I need a clarification on the Encounter Phase. Step 1 gives each player the option to engage an enemy in the staging area. In Step 2, any enemies in the staging area that fall within a players threat level engage. My question is, why engage early? There is no benefit to engaging an enemy early (from what I can see). Am I Missing something here?

Question 2 is in response the rule about playing cards that are only for a single phase. If I play the Event card during the ACTION step at the end of a phase, will it exhaust immediately or does it work for the next phase? For example, I want to play the Steward of Gondor card at the end of the Encounter Phase so that in the combat phase my hero gains +1 to Defense...is this legal or do I have to discard the Steward of Gondor card at the at the end of the Encounter phase?

Thanks.

hendersondayton said:

1) Engaging an enemy removes it from the staging area and thus lowers the amount of willpower you need to quest. If you just leave a bunch of enemies in the staging area you will get overwhelmed pretty quickly.

Additionally, when playing multiplayer you might want to choose to engage an enemy to prevent it from engaging another player who has higher threat.

2) I'm not sure I understand this question? Steward of Gondor is an attachment, do you mean "For Gondor!"? That only lasts until the end of the phase, so if you played it at the end of the Encounter Phase the effect would end when the encounter phase ends. Additionally, event cards are discarded immediately, only the effect stays around.

Why not just play it at the beginning of the Combat phase?

also for q.1 several enemies are tied to quests.....hill troll for example, prevents you from progress to the next quest card, and sometimes you have no choice but to engage them or wait many rounds for it to engage you....sometimes you may not want to wait

1) There are many reasons for choosing to engage. Mainly for controlling the encounter deck. Choosing to fight a mob of at your choosing. This can be for something as simple as removing its threat form the staging area, or that you fell you can easily kill it off, to more complex things like avoiding card effects.. like say snipers for example... Also when playing multiplayer this is a major part of the strategies,. Just remember that you can only engage by choice 1 monster each, but all monsters will attack anyone whose threat is equal or higher... no one wants to fight 6 monsters at once.

2) I "think" you are talking about "For Gondor"

Not Steward... but w/e this card says "for the phase" so.. yes.. the effect only lasts for a single phase. So you need to cast this in the combat phase during a player action step. It is also a event not a attchment there is no exhaust

hendersondayton said:

After re-reading this, I think you might be playing it wrong. You cannot play Steward of Gondor during the Encounter phase, as it is an attachment. You may only play event cards or use actions while not in the planning phase. If you were to play Steward of Gondor during the planning phase, then you can exhaust it during an action window in the combat phase to get the bonus (Steward of Gondor gives 2 resources though, not +1 defense).

When you play attachments and allies they stay in play until destroyed or removed by some effect, they are not automatically discarded like events are.

@Svenn - I understand the idea of lowering threat from the staging area, but if your threat level is high enough that the enemy will engage you in step 2 anyway, your second thought makes more sense....engaging an enemy so that they do not engage another player makes a lot of sense though...

Yes - I did mean "For Gondor"...sorry. I was not aware that a player could play a card at the beginning of a phase...if I am not playing with Shadow cards...does the first player action (that is right after the shadow card step) get skipped? That is what I assumed. If i can still skip the shadow card phase, and start the combat phase with the player action step....then my problems are solved and my question is not relevant.

Well, personally I recommend playing with Shadow Cards... but either way you can play For Gondor! before the attacks occur.

If you look at the timing chart in the back of the rulebook you will see that green steps mean "actions can be taken generally". The first step after Shadow Cards is a green step ("First player resolves attacks made by enemies against him. (See page 18.)"). This means you can take actions at any time during this step, so you can play For Gondor! before resolving the attacks.

Svenn said:

but the first action after the shadow card is inset (tabbed in), so i assumed if you skipped the shadow, you also skipped the action. Thanks for the clarification.

hendersondayton said:

You aren't playing the card there, you are playing in the "First player resolves attacks made by enemies against him." step. Since the step is green and not red, you can play actions DURING the step, while resolving the attacks. You could play an action in the middle of resolving an attack if you wanted to, or between attacks.

You can play Actions in any step that is green, not just the "Player Actions" steps. The only time you cannot play an action is during red steps in the chart.

Newb here... but i wanted to point out that some cards seem to have effects when they engage you, that i believe can be bypassed if you chose to engage them first. Please let me know if I am wrong on this.

Captain Poe said:

no unfortunatly it doesnt work like this..hummerhorns for ex. still puts 5 damage on you even if you engage it, thats why you usually take it down another way- infighting,gandalf,dunhere etc.

Svenn said:

OMG! Totally missed this. Would have helped a lot! Thank you! I would imagine that ally and attachment cards are the only exceptions here? They can only be played during the planning phase (unless a card specifically allows me to play an ally or attachment out of turn)?

hendersondayton said:

Correct. Ally and attachment cards can ONLY be played during the planning phase unless you have something that specifies otherwise.

Captain Poe said:

You are unfortunately wrong on this. This is covered in the FAQ - engaging is engaging, regardless of how it was initiated.