Fantasy Flight Games

Time to Escape

Published 30 July 2015 | The Lord of the Rings LCG

Time to Escape

Escape from Mount Gram Is Now Available for The Lord of the Rings

"Goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. […] Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tons, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light."
–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Escape from Mount Gram, the second Adventure Pack in the Angmar Awakened cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, is now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore!

If the early responses to the Adventure Pack's announcement and preview were any indication, the scenario in Escape from Mount Gram is poised to become an instant classic. This is due largely to the way it forces you to think differently about your deck. At the beginning of the scenario, your heroes are held captive in a Goblin cell, deep in the darkness beneath Mount Gram. Your allies, Items, Artifacts, and Mounts are all taken away from you, "captured" and set aside during setup. Even your fellowship has been broken; you start with just one hero in play, and the others go to your captured deck. Alone and unarmed, your one solitary hero must find some way to free the rest of your fellowship, reclaim your gear, and make an escape!

In his preview, "Prison Food," developer Matthew Newman addressed some of the different ways that Escape from Mount Gram forces you to think differently about the game. When you start with just one hero, each phase of the game feels brand new. Each enemy feels more menacing. After all, the game was designed so that you could start with three heroes to balance against the three main tasks before you: questing, defending, and attacking. Fortunately, as Matt mentioned, you start with a glimmer of hope. Not only does one of your heroes manage to slip out from his cell, but Stage 1A reduces your starting threat to the threat cost of your sole starting hero.

This means you can buy yourself some time before you need to face an enemy like the Cruel Torturer (Escape from Mount Gram, 43). It also means that you'll find new use for all the game's Secrecy cards. A fan-favorite mechanic that originated in the Dwarrowdelf cycle of Adventure Packs, Secrecy allows you to play powerful cards at significant discounts so long as you keep your threat at twenty or below. Now, as you start with just one hero, the pack has arrived, and your prison door has cracked open, it might just be time to make your escape swiftly and Secretly!

Swift and Secret

Along with its new scenario, Escape from Mount Gram introduces a new hero and twenty-seven new player cards (three copies each of nine different player cards), several of which allow you to manipulate the victory display to your advantage. These permit the exploration of an all-new sort of strategy within The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and it's one that plays very well into the strengths of the Adventure Pack's new hero, Rossiel (Escape from Mount Gram, 28).

This clever Silvan Lore hero arrives with a fairly modest set of attributes to befit her low threat cost. However, Rossiel is extremely quick to master the challenges she encounters, and she gains two extra Willpower whenever the active location shares a Trait with a location in the victory display. Likewise, she gains two points of Defense Strength whenever she defends against an enemy that shares a Trait with one in the victory display. You may not always benefit from her abilities, but when you do, Rossiel becomes one of the most capable heroes in the game, with an effective Willpower of four, Attack Strength of one, and Defense Strength of four – all for just eight threat cost.

Naturally, Rossiel will want to take advantage of the event Leave No Trace (Escape from Mount Gram, 35) to force locations into the victory display. Later on, she'll also hope to make good use of None Return (Across the Ettenmoors, 62) to force enemies with the appropriate Traits into the victory display, as well. Still, even before you can get your hands on None Return, you can explore the new tactics afforded by Rossiel and her victory display manipulations with such cards as Scout Ahead (The Wastes of Eriador, 9) and Out of the Wild (Road to Rivendell, 36).

There's no better place to start experimenting with Rossiel and her unique tactics than within the dungeons of Mount Gram. Here, she is guaranteed a couple turns to take advantage of Secrecy, and your ability to manipulate the encounter deck and victory display can help her free the rest of your fellowship… a matter that becomes especially important once you've made your way to the third quest stage and Jailor Gornákh (Escape from Mount Gram, 41) sounds the alarms!

