Last game playing HfG I had the following situation:

I was at stage 2B, and there was one (unguarded) clue card in the staging area. My heroes had no clue card attached. I finished the quest and advanced to stage 3B. The Gollum clue card says that a player might claim it after he quested successfully and attach it to a hero that was committed to the quest. Now the adventure card 3B says that "if there are ever no heroes with Clue objectives attached in play, reset the quest deck to stage 2B."

So what happens?

a) a hero claims the card immediatly after resolving quest 2B and my heroes advance to stage 3B

or

b) the heroes claim the clue card but the quest will be reseted to stage 2B because the didn't have a clue card attached when the 3B quest card was revealed?

Btw, I decided to choose option a), but mostly because my luch was already getting cold ;-).

The second question is about objective cards that are unguarded? I play it so that a unguarded card gets no new guard attached during the next staging phase and remains unguarded. Is that correct?

leptokurt said:

#1: As per the latest FAQ, questing successfully means WP > threat after the cards have been added from the Encounter deck, but before you actually place any progress tokens. So you can claim the Signs (since it's a Response), then you add the progress tokens, reach stage 3B and don't have to reset. Probably only to then draw Hunters from Mordor as Shadow Effect or something and still reset .

#2: Yes, once it becomes unguarded, it remains so, unless it hits the discard pile and comes back (Athelas via Forest Grove) or gets shuffled back into the Encounter deck and comes back (False Lead for Signs in HFG).

Ok, that makes sense. So the best strategy would be to keep the unguarded clues in the staging area until I finish the second stage - so that the shadow effect of the Hunters won't effect my heroes? Because - well, the 3rd stage I usually complete in one turn, so that no shadow effects emerge before I finish the game.

Thanks a lot!

leptokurt said:

I like this - although some of the location shadow effects (east and west bank) are nasty when you don't have a hero with a clue.

leptokurt said:

I'd suggest that it makes no difference whether you claim the signs card or not, because it is still regarded as "in play" and the hunters still get pumped and any card such as false lead will resolve (if not cancelled) either way so you might as well claim it, that way you can move to the next stage of the quest when you're ready to.