I know I promised not to do the monthly reviews anymore, as there wasn’t too much to talk about, aside from the 2-3 articles I released. Remember the times I would do 10 articles a month? Man, those were the days. Instead, I wanted to recap the first half of 2024, see what it brought us for the game, and what articles I’ve done these past 6 months. I will also share the projects we have in scope for the second half of the year and perhaps even beyond that.
Official content
For official content, we got the release of the two Ered Mithrin boxes, though the campaign box will likely drop soon after the release of this article. I have been looking forward to the rerelease of this cycle, as it is one of the strongest that the game has to offer, though the quests might be a bit too long for my liking. Still, the player cards included will go well with your RCO collection so far, and I think it will entertain players for a long time to come. Let’s just hope there is something new waiting for us after the Return of the King box drops (hopefully) in the next half-year.
Fan-made content
AleP has also been busy these past months, and have released their second Deluxe set, The Shire’s Reckoning. These quests take a great turn on the traditional format, and the player cards dive a little further into the whimsical aspects of the Shire. Expanding the Song, Minstrel, and Instrument traits for this is great since songs are such a big part of the books. I will be looking forward to the APs as they are released, though I myself will not be covering the AleP stuff until I have completed my own quest to have reviewed all the Nightmare quests. Luckily, we do have some new writers stepping up to help out with the reviews of the first AleP cycle, of which the first two quests have already been covered these past six months.
Quest Reviews
We currently have two writers covering scenarios with analysis articles that have not been covered yet. Mortendall has been hard at work completing the Flame of the West Saga box ahead of the Return of the King rerelease later this year. His crown jewel of The Battle of Pelennor Fields was a lengthy article, but definitely worth the read if you are going to attempt this quest. From here, he will be moving to the Mountain of Fire quests, with just 3 more quests standing in his way of a completed campaign! It would be a fantastic achievement for the blog in general to have reviewed all of those quests, and we hope to bring you more articles in the coming months about that.
Kyle Butler has stepped up as the author of AleP articles and has released two articles so far. He will be working through the Oaths of the Rohirrim cycle in progression order, but they will be far between, as he is also in charge of development on a quest in the next cycle for AleP. Hopefully, his analysis skills will result in a wonderful quest to release later on.
Nightmare Reviews
I myself have been hard at work covering Nightmare quests. I know that there isn’t a high demand for these, but they have to be finished eventually, so I might as well do my part. After completing the Nightmare Angmar Awakened cycle early in the year, I have been moving to the NM Dreamchaser cycle. Only 5 quests remain to be covered, so I will do my best to hopefully complete those towards the end of the year. Other articles and obligations do slow down my progress, though, so I won’t set a definite deadline for these articles in December. It is just nice to experience these quests in a different format and get to look at the amazing art!
Two other authors have been roused from their slumber and have promised to also get back to covering Nightmare quests. This would include the start of the entire NM Ringmaker cycle, which I skipped intentionally, as well as the start of the NM LOTR Saga set. That would leave the NM Hobbit packs (yaaaayyy….),which I guess I have to cover in order to have completed them all.
Storage articles
We have had one new storage article since the last update, and I’m glad to see more different ways to hold all your cards being shared with the community. Hopefully, people with some crazy 3D printed solutions that include custom templates and stuff will reach out one day, but it’s great to see what you can do with a limited budget.
Traits & Staples
It was recommended that I look further into the Traits now that some of the articles are over six years old. I have not gotten around to this yet, but I hope to make updated articles at some point. Moreover, we would like to cover the traits further developed by AleP (old and new) into their own articles eventually. Again, I won’t be going for those myself, but I hope to find someone interested in doing some writing on these traits.
As for Staples, I did do a second run of them last year but have been busy with other tasks to work on these articles. If anyone is interested in covering this topic, feel free to reach out.
Quest of the Week
This is a relatively new segment on the blog that has been started in collaboration with Autumn. We wanted to get the community together every week to try and beat a single quest and see how everyone liked it. With the Core Set done and Dark of Mirkwood being the current focus, we will be going to Ered Mithrin next. From there, we have not decided on what to do next, but we will keep you up to date via the various platforms and the weekly articles on the blog!
Additional articles
We have had a number of additional articles released in the last half-year, some of which were actually pretty popular. I have hopefully convinced more people to attend Lure of Middle-Earth next year with my recap article, and I hope to give another one next year! I won’t be doing an article on this year’s Con of the Rings, though, as I won’t be attending. I will be in Peru on holiday and won’t be back in time to make it to the convention (plus, cross-Atlantic plane tickets aren’t getting any cheaper).
Aside from that, I have also done my traditional birthday article for the blog, a look ahead at what might be in store for us after the completion of the repackaged Saga boxes, and we’ve had a guest author on for a comparison article between LOTR LCG and Marvel Champions. That last one was the result of my poll, where I asked for feedback on the blog and its articles. We’ve done a lot of behind-the-scenes work with the results, and hopefully, you have started to catch some of the changes we’ve made so far. More improvements will be released soon, including articles on some more different topics. The poll also helped me get in contact with many would-be authors for the blog, so if everyone could please check their spam folder for my emails, that’d be great. Thanks.
The biggest new article that was released was a complete review of all the expansions that the game has to offer. It was a rough article to get through, and probably my longest to date. But it was very well received, and I know it has helped some players with making informed decisions on what to buy. It was well worth the effort, though part of me hopes that FFG never releases another pack again, or else I have to update the list again.
For the coming 6 months, I do not have any additional articles planned. But that can all change with the right suggestions and inspiration. The poll I released in April had some great article suggestions that would be interesting to release on the blog at some point. But I would rather focus on the ongoing series before starting something new. So that might mean we get a bit more of the same in the coming months, but time will tell.
And that’s gonna be the update for now. I think I will keep these updates going every half year, as that seems to be a good balance for keeping everyone informed and having enough content to talk about. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the Ered Mithrin cycle this summer. If you get the chance, play along with the rest of the community for the Quest of the Week so that we can get the most data possible!
Vision Of The Palantir 