Cardboard of the Rings has posted the first photos!

thanks karlson! looks very interesting!

I'm really digging the Lord of the Dead's artwork. It's too bad he has to die!

the stone of erech wins it for me....so atmospheric and creepy...on an unrelated note i cannot wait to see minas morgul, i hope its as good as my imagination

Man that king is crazy bad and to make it even badder the stone location forces you to exhaust your characters. Very interesting quest though with the dusk and midnight things.

Shouldn't Derufin be ranged ? If i recall well he was an archer

I wonder what's the story on this one gonna be. Is this the actual summoning of the dead by Aragorn (since he was the only one who could do it) or something else?

Imposing cards. AMAZING artwork. Just too much awesome in one picture!

I echo Rich's thoughts on the Stone... very creepy and atmospheric. And I LOVE the style of artwork for the Lord.... we need a LOT more of that in the game!

I wonder what this "dusk" and "midnight" business is all about, too...

Very exciting, almost as much as The Massing at Osgiliath excited me!

Lord of the dead seems like nemesis for Outlanders

The Stone of Erech will be Boromir's bane. I'll need to get that thing off the table fast.

They also have the Spectral keyword... Hmm. This is the first quest with undead we've seen so far (other than that one in Escape from Dol Goldur). Hope it's good!

so many spoiler, waaaaah

Sorry if someone has said it already but Beorn or Glorfindel (to much lesser extent) profit from the Lord of the Dead, the former quite significantly.

The art for the Stone is among the best, very atmospheric.

Beorn becomes playable! When you're engaged with king of dead he isn't immune to player card effects!

he always was

Hey now, Beorn is *always* playable!

That said, Beorn is not a good choice for Stone of Erech. While his text is blanked he will exhaust to defend. Once you exhaust him to attack or defend, he will not ready as long as the Stone is the active location. I guess you could play Celebrian's Stone on him. That that would be pretty funny, but it would fall off once you explored the Stone. That seems like an awful lot of work when you could just use other, more efficient solutions (Merry, Brand, Bard the Bowman, Gimli).

In any case, this is a really fun scenario that requires a particular kind of deck. It calls for multiple characters with high willpower AND attack so, yet again, Spirit Glorfindel is amazing. The only players that I heard beat it (on the first play through) were running an Outlands deck and a Dwarf deck (w/ Dain). It was fun going into it blind, but my Elladan + Elrohir + Legolas deck was definitely not optimal for this quest. After playing it, and watching others play it, there is absolutely a range of decks that can be successful. I actually think that Theoden, once he is released, will work really well in a mono-Tactics deck designed for this scenario.

wow wow. What quest would you compare it to in difficulty?

Yes can you give us more details about?

Thanks

In any case, this is a really fun scenario that requires a particular kind of deck. It calls for multiple characters with high willpower AND attack so, yet again, Spirit Glorfindel is amazing.

This comes as no surprise. He doesn't really become bad unless you have a card that makes the lowest threat hero in the game attack you.

I can give a few thoughts. Difficulty-wise, it's definitely beatable, but not easy by any means. I think it'll be interesting both for the crowds that crave a challenge and those who enjoy thematic experiences, as it has both. Spectral requires you to use willpower to fight a la Druadan Forest. As the time of day changes, encounter card effects get worse. The story involves you searching for the Lord of Lamedon's son, Derufin, who hasn't been seen for days. Ultimately, you find him at the Stone of Erech, meddling with forces he shouldn't, and riling up those undead!

A few more details here:

http://talesfromthecards.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/first-two-days-of-gen-con/

EDIT: Ah, I see that Ian has already commented - definitely check out his blog for more details. I hope to document my own solo play through (with a more appropriate deck) in the near future.

I am not overly fond of the difficulty system, as I think that it is trying to distill too many factors into a single number. Also, I have only played it multiplayer so far, so I'm not sure how different it would be solo. I have found that many of the newer quest have far different difficulty solo vs. multiplayer (e.g. Druadan Forest), and this quest is likely to be the same. It is definitely hard, especially if your heroes are dependent on their text boxes as Elladan, Elrohir and Legolas are. Cards like Glorfindel, Mirlonde and Denethor, on the other hand (the other deck that I played on this scenario) work much better, as they not only have good willpower AND attack (defense in Denethor's case), but blanking their text boxes does not substantially reduce their effectiveness.

One of the best things about this scenario is that it gets harder the longer it goes on, unlike most quests. It starts in Eventide, progresses to Dusk and eventually Midnight. If you let it get to midnight you have very little chance of surviving as there are shadow effects which gives attacking enemies +4 and enemies that get huge boosts to their attack/defense along with locations that have more threat in the staging area. It is definitely not an easy scenario, and it punishes you if you cannot complete it quickly. It is also really thematic, and some of the art is amazing, so I would say of the three GenCon PODs, it will probably end up being my favorite so far. When I have more time, I will post a play-through article with more detail on my blog.

I had a chance to play this at CBOTR listener event at Gen Con. The evening / dusk / midnight are basically timer cards that get 1 token per turn, at 4 tokens they progress to the next. Some cards become more difficult each as the time cards progress. Spectral trait means you use Will Power as Attack. I wasn't able to get a copy as I arrived Friday... Willpower is vital.