I'm playing Hunt for Gollum and my Leadership/Lore deck keeps getting overwhelmed with locations. Even if I get lots of allies out, it seems the locations accumulate faster than my allies. I end up losing the threat race, even with Gandalfs to help out occasionally.

Any tips on how to conquer the locations with Leadership/Lore?

I'm just getting ready to undertake this scenario as well. I was planning on a Leadership/Lore deck too. My strategy was going to be using Celebrian's Stone on Aragorn (giving you a Spirit icon attachment) and Song of Travel for the other heroes. Add in some Guides and Trackers from Spirit for the extra help with locations.

Several Rivendel Minstrels and Song of Travel cards and Spirit Cards.

Of course that's just cribbing Spirit into your Leadership/Lore deck.

There are a few Lore characters with High Willpower (which helps), Like Glorfindel, Gildor, and the Long-Beard Map Maker plus Secret Paths and Strider's Path. There's nothing that will let you slap down Progress Tokens on locations as well as some Spirit cards, but Lore does the second-best job of building up Willpower and managing the Encounter deck.

Also, make sure you've got your Snowbourn Scouts in there.

There are a few decks in some other threads on the forum. Maybe those can help you a bit.

I never leave home without all 3 Secret Paths and Radagast's Cunning!

tripecac said:

1.have a big card draw then use protector or lorien to buff up a heros wilpower-big time

2.use map maker(if you have it?) and use leaderships resource draw with stweard of gondor attatched to a lore hero, and use the extra resources to buff map maker up

3.use songs to put in spirit and get out northern tracker- hes one of the best cards for clearing the staging area

4.use striders path (if you have it) to travel immediatly to really nasty locations

5.use denethor to look at the encnouter deck and move really bad ones like gladden fieldsand east west back to the bottom, this also help get clue cards out

scottindeed said:

I think these cards, witch admittedly do not make the cut most times. can be the difference between winning and loosing this quest in a single turn. No need to go 6 cards into your draw for it though... depending on how fast your draw is I only go 2 or 1 copy of each.. you just want one for emergencies. I like to make what I consider consistent decks, I like a 4/5 or so win ratio when I play... I feel anything under 3/5 means that your deck or play style is more about luck of the encounter draw then having a good deck, so for a cautious player like me having these kind of emergency "I only play it once every 2 or 3 games, but when I do I WIN then game" to be a solid choice.

I think that Secret Paths is way more valuable in this quest. If you are pulling a 8 threat Hunter or w/e it is called and can not deal with it, then the 1 turn you cancel that threat isn't going to help you much. I found that controlling the threat of the random locations was much more important than the threat of the Hunters. Making a solo deck you have to make some hard choices, and Cunning usually stays in the pool.

Some of those cards I don't have yet; I'm going through the adventure packs in order, so I've only opened the cards for Core and Hunt for Gollum.

Therefore, no Spirit songs.

I managed to beat Hunt for Gollum today with my Leadership/Lore deck. I quested aggressively, and got luckier than the last attempts.

It was a memorable win, because the final turn started on 3b with 49 threat and no way to reduce it. It was do or die, and I committed all my guys (including Faramir) to the quest, in case I drew a treachery to "raise 1 threat for every character not committed to quest". I had a card to ready any ally so I readied and then exhausted Faramir, who added even more willpower. I had 20 willpower going into the final quest phase, and the encounter draw was one of those guys who gets +2 threat and attack for every clue in play. I had two clues attached to my heroes, but 20 willpower minus 6 threat is 14, which was more than enough to knock out the quest.

I hope I played that right!

tripecac said:

If I understood correctly, you exhausted Faramir for his ability that gives everyone committed to the quest +1 Will, and then you readied him and exhausted him again to send him on the quest as well. That's a pretty neat combo. I don't see anything wrong with it. Would Faramir benefit from his own ability? I assume he would.

Budgernaut said:

The correct sequence would be to commit him to the quest, then ready him, then tap him for his ability, that way his +1(w) all committed characters would also include him.. the way you wrote it, the other way around, when he tapped to add the will he was not on the quest.

I should have been more explicit. I tapped everyone to commit everyone to the quest (including Faramir). Then I readied Faramir and tapped him again, using his willpower boost.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't it work the other way around: commit all but Faramir, tap him for the willpower boost, play the event card to ready him, then commit him to the quest along with the others?

Are we not allowed to commit a subset, play events, and commit another subset? The "Players commit characters to quest" step is green, which means we should be able to use events any time within that step, correct?

the effect of his ability is instant, so it will only count to the cards that are committed at the exact moment he taps... it is not global effect type thing.. there is a rule definition for this about the payment of abilities and there effect...

