Month in review: January 2019

Guess I will start by wishing everyone a happy new year. Here’s hoping that 2019 will be another great year for the community. For the first month, the blog has certainly been busy, so it looks like this year will turn out great. A lot of things happened this month on the blog itself, from a birthday party to the introduction of a brand new series. So let’s dive straight in with the review of this month.

January

This month marked the first full year of the blog being a part of this community so I couldn’t resist making a post thanking everyone involved with this process. With no intention of slowing down, the blog will hopefully continue to grow and to catch up on recent content. We are closing in as we speak, so the new year will hopefully see us catch up.

Out of FFG we got some big news, introducing a brand new LOTR game with similar artwork to the LCG, but with minis and an app. I am looking forward to the responses of the community to this game, but I didn’t pre-order it myself. Not only did my wallet not let me, but the shipping costs to Europe were too high to justify the pre-order in my eyes. I will continue to follow the development of the game and see if it is something I would enjoy. Besides that, some spoilers for reprints were hinted at, so I hope new players will soon have access to more of the older content and don’t have to pay insane prices for it. We didn’t get official releases this month, though some people in Europe did get their hands on Ghost of Framsburg early. I didn’t, so I will sit here and wait. This will likely mean that I get the pack next month, so a new First Impressions article is likely on its way!

Cycle Scenarios

We began the sixth cycle this month with the Dream-chaser. The fifth cycle got concluded with The Battle of Carn Dum and I managed to kick this new cycle off with the Voyage Across Belegaer scenario. I also made a general article about the mechanics in the Sailing quests, which will be referred to in the future. I am currently busy with the second scenario of the Deluxe box and hope to continue with this cycle in February.

Nightmare scenarios

Slowly but surely, the first cycle is getting completed in Nightmare form as well. I have finished The Hills of Emyn Muil this month and will continue with Journey Along the Anduin next month. From there, I think I will go on with different scenarios that I already own instead of continuing with the first cycle. I don’t own those packs yet and feel like I should at least have the cards in front of me when reviewing them. I will look into buying more NM packs in the future, but they are difficult to get a hold of here in Europe.

Player card reviews

Yes, you heard right, we have a new segment on the blog where a new author takes a critical look at all the player cards from the perspective of a progression player. Right now, we are going through the Core Set, which will be continued through the next month. After that, the APs are up and we will continue to progress to the current content at a slow but steady pace.

Traits

The Harad trait was one of the traits I hadn’t covered yet and which is big enough to build a deck around. This was one of just a few traits that is left, so I have the idea to make February a trait focused month. This will allow me to finish the segment, requiring only that I keep them updated with the expanding card pool. Since we now also know the majority of the cards in the Ered Mithrin cycle, I will start to update the articles on traits that got a boost during that cycle. I am not sure if I will manage to complete them all, but at the end of next month, you will hopefully see that the trait page is nearly completed. This will go at the cost of me spending time on other articles, but they aren’t going anywhere, so they will come afterwards.

Staples

In terms of staples, nothing has been done this month after the shadow card interaction article from the end of December. I plan on dedicating an entire month on these articles like I will with the traits. However, this will probably have to wait a little while. This allows me to integrate any new cards into the article when they are released. If you have a preference on what group of staples you’d like to see next, just let me know!

Additional Articles

The month has had plenty of additional articles, ranging from a celebratory article for the blog’s first birthday to an article detailing the ships and sailing mechanics of the Dream-chaser cycle. I have asked you on the forums already what topic you’d like to see discussed on the blog in the next months, but besides that, I plan to do a new poll for the community to receive feedback on the blog and make some long term plans.

The Future

January has been a very busy month for me thanks to the wrapping up of my minor project and a couple of exams I had to take at the end of the month. But now that that is over, I have 3 months of “free time” until I start my graduation. Of course, I will have to do some things related to my study during that period, but I will have plenty of time to spend on the blog. I have some big plans that I want to see if I can make into a reality. This not only involves another poll for you guys, but also some Patreon exclusive content that is downloadable for offline access. I am also busy looking into options for this year’s loot and have come across some sweet options. Polls and community feedback will matter in my decision, so if you want a piece of that loot and want to support the blog, then this is the perfect time to join the Patreon group.

Besides that, I will be continuing the standard scenarios of the Dream-chaser cycle. There are still a lot of great scenarios to cover, but I also want to do something else in the meantime. This involves the fact that I would like to have covered all the traits in the game at this moment, so during February, the traits/mechanics page will become my focus. Not only will I start to update the existing articles with the cards released during the Ered Mithrin cycle, but I will also try to finish the ones I have not yet covered at this point. Hopefully, by this time next month, you all should have access to a full catalogue of Trait analyses!

Other than that, I expect a new AP to drop, and maybe we will get some more news from FFG. This can fuel more articles in the future so there will be plenty of content heading your way! Thanks for sticking with the blog, and I hope to see you all again soon.

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