Month in Review: November 2018

The days grow shorter, the nights deepen, giving more time for some tabletop gaming for me and some more blog work as well! November has been a particularly weird month for me personally, but you are not here to read about my life, you are here for articles and announcements! Let’s review this past month, and look ahead to what is to come until the end of the year!

November

While it has been a full month again, there hasn’t been any news out of FFG spoiling new packs (regular or Nightmare). There was a great recap of the Con of the Rings event by Caleb, but besides some Digital game news, nothing for the physical game. I have noticed that packs have been delayed a lot this year, which is actually good news for the blog. It allows us to catch up on the current scenarios a lot faster, finishing cycles every 2-3 months. I am sure that more news will be released next month, and hopefully, new spoilers and packs will be released!

Cycle Scenarios

This month has been busy with the cycle scenarios for the Angmar Awakened cycle. I really like most of the scenarios in the cycle, as they are unique and play very differently. We have completed 3 this month, which is more than usual. On top of this, work has begun on the final scenario analysis on Carn Dûm and Mount Gram. Mount Gram will be out within a few days, but Carn Dum will take longer. For reasons that should be obvious, this one will take some extra time before every nook and cranny of this quest has been dealt with. Upon release, the Angmar Awakened cycle will be completed in Normal mode, and I will be taking offers from the community to handle the 9 scenarios from the Dream-chaser cycle. Again, there are some really fun scenarios in there, so claim them as soon as possible. I will postpone the release of the first Dream-chaser till January, giving everyone a break from the blog to be with family. Any scenario analyses will be held in the backlog and will be rolled out at the start of the new year.

Saga Scenarios

Exciting news from the Saga department of the blog: The Hobbit saga analyses have returned. We are glad to have the original author back from the first article, and he has been doing more analyses on the first Hobbit box. At the same time, a new author has stepped forward and will be focusing on the Fog on the Barrow Downs scenario. These generally take some time to complete but will help everyone in completing their full 22 part campaign once it has been finished. More Saga stuff is on the way, so be on the lookout for that!

Nightmare Scenarios

I have picked up some Nightmare packs a while back, but have been focussing on Normal scenarios for this month in order to complete the cycle. For December, you can expect at the very least 1 Nightmare scenario analysis on an early quest in the life of the game. Given more time, I might do another one of them, but that depends on how much I like to get my butt kicked against these scenarios. They are fun but so difficult to a gamer like me. It will take some time to get a full analysis of the quests, but I enjoy doing it.

Trait Analyses

I have made one trait analysis over the last month, and have made adjustments to many others in my spare time as well. The big shiny traits are nearly all complete (or are receiving new cards during this cycle), so I get to focus on just the small occupational traits for now. Or so I thought while looking through the list. I noticed that Gondor is still missing, so I might give that one a shot, should be fun.

Staples

No staples this month, but more will be coming next month while scenario analyses are on a lower burner. I am looking for some inspiration to do them, but I might pick up Direct Damage next month. It is a mechanic that I like, and there are certainly good cards for that mechanic.

Additional Articles

This month featured 2 articles that don’t fall under the regular sections as described above. I had the pleasure of receiving your questions for the blog’s second Q&A session, which was a lot of fun to do. If you have questions for next time, feel free to post them now, and I’ll write them down for whenever I am doing the next Q&A. Besides that piece of community interaction, I had one of my co-authors start the analysis of the two quests from the Two-Player Limited Edition Starter set. The Oath has already been covered, and you can look forward to seeing Caves of Nibin-Dum in the near future. I have made a new tab for Additional Quests on the site where you will be able to find quests that are not part of the regular cycles or the sagas. This includes the POD scenarios, though no plans are yet in place to write on any of them. If you are interested, we’d love to have them written about, though it will be quite the challenge. For next month, maybe new articles will be made on newly released content (or so I hope). I might also do a yearly review, covering everything the blog and the community has accomplished in the past year. While content has been slow this year, the community has been more active than ever, so there is a lot to say about that.

I will also have some updates throughout the month on the new tournament poll where I will pit all quests that have been released so far against each other. I hope this will entertain a lot of you, and hopefully see some surprising quests going forward. To vote on what quest you like the most, check this link: https://challonge.com/FaveLOTRQuest2018

The Future

With only one month remaining until the end of the year, the blog will have some downtime for the next month. This will mean that the Dream-chaser cycle will be pushed towards the start of January 2019 (seems far, but it is closer than you think). This gives me and my co-authors some time to spend on the holidays and to finish the Angmar Awakened cycle as well. This also allows me to throttle down a little and pad out the blog with some more smaller articles. I might do a couple of Nightmare analyses, but no other scenario analyses are planned by me for the rest of December. I might start the Dream-chaser cycle to have a backlog of articles lined up for January, but that will depend on how much time I have next month. Rest assured that the blog won’t be going anywhere, but we are just going into hibernation for a month, giving just some small articles so that we can spew out content at the start of the next year. The tournament for the favourite quest will also be a great experiment to see what quest comes on top. If you haven’t voted for the first stage yet, check out this link: https://challonge.com/FaveLOTRQuest2018. I hope this will keep you guys occupied for a while, and we may do more of these in the future. On top of this all, I am currently in talks about making a new segment on the blog, which will be appreciated a lot (I hope) for new players who first crack open their Core Sets. More info on this will follow, depending on how fast we can start production of the articles. Keep an eye out for some changes on the blog when the time comes.

If FFG releases Fire in the Night during December (which is likely), I will do a First Impressions article on it as well. For other additional articles, I might do a recap of the year, and will have the basic monthly poll running as well. Hope you guys have a great festive December, wherever you are.

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