The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game – Beneath the Sands
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game – Beneath the Sands Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Scenario Rules
Difficulty Level = 5
"Beneath the Sands" is played with an encounter deck built with all the cards from the following encounter sets: Beneath the Sands, Desert Creatures, and Harad Territory. (Desert Creatures and Harad Territory can be found in The Sands of Harad deluxe expansion to The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game.)
On Track / Off Track
Included in Beneath the Sands is a double-sided Search objective: On Track / Off Track. This objective represents whether or not the heroes are heading in the right direction to find their missing companions. When setting up the scenario at the beginning of the game, the players