Faramir's ability is:

"Action: Exhaust Faramir to choose a player. Each character controlled by that player gets +1 [willpower] until the end of the phase. "

There is no clause about the willpower boost only affecting committed (questing) characters. So, even the willpower of non-questing characters is boosted, including Faramir's own willpower. Correct?

After we use Faramir's ability, we are still in the green step, and can ready him via the event cart, and then commit him (and any other characters we neglected to commit before) to the quest.... And all these actions (committing, boosting, readying, committing) can happen within the single [green] "commit characters to quest" step at the beginning of the quest phase. The willpower boost will last until the end of the questing phase, so all committed characters (including Faramir) should have the willpower boost in effect by the time we need to calculate the quest results.

Is this logic correct, or am I missing something?

the commit to a quest time period is is a entire step.. you can only take actions before or after..you need to do his action after the quest step, so after he commits. Also in the rules there is a clause that speaks of how card costs must be paid at the instant of casting and effects occur at the moment of casting.

tripecac said:

You can use his ability and then ready him and commit him to the quest with everybody else.
You could commit everybody you want to and then ready Faramir and use his ability . Both variants work before you reveal encounter cards.
OR
You could commit everybody, have the encounter cards revealed and then ready Faramir and use his ability.

You CANNOT commit somebody, then do something and then commit other characters. You have to commit all your questing characters at the same time.

>> you need to do his action after the quest step, so after he commits. Also in the rules there is a clause that speaks of how card costs must be paid at the instant of casting and effects occur at the moment of casting.

Faramir's ability boosts the willpower of each character controlled by that player, not just the quest-committed characters. So it seems like Faramir could do his action before or after the quest step and have the same effect.

>> You CANNOT commit somebody, then do something and then commit other characters. You have to commit all your questing characters at the same time.

Does this mean players cannot take actions during green steps, but only before or after green steps? That seems to contradict the sentence in the rules: "Action windows in which the players are free to take actions are presented in green." The phrase "in which" (rather than "before or after which") implies that players actions can take place at any time during the green step.

If actions cannot interrupt green steps, then actions cannot interrupt "First player declares and resolves all attacks against his enemies". So, all attack declarations and resolutions would have to be performed atomically, with no opportunity for player actions until *all* of the player's attacks have been completely declared and resolved. This means you cannot declare and resolve an attack on one enemy, ready your character, and declare and resolve an attack on another enemy. No double-attacks.

Likewise, players would not be able to play an ally card, take an action (such as play an event card), and then play another ally card. No attachment-action-attachment either. So when you play the steward of gondor, you can't immediately tap it to get back the 2 resources, and then use those resources to pay for another attachment.

Is that correct?

Or is there a rule somewhere that specifically says that quest committing cannot be interrupted, but attacks and playing of allies and attachments *can* be interrupted?

It seems like we need to choose either the strict interpretation (player actions cannot occur during green steps unless the green step is labeled "Player actions") or the lenient interpretation (player actions can occur at any time during green steps), and then apply that interpretation to not just the quest-committing step, but all steps listed on pages 30 and 31 of the rules.

Unofficial FAQ version 6.0 page 2 says actions "can be used by controlling player (unless otherwise specified) any time before, during, or after any green-colored section of the Turn Order chart (but not during Setup)." The only exception is combat.

So this also suggests that actions can be played during the quest committing step. So, commit, actions, commit seems ok.

Of course, that's just an unofficial FAQ. Is there an official ruling somewhere?

Committing characters to quest is not an "Action", it's more of a game event. You can't interrupt it, just as you couldn't ready someone at the end of the round, take actions, then ready the rest of your dudes.

Straight out of the FAQ:

Q: Does a player commit his characters to a quest at
once, or one character at a time? When can a player
trigger responses to committing his characters to a
quest?
A: A player commits all characters he wishes to
commit to a quest at once.

Thanks. I now see the clarification on page 6 of the official FAQ (v 1.2).

So, we cannot commit all characters except Faramir, then use his ability, then ready him, and then commit him.

Instead we can either:

A) commit all characters (including Faramir), and then ready him and use his ability
-or-
B) use faramir's ability, then ready him, then commit all characters including Faramir

Either approach (A or B) will result in the same amount of willpower during quest resolution.

However, approach A is more flexible, since we can wait until after the encounter draw to decide whether to ready Faramir to use his ability or do something else with him.

Does that seem correct?

I don't see any reason why you couldn't use Faramir's ability two times if you can actually Ready him during that phase. I assume you'd do this is it will get you more Will Power than committing Faramir of course.

Either A or B works just fine! Bomb's suggestion is also probably the better choice, although in your situation (49 threat, afraid of the "raise your threat by 1 for each character not committed" card), I think you made the right play. I'd commit Faramir *before* the encounter draw, then ready and use his ability afterward if need be.