Escape from Don Guldur

By ZAxxor, in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

Ok I been working on my deck for this quest for the past few days and I am going to make my first run at it tonight..(Solo is all I Play BTW)

So I have a few questions about the set-up. i have spent soemtime looking over the internet but still feel confused..

1.)So I put the 3 objective cards in staging area. Then I draw 3 encounter cards and attach to each objective. Are these like shadow cards and placed face down? or do I turn them up and place them under the Objective? If they are turned over am I right in understanding the only actions that could occur at that time are surge and doomed?When Revealed effects do not occur? Do I count thier threat at questing?

2.) Ok I am playing with my own solo variant here in which I choose my hero to send to prison. So as I start the game with my 2 heros..how do I get the objective? If it is a location I travel?, a Treachery? or an enemey I attack?

I get the direction of the quest but need some help on how to play this the right way..

Thanks

Zaxxor

1.) No, they're attached face up. You've got to see the guarding card, so you can attack it sometime (in case of an enemy) or explore it (in case of a location). You're lucky in case of a treachery card: since the Dol Guldur setup says to "attach" and not to "reveal", the "when revealed effect" of the treachery card is not handled; and the objective is free from an encounter, too, and could be claimed any time an action could be triggered.

2.) You get the objectives by triggering their action (and increasing threat by 2). You can only do this if the objective card is unguarded. To get rid of a guarding location, travel to it like to any normal location. (The guarded objective remains directly under the guarding card.) When the guarding location is fully explored, it gets discarded, and then the objective is free, and you can trigger the action. Likewise with an enemy: Kill the enemy, and then you can claim the objective by triggering its action.

Btw, Dol Guldur is pretty hard, I never managed it in solo play. Don't despair ;-) (I only have 1 core set. With 2 players, it's tough but doable.)

HilariousPete said:

1.) No, they're attached face up. You've got to see the guarding card, so you can attack it sometime (in case of an enemy) or explore it (in case of a location). You're lucky in case of a treachery card: since the Dol Guldur setup says to "attach" and not to "reveal", the "when revealed effect" of the treachery card is not handled; and the objective is free from an encounter, too, and could be claimed any time an action could be triggered.

It says on p24 of the rules

"The guarded keyword is a reminder on some objective cards to reveal and attach the next card of the encounter deck..."

Therefore any when revealed effects on a treachery card would trigger and resolve.

silverhand77 said:

It says on p24 of the rules

"The guarded keyword is a reminder on some objective cards to reveal and attach the next card of the encounter deck..."

Therefore any when revealed effects on a treachery card would trigger and resolve.

Ohoh, I shouldn't have opened Pandora's Box and just omitted treachery cards ;-)

@Silverhand: Yes, that's one option. But there are others, too :-)

@ZAxxor: I don't know if you've been long enough in this forum, there has been some debate in the past (see here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=201&efcid=4&efidt=560857) wether the "When Revealed" effects of a treachery card guarding one of the three objectives should be resolved or not, because the quotation by Silverhand says to do so, and the setup text of Dol Guldur doesn't. Here are the three possibilities I can remember to deal with this:

a.) Attach 3 cards. "When Revealed" effects don't get resolved, because the setup text says to attach and not to reveal. This overrides (by the golden rule, rulebook page 4) the text of page 24 silverhand quoted. Because "When Revealed" effects are only resolved when the text specifically uses a form of the word "reveal", this is not the case here (FAQ rule 1.22).

b.) Attach and reveal 3 cards. You can argue that the Guarded keyword is only a "copy and paste" command for the text on rulebook p. 24. So the whole paragraph about Guarding in the rule booklet would be considered printed on the 3 objective cards. Thus the golden rule can't apply (because it only deals with conflicts betwen card texts and rule texts), and so you would have to resolve the "when revealed" effects.

c.) Attach 3 cards, and reveal 3 cards (so 6 guarding the 3 objectives!). Since the "Guarded"="reveal" on the objectives and the "attach" on the setup doesn't conflict, you can argue that you have to resolve both texts, thus drawing 2 guarding cards for each objective. (Like when you have 2 Dunedain Warnings, the character also gets +1 defense from the first card, and +1 defense from the second card, so +2 in total). This is perhaps the solution with the least rules troubles, but I absolutely don't think this is intended by the quest.

Note that these are my personal reasonings, other people might argue in another way.

In the link above, there's a link by radiskull to a BGG site where a player published a rules question about this issue. Nate French, the game designer, answered and choose for option a.). So until the new offical FAQ comes out (hopefully giving a good explanation for the chosen option), I just play with version a). But if you don't like it, you can also play with b.) and c.), currently there's no bullet-proof reasoning against them, I think.

HilariousPete said:

silverhand77 said:

It says on p24 of the rules

"The guarded keyword is a reminder on some objective cards to reveal and attach the next card of the encounter deck..."

