Love. It.

2 cost total for 4 progress on any single location in play.

Leadership/Spirit deck wrecks Hills of Emyn Muil. News at 11.

ha ha ha. That's fantastic!

Last night, my wife and I sat down for to play A Journey to Rhosgobel. My wife got Ride to Ruin, Snow born Scouts and Valiant Sacrifice in her opening hand, which allowed her to clear Rhosgobel on the first turn, before we even quested. I was playing a lore deck with Glorfindel, so was able to start healing Wilyador on the first turn. It's a potent combination.

Snowbourn Scout is another of those cards whose ability I totally underestimated. In the core set, there was not much value for it, except in conjunction with Northern Tracker or with Stand and Fight to get rid of Brown Lands when they landed to the staging area.

I first began to include it when Prince Imrahil showed up. I thought to get him ready for the cost of 1 and to block any of those unique trolls, now that is great. But it has got even much better still with Ride to Ruin. There are games where I put the guy in four or five times even (I mean different copies of).

Yeah, Rohan is extremely good.

Bohemond said:

"Players must defeat stage 1 of the quest before they can journey to Rhosgobel."

Bullroarer Took said:

You don't have to travel to it to put progress on it. With these cards' particular effects that is. Snowbourn Scout and Ride to Ruin don't indicate that the location has to be Active or in the Staging Area. The progress tokens can be placed on any location in play.

Bullroarer Took said:

What Marlow said.

What happens to Glorfindel in JtR when he heals Wilyador? Is he discarded?

During stage two, he is discarded. But, if you can remove the Rhosgobel location during stage one, you can heal the eagle normally.

He isn't discarded, he's removed from the game. So you couldn't bring him back with Fortune or Fate, for example. He also wouldn't count against your final score.

Marlow said:

I'm sorry, I knew that. I just couldn't visualize it in the post. I used Northern Tracker in the same way.

Snowbourn Scout just keeps getting better and better. I'm totally in love with this card and think it is vastly underrated. Clearing Tower Gates or The Brown Lands when you can't/don't want to travel to them and then chump-blocking with it for a single resource is already great, but with Imrahil, Ride to Ruin and other goodies, it becomes truly awesome. I never play a Leadership deck with less than 3 Snowbourn Scouts.

I have to agree with the Leadership/Spirit deck wrecking Emyn Muil. The first time I played it was with one of these decks and I beat it with a final score of 3... I'm gonna go back and play it with a different deck just to see how its supposed to feel.

Until FFG brings out some tougher locations(like that nasty Caradhras) location heavy quests are going to get hammered. Ride to Ruin is almost too good for it's cost (I know you have to sacrifice somebody, but still). The Riddermark's Finest is another good card to put multiple tokens in a location. With Stand and Fight you can put 4 tokens on a location in one turn. A little more expensive than Snowbourn Scout/Ride to Ruin, but still darn good. And with all the other stuff that Spirit has( Eowyn, Tracker, Mathom, etc) it may very well be the best sphere right now. All it really lacks is a couple of bruisers.