Whilst battling the Hunters from Mordor, the shadow card drawn for their combat was a "Signs of Gollum" clue card.

Does this clue card count as "in play" for the Hunters text?

no i dont believe it does, and as it doesnt have a shadow effect is discarded from play

richsabre said:

It is discarded from play at the end of the phase. That probably doesn't matter in general, but there you go. Even if it's revealed as a shadow card, it isn't really "in play" since it doesn't have any active text.

No, the Hunters don't get +2 AS. The Hunters count the Clue-traits in play. But when you're drawing a Shadow card, only the text below the shadow separator/behind the Shadow: trigger is active (FAQ page 6, lower left question), the rest of the text is ignored. So the Clue-trait is also ignored.

Hilarious Pete - yes, I agree totally, well explained. no bonus as a shadow card, as an encounter card drawn as a shadow card during combat basically is a blank card, if there is no shadow text...

Thanks for the replies.

It's bad enough that the clue turned up as a combat card, glad it doesn't give the hunters +2 att !

I drew "Clues" as shadow cards three times during my last play through HfG. I managed to have one in play until I quested to complete 2b then drew the "discard one copy of Clues from play" card, easily scored the 10 progress tokens, flipped to 3b, then back to 2b.... grrrr. still completed the quest eventually with a score of 15.