The Ents Awake: Entmoot

[loweringthebar]

The expansion rules for Twilight imply that 3 cards are used to activate the ents, allowing them to move and battle. The other two Awake cards allow for the player to move and attack wherever they choose, but this card has very specific requirements. I just want to verify that this card could be useless if Saruman is in play and Gandalf gets stuck in a seige in Rivendell or the Woodland Realm, or anywhere other than Fangorn or a Rohan region.

So, really only two cards allow the FP to fully utilize the Ents, and this card could best be described as a Saruman spoiler that could bring about his demise with a lucky roll. The Ents don't even have to be located in, or adjacent to, the Orthanc region for this to occur, as I read it.

I would be quite disappointed if this turned out to be the only Ent card drawn during a game, and the conditions couldn't be met, but let me know if I'm missing something.

Cheers

[Krieghund]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. All three of my expansion Ent cards have the exact same wording. Are you sure that you don't have your base game Entmoot card mixed in with your expansion cards?

[loweringthebar]

I'll check my cards when I get home. It's good to know that all three should be same. Thanks for the tip.

[loweringthebar]

You nailed it Krieghund! I was trying to be so careful when bringing in the expansion cards, but I mixed in a card from the base game. Thank you very much!

[arcaril]

hi,
May the may pass montains to directly attack Orthanc ?
(like with the first cards in the main game)

thanks !

[Krieghund]

No. Regions with mountains (heavy black lines) between them are not considered to be adjacent for any purposes.

[pisfin]

We have played a couple of games with the expansion now, but we find it way too hard to activate the ents as GtW needs to be in play before you can use any of the cards and actually attack with the ents. We have considered making a house rule allowing for activation of the ents without GtW in play. Does anybody have any thoughts on the level of difficulty in activating the Ents?

[genghissean]

The problem with the ents in the Xpac is not activating, its how useless they are when activated. See "house rules". The best and easiest changes are:

1.If after an Ent attack, the defending Shadow army is completely eliminated, place the attacking Ent in the now-vacated region. (this stops the stupid antic of leaving a trail of 1 wildman in every region up to orthanc thus taking a ent away for every wildman).

2. If a hobbit is fangorn, ents are automatically activated (without using a muster) and immediately place one ent

3. If TWO hobbits are in fangorn place a extra ent every time Saruman uses "voice of Sauruman"

I find these simple changes makes the ents more effective, and the game more thematic like the books, really making it costly for Suaruman to make his armies.

[pisfin]

But you would then still need to have GtW in play in order to attack. We just find that the evil side does not put any Sauron minions into play before very late in the game, making impossible to muster GtW and thereby use the ents.

[Krieghund]

That should be Shadow Minions. Saruman counts also. It's in the errata. That should make a difference.

[pisfin]

Ahh, yes. A big difference....