Deck Created with CardGameDB.com The Lord of the Rings Deckbuilder
Total Cards: (49)

Hero: (3)
1x Rossiel (Escape from Mount Gram)
1x Pippin (The Black Riders)
1x Merry (The Wastes of Eriador)

Ally: (12)
1x Bilbo Baggins (The Road Darkens)
1x Bofur (The Redhorn Gate)
1x Elrond (The Road Darkens)
3x Gandalf (Core Set)
1x Gildor Inglorion (The Hills of Emyn Muil)
1x Gléowine (Core Set)
1x Haldir of Lórien (A Journey to Rhosgobel)
1x Henamarth Riversong (Core Set)
1x Quickbeam (The Treason of Saruman)
1x Treebeard (The Antlered Crown)

Attachment: (13)
1x Elf-stone (The Black Riders)
3x Hobbit Pipe (The Black Riders)
3x Leaf Brooch (The Three Trials)
3x Protector of Lórien (Core Set)
3x Resourceful (The Watcher in the Water)

Event: (24)
3x Keen as Lances (Escape from Mount Gram)
3x Leave No Trace (Escape from Mount Gram)
3x Needful to Know (The Redhorn Gate)
3x Out of the Wild (Road to Rivendell)
3x Ride Them Down (The Antlered Crown)
3x Risk Some Light (Shadow and Flame)
3x Smoke Rings (The Black Riders)
3x Will of the West (Core Set)

Side Quest: (1)
1x Scout Ahead (The Wastes of Eriador)

Race to Freedom

Whether or not you design a new deck around Rossiel and her victory display manipulation tactics, Escape from Mount Gram is certain to test your skills and your luck in an wildly new and exciting fashion. When you consider that this Adventure Pack introduces not only a thrilling new scenario but also presents you the keystone of a new strategy suited to the tastes of veteran deck-builders, as well as fans of the Secrecy keyword, you can see why Escape from Mount Gram is poised to become an instant classic.

The door to your prison cell is now unlocked. Don't wait! Head to your local retailer today, and pick up your copy of Escape from Mount Gram!

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The Lord of the Rings and the characters, events, items and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Middle-earth Enterprises, LLC and are used under license by Fantasy Flight Games.

Prison Food

Published 21 July 2015 | The Lord of the Rings LCG

Prison Food

Join Us for Second Breakfast in the Cells of Mount Gram

"It was deep, deep, dark, such as only goblins that have taken to living in the heart of the mountains can see through. The passages were crossed and tangled in all directions, but the goblins knew their way."
–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Greetings, fans of The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game! The plates have been set, the tea has been poured, and we invite you to join us once again for Second Breakfast.

In their Second Breakfast series of articles, the game's developers spare a minute from their usual march to pause, sit, unleaf a cake of lembas, and recount old tales. While these articles often arrive as unpredictably as a certain Grey Wizard, we'll find them a bit more dependable throughout the Angmar Awakened cycle. As this cycle of Adventure Packs leads the game into an ancient and relatively undefined region of Middle-earth, lead developer Matthew Newman has been cooking up all manner of behind-the-scenes insights about how this region and its threats come to life within the cycle's new scenarios.

Last time, Matthew Newman started us upon our journey with a philosophical musing upon the visual design of the North and how the double-sided Time objective in The Wastes of Eriador was designed to add a chronological perspective to your heroes' journey across the region's vastness. Today, though, as Matt returns with more lembas and more tales, his words are a bit more urgent and more specifically addressed to the task at hand.

Today, you see, we find ourselves confined within the darkened cells of Mount Gram, and Matt's here to talk about the plan for getting out…

Lead Developer Matthew Newman on Escape from Mount Gram

Mae govannen!

This article is the second in a series in which we'll explore the world of Middle-earth by discussing some of the key areas of Arnor and Angmar that players can look forward to in the Angmar Awakened cycle. Previously, we showed off the northern wastes of Eriador, and the Wargs that inhabit that vast and barren wasteland. Now it’s time to take a look at one of my personal favorite scenarios, Escape from Mount Gram.

Not much is known about Mount Gram, but Tolkien did mention that it was home to a faction of goblins who once attacked the Shire. Their leader, Golfimbul, was slain by Bandobras Took in legendary fashion, and the Goblins retreated to their mountain lair. But in the Angmar Awakened cycle, the forces of Angmar stir in the north once more, and the Goblins of Mount Gram have rallied behind a new master – one who threatens to sweep through the North with dread and despair. In Escape from Mount Gram, our heroes experience this despair head-on after they are captured by these Goblins and brought deep into their dungeons.

