My group and I have recently been discussing these issues:

1) If a hero has "song of wisdom" is he considered a lore character or just a hero with a lore resource icon? (this is particulary relevant for the "burning brand" attachment which can only be attached to a lore character)

2) The next question is a bit more dicey: Last night we had played a 2-man game in the "escape from Dol Guldur" scenario. We had the misfortune of drawing 2 encounter cards for the guarded objectives with the surge ability ("endless caverns" in both instances). Not entirely sure what to do we decided to draw the surges immediately after drawing each "endless caverns" and playing them besides the objectives. Which resulted in 5 cards drawn for the setup. Not a good start. The issue of what to do if you draw a guarded card mid-game is pretty straightforward (since there is only 1 active guarded effect to draw). But afterwards we talked about wether the surges were supposed to be drawn to guard the next objective (thus invalidating them a little). Since the 3 draws in a row instructed by the quest are supposed to go onto the objectives that would seem like a logical conclussion but any input would be appreciated

1) You can treat him as though he was a lore character.

2) I believe you would be drawing additional cards for the surges. The point of surge is to reveal an additional card.

Svenn said:

Let me clarify: the question is not wether or not to draw surges. But wether those surges should be placed besides the objectives or onto the next objective in line.

Nerdmeister said:

Ah yes, I think this question has come up before but I don't know that there is an official answer yet.

It's my understanding that if the guard for an objective has surge, the surged card simply gets placed in the staging area.

Svenn said:

I agree with number 2, but I'm not sure about number 1, can you explain your reasoning? is there something in the rules or official FAQ? The card says:

Attach to a hero

Attached hero gains a Lore resource Icon

To me this means that the attached hero's recources can be spent on both lore cards and cards from the hero's original sphere. I don't think it means that the attached Hero now belongs to both spheres.

He belongs to both spheres now. (Rules p. 8, about Resource Icon: "Found only on hero cards, these icons indicate the sphere(s) of influence to which resource tokens in this hero’s resource pool belong. They also indicate to which sphere(s) the hero card itself belongs.")

HilariousPete said:

Ah. thanks, that makes sense

silverhand77 said:

To clarify again: the question isn´t about wether or not the surges take place. It is wether those surges should be placed besides the rest of the objectives or be attached onto the next objective in line. Since, so far, only "rescue from dol guldur" has a setup where you have to draw to 3 guarded objectives at one time

Nerdmeister said:

I'm with radiskull here, though I'm not really sure, because a clear timing structure isn't given in the rules / FAQ yet. Assuming that only the topmost card of the encounter deck has Surge, I would distribute the 4 cards like this:

1. Reveal the 1st encounter card and attach it to the 1st objective. The attached card has Surge, so:

2. Draw the surge card, reveal it and execute its effect / place it in the staging area.

3. Now go on with the original task: Reveal the 3rd encounter card = 2nd guarding card and attach it to the 2nd objective

4. 4th encounter card attached to 3rd objective.

As I said, I can't quote you a rule from the FAQ, but I think that Surge on a guarding card is handled for itself (stopping all other things in the game, and starting it's own "subroutine" until it's completely finished) and then the original game effects go on. I sure might be wrong about this, but I can give you 2 arguments for it:

a) If you refer to the CoC FAQ, it states in the case of multiple effects: "Some cards have effects that attempt to do more than one thing. Generally, these effects resolve independently of one another." If you would apply this to LotR, you would have to do 3 things (attach 3 guarding cards), each handled individually, and therefor the Surge is handled independently, too, and therefor not attached to the 2nd objective. (But now of course someone can argue that "attach 3 cards" is not 3 effects but 1... so this is perhaps a weak argument.)

b) If you would attach the 2nd encounter card (drawn because of surge) to the 2nd objective and the 3rd EC to the 3rd obj., you would draw the 4th EC because of the "attach" text on Dol Guldur setup, but you wouldn't attach it at all. This would seem a bit strange.

@HilariousPete: that's a perfect explanation and exactly how I read the rules, too. I haven't even played with Guarded yet, but Surge makes it pretty clear that you stop whatever WAS going on and reveal another card off the top. Thanks for the breakdown.

Yep, it's how I play it too