1) How do you resolve this situation. Two cards left in Encounter deck, both Eastern Crows. Thalin questing. Draw 1 card during Staging, it is an Eastern Crows. Thalin causes crows to die, shuffled back into the Encounter deck, and surge forces a new card to be drawn. Its Eastern Crows. Repeat forever. What is the correct resolution of these events? Im assuming we did something wrong.

2) Hunters from Mordor caused us to lose the game. All four clue cards were out, so when Hunters from Mordor was revealed it had a total of 10 threat. Thats correct, right? If you draw Hunters near end game, it can be an auto lose situation. Just making sure we werent missing something.

Thanks

1-According to the FAQ, Thalin's ability takes precedence over keywords like surge. When the Crows are revealed, Thalin would kill them, surge would not apply and they would go back into the encounter deck. You would then resolve the quest phase and move on.

2-That's correct. I usually try to not have all the clue cards around at once. One or two is usually enough for me. I have even discarded if one shows early.

The hope is, by the time a several clues hit the board, you have enough allies to overcome the threat. However, you can also use cards like Radagast's Trickery and Sneak Attack + Son of Arnor to mitigate the high threat problem.

Ahhh, I didnt realize Thalin's power trumped surge. That would have helped a lot. Also, you stated that you dont let the clues come out all at once.. what mechanic do you use to get rid of them once they are revealed?

I had a two player game where a Hunter of Morder came out with a clue. We tried to take him out that turn, but the shadow card that sends him back to the staging area came up. Turn 2 was epic...between surges and guarded objectives we ended up with 2 more Hunters and 2 more clues. Threat was at 31 on turn 2. We lost.

Dietcokeofevil said:

Well, if one or more are drawn from the encounter deck, there's not much I can do about it. However, you can diminish their potential cumulative effects by using the effects of the first two quest cards. I have more than once discarded a clue that would have been out early with the knowledge that there are 3 more still in the deck. It's a calculated risk, but I think the odds favor you there. The Hunters are almost always an automatic discard. I have discarded them as many as 3 times in a game. I have had an early clue out and I have chosen to use False Lead to send it back into the deck, you still have 4 of them in there and you are suffering no negative effects from the treachery, so the odds are still with you. Likewise, I have chosen to put a clue card out when the time was right.

My experience with this quest is that if you can quest effectively, you can control a lot of what goes on during the game. Increase your odds by discarding the cards that you don't need out or that you have more trouble dealing with and keep the ones that you can handle. There are always going to be bad draws, but hopefully those can be kept to a minimun.

Yeah, pretty much to sound off on what everyone else has been saying, Hunt for Gollum is extremely quest-heavy. It's actually my least favorite quest in the game thusfar. If you have any reasonably successful control deck then you can speed run through most of the quest stages.

Eowyn and Thalin destroy this quest.

Then again, my deck is Eowyn, Beravor, and Thalin, so I'm slightly biased as that trio quests without too much trouble, but that deck holds up fairly well against battle heavy decks as well, it just takes a lot of smoke and mirrors with Gandalf(Born Aloft is easily the most OP card in the game atm, but that's another story).