i like it……epic artwork…..awesome ability…….discuss…………..

ps. they seem to be favouring magali more and more recently- not that im complaining ….just thought it worth a mention

Will Healing Herbs turn Rhosgobel more soloable?

They are indeed an interesting set of cards.

Healing Herbs is interesting. I think my playing style would probably be conducive to using it. And since a lot of Lore allies are 3+ for cost, it would be a great replacement for Lore of Imladris. I, too, wonder how Healing Herbs will work in Rhosgobel.

Durin's Axe is great. I have no complaints about it. I think it's interesting that many objectives are guarded, causing another encounter card to be placed in the staging area, but this one has surge instead. I think that's a good move because it wouldn't make sense for this to be guarded. What do orcs care about this axe?

Path of Need is probably the most controversial card from this pack. I'm really interested to see how it plays. It certainly will take some strategy to use. If you don't have to exhaust to quest while it is attached to the active location, it could be really easy to over-commit and remove the location from the staging area, meaning you won't get the benefit of attacking/defending for free. Then again, you would get to attack/defend in the round in which you traveled to the location Path of Need was attached to, assuming you played it on a location in the staging area rather than directly on the active location. I think it's very interesting that they've limited it to one per deck. It'll be a lot harder to find it in your deck with only one copy. You know, this would be a great card to put on The Carrock in Conflict at the Carrock. Then you just make sure you have 4 allies to die and enough combined attack with your heroes to fell a troll. You don't need to keep your threat low because you could just knock each one out in the round they engage you. EDIT: Better yet, if all three heroes have a Tactics icon, you just let the trolls engage and use Thicket of Spears to prevent their attacks.

Path of Need on Durins Door …

^^^^^^ yes……let me think about that for a moment- very interesting indeed

Path of Need could be crazy. Yeah you can only run 1 per deck but you could build a Leadership/Lore deck with drawing tricks and Word of Command x3 to get it quickly and then use the Erebor Hammersmiths x3 like they mention and also Second Breakfast x3 to keep getting it played a ton.

And if you play multiplayer, both the Hammersmith and Second Breakfast are worded so that your friends could run copies of those to help you keep getting it back as well as run their own Path of Need.

Ok, first I wonder whether the pack will only have one copy of Path of Need or still three? Then while it is a very strong card, is it really that much more powerful than Grim Resolve. The answer is probably yes, it is more powerful, heroes can do whatever while it is activated but to trigger its effect is certainly more complicated. You play it as an attachment so you shall have the location active by the time you go questing and then it will be gone if you quest well enough, if you don't quest well enough, what's the point of playing it? Battle! I am sure it will find its uses - new combos will likely show up soon but for now I am not really psyched about it. In fact I see no reason of the deck restriction to a single copy but time may prove me fool.

Neither do I think the herbs too good. I find Warden of Healing a much stronger card. In my games I more often than not have the damage spread around the table rather than concentrated on a single character. But again, instances, Gloin, Wilyador, Gollum's Bite, etc.

ps: Cannot wait for the hero preview next week.

Path of Need would have made a good secrecy card. And I hate when they give you three copies when you can only use one.

mkultra said:

Absolutely! I didn't even think of that. If you've only got 2 heroes, you need them to do more than in a standard deck, and giving it a secrecy card would have made it more accessible to those decks. I suppose it only takes 2 rounds of Steward of Gondor to get enough resources for this card, and if both your heroes are Leadership and SoG is on the table, you should be able to buy this in a single round. But still, secrecy would have been nice.

Remember, lots of solo players use multi-decks… so it is possible to get use out of multiple copies of a 1-per-deck card.

I'm thinking it's probably best used in a lore/leader deck, where you can pull a Word of Command

does this not give dale scout a whole new meaning? just keep moving tokens off the location

richsabre said:

Interesting.

And I have also thought of Word of Command - if you can really make most out of the card and you can only have one in a deck, you better draw it early and recycle it with Erebor Hammersmith. That ally is really something, his stats already make him a good addition to almost any Lore deck but his ability has grown considerably since the core set, Ancient Mathom, Good Meal, now this.

yes this card is very 'combo' friendly - it really boosts dale scouts worth i think and yes also hammersmith (though he didnt need it)

The Ravenhill Scout idea is cool, Rich. Only problem though is that no progress really gets to the quest cards. But there's still some merit in that for certain quests or to clear the staging area easily for a turn or two.

I was more thinking Strider's Path x3. Cause then you attach Path of Need to the active location, quest everyone without exhausting, switch a newly flipped location to the active with Strider's Path, get a ton of progress cause of everyone questing which completely explores the switched-to location and a bunch more progress on the quest, and then Travel phase go back to the Path of Need location for non-exhausting battle/defendings.

There's also some Encounter deck cards that help us out in certain quests, like Impassable Chasm or something I think in Emyn Muil? It's when revealed pushes out any active location. Perfect for Path of Need lol.

I wish Sneak Attacking West Road Travellers worked as well, but alas it doesn't.

Mattr0polis said:

I don't think that would work. If you switch out the location that has Path of Need attached then it would seem that no one is committed to the quest. In order for Path of Need to activate it needs to be attached to the "active location". By removing the active location Path of Need no longer applies. If my thinking is correct the quest phase could be disastorous…no progress would be put on the location you swapped or the quest because no progress would be gained. However, you would have all your characters ready to defend and/or attack.

No.

Path of Need just makes them not exhaust to commit. You are well past the committing characters step when you would play Strider's Path and knock out the active location and Path of Need. You can't be knocked out of being committed to the quest unless a card specifically does that or the character dies.

It's like Aragorn still being committed to the quest even if you use his response ability to immediately ready him.

Mattr0polis is correct in his ruling. For the moment, Strider's Path seems to be the best combo with this card.

All I know is that now Doors of Durin will be a octopus slaugtherfest.

yeah great.. the designers of this game are just loosing it.. they need to get there **** together.

Northern Tracker… arguably one of the most powerful cards in the game is hated by many players as it nearly completely negates an entire sub phase of the game. .the travel phase.. when you have trackers out you just never travel.. completely removing an entire decision form the player and making the game a ton easier.. and now we have a card that again tries to completely remove the travel phase as well as making it re-donk-ulasly easy to attack and quest.. as if that wasn't easy enough after a few turns..

So we have a card that like tracker but even worse. removes an entire game play element, we also remove tons of decision making processes on who to tap when and why and those decisions are almost ALL the decisions you make each turn.. so the game will basically play itself after this card is out and you just watch.… this is even worse than the Ziggy card for completely wrecking the game play…

Seriously.. WTF are they thinking.

Though I don't endorse all of your words booooored, I do endorse your opinion that they have screwed up with this card. I don't like it at all at the moment.

Bohemond said:

Even better, my friend (username: The Janitor on here) reminded me of some of those Hobbit card previews. If you go to the Hobbit description page and scroll down a bit, you can make out a card called Thror's Map. We're not positive but it looks like Thror's Map is an attachment that can exhaust every turn to change the active location. Here's a link to it:

javascript:void(0);/*1338864402640*/

If that's true it's gonna be CRAZY with Path of Need once it's out!

booored said:

Umm, What? First off, why would you not travel just because Northern Tracker is out? Do you seriously think it is better to have two or three threat sitting in the staging area for three or four turns then to just jet it out of the way in one turn? Tracker is a great suppliment if you are getting buried by locations, but is no competition with clearing one in a single turn.

And Path of Need had absolutely no impact on the travel phase. While it does give you a turn or two of great power, unless you build your deck around it it really isn't much worse then Grim Resolve or Lure of Moria. And if you do build around it, it has the same weakness as Zigil Miner. If you don't see it, how much use can you get out of the cards you included to enhance it? And to make it even harder to pull off, you only have a single copy to dig for.

Personally, I love it. Yet another card that provides a different approach to deck building.

Strider's Path is a good one.

Or this, you attach it to a location in the staging area, its effect doesn't trigger because it isn't active so you still have to exhaust for questing - it doesn't affect allies anyways, so you want to get most out of those. You then travel to it after you make progress. Then you're set for Combat and the Quest phase next round - so you can still get benefit from all three things, defence, attack, quest.

The Janitor said:

because the vast number of locations have a negative effect when you travel to them..

i would agree on that mattr0polis- it certainly looks like thrors map does that