Shelfwear said:

Are you attempting to add X tokens? But X isn't a number, its a variable.

No, you will know what card is on top of the player's deck after having played Gandal's Search, so it will be rather easy guessing the correct cost/number afterwards...

(and it was a joke, Gandalf's Search still sucks...)

Fighting a Balrog would be awesome, but what would be the difficulty level for that scenario? 12?

Can't wait!!!!!

the only thing with a balrog I could imagine is: in the last AP of the Dwarrowdelf Cycle you MUST FLEE from him, HE is kind of CHASING YOU and if he gets you, well good night!

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE for the party as such to defeat the Balrog - even Gandalf nearly died (and he is a Maia!!!) - the Balrog is on par with Sauron himself! Having been on of the generals of Morgoth (for all who don't know what I'm talking about - read Silmarillion)!!!! He absolutely CANNOT be beaten! Trust me... at least, if they keep to the books, i.e.... and it would kind of defeat the purpose - oh, I walk with gimli, legolas, AND aragorn, heck, why not bilbo AND frodo into moria and defeat the balrog... or flee from him... only to do so AGAIN 17 years later (in the books/movie)... kinda stupid, wouldn't you think?

"Oh, yeah, Balrog, that bugger... well, let's visit him again, shall we? We nearly died the last time we saw him... what the hell! We have Gandalf now and Merry and Pippin :-P"

As much as I love the Balrog (esp in MECCG!!!!), I'd rather not see him FIGHT the "fellowship".... he can chase them or whatever, but... you get me

yeah i think it will be a vitory condition, not an enemy. i dont think theres much chance of it being left out, being a key enemy in the entire history of middle earth

He guess he could appear as an encounter enemy card but not as one meant to be killed: Put into play like the two Nazguls in Dol Guldur/Osgiliath during the last stage with ridiculous high defence and life (or even without stats expect threat) adding his threat to the staging area while the heroes try to finish questing the last quest card...

Glorfindel can kill Balrogs, he's done it before.

Given the news that this pack will be needed to play all of the expansions from the second cycle, what are the odds it'll be out of print and out of stock by the time the first AP comes out?

thats a very good point, FF will have to print more than they did with HFG, seeing as this is a deluxe expansion and is critical for the purchase of the following cycle.

it would be very bad for business if they needed to reprint kazad dum because no one could buy the packs coming out

So, Spirit and Lore Dwarf heroes? Kinda makes sense, it will make sure everyone has one.

I was wondering how they were going to balance out the two extra heroes from the 5th and 6th APs, and now I know. And if we really are getting some bearded goodness for the blue and green decks, then we can probably expect another hero for both Tactics and Leadership?

well... Boromir is pretty sure to come up sometime soon, right?

and THORIN!!!!!!!! WHERE's THORIN!!!! it was one of the first artworks shown to us (thanks again, Tiziano) and I want him!!!!!!! NOW!!! ;-) so probably we'll see him in the Deluxe Pack or even earlier

it would be interesting to know, whether they'll print Faramir as a Hero sometime in the future... given that he's an ally already... or Beorn, or even Gandalf?!??

Palando and Alatar would be great also as allies... maybe even Saruman? we'll, guess he's got too many colours already, so he won't help us :S

sorry, can't form clear thoughts about this, still too euphoric about the Deluxe Pack...

what do you think? will they add new KEYWORDS, i.e. new rules? Will there maybe be an official FAQ attached? you know, the one we've been waiting for since... ???

im not sure palando and alatar would be included in this game, their works being in the east and nothing is wrote of them (save a line or two) in the hobbit or trilogy, only in the unfinished tales, so would FFG bring them this far into their own story telling? be interesting if they did though i think it would be hard for them to justify it

Quite an exciting announcement. I'm still trying to adjust to a regular Adventure Pack release. Dwarves are great and I like that there will be "hoards" of Orcs and Goblins! This makes veteran axehead a more viable card in my deck building strategy. ****, I am excited for the Balrog aspect, I have a feeling that will be an epic quest.

I really hope they emphasize equipment attachments more as well. Mithril for sure.

I hope this is out by Christmas.

