Has anyone heard how the Hide mechanic works? I'm really excited about it. Hopefully it's better than the Riddle mechanic from the Hobbit.

Staging is done in Black Riders per player so Hide X (eg. Hide 2) will only effect the player who is currently revealing the encounter card (written as "you" on the cards). When a hide card is revealed a player action window is opened and the active player can exhaust and commit any number of characters (including zero) to the hide test. X cards are discarded from the top of the encounter deck and all of the threat values of those cards are added up. If the total threat of discarded cards exceeds the total willpower of all characters committed to the hide test, then the hide test is failed. Otherwise the player has successfully remained hidden. Failing will cause all Nazgul in the staging area to immediately engage the active player (the one who failed the hide test). Other negative effects will so trigger when a player has failed a hide test (e.g. nazgul making an immediate attack, shadow cards with increased effects if the defending player failed a hide test that round, etc.).

Right now I consider Fatty to be a promising candidate for the next worst hero award. Eleanors (useless) stats and basically no ability. The art is nice for what that's worth.

Fatty is IMO intented to be the Hobbit defender. His ability sounds like an emergency action if things go awry, but it's not very important. His stats are the trick. He's the only Hobbit with 2 DEF beside Frodo. Furthermore he has 3 HP. Surely he's going to be played. Unlike Frodo you don't have to raise your threat when a 4 ATT enemy attacks you.

His ability, well, doesn't sound very cool to me. It's hard to judge how helpful it might be before playing a Hobbit deck first. I could imagine though that these decks allow you to lower your threat beyond 10 points. If all enemies have a threat of 20+, well, his ability doesn't sound that bad. However, in solo mode it still seems to be bit of a waste, but then we already have Fast Hitch to increase the Hobbit's flexibility.

When playing multiplayer his ability is ability makes more sense. One player plays a Hobbit deck, the other has a battle deck. Hobbit player can thus reduce threat in the staging area by a hight threat enemy, and the battle deck player engages that enemy later in combat phase.

leptokurt: hate to nitpick but bilbo also has 2 DEF; makes an ok defender too with on color burning brand, fast hitch, and protector of lorien (which is more manageable to use with his ability)

leptokurt: hate to nitpick but bilbo also has 2 DEF; makes an ok defender too with on color burning brand, fast hitch, and protector of lorien (which is more manageable to use with his ability)

Hey yeah, completely forgot about him. After playing that combo you mentioned multiple times. However, Fatty's the defender. if you don't use Bilbo or Sam, but a Hobbit/spirit deck.