The Nin-in-Eilph Is Now Available for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

“The ground now became damp, and in places boggy and here and there they came upon pools, and wide stretches of reeds and rushes filled with the warbling of little hidden birds. They had to pick their way carefully to keep both dry-footed and on their proper course. At first they made fair progress, but as they went on, their passage became slower and more dangerous.”
    –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

A treacherous swamp lies before you. A horde of Orcs trails behind you…

The Nîn-in-Eilph, the fourth Adventure Pack in The Ring-maker cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, is now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore!

After escaping the ruins of Tharbad, several of Middle-earth’s greatest heroes must quickly find their way through the treacherous swamp waters of the Nîn-in-Eilph as they race toward the location of Celebrimbor’s abandoned forge. Free from the Orcs they faced in Tharbad, the heroes must now contend with other dangers. The swamp is treacherous and filled with deadly predators.

There Is No Time to Lose

Your heroes have no time to spare as they navigate through the Nîn-in-Eilph. Their rations are limited, the insects that infest the swamp drain their energy more every day, and the Orc hordes that chased them out of Tharbad will be on their trail. Though your heroes see no immediate trace of them, nor of the spy who commanded them, the longer you spend in the swamp, the greater the chances are that you may be caught.

Accordingly, as The Nîn-in-Eilph challenges you to find your way through the swamp, each of its quest stages uses the Time X mechanic to compel your heroes forward. There are three different quest cards for stage two, and there are three different quest cards for stage three. When you first set foot into the Nîn-in-Eilph, you choose your quest two stage at random. Then, once you complete stage two, you proceed through the swamp to a random stage three. However, should you fail to successfully complete one of these quest stages before its Time effect triggers, you get lost and must start following a new path forward at a random quest card of the same stage.

Then, if you get lost, each quest card at stages two and three shares the same “When revealed” text, “When revealed: Raise each player’s threat by 1.” Each moment that you spend lost in the swamp is another moment lost to the Dark Lord’s agents.

Moreover, each section of the Nîn-in-Eilph imposes its own penalties upon your travels. For example, if you arrive at A Forgotten Land (The Nîn-in-Eilph, 97), you cannot play more than one card each round.

The result is that you must commit yourself fully to your quest so that you can push through a stage before you get lost. Even your successful efforts, though, are not without dangers. An Ancient Marsh-dweller (The Nîn-in-Eilph, 103) lurks somewhere in the swamp, hunting prey close to your eventual destination. Thus, even as your journeys lead you closer to your goal, they lead you closer to this deadly predator.

Do Not Search in Vain

“My search would have been in vain, but for the help that I had from a friend: Aragorn, the greatest traveller and huntsman in this age of the world.”
    –Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

The deadly swamp of The Nîn-in-Eilph may present you a host of unforeseen obstacles, but it also presents you a number of new tools to face them, several of which tie closely to Aragorn’s talents as a leader and ranger.

While many of the new player cards from the Adventure Packs in The Ring-maker cycle focus on developing the Silvan trait, there are many, also, that explore different ground. In The Nîn-in-Eilph, we find two new, unique Title attachments, both of which reflect aspects of Aragorn’s character: Wingfoot (The Nîn-in-Eilph, 92) and Defender of the West (The Nîn-in-Eilph, 93).

Wingfoot offers a thematically appropriate response to the challenges of the swamp, as it reflects Aragorn’s expert talents as a tracker, as demonstrated in The Two Towers when he tracked two Hobbits and a pack of Uruk-hai for many leagues. In Wingfoot, we see his peerless talent and his tireless devotion given shape in the form of a readying effect:

“Response: After attached hero commits to a quest, name enemy, location, or treachery. If a card of the named type is revealed during this quest phase, ready attached hero.”

Wingfoot combines nicely with Henamarth Riversong (Core Set, 60) and several Secrecy cards, such as Risk Some Light (Shadow and Flame, 136) and Ithilien Lookout (The Dunland Trap, 8). Even if you don’t draw a card that allows you to look at the top of the encounter deck, your odds of naming the right type of card increase as you add more players to the game and reveal more cards each quest phase. This makes Wingfoot one of the many cards from The Nîn-in-Eilph that subtly reward the different interactions available in multiplayer games.

Defender of the West, on the other hand, is less subtle in its multiplayer rewards. This Title attachment is inspired by the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring in which Aragorn swears his aid to Frodo: “If by life or death, I can save you, I will.”

Defender of the West attaches to a unique, non-objective ally and gives control of that ally to the first player, meaning that the ally then travels from player to player so long as both it and Defender of the West remain in play.

As a cooperative game, The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game offers players a great variety of ways to interact with each other and lend each other support. Your characters with the Sentinel keyword can defend against enemies engaged with your teammates, and your Ranged characters can attack those enemies. A wide range of triggered effects, such as that on Gléowine (Core Set, 62), allow you to choose the effect’s beneficiary.

Still, there are always circumstances in which the first player might need the help of a powerful ally like Beorn (Core Set, 31), who doesn’t have an ability or keyword that allows him to lend his assistance across the table. In such cases, Defender of the West can save you. If you were to send Beorn to the first player, he could defend attacks for your teammate, or he could attack for as much as eight Attack Strength. In fact, given Beorn’s whopping six hit points, and the fact that Defender of the West allows the attached ally to absorb damage from undefended attacks, Beorn might even be able to absorb an undefended attack before retaliating and single-handedly destroying an enemy. Alternatively, you might play Defender of the West on an ally like Erestor (The Long Dark, 77) just so that he can offer his counsel (and card cycling ability) to each player, in turn.

Lead Your Fellowship Out of the Swamp

You can take advantage of Wingfoot, Defender of the West, the Ranger hero Mablung (The Nîn-in-Eilph, 84) and the other player cards from The Nîn-in-Eilph to meet the challenges of its scenario in multiplayer games, or you can brave the swamp on your own. Either way, you must hurry. The Dark Lord’s power is growing, his agents are afoot, and the White Council is counting on you to recover whatever secrets lie hidden in Celebrimbor’s abandoned forge.

The Nîn-in-Eilph is now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore. Pick up your copy today!

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