Mostly because I'm hoping someone will buy it for me.

Vyron said:

But isn't Thorin dead when the card game is supposedly taking place?

of course he is dead! ((

but why else the image? wasn't he supposed to come out? or why is there a painting depicting him?

anyway - he was announced in april, more or less, that's why I'm wondering - but if he doesn't show up - fine with me - it's more consistent anyway...

Very excited about this. A couple of thoughts:

Creating 9 new encounter sets to be used for the next arc is setting a really good precedent, I was worried that they would keep pulling from the core set. This also means a whole ton of possible combinations for possible 'online scenarios' which I'm still crossing my fingers that they will start putting out using random combinations of encounter sets.

I really like the idea of a 'theme set' and look forward to the endless possibilities that lie there.

With said 9 encounter sets, it sounds like there really won't be a whole lot of room for player cards, which is the only disappointing thing here. With 2 heroes I assume it will be about 2 normal packs worth of cards, where we really need more. The deluxe expansions are an opportunity to inject a lot of new player cards into the mix, and I'd really like another 'big box' like the base set.

All in all, very excited, especially as it will be coming out (relatively) soon.

Bear in mind that these games reflect a "what if" scenario rather than something canon, so it doesn't matter whether a character is alive or dead, or whether they wouldn't have been on these quests at this time frame.

I love the setting of the dungeon. Darkness, corridors, traps. Sounds like fun!

For me encounters decks mean more than player card, so I will be happy if there will be 2:1 ratio.

guciomir said:

New encounters is definitely awesome... but I really would like to see some more player cards so we can get some better deck building going on.

Actually, I'd pay for a deluxe expansion with all player cards just to have a nice large pool of cards to build decks from.

I was hoping for a deluxe set that was mostly player cards for the same reason. I guess they need to expand the encounter sets just as badly though.

Adam said:

In time we'll have plenty of everything. What would be nice is if they released say 2 deluxe expansions at the same time... one with encounters for people who wanted more of those and one with player cards for people who wanted more deck building options.

I assume that we will see 3 each of 5 cards per sphere + 2-4 heroes so roughly 65 player cards this leaves 100 cards for the 9 encounter sets which might not be enough. So I may be a tad too optimistic on the player card side of things. Although 11 cards for each of the encounters sounds quite reasonable; however maybe we will only get 3 each of 4 cards per sphere and 2 heroes. That leaves 115 encounter cards or just shy of 13 cards per encounter set.

I agree with those of you who would like to see more player cards as I really want to be able to explore more deck building strategies. I'd love to be able to run a 4 sphere deck, although the other 2 songs (Tactics, and Spirit) need to be released to make this viable. I'm still a little underwhelmed at the options we have as players to thwart the difficult quests and the fact the Shield wall is currently only viable in a Mono Tactics deck is quite bunk. I'd like to see another Deluxe expansion that focuses on player cards although it makes sense for Khazad-dum to be more encounter heavy.

The Strolling Bones said:

You don't include the quest cards for the 3 scenarios....

My analysis :

2 (Heroes)
+ 48 (3x 4 players cards in each of the 4 types)
+ 6 (3x 2 neutral cards)
+ 9/10 (3x 3 quest cards)
+ 99 (9x 11 cards per encounter decks)
= 165 cards !

Which leaves us with 2 new heroes in each sphere (assuming they make it logical) and 16 (x3) new cards in each sphere and probably 8 (x3) new neutral cards at the end of the first cycle+big expansion.
If FFG (EDGE in France, where I live) proposes this twice in a year, I sign now and every day... If only all the new stuff was usefull... But maybe in time ;-)

YES!!! I am with you guys, want this so badly! :)

Does this mean that there will be a Deluxe Expansion before every Cycle? Just wondering, because the Deluxe Expansion seems to include the Encounter decks for the following Cycle (where the first Cycle used the Encounter decks from the original release).

sWhiteboy said:

I'm pretty sure that FFG has followed that formula for all of their other LCGs, so I would imagine LOTR will follow suit.

Core + 6 adventure packs

Khazad Dum + 6 adventure packs

new expansion + 6 adventure packs

wash, rinse, repeat