COTR Brandon prioritizing a terrible action movie before life stuff that is way more important? What else is new?

I mostly agree with John Constantine here. First, I think that the current hero Gandalf we already have is supposed to represent Gandalf in general, both grey and white (the reason he appears grey in the artwork is because I think the most iconic representation of him is as the grey, plus he lived most of his life as that and only the last few years as the white, plus even when he was the white he would wear the grey cloak over the white garments). His ability, moreover, I think is a perfect representation of Gandalf, again, in general. Second, if they were to make a new version specifically representing Gandalf the White, he would still be named Gandalf to avoid uniqueness trouble. So, in the end, you would end up with just another version of Gandalf much like we previously had Leadership Aragorn and then Lore Aragorn. Personally, I would much prefer if the designers made hero versions of Radagast, Saruman and (if license permits, which I think it should now), Alatar and Pallando before a new version of Gandalf, which is already really good.

In that case, would it be worth it to run Miruvor, @Seastan? If played on Beravor each round you essentially are paying 1 resource for 2 cards each round (and you get to use her stats), although you are drawing Miruvor the net round. The Dúnedain Pipe would work well in that deck to get rid of uniques and keep your hand fresh.

Elven-light feels like the new card drawing Steward Is there any good version of your (or just a) Dale deck that can pull its weight without Elven-light, Seastan?

As much as I love this piece of news, prebuilt decks and new heroes, this seems like a kinda bloated and confused product. Not to mention incredibly expensive. People from outside the US, forget about this!

Yeah, I was sort of coming to a similar conlcusion. Didn't even occur to me to recur Mathom with Dwarven Tomb... Maybe even a couple Hammersmiths would be also worth it in that case. Thanks for that tip! In any case, I am now considering running Thurindir instead, which would be the first time I seriously consider him in solo. I'll have to see who fares better in general.

I was considering building a Dale deck with Haldan as the Lore hero. Thematically he's awesome for that (the Northmen deck) but I'm wondering whether he's really compatible with Dale. If you want to take advantage of Haldan you run, say, 9 location attachments (3 of those obviously being Mathom for insane draw), and if you want to take advantage of the Dale mechanic you run at least 20 character attachments, which in the same deck would be an insane amount of attachments. Now is it necessary to run the 9 location attachments? I'd LOVE to make these 3 heroes work together but I'm wondering how solo viable this would be. Any input on this, @Seastan?

Elven Jeweler has nothing to do with cancellation AFAIK. Also Map of Earendil doesn't exist.

People, we have no strong reason to think that this is the last cycle. Could be, for all I know, but none of the arguments posed here actually support that. A proper Rhovanion cycle with drakes, dragon-hoards and woodmen was long due to appear and should've appeared years ago. No reason to think this is the last cycle yet.

No new info? We got confirmation that there will be a Fire-drake in this box. As someone who was really disappointed last cycle with the lack of creativity in regards to the locale, knowing that this box will in fact include a drake and not just push the encounter for the last pack is huge to me. This piece of news made me consider that this may be my favorite deluxe yet, themewise at least.

I actually don't think all Wizards should work with the top card of your deck, I'd even say that's something only Gandalf should do. My personal vision of Istari heroes is that they should be neutral, and each should have their own gimmick NOT to play with the top card, but to gain recource icons in order to play stuff. Gandalf gains the icon of the top card of your deck, but Radagast could do that for your discard pile (though in my custom version I could never make that work), or maybe Saruman can play 1 sphered card per phase, but that card gains Doomed, something like that. Though I could understand if they didn't do this if they wanted Wizard Pipe to work with all Istari, but that's really unnecessary IMO.

And I was just looking for Vilya deck inspiration. Glad to see a new top (toppest) tier lineup from Seastan.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/5/4/the-wizards-quest/ I hope you guys are excited! As for me, I'll be my usual negative self and say I'm pretty meh to be honest. The mechanical aspect with the customization seems amazing, and the quest will probably fun and balanced. The theme of it though... I wonder if new players that just bought the core, are amped for WoR and saw this announcement will say "****, the game designers are really obsessed with Mirkwood". TBH I feel Caleb has been kind of redundant with the themes of his quests recently, I mean we were in Harad last cycle and he still made a spider quest! And now this... At least if these stages are an indication we might get Radagast hero, I'm all for it. So what are your presumably more positive thoughts on this?

At this point I don't even care half as much as I did before what our possible Saruman and Radagast heroes would do... I just want Caleb to get on with it and make them. After pretty much 2 cycles mostly comprising some very tertiary characters or FFG created characters, it's long due for us to get some powerful Istari for a change...

I hate it when people use wit to defend FFG.