So, I just picked up the Rhosgobel question and was looking at the quest cards and am wondering about 3B, which is called Return to Rhosgobel. On here, it looks like when you flip it over, you basically check how many Athelas cards your party owns and if you have enough to heal Wilyador back to full, you win. My question is....why would you ever complete the stage before this to turn this card up? I briefly skimmed through the cards and didn't really see anything that might force you to place progress tokens down on 2B to rush completing this stage before you are ready. It just seems odd to have a card with a win condition like this that could basically be avoided until you either lose or have enough Athelas to put down the last bit of progress.

I guess if you are going to locations, you might have some splash progress that progresses it before you are ready. Just want to make sure I'm not missing some concept here.

TheGrue said:

The "concept" with this scenario is managing your threat, progress tokens and wounds to Wilyador. This is a mission based on proper timing. Rather than outright beat up the bad guys. it is a nice change of pace.

Rhosgobel poses the players with a nice wrinkle and would suck if you had the 4 pop up too soon.

disreguard the 4 popping up

TheGrue said:

eagle is dying so you need to rush 2B stage and at the same time you need to find enough athelas. If you do not rush, eagle will die. There are not many player effects capable of healing the eagle.

I also have a question about Rhosgobel. What happen with Athelas card if hero discarded or destroyed??? I suppose it comeback to staging area...

Or??? there is no explanation about this..........

Glaurung said:

Discarded, I'd assume.

guciomir said:

Right, but you would theoretically not go to 3B unless you could win it, right? They could have just as easily have put that on 2B, I guess, such that when it is completed, you make the analysis on whether or not you win. My question was to be sure I wasn't missing some aspect of what that last card is meant to do and I think I interpreted it correctly. I agree with your statement above that this is the point of the scenario, for sure.

Glaurung said:

Attachments always get discarded if the Hero they're attached to gets destroyed, right? I don't see why Athelas attachments would be any different.

gatharion said:

Most objective cards that attach to heroes have text that cause them to be returned to the staging area or deck if something happens to the attached hero. That is probably why it seems unclear. I'd say Athelas is discarded since it has no such text.

Kiwina said:

Yes look like you right..... Probably is discarded as other attachments too......

Athelas is discarded, just like every other attachment without text to the contrary.

Hmmmm there is a lot of direct damage in this quest..... Is quite possible your heroes with athelas will die. Than will be very difficult to get it back form discard pile, time is short. Look like my deck will have lot of problem in this journey. Good good i like challenge.

Exploring the Forest Groves will allow you get the plant back from the discard pile, I believe.

Edit: Yes, I think Behemond is right.

Is Forest Grove allowing to search the encounter discard pile also? (I don't think so, but I'm curious)

Forest Grove states that after you explore it, the players "search the encounter deck and discard pile for 1 Athelas objective"...

What part of that is the least bit unclear?

It was not clear to me which discard pile the Forest Grove is referring to. Every player has a discard pile and the encounter cards have the encounter discard pile. I took the wording of Forest Grove literally, and saw me allowed to search only the encounter deck and my player discard pile.
Before your post, Radiskull, I thought discarded Athelas cards go to the player discard pile (because they are attached to a hero, and player attachment cards go to the discard pile if their character is destroyed. This is wrong, I now think, because Atheals still remains an objective.). It made sense for me to search my own discard pile to get those Athelas back. I only was wondering wether I also could get back the Athelas cards which were discarded because of shadow card draws.

After looking into the rules, on p. 10 is stated:
"Discard Piles: Each player has his own discard pile, and the encounter deck also has its own discard pile. Whenever a card is discarded, it goes to the discard pile belonging to the card’s originating deck."

Now it's clear that Athelas cards go into encounter discard pile. (Perhaps the wording of Forest Grove could be a little different, like "After the players explore Forest Grove, search the encounter deck and the encounter discard pile for 1 Athelas objective..." for avoiding misunderstandings.)

Ah, I understand the confusion now. Yeah, you can never put a card into a place it doesn't belong - you can never put another player's card into your own discard pile, deck or hand. You can never put a hero card into your hand. You can never put an encounter card into a player's discard pile, deck, or hand. You can never put a player card into the encounter discard pile. You can never put a quest card ANYWHERE.

But I can see how that rule may have been easy to miss. Consider, though - if you put Athelas into your discard pile, then return the card to your hand..how the heck do you play it? (one of the reasons why this is something to avoid.)

That's right. I think I would have realized it when I played Will of the West. But I'm currently playing solo, and usually I lose (or win) the game before there's a decent amount in my discard pile (I'm using 50 or more cards in my decks), so I think it would've taken a long time till I would've been asking myself "what the hell is this encounter card doing in my player deck?" ;-)

Pete - you yourself have quoted the rulebook - it goes back into the card's ORIGINATING deck... now where does Athelas come from?

as the topic: well, you kind of ALWAYS wait for the right moment... I also don't rush to stage 2 of anduin... you always plan your turns, eliminating enemies, locations.... I sometimes deliberately kill of some enemies, rather than progress to the next stage, when I know that they'll bite me in the a** later on...

A Journey to Rhosgobel is a different thing though...