Orchestrating Your Prison Break

While designing this quest, I was inspired by the different "prison break" sequences from a variety of video games. What makes these sequences so interesting is that we, as players, are used to a certain level of power, in the form of allies at our side and powerful weapons and artifacts in our hands. As soon as we are separated from our equipment and our comrades, and told that we must rely solely on our wits to survive, we are immediately struck with equal parts terror and excitement. Of course, in many of these sequences, the first thing we must do is race to find our stolen equipment and captured allies, in order to gain strength enough to tackle the challenges that lie ahead.

Escape from Mount Gram was designed to capture this prison break experience in card game form. To that end, the first thing you are instructed to do when setting up this scenario is to remove all of your allies, Items, Mounts, and Artifacts from your deck. That’s right, you heard me.

Your Goblin captors are not exactly going to throw you in a jail cell with your Rivendell Blade (Road to Rivendell, 31) sheathed at your side. Instead, the cards representing your friends and gear are all shuffled together into a separate deck called your “captured deck.” Then, once you've set all of those cards aside, you’re going to choose one hero to be your starting hero – just one – adding one of your other heroes to the very top of the captured deck, and the third (if you have three) is shuffled into the deck itself.

Then, as if that’s not bad enough, each of the players in a multiplayer game start apart, separated into their own staging areas. You’re completely alone, with only one hero and a deck that consists only of events, Skills, Songs, and Conditions. “How on Middle-earth am I supposed to survive that?” you must be thinking. That’s where the Capture X keyword comes in.

Many of the encounter cards in Escape from Mount Gram have the Capture X keyword. When these cards enter play, each of the players at that stage place the top X cards of their captured deck facedown underneath them. Whenever an enemy or location with captured cards beneath it leaves play, those cards are “rescued,” and placed in their owner’s hands. Some effects, like those on Prison Cell (Escape from Mount Gram, 46) and Dungeon Guard (Escape from Mount Gram, 44), even let you play one of those cards for free.

Imagine traveling to a prison cell where Faramir (Core Set, 14) is held captive; if you rescue him, you get to bring him into play for free. And, of course, if you are lucky enough to find your other heroes, you’re well on your way to victory!

Threats Look Different When You're All Alone

Enemies like the Dungeon Guard may seem like complete pushovers at first glance… until you realize you may have to quest successfully, defend against his attack, and destroy him all with just one hero. Unless your lone hero can find some way past this guard, you may never recover what he has captured from your deck!

Sometimes your best bet may be to sneak by as many enemies as you can until you’re no longer alone. It helps that in Stage 1A, you are instructed to set your starting threat to the threat cost of your sole starting hero. This gives you a lot more control over your situation. For example, choosing not to send any characters to the quest, and accepting the threat hit that you're about to receive, is not quite as scary when you only have ten or so starting threat.

Through clever action and risk management – and the skilled use of events – you must recover your allies and equipment, and meet up with the other players. Then, your prison break is truly underway! At that point, you and your friends must escape from Mount Gram together – or perish in the attempt.

That's about all the time I have for Second Breakfast today. Join us next time when we take a look at the dreadful Ettenmoors, a region with so many punishing enemies that we had to design a new five-hit-point hero for you just to compensate!

Start Plotting Your Escape

Old Bullroarer Took may have invented golf when he struck down Golfimbul, but Escape from Mount Gram is certainly no stroll across the greens. Its scenario is dark and wicked and, as Matt says, certain to force you to adjust your standard approach. You may manage to slip the shackles from your wrists and find your way into the Goblin tunnels outside your cell, but what then?

Start plotting your escape. Escape from Mount Gram is on its way. Head to your local retailer to pre-order your copy today!

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Escape from Mount Gram

Published 3 March 2015 | The Lord of the Rings LCG

Escape from Mount Gram

Announcing the Second Adventure Pack in the Angmar Awakened Cycle

"It was deep, deep, dark, such as only goblins that have taken to living in the heart of the mountains can see through. The passages there were crossed and tangled in all directions, but the goblins knew their way."
–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Escape from Mount Gram, the second Adventure Pack in the Angmar Awakened cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game!

Middle-earth is an ancient and storied place, and even such placid locations as the Shire share histories filled with drama, struggles, and warfare. Indeed, long before the Dark Lord ever cared about the Shire or the name of "Baggins," even long before the births of Frodo and Bilbo, Goblin invaders swept down from the mountains and made their way into the Northfarthing before they were turned back in the Battle of the Green Fields, where old Bullroarer Took struck the Goblin leader's head clean off his shoulders with a single blow from his wooden club.

However, no story is ever truly ended while its actors live on, and though the Goblins were routed that day, many retreated to their home at Mount Gram. There, they passed the centuries hidden from the Hobbits and the Rangers of the North. They launched no more invasions of Eriador, but they never shed their evil natures…

Now, in Escape from Mount Gram, the Goblins of Mount Gram are once again up to new evils, and when they capture a host of Rangers and heroes, it's up to you and your heroes to lead a daring and dramatic prison break!

Forewarned Is Forearmed

In addition to its new scenario, Escape from Mount Gram introduces a new hero for the Lore sphere and three copies each of nine different player cards. As suggested in the introduction to the Angmar Awakened cycle, these cards explore a variety of different themes, divided among the different spheres of influence. While Leadership players benefit from a pair of cards that encourage direct action against the Enemy, Tactics players gain a pair of Ent-focused cards, and Lore players gain two cards that support a new mechanic based around manipulating the encounter deck and the victory display: Leave No Trace (Escape from Mount Gram, 35) and Keen as Lances (Escape from Mount Gram, 37).

If any of the game's four spheres is built for tricky interactions with the encounter deck, it has to be Lore. Since the Core Set, the Lore sphere has been home to most of the game's draw effects, making it arguably the best sphere for exploring card combinations, and it boasts twice as many cards that target the encounter deck as the next closest sphere, Spirit. These facts make Lore the perfect home for Leave No Trace, which could easily be mistaken as an ineffectual card. Its text reads: "Response: After a non-unique location is explored, add Leave No Trace to the victory display to add that location to the victory display."

For even just one Lore resource, this doesn't initially appear to be a good bargain. Leave No Trace doesn't explore the location, nor even make progress on it. It doesn't cancel the location's effects or allow you to draw cards when the location is explored. It's not even free; you have to pay a resource to trigger it. And to top things off, it comes with the caveat, "Limit 3 copies of Leave No Trace in the victory display." This is only a concern in a multiplayer game, but even so, such explicit limitations are usually reserved for only the most powerful of cards. Black Arrow (On the Doorstep, 15), for example, reads, "Limit 1 per deck."

However, as is now likely obvious, the truth is that Leave No Trace isn't limited to three copies in the victory display because of the impact it mades right when it's played, but because of the power it has to shape the course of the game as it moves toward its conclusion. First of all, in a four-player game, or at any time that you think you might cycle through the encounter deck, Leave No Trace allows you to permanently remove from the encounter deck any locations with nasty "when revealed" effects, Doomed, or Surge. Likewise, it can remove locations with nasty ongoing effects that quickly add up whenever they start flooding into the staging area.

Still, the card's true power becomes evident as it sets up the sorts of combinations that will become increasingly powerful throughout the Angmar Awakened cycle. For example, each time you play Leave No Trace, you reduce the cost of Keen as Lances by two – once for placing Leave No Trace into the victory display and once for placing the non-unique location into the victory display. Once you've played Leave No Trace twice, Keen as Lances costs only one resource; and if there are three copies of Leave No Trace in the victory display, you'll have at least three non-unique locations along with them and your Keen as Lances will be free. Also, if you're playing multiplayer, your teammates' copies of Keen as Lances will also be free. That means that you could each, for zero resources, draw three cards, reduce your threat by four, or add two resources to a single hero.

Of course, we've already seen that other cards from the cycle can manipulate the victory display, such as Scout Ahead (The Wastes of Eriador, 9), and we can expect that other cards in the cycle will allow us to transfer our control over the victory display into a greater measure of control over the encounter deck. Accordingly, as we look forward to sending our heroes to aid the Rangers of the North, we can also look forward to some proper scouting. The more we know about the encounter deck and its dangers, the better prepared we'll be to defeat them. Forewarned is forearmed.

Ancient Evils Are Stirring

North of the Shire and north of Bree, ancient evils long gone quiet are stirring once more. Head into the heart of a Goblin stronghold and execute a daring prison break in Escape from Mount Gram. This second Adventure Pack in the Angmar Awakened cycle is scheduled for release early in the second quarter of 2015!

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