Month in Review: May 2022

Again, this has not been the most exciting month on the blog, as I have been busy starting my new job and still recovering from the personal changes that came in last month. Mentally, I have not yet recovered, though work has been a good distraction. It has taken up a lot of time that otherwise would be given to the blog, though, seeing how productivity here has not been the greatest. It’s just difficult to pump out these articles if you’re working 40 hours a week and sitting behind a computer for most of those hours. Still, I have not been idle, and some articles were released this month. On top of that, we have gotten some new updates from AleP, and plans are forming for convention season, which is starting soon.

May 2022

No news out of FFG, though I am expecting another article on the repacked Angmar Awakened boxes to keep the hype going on those. Maybe it will spoil some of the new Boons and Burden cards, but not much else. We did get another big restock by GameZenter of Nightmare packs and POD products, though by the time you are reading this, I expect them to be sold out. Let’s hope these reprints continue to keep coming to supply the community with those hard to get items. AleP released a new announcement article for their next AP. The player cards will focus on Beornings and Woodmen, which is something I am very much looking forward to. More location control stuff would be great to introduce into a deck, and it might finally force me to start playing more AleP stuff.

Scenario analyses

We got a brand new Saga article released this month. We are now officially over the halfway point for the LOTR Saga now that Mortendall has given us the Passage of the Marshes. He will continue his quest to complete the rest of the Saga in the months to come, but as you can tell by the length of these articles, they might take a while. But I hope that you learn something new from these reviews and that they help you with taking on a campaign! I will also look into revisiting the Shadows of Mirkwood scenarios next month, with Conflict at the Carrock being the next quest in my crosshairs. I promised to rerelease the entire cycle by the end of the year, so I have some catching up to do.

Nightmare analyses

The reason why the SoM reviews have been missing this past month is that I was busy reviewing the Nightmare Against the Shadow scenarios. I released the Nightmare Steward’s Fear article this month, which took a while thanks to the new mechanics introduced and the increased difficulty that the quest poses to casual players. The next quest, The Druadan Forest, is already in the making and will take some time to explain as well. There are a lot of new features in that quest, so I need to take my time with it. The rest of the cycle will follow soon after, with one of my co-authors joining me in our efforts to clear the cycle before the end of the year. He will even continue our efforts to have an article for each NM quest, covering all of the Ringmaker NM scenarios. That allows me some free time to focus on other projects, which will be good.

Additional articles

There were no additional articles this month because I was a bit too busy and was lacking inspiration. If you have a topic that you would like me to cover, make sure to let me know. I will try and focus on updating some older articles in the meantime, which is really needed for some of them now that the Revised versions of the game have been released.

The Future

As I said, the future of the blog will see fewer articles as I will once again be busy with work. This new job is great, but it does not allow me to work on my articles during work hours, and my evenings are usually reserved for relaxing and taking my eyes off the screens. That leaves weekends and some spare days off, which is not as much time as I would like to put into the blog. I am trying to make an effort here, but I just have to strike a good balance with this.

Still, I have returned as an active member of the community. I recorded a podcast episode with members of Cardboard of the Rings on Pokemon. This is pretty unrelated to the game, but it was nice hanging out with people again and talking about hobbies. I have also returned to the game as a player by offering to play some more games on DragnCards with people on Discord. I hope that I will be able to achieve my goal of playing more individual scenarios this year than in 2021.

Where conventions are concerned, I have put in my request for leave off work so that I can attend Con of the Rings. While the team has made no official announcements, I know the dates for the event and am planning a trip to the US to attend the convention. I would also like to hold a digital event again this summer, where the online community joins together to beat every quest in the game over the course of a weekend. We have done it before, but let’s see if we can do it again, this time including fan-made projects. I will speak with fellow admins on the LCG-Con server to see if we can host it somewhere in July. More details will follow.

~Aa’menealla nauva calen ar-malta~

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3 thoughts on “Month in Review: May 2022”

I think it would be nice to have a revised buyers guide, specifically for new players / based around the new release model & now that the game is “complete”.

Basically if you are getting into the game now which out of the old products might be worth hunting down (accounting for player card’s already reprinted in the Starter Decks, is “Shadows of Mirkwood” a good purchase for new players? Are there remaining player card’s you might want? And are the quests worth the price if all of the best player cards are now duplicated in the new Starter decks? – What about the Hobbit Saga? Is it a good purchase given the contents of the Dwarf Starter deck, or are the quests + Thorin + Beorn + Bard too little to justify their cost?).

Also now we know the quests and player cards will be available separately looking forward to speculated re-releases based on the Starter deck contents (where several Cycles & the Lord of the Rings Saga have no cross over whatsoever with the Starter decks) is it possible to highlight “must have” quest boxes that should be purchased – or to detail what deck building options are opened up by specific player card set’s (starting with Angmar – what does it add for those who own each of the Starter decks & what new deck archetypes are added to the card pool – and what element of cards will be of limited use without further purchases & what might those purchases be?) .

It sounds a lot but most of the ground work is already set out across different articles / sections of this site already – really needs pulling together so it makes more sense for new people jumping into the game now.

The current buyer guides around for this game currently all focus on the old release model – where generally either the player cards or the quests of each Deluxe Box or Cycle Pack are used to justify a purchase – but now new players will instead be looking less towards judging the worth of individual packs and more towards a particular set of player cards or quest cycle – and these new products should be judged on their own terms.

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durinsfather says:

1 June 2022 at 08:51

You are correct in that the buying guide is a bit outdated seeing how we have a new format now, as well as some new expansions that are definitely worth picking up for new players. I could bundle a lot of suggestions and buying advice together in one article, though it might take some time to complete. Still, considering that my old buying guide is so popular, new players will deserve some updated info. I could even include a guide to which specific packs you could buy next after each of the starter decks in order to boost the decks a little more. Great suggestion, I’ll see if I can whip something up during the coming weekend.

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