Month in Review: June 2019

Another month has passed, and guess what, the game isn’t dead yet! (to no-one’s surprise). That means that it is time to look back at the past month with all the content that this blog has been putting out and all the news that has come out of FFG this past month. We got our final AP of the Ered Mithrin cycle, and are all looking forward to seeing what GenCon is going to bring in the following 2 months.

June

The month of June has been a good month for the game, as we got a few news articles on the next cycle. Some player cards were spoiled and the new Contract cards were spoiled, which I find really interesting. I am looking forward to the 6 others we will likely get in the cycle’s APs. For the blog, June was a month of highs and lows. While I did try to put out more content, I got stuck on really only being able to make per week. I’m afraid this will be the trend for the next 2-3 months. But afterwards, I should be back to normal schedule with regular analysis article every other week or so. But let’s discuss what has happened in the past month for the blog in this article.

Scenario analyses

As I promised last month, I continued to work on the Dream-chaser cycle and released Flight of the Stormcaller this month. The rest of the cycle will follow soon, though several other authors are also working on the articles but haven’t found a lot of time to write yet. Hopefully the summer holiday in the coming months will free up some time. There weren’t any Saga scenario analyses for the same reason. Nightmare articles have stalled for a while, as I want to focus on Normal scenarios first, and tackle the Nightmare stuff when I have the packs in my hands. This won’t change for July, where I hope to bring out even more scenario analysis articles on the Dream-chaser cycle.

Saga analyses

While it has been a while since the most recent saga scenario analysis, I am happy to announce that we are planning to complete the Hobbit Saga between now and the end of the summer. The articles will help players with the tricky scenarios from those boxes. The LOTR saga will take some more time, but you will have more than enough saga content for a while!

Traits and Staples

I have been updating the traits over the last month, though I don’t really announce those changes a lot. I will wait with the Hobbit update until after the new Deluxe box has been released, as there are some great Hobbit cards in that box. I will also be looking to making a new section for the Master card synergy, once that is being developed.

Storage Hub

I received a single article for the storage hub this month, which allows me to continue keeping everyone up to date with more ways to store your cards. I am still looking for players who are willing to share their solutions with the community, so feel free to reach out. I am especially interested in those of you that have Hobby Lobby boxes and store your cards in those. I have seen several of these solutions and would like to spotlight at least one such solution on the storage hub.

Player card Reviews

The player card review for The Hills of Emyn Muil was finished towards the end of the month. This series will continue onward at a steady pace of at least one article per month. We have received some fantastic feedback from new players that are enjoying the series, so we hope to finish this cycle of player cards soon.

There and Back Again

Each Thursday, dragoncymru is releasing his next part of the cycle-progression series. This month saw him start the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle, where we are currently half way with. Next month will see the conclusion of the cycle and the introduction to the next one, so be on the lookout for that each Thursday.

Additional Articles

In the first week of June, I released an article that I have been brooding on for a while now. The levels of LOTR LCG players was a really fun article to make. Now, I know not everyone wants to be put into a box or get a label just because they own a particular set of content, but this was the best way I could think of to classify the players in our community. There have been calls for a second version with an extra level between 5 and 6, so I will see what I can do there. I also had fun creating a list of splashable heroes for your decks. I hope this has given players some options on cards to include in their decks if they are looking for a third hero.

For July, I will have to see if any other additional articles will be posted. I am facing a busy time with my project, as I am currently doing my experiments, so not a lot of time will be left for me to write other articles, though I would be happy to take any suggestions and see what I can do with those. Since I haven’t found Fate of Wilderland in stock anywhere, I will have the First Impressions article somewhere in the future as well.

The new deckbuilding series will also be brought back with several articles in the coming months. These articles will focus on building a deck that can reliably beat specific scenarios. With the series going forward, we hope to cover a large part of the Ringmaker cycle over the next few months.

The Future

As you may have guessed from the previous segments, there are a lot of articles currently in the pipeline. Many co-authors have got a summer break from work or university, and will have more time to spend putting out articles for you all. I myself will be busy with my project during the summer, but I will keep an eye on the blog and the community. It will mean that the next 2 months won’t see as many articles from me as from other authors on the blog, but that is fine. Rest assured, I will still be doing all of the background work to keep the blog alive.

As a thank you for your support and for everyone who has made this blogging project easier on me, I am in the process of making swag. The initial prototypes have been finished and I am in talks with the supplier to get the swag by the end of August. Since I am closing the Patreon benefit at the end of August, I will order the swag afterwards, as I will have a good indication on how much I will actually need. If you are not yet supporting the blog via Patreon, you have 2 more months to do so if you want to. You can check out the reward tiers here. We are very close to another goal, meaning that I will be publishing the second downloadable file with cycles 3 and 4 as soon as we reach it. Thaurdir is working on upgrading the file as well as the first one, making it more appealing to read than my standard Word-file.

Thank you all for your support, and I hope you have a wonderful summer. I’ll be back for July’s month review this time next month and hope to release a bunch of new articles in the meantime!

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