If you have the Foundations of Stone pack, you'll find that Imladris Stargazer is more efficient than Gandalf's Search as a Zigil Miner combo card, if you're only interested in the resources rather than the card draw. And if you want the card draw, Foundations of Stone also includes Daeron's Runes, which is a better card draw option than Gandalf's Search as well. If you don't have Foundations of Stone, I think you'll want it for your dwarf deck, and you'll probably ditch Gandalf's Search once you're finally able to get a copy of Foundations of Stone.

If you look at the online rules reference for LotR and the online rules reference for other FFG LCGs such as L5R, you'll find a lot of rules in common, because FFG seems to be starting from a basic set of rule ideas and tweaking it to fit each game. E.g., compare the "Modifiers" entry in the LotR rules reference and the L5R rules reference, and you'll find that both games have almost the same Modifiers rules, and they also have practically the same rules for Cancel effects, for the word "Cannot", for the concepts of "Play" vs "Put into play", and much more. And the places where the rules vary, it tends to be in ways that make sense for that game (e.g., in L5R each player has two decks, the Conflict and Dynasty decks, so the play/put into play rules mention that fact, whereas that language is omitted in the LotR rules reference where there's one deck per player). That's why I wanted to verify whether LotR's omission of the "Set to X is not prevented by "cannot be increased/decreased" effects" language present in L5R was deliberate, because there's a decent chance that it wasn't, and in the absence of a ruling it would make sense to resolve an ambiguity the same way other FFG LCGs resolve the same ambiguity. Now that I know there's a ruling, my question has been answered; thanks for that. Edit: And the reason I figured LotR's omission of that language present in L5R might not be deliberate is because LotR was FFG's first LCG, and the early years (I picked it up when it was first released) had a LOT of rules changes. In particular, the Modifiers rules went through a couple of iterations before landing in their final state, with some back-and-forth about whether lasting modifiers would be recalculated or not, for example. And so when I saw that the LotR online rules reference dated from 2018, and the L5R rules reference dated from 2020, I figured there might have been another FFG decision about how to treat modifiers in the past two years, which they just forgot to retrofit into their first LCG. Now I know it was a deliberate decision, not an omission.

That makes sense, even though it contradicts the rules of L5R. But then, L5R is a competitive game, where the "cannot be reduced" effect is probably coming from the other player's deck and shouldn't necessarily be favored over the "set" effect. Whereas here, the "cannot be reduced" text is almost certainly coming from the encounter deck, or is a penalty on powerful cards like Saruman and bypassing that penalty would make them OP. So it makes sense here to have a different ruling in LotR than the ruling in L5R.

I play the errata as-is for the most part, but there are a couple of house rules I use to reverse rulings that were, IMHO, mistaken and/or to fix cards where the card text failed to capture the card's obvious intent. One such card is Hands Upon the Bow. It requires a character with ranged, and is very similar to the effect of Great Yew Bow. But where Great Yew Bow expliticly states that the attack it enables is a ranged attack, Hands Upon the Bow does not, and Caleb has ruled that based on the card text, Hands Upon the Bow does not count as a ranged attack. So it won't trigger Bard the Bowman's effect, or the effect of Rivendell Bow. I find that to be an odd decision on Caleb's part, when clearly the right decision would have been to errata Hands Upon the Bow to say "This attack counts as a ranged attack". I also don't like that the original printed rules contain the sentence "Any player can take actions generally, or between the game steps stated in the rules" for steps listed in green, but the more detailed action sequence printed in the online rules reference does not contain those action windows that the original printed rules granted. Yet no errata ever mentions this fact, so it's unclear whether this was intentional. This came up in the "Westfold Outrider in Solo" topic (linked below), where someone asked whether Westfold Outrider could be discarded between the enemy attacks step of the Combat phase and the player attacks step. Going by the online rules reference, the answer would seem to be no, because they stealth-erratad the action window that used to exist between those two steps. But that leads to an unintuitive conclusion, where you can use Westfold Outrider to lure enemies into an ambush if you have an enemy already engaged with you (because then you have an action window while you're resolving your attack against the first enemy), but you can't do so if you have nobody already engaged with you (because the Player Attack Resolution sequence is the only place action windows are found in the online rules reference, and that doesn't open for you until after you have declared at least one attack, which means you must have an eligible attacker & enemy to declare against). This is counterintuitive and weird, so I house rule that there are action windows in between the game steps stated in the online rules reference, just as the original printed rules stated. This smooths out a lot of card interactions and makes them make sense. Oh and I also follow the Setup phase house rules that other people have mentioned. They basically boil down to "Just do what actually makes sense when the card's intent is clear, rather than following RAW when that would lead to a result that makes no sense." E.g., when using Messenger of the King, you can put your ally-turned-hero into play before drawing your initial hand of 6 cards. (RAW says draw first, then follow setup rules). Otherwise it might happen that you draw your intended ally in your first six cards, he/she is unavailable for the contract's purposes, and the entire design of your deck (especially resource balance between your spheres) is broken. That's no fun, and is not the way the contract was intended to work. So I agree with the house rules that other people mentioned, where you follow the way the Setup phase clearly should work instead of the confusing and unintuitive mess that we have now with current rulings.

I haven't seen anyone yet discussing the fact that after you flip over the contract, you're now at 40 threat level (probably) and thus in Valour mode. I feel like this might be getting overlooked. Set up a bunch of Valour allies like Veteran of Osgiliath, Angbor the Fearless, Honour Guard, and Defender of Cair Andros. Then when you know you're going to flip to side B this turn, make sure you have 2 Leadership resources ready. Go all-in on questing, and when you flip to side B, pull and play Need Drives Them at a 3-cost reduction, making it free. Now your entire board is ready to attack or defend. Play Rallying Cry at the start of the Combat phase, and now every time Honour Guard exhausts and discards to cancel 5 points of damage, you get him in your hand. Plus any Defenders of Cair Andros that die despite their 4 defense are still available to bring back as well, albeit expensively. You'd be able to soak a massive amount of damage and still have plenty of attack power left to, most likely, clear the board of enemies. Also, would Pillars of the Kings ("set your threat to 40") count as "reducing" your threat under the terms of the contract, or not? I can't seem to find any rulings on whether "set a value to X" counts as increasing or reducing that value for the sake of effects that trigger on increases or reductions, or effects that forbid increases or reductions. If Pillars of the Kings is still playable under this contract, it could give you up to extra ten turns in Valour mode on top of the up-to-ten Valour turns you already got from side B of the contract. (Of course, Doomed effects would make that fewer than ten turns...) And even if Pillars of the Kings is forbidden by this contract, a Leadership-Tactics Valour deck could produce some pretty incredible contract-flip turns. Edit: I don't see any rules about "set" interacting with "cannot be reduced" in the LotR LCG. But the online rules reference for Legend of the Five Rings, whose "modifiers" entry includes a lot of rules identical to the "modifiers" entry in LotR LCG's online rules reference, also includes the following: "If a value “cannot be increased/decreased, [...] “Set” modifiers are not ignored, as they do not directly increase/decrease the value." Assuming the ruling for LotR would be the same as FFG's other LCGs, that means that Pillars of the Kings can be used during this contract's side B to give you a second set of up to ten Valour turns.