player had a Tactics deck and we had three fights in total during the whole game... I think only one of the Mordor Hunters ever came out, the rest was discarded using Forced Effects of the Quest Cards or drawn as Shadow Cards... and suddenly... we had the scenario on a head-lock. A boring and uninteresting one at that.

Luckily it was over fast.

/wolf