I mentioned this ages ago but i thought now might be a good time to bring it up again… now that we are getting really close to the first new adventure pack coming out. i thought maybe that would give FFG time to stick a new card into the 6th one.

the idea is that the 6th and final adventure pack in this cycle should include a treasure card, to reward us for completing the whole cycle.

it will be a big and powerful treasure, like the ones in the hobbit box, and only those people who have played and completed the entire cycle will get to include it in their future decks.

obviously that will involve a bit of trust on behalf of the players -- because you are only supposed to "win" it if you have completed all 6 packs successfully. but the treasures in the hobbit box rely on trust as well -- there is nothing to stop players including those straight away if they want to 'cheat'.

i just think it would be a good way for FFG to encourage people to go out and buy the whole cycle, so it will make them money, and also it will reward those players who have stuck with the game.

the final pack will presumably be a big boss fight, or really hard battle, and we will actually be rewarded for completing it. that will make the final pack really cool.

and also… one more thing… it has always annoyed me that you can only use the hobbit box treasures in the hobbit quests, and not all the other quests. so this new treasure should made be available for all your decks once you've won it, not just this cycle… so you can use it on all the old quests and all the future ones too.

or maybe it should be available for just this cycle?

I don't think your idea is a bad one, but I somehow suspect that they will not do that unless treasure cards begin to be included in the standard game. I always thought of them as more "saga" only.

As a side note: I don't particularly like treasure cards anyway. They are entirely theme based as of now, limited to only the Hobbit Saga games, and worst of all, the game designers are relying on a level of "trust" from their players in order to play the cards at all. I think this latter point is just a bit silly. Anyone could just put the cards into their decks to try them out; the idea of having to "find/earn" the items just seems a bit weird to the rest of the game. What do you think? Do you like the treasure cards?

i like the idea of treasure cards. the alternative, i suppose, is to just have some really powerful player cards available to everyone, but doing them as "treasures" that we have to earn makes them seem a bit more special.

but i agree that they didnt implement them very well. i think its a waste that we can only use them in the hobbit quests. people arent going to want to play those same quests over and over again just to use the treasures.

maybe they could have made them specific to particular characters in the game, rather than particular quests… so once you've won a treasure like "sting", for example, you should be able to use it in absolutely any quest, but only by attaching it to bilbo or frodo. so you'd have to build your deck around it.

i dont mind that they only work on trust, because most of the game works on trust anyway. how many times have we taken an extra mulligan, or gone back a phase to play a card that we forgot about (be honest!). if players want to try the treasure cards out without having earned them first, it doesnt do anyone any harm

i sort of like the idea, but i sort of dont.

i agree with your points above, the treasures in the hobbit were a bit of an anti clima given the previews beforehand, but i think what is most off putting is the fact that alot of players, myself included, find the ultra hard quests very difficult indeed. i mean, take HoN end quest. ive never won it, so if that were the 6th pack, then i would essentially have a card in my pool that i couldnt use (becuase i like to use the proper rules)

perhaps something i little more realistic? im not sure what, but i do like your idea of a reward at the end

rich

…so you'll have a good incentive to keep going back and trying to win it. where is your incentive at the moment… other than your pride in wanting to beat it. having an actual reward at the end will give you that extra push over the top and then i reckon you will beat it easy.

…although ive never beaten dol guldur solo. and no amount of treasures will make me want to play that again so i see your point

DurinIII said:

DurinIII said:

One thing I don't like about the treasure cards is that they commit you to playing the whole saga expansion with the same group of heroes. I rarely play the saga quests because of this rule. I think it really limits the replay value of each scenario. I like to test out different hero builds regularly, so if I want to build a deck for a particular hobbit scenario with a set of heroes, I do not want to go back and play all the scenario to see if I get the treasures. The alternatives are not to play with the treasures or use them with whatever hero build I want to for any of the hobbit scenarios.. Also it would be nice to have rules that allow us to use them outside of the saga expansion. There are 5 treasure cards introduced in the second to last scenario, and they are only useful for the last two scenarios. It would be great if the the designers find a way for them to get more game play, but I do not see this happening since they are really designed for the hobbit.

I think treasures should stay in saga expansions, but there should be different ways to acquire and access them in the future saga quests. It would be pretty limiting to have to play the whole lotr trilogy with the same group of heroes just to keep the treasure acquired along the way.

I think having treasures that you use during an adventure cycle would be better - but I'd prefer them to be done not in a take up slots in your deck way.

They should have just let you start with treasures equiped in the saga expansion imo.

I think Treasure cards could be played in any scenario of the game as proposed by Cunir: making Treasures specific to a character or trait and limiting them to 1 per deck.

Anyway, I don't like how they are obtained: It's pretty ridiculous to keep a troll alive just to be able to obtain the Treasures. And it's contradictory that we can play with Arwen but we can't use theTreasures. Players that want to stick to the lore, won't use the Treasures (and inapropiate heroes) until the second Hobbit quest.