Therefore any when revealed effects on a treachery card would trigger and resolve.

Ohoh, I shouldn't have opened Pandora's Box and just omitted treachery cards ;-)

@Silverhand: Yes, that's one option. But there are others, too :-)

@ZAxxor: I don't know if you've been long enough in this forum, there has been some debate in the past (see here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=201&efcid=4&efidt=560857) wether the "When Revealed" effects of a treachery card guarding one of the three objectives should be resolved or not, because the quotation by Silverhand says to do so, and the setup text of Dol Guldur doesn't. Here are the three possibilities I can remember to deal with this:

a.) Attach 3 cards. "When Revealed" effects don't get resolved, because the setup text says to attach and not to reveal. This overrides (by the golden rule, rulebook page 4) the text of page 24 silverhand quoted. Because "When Revealed" effects are only resolved when the text specifically uses a form of the word "reveal", this is not the case here (FAQ rule 1.22).

b.) Attach and reveal 3 cards. You can argue that the Guarded keyword is only a "copy and paste" command for the text on rulebook p. 24. So the whole paragraph about Guarding in the rule booklet would be considered printed on the 3 objective cards. Thus the golden rule can't apply (because it only deals with conflicts betwen card texts and rule texts), and so you would have to resolve the "when revealed" effects.

c.) Attach 3 cards, and reveal 3 cards (so 6 guarding the 3 objectives!). Since the "Guarded"="reveal" on the objectives and the "attach" on the setup doesn't conflict, you can argue that you have to resolve both texts, thus drawing 2 guarding cards for each objective. (Like when you have 2 Dunedain Warnings, the character also gets +1 defense from the first card, and +1 defense from the second card, so +2 in total). This is perhaps the solution with the least rules troubles, but I absolutely don't think this is intended by the quest.

Note that these are my personal reasonings, other people might argue in another way.

In the link above, there's a link by radiskull to a BGG site where a player published a rules question about this issue. Nate French, the game designer, answered and choose for option a.). So until the new offical FAQ comes out (hopefully giving a good explanation for the chosen option), I just play with version a). But if you don't like it, you can also play with b.) and c.), currently there's no bullet-proof reasoning against them, I think.

I think you might be right about version a) it never occured to me that there was a golden rule situation here, but I've re-read the cards and I can see what you're getting at. This occasion being the exception, you would usually resolve the when revealed effect on a card attached to a guarded objective though. :)

silverhand77 said:

I think you might be right about version a) it never occured to me that there was a golden rule situation here, but I've re-read the cards and I can see what you're getting at. This occasion being the exception, you would usually resolve the when revealed effect on a card attached to a guarded objective though. :)

Ok, now with the new FAQ v. 1.2 released, option a.) is out of consideration, the new text reads to "plasce and reveal" the objectives, so the "Guarded" of the objectives triggers as usual, and if a treachery card is drawn as a guard, its "When Revealed" effect gets resolved as usual.

It's still not clear wether it is for option b.) or option c.). Hopefully, the "and attach 1 encounter to each objective" is only a reminder and not considered valid. Another member of this forum submitted a rules question and will post it when he gets an answer. And the reason for option b.) has now changed dramatically, of course. Better forget that "copy and paste" thinking.

@Silverhand: Sorry for arguing away your original way of playing it! ;-) But before the erratum of the text has been published in v.1.2, the rules suggested option a.) to me as the "more" proper way than other options. I think/hope that your option b.) will become now the new official way (and not option c.).)

HilariousPete said:

@Silverhand: Sorry for arguing away your original way of playing it! ;-) But before the erratum of the text has been published in v.1.2, the rules suggested option a.) to me as the "more" proper way than other options. I think/hope that your option b.) will become now the new official way (and not option c.).)

Sorry, I'm a bit confused, I was leaning towards option a) and I thought that was your preferred option too. did I misunderstand?

Before the new FAQ came out, I was for option a.) too, you did get that right.

But now the new FAQ says that the objectives are not only placed into the staging area, but also revealed. So their "Guarded" keyword goes off, just as usual, and if a treachery card is drawn as a guard, its "when revealed" effect is resolved. Therefore I meant that option a.) is now out of consideration.

So the only thing I'm wondering now is wether there is only 1 guard per card (attached and revealed due to "Guarded" on the objective); or if there are 2 guards (1 attached and revealed due to "Guadred", and 1 only attached due to "attach" on Dol Guldur setup, so no "When revealed" effects getting resolved)

HilariousPete and silverhand77 are no longer allowed to have conversations with one another until one of you gets a different avatar gui%C3%B1o.gif

Haha! Done. I actually became a bit tired of the ever-same picture of good old Faramir. A change to more scenery will do fine, for a while