Hello all,

just wanted to share some new cards from the Over Hill and Under Hill expansion, revealed in the new magazine of Edge (French editor of this game). You can see them here (page 9).

- Gandalf : same stats as the old one. Does not exhaust to quest. Forced : discard at the end of the turn or +2 threat.

- Gollum (50). 2 threat, 2 attack, 3 defense, 5 hit points. (…)

- Hobbit land. West Lands. 1 threat, (… at least 1 progress token on Hobbit land, the) -first player draws ?- (1 card) .

- Goblin caves. 3 threat. +1 threat to Goblins while Goblin caves is the active location.

- Sting (treasure). Bilbo Baggins only. +1 willpower, +1 attack, +1 defense. A special effect, probably : "When Bilbo Baggins is exhausted to defend, discard the first card of the encounter deck and inflict to the attacking enemy damages equal to the threat value of that card".

- One quest card (something Moutain). Adds one Stone Giant + 1 card / player to the staging area.

Cheers,

Jokin

oooooh juicy……..thanks for that

gandalf is going to be powerful as you dont have to discard

Thanks so much for sharing.

I really like what they did with Gandalf, I was much afraid he'd be a Hero this time. The original one is perfectly thematic but this is again very interesting, and a nice alternative.

Dard is Sting, of course.

dard is sting in french correct?

Yes, thanks, I'll edit that.

Jokin

And I don't want to be too clever about it but I think this Gandalf is made for a Spirit deck. After a while I began to include the original Gandalf only in a deck with Leadership (and Sneak Attack). But this one just needs Spirit to keep the threat low enough, I feel. And of course, you can run both in a deck - sweet.

and lore aragorn as well- man i love that guy

Gladstone said:

The art on those cards looks great. Thanks for posting.

Thanks alot for the link! Btw, You can select and copy the hidden text on the location and other partly hidden cards. It is a bit shredded, but I guess it should be something like this:

Réponse : quand au moins 1 marqueur de premier joueur pioche 1 carte.
Ombre : le joueur en défense doit mettre la première carte de la pile de défausse de rencontre sur le deck de rencontre.

Sadly I can't speak any French, so it's up to you to translate that ;-)

The new gandalf looks very interesting. At first I thought he'd be overpowered, but then I remembered what +4 threat in RTM mean and that with this Gandalf, you have +3 in total, and Elfhelm won't help… So he'll again assist players only for a limited time, but now more than a single phase (Sneak Attack) or single turn (core-set Gandalf).

still with lore aragorn its not as big a problem…..of course that obviously means field him…..but perhaps gandalf will be twinned with some new threat reducing cards

Yeah, I think the Gollum card says something along the lines when you fail to answer the riddle, Gollum attacks Bilbo directly. And when you defend with Sting, you discard the top card of the encounter deck and if it is an enemy, then… here my French fails me but it can be along the lines that you hit the attacking enemy with a number of damage equal to the threat of the card? Probably not.

By the way, the new Gandalf also combos much better with Word of Command, I feel, especially as he doesn't exhaust to commit to the quest so it is not as unlikely to have him ready at the end of the round.

richsabre said:

When Loragorn first came out I didn't get him, but then I forced myself to use him in a deck with a Leadership hero. He's my favorite hero now.

Which leadership hero do you use with him?

i use him with frodo and glorfindel for a flight to the ford theme deck with splash of leadership and rivendell minstrel to get the song cards

i alternatively use him with the twins for another themed deck

ive had considerable success with both

I use him with Théodred, I used to run a secrecy deck as they advertised but I added Eleanor to get a get-go access to Spirit. It works much better like that and the threat is not that high either (27). Of course this is only one way of doing it but I find Leadership quite worth it for the Stone but more importantly the Sword, and Théodred helps get those resources early.

[double post again - not my fault, I promise]

lleimmoen said:

it was probably becuase we posted at the same time

lleimmoen said:

I've had good success with what sounds like a similar deck, but with Strider + Theodred + Beravor. As you say, Theodred's extra resources are key. The aim is to put Sword and then Steward [and Stone as well in the perfect scenario] onto Strider second turn, and the odds of drawing into this (with Beravor) are actually pretty decent.

Very interesting stuff. The Gandalf is really cool.

I wonder if they will let us run 3x of each Gandalf or say only 3x total? It's a different card but same exact card name it seems. It's an interesting question as this is the first player deck card to have the same exact name as another.

Not that 3x of each Gandalf would be ideal in many decks but curious nonetheless.

Mattr0polis said:

The rules (p27) are, I think, clear on this: "no more than three copies of any card, by title, can be included in a player's deck." So you are limited to a total of 3 Gandalfs (Gandalves?) in any mix from the two different versions.

jjeagle said:

Oh cool. You are right, it actually does say "by title". The people on the last page confused me.

That's probably good.

Mattr0polis said:

There was no mentioning of otherwise on the previous (if that's what you call last) page.

But it is indeed interesting that you can have three copies of Gandalf but you can have a mix of the two versions. Strider actually calls for that mix as he's good to combo with Leadership and thus the original Gandalf can use Sneak Attack, and he is good in threat reduction in case of the Hobbit version.

lleimmoen said:

Yeah, your comment on the last page about running both is what I meant. I read it as if you were running both 3x but looking back I see what you meant.

Not sure how often I'll mix Gandalfs, as they both have kind of specific uses. Original Gandalf is great to bounce down for his abilities but then doesn't stay around. New Gandalf is great for questing and then keeping out if you can deal with threat. I probably won't often mix because it's hard enough to find a Gandalf when you absolutely need him right now as it is, so having less than 3x copies of the one your deck needs could be bad.

But still, interesting options to consider.

Yes, that seems right. A card should have a purpose and having less than three copies reduces the chances of using it at the right moment.

I still think the original Gandalf is a great card, thematically and in terms of its function. But as I said I saw the trend of needing it less and less in my games. in the beginning of the existence of the game we always felt having Sneak Attack and Gandalf was the best thing that could happen in the game. Of course it is still a great combo indeed (and ever will) but I would often exclude Gandalf in a deck that was either not running Leadership or wasn't overflowing in resources. Now this Gandalf bring an entire new possibility. It is a truly exceptional ally if you can manage your threat well enough (which I feel may be very hard and nigh impossible without Spirit unless other spheres get their boost in threat reduction). Having an ally who can constantly quest for 4 and fight, is superb though beyond questioning.

There was an earlier post that this Gandalf would work better with Word of Command. I can see that combo working, but it's easy to overlook that the original Gandalf also works nicely with Word of Command. If you don't sneak attack him, then after questing or combat, he readies at the beginning of the refresh phase. There's an action window in the refresh phase before Gandalf leaves play "at the end of the round," during which you can exhaust Gandalf to play Word of Command. That helps to make Word of Command more playable if you're not running Radagast.