Got my German version of The Hobbit and was very disappointed about the first scenario. It was too easy to win, as I had no problems at all to win the first two attempts. But then I had a look at the small rule book, and I discovered a big mistake there. The cards and the text in the rule books both speak of "allies" when it's about the effect of those sack cards. However, in the example they use in the rulebook these cards get suddenly attached to "heroes". IIRC we have "heroes", "allies" and both together are "characters".

If those sacks would be attached to heroes, the quest would get harder, that's why I'm probably going with the "character" keyword. My question is if they just made an error when translating the card text into German or if there's the same discrepancy in English. If the latter is a "yes", how do you deal with it?

all but 2 of the sack cards state CHARACTER

out of the 2 that dont 1 is ALLY and 1 is HERO

i think all state - EXCLUDING GANDALF

rich

Interesting. Looks like the messed up with the translation. In German every card states "ally". Rich, could you please tell me which one states "hero" and which one "ally"?

leptokurt said:

sure

WORN sack is hero

SMELLY sack is ally

the reason these occur is the hero is the one with most resources and the ally is the highest cost so it couldnt be 'character' i guess….sounds like they realy messed up with translation then?

rich

richsabre said:

Yep. I started wondering when I should attach a sack to the ally with the most resources. Doesn't make much sense when Radagast ist the only ally who is able to gather resources (the card text forced me to check again if the new Bilbo is considered as a hero or as an ally).

Ok, at least now it makes more sense. Thanks, Rich!

leptokurt said:

Ah, I see this explains it. Got mine yesterday and found the first quest so easy. Didn´t struggle a bit. If ii´s heroes……than it gets way harder. On the other hand….I had the troll camp in play and did discard all sacks right away.

How could they mess something like this up. You don´t even have to translate character into german.

The list of cards to remember gets longer and longer. Nasty.

muemakan said:

And longer…

I just found out that they also messed up with the troll card translation. Tom's text says in English: "Troll enemies can only be attacked by one character at a time." Which makes the game a lot harder than the German version.

thats a pretty game changing mistake they made there……………

richsabre said:

Indeed. I was already wondering why everyone complained about the high difficulty of quest 1. Played it now with the correct rules (only one character attacking the troll, sacks being attached to characters instead of allies) and I almost lost. Managed to win with my threat at 42 because the encounter deck was empty. Defeated Bert after some rounds (with Grave Cairn and Durin's Song on Ori), and was fighting Tom. I think I made a few rule mistakes so the win wasn't valid, but still the game feels much better now.

I sent a mail to FFG's customer service to make them aware of the problem. Every player that uses the German version is playing a different game which is way to easy to be a challenge. And not every player checks internet forums like these to find out about it.

leptokurt said:

Actually this quest is really easy until you dont care about treasures. If you dont need them so you just keep your threat low, engage the first troll and quest with maximum power to discard encounter deck cards. When encounter deck is empty you win. Really not a big deal. But if you want to get treasures different story. Is really hard until you get lucky. But i dont care about it. i dont need treasure cose anyway they are not so important for next quests. Only Gollum attack is dangerous but you will have 1sting in your deck so draw it in right time is almost impossible.

Glaurung said:

You can't play Sting on Bilbo until the 3rd stage of that quest so it can't help you against a Gollum attack.

Bullroarer Took said:

Yes cannot my bad. So this make sting more useless……..

I finally got an answer from FFG. They told me that the Heidelberger Spieleverlag will putting up an FAQ and correct the errors in future printings.

Thumbs up for this!