Personally, I don't see the need. I guess it sounds like a nice "reward", but the novelty isn't really there for me. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of some cool "bling", but don't really think there has to be a format for it. The treasures that are in the hobbit sets are already pretty nice. And quite honestly, the only thing preventing anyone from using them is if you hardcore follow the rules that FFG has for tournament play. Tournament play that exists…. for a tournament that DOESN'T exist. So really, I just don't see the need to create some sort of "reward" system for completing a cycle. The cards in the set are already the reward for me (Elrond and his ring were a pretty sweet "gift"). So far I have followed the "rules", but since there's no reason to, if some friends and I wanted to agree to allow us to use them in a get-together, it wouldn't bother me. And that's doubly reinforced by the fact that it's cooperative play and not competitive. It's not like a friend shows up for a game, asks to use treasures from the hobbits, and that puts the rest of us at a disadvantage…. lol. I would probably still choose to follow the rest of the "rules" (have to discover them, use them only with the heroes that discovered them, etc), but even that I could look past. If we sat down with a bunch of hobbits and dwarves and someone said, "Hey, how about if I drop Sting on Frodo/Bilbo and you use Orcrist with Thorin for fun…". I'd probably go for it, just for the fun theme it helps create… Since there's really nothing preventing anyone from Home-ruling just about everything, I don't see the point.

Granted, if you bend that many rules that you just use treasures randomly throw in treasures into decks, remove major enemies to make it easier, etc. so that there's no more challange involved, then I think it takes away from the satisfaction of knowing you can handle the encounter the way it was designed.

But if you do that, then get on the forums here and brag to everyone how you beat the Balrog using only Frodo, 2 allies, no attachments, and a bottle opener, then don't expect many of us to believe you… but hey, that's between you, your conscience, and Iluvator. I'm not gonna judge.

… (I'm totally gonna judge…)

karagh said:

I do agree with this. I think the mechanics for getting those first treasures are silly, particularly since you can really only use the treasures sporadically in the quests that follow…

I'm not really getting the idea of treasure cards at the end of a cycle. I'm not sure what would be the point of having them be "treasures" instead of just player cards.

If you want special items that are more limited in use than normal player cards, then I think the thing to do would have them be objective cards in a deluxe expansion that could then be utilized for which ever particular quests in that expansion and following AP cycle that were thematically appropriate.

Also what´s the deal with us only being able to use Ranger of Ithilien in the massing at osgilliath quest or that eagle from the battle of five armies?

I say we include both of them in all quests out of pure spite. That´ll show Sauron who´s in charge.

Nerdmeister said:

I'm pretty tempted to include the eagle from Battle of Five Armies in whatever quest I'm playing if I'm using an eagle-themed deck.

I dont like treasure idea at all. The hobbits quests is easy enough and with treasures is to easy…….

What kind of treasure should it be anyways?

In the saga expansions it made sense. Here? Not so much.

Whoever likes this idea is silly. There is no reason for them to "trust" us to buy the whole cycle. Trusting us to play the quests right doesn't matter to them at all (except for tournament play). Besides, what's the point of just adding one more awesome player card in the last pack? There's no reason not to just try to make all the cards good in some way. Also, for those complaining that you can only use the treasures in the Hobbies quests, get over it. Those treasures were only mentioned in the Hobbies book, so why should we feel bad that we can't use them elsewhere? They were just designed to be awesome objective cards that we can add to our decks instead of pulling them from the encounter deck. Why can't people just be happy with what they ate given.

joezim007 said:

I like Glamdring a lot and will be happy when we get it as a normal card. All this treasures is just waste of time for nothing for me.

Cunir,

I was wondering if you saw (or heard) about the novel printing on the back of the quest sheet in The Steward's Fear. It says something to the effect of Do not read unitl completing this quest. I haven't, so I haven't read it, but I imagine that it will help to tie the quests together more (like the narrative cards at the end of some of the fan made quests (ninjadorg started this I think).

I know it's no treasure, but I thought it might be more RPG-esque, and therefore appealing to you.

Glaurung said:

I've considered including Glamdring in some of my decks that have the Hobbit version of Gandalf in them. (With the House rule that Gandalf could equip it, obviously.)

I think the items at the end of the dwarrrodwelf cycle (The armour, helm, and greavees of that dwarf) would have been good treasure cards, that should have been allowed to be taken from the deck (if you happen to get them) and used in the final battle vs the Balrog.

So I wouldn't have minded them having that rule (if you already got the armour of that dwarf in the last quest, you can start with it equipped).

I might play that out sometime and see if it has any unbalancing effect.

Actually getting cards that can be used in any quest as a reward for completing a cycle is a bad idea though. But items from the encounter deck, that you get to keep for the remainder of the cycle quests (or maybe just - the next quest, or some other way) would be good.

Essentially more like how the hobbit did them (treasure cards with this symbol can be used) but with the way you get the special artificats from dwarodwelf, where you just get lucky or you don't. Instead of having complicated mechanics like the saga does, to get the treasures.