I submitted a question to Caleb Grace asking what happens if the last card (or the last two cards) of the scenario deck are both cards with Surge that are shuffled back into the deck once they've been resolved. This was the response I got:

"In the rare event that Blocking Wargs is revealed as the last 1 or 2 cards in the encounter deck, it creates an infinite loop. Should this happen, the players will have to reset."

Given that there are 4 copies of Blocking Wargs and two copies of another treachery card that is shuffled back into the deck and all have Surge, I'm not entirely sure that it's far to say this is a "rare event" (it's happened to me twice already), and I REALLY don't like the idea that it effectively results in an automatic loss (or as near as dammit) and you have to restart.

Thoughts? Comments? Opinions?

Stenun said:

I think the answer is quite odd but im ok with that cose Caleb is much better for the game then Previous guy ( Nate) so give him a chance.

HON and Hobbit is cool anyway so i think he will solve all mistakes step by step.

Had a follow up response to my reply to the first one:

"The situation you are describing is the unintentional byproduct of an ambitious design. I call it rare because in all of the extensive playtesting that was done by the design team in the office and by our external playtesters, this situation never happened. I can assure you that we playtested this scenario far more than six times and if this situation had occurred during one of those times we would have addressed it then. The best we can do now is suggest that players reset. When we release our next FAQ for the game, we can address the infinite loop with a possible errata at that time."

Stenun said:

4 / 35 chance of Warg trechery being last card of the encounter deck.
That is roughly 1 in every 7 game.
Of course there must be some cases where it was dealt as shadow card, or players didn't run out of encounter deck, etc.
but once again, FFG might want to get some more budget into play testing

On the other hand, I hope that Caleb does not stop being ambitious with the design of this game, because infinite loop of Warg trechery cards is really small oversight compared to overall improvement of this cardgame with Heirs of Numenor expansion.

But yeah… FFG should look into that play testing thing. Change the way how internal play testing works or hire more play testers or release beta version to exclusive members before actual product……

I mean, I won't even mind waiting extra few weeks (or a month or two), if that will help improve overall quality of the game.
Better delayed to perfection than rushed goods.

as much as i agree more play testing is needed i really dont think ffg can afford to go any slower with this game's releases

rich

Sorry, is this a question about a card from HoN? Could you reference the text, I'm stil waiting for it to get here and could find no "Blocking Wargs" card. The math I see seems off 4/35 is 11.5% or so .Do you have to clear the deck? Is the issue with the resolve the when revealed then sugre ruling? That always seemes weird, could it be solved if you went sugre, then when revaeled? Would that break other cards?

Weird. Why does "reset" somehow sound like "loose" to me?

However, there are some cards that are able to influence the encounter deck so that a player does not have to "reset" the game.

I can see why people might get peeved if it happened to them. So far our play group has played II a few times and have lost to it without the blocking warg reset. I actually like the challenge of it, and have thought of a few different ways to tackle the varied needs of the scenario. But honestly I'm not very inclined to fear the blocking warg infinite loop.

Since we play four player we splash spirit in to get anywhere between three to six test of wills.(Though not everyone has three base sets to work with) . The silver bullet for this problem is Eleanor though. I know people don't like to play her and think she's sub par statwise, but in a four player game your probably going to run into at least one treachery a round. If you go to LOTRLCG, and go to the compare section you can see the various percentages pertaining to different card types. The treachery content ranges anywhere from 19%(passage through mirkwood) to 51%(flight from moria) Eleanor will be worth it if your getting hosed by treacheries. We used her for the majority of dwarrowdelf and always felt she was as crucial as Eowyn in multiplayer games.

We generally have smooth sailing when she's around and if your worried about the lady of Gondor being idle in some situations I suggest using the cards strength of will and common cause to put her to use.