Maybe he or his staff could have an ability that interacts with Orc Enemies? Seems a bit cheesy but I think it's mechanically interesting.

FFG (or is it Asmodee? uncertain) seems to consistently underestimate demand for this particular game. I don't understand why.

Oh interesting, I was looking here: http://hallofbeorn.com/LotR/Scenarios/The-Uruk-hai

The asymmetry between "Guarded" and "Guarded (X)" drives me crazy.

Lugdush and Mauhur do appear in the Nightmare version of The Uruk-hai. I remember being really happy to see them when I opened the pack! It looks like Beorn doesn't have the Nightmare version of that quest catalogued yet.

I did for my blog: https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/thematic-nightmare/ What did you want to know?

You skip the whole quest phase, which includes sending characters on the quest and staging (revealing encounter cards). You still get to travel (theoretically, at least, if there were any locations in play) because that's the next phase. Bombadil's house is like the calm before the storm!

Hahaha Mount Gram *and* Carn Dum!? 🤣😂😭

Has to be Escape from Mount Gram! That's sure to be a weird one when you can't custom-build for it, right?

Yup, you've got it!

Another thing to consider is that a lot of us play primarily in solo, and cards that work best in multiplayer often get overlooked in that context. I think Dori falls into that category. When I build a solo deck, I often break it down into 3 things: 1. How will I quest successfully? 2. How will I handle enemy attacks? 3. How will I clear enemies from the board? Dori is clearly meant to help solve #2, but he can't do it by himself. Furthermore, if I'm planning to use Dori effectively, my answer for #2 is almost certainly "a hero defender other than Dori". That locks down 2 of my 3 hero choices just answering question #2, leaving me with only one hero slot remaining to answer questions #1 and #3. That doesn't mean that you can't do it, of course. Grimbeorn is pretty compelling since he answers #3 as well, leaving your final hero slot to help you answer question #1 (although you'd still have to get clever with your questing in a majority Tactics deck, but I digress). Anyway, my point is that Dori is pretty difficult to build around in a solo environment, which is likely to hamper his reputation even further. See also: Tactics Brand Son of Bain.

Agreed! Shadow and Flame can still be pretty rough if you don't cheese it. Foundations of Stone is no slouch either. And of course Road to Rivendell is much the same experience today as it was when it first came out.

@PocketWraith does progression Nightmares with the card pool at the time Nightmare pack was released: https://wardenofarnor.wordpress.com/the-line-unbroken/

I believe the player card power creep happened around Dwarrowdelf, and the enemies caught up with Heirs of Numenor. Since then the power curve has been flatter, although I have my suspicions that we may have seen another player card power creep with the latest cycle.

My general advice is that with a few exceptions, the cycles can be played in any order. In these times of limited availability, it's probably best to just buy what's in stock. Most of the time you should be just fine.