Month in review: December 2018

While the year is coming to an end, I decided to have a hibernation break during December from the blog. While this didn’t mean that no content was posted, the number of posts was limited to give me and my co-authors some time to breath and have the time to spend on the holidays. But the game hasn’t stood still during the month, so at least some content got released during December. Let’s look back and make plans for the start of the new year.

December

From FFG we finally got some more news! The fifth Adventure Pack got announced and Fire in the Night has been kicking our asses (mine at least) since it got released halfway through the month. While all this new content means that the game isn’t dead (nor is it dying), we are still left without reprints for a lot of content. This makes the game hard to access for newer players, who struggle to find packs for the game online or at their FLGS. Hopefully, 2019 will see full reprints of all products so that more people can get some more scenarios to play!

For the blog itself, there was a bit of a drought in content as we took a break from writing this month. But don’t you worry, we have a whole new cycle to kick off next month, plus a new series dedicated to new players who open up their packs for the first time!

Cycle Scenarios

As I mentioned last month, there would be no start of the Dream-chaser cycle this month. Instead, I finished up the Mount Gram article and Matt is still working on Carn Dum. This will roughly round off the year with 5 cycles completed since the end of January, a great feat in my eyes. For next month, I hope to start analyzing the scenarios from the Grey Havens Deluxe box. If that is finished before the month is done (unlikely, I have a life outside the game too, but still) then the rest of the cycle will be up for grabs. If you would like to do the writeup for one of the scenarios of this cycle, just let me know, and I’ll get you started!

Saga and Nightmare scenarios

With this month’s hibernation, no new Saga or Nightmare scenarios were released, but work has continued on them. I hope to release a new Nightmare analysis in the first week of January, and the Saga scenarios are also still being worked on. We covered a lot of the Saga scenarios this year, so hopefully, we can complete them in 2019. That will open up more manpower for the Nightmare scenarios, which will continue as well.

Trait analyses

While I took a break from the occupational traits, I decided to cover Gondor this month. This was a pretty big article as the faction is larger than most other traits. For next year, I hope to update some traits that have gotten more cards during the Ered Mithrin cycle. On top of that, the remaining few traits and mechanics are sure to be covered as well. While this series is not the focus of the blog, I do enjoy exploring them, and explaining what this trait does best. I am sure that next year a new trait or mechanic will be created, leading to new articles. But this won’t happen at the same rate as my articles, so I hope to have been all caught up by this time next year.

Staples

This month I explored the staples of shadow effect manipulation. While I put some cards in the spotlight, this doesn’t mean that those are the only cards dealing with this mechanic. I highly advise players to experiment with other cards to make for some fun gameplay. For next year, I hope to continue this series with more staples concerning different aspects of the game. I still have a shortlist of things to cover, and am open to suggestions on mechanics that you would like to see covered.

Additional Articles

Since a new adventure pack got released this month, I made another First Impressions article on it. I hope to continue these as I get my hands on new packs. I also posted an announcement about the Lure of Middle Earth event that is happening in March. If you haven’t read it and are living near to Germany, I would highly recommend going there. For the new year, I will have some more random articles thrown into the mix of standard articles. I have received some great feedback on some of the community-focused articles and will be thinking about new topics to cover on the blog. Starting next year, I will also be making a new series in collaboration with a new author, focusing more on the player card side of the game. I hope this will be appreciated as well and continued throughout the rest of the year. Also stay tuned for an article tomorrow about the year of 2018 in numbers concerning both the blog and my personal playthroughs. I have kept logs of all games I played this year, and will share that info and some conclusions in tomorrow’s article.

This month I also had a different style of poll that has been met with a lot of enthausiasm. I will go back to the traditional polls for now, but am sure to go back to some tournament style polls next year. More info on the winner of the tournament will be out in 2 days.

The new year

2018 has been a wild year for me, not only starting the blog, but also on a personal level. I feel a lot more connected with the community now and hope to continue this in 2019. For the new year, the blog will continue to catch up to recent content and will be adjusted to fit the current card pool as well. This will take some more time, but I hope to continue releasing enough content per month to keep everyone satisfied. 2019 is looking to be a great year for the community, in which we will get a new cycle, 3 big events besides the global Fellowship event, and hopefully a lot of surprises thrown in by the developers.

I hope everyone has a great new year, and has “playing more games” as their new year’s resolution, I sure do. The blog will continue to grow as the community does too. I personally feel like 2018 has been one of the best years for the community in general, and can’t wait to see what happens in 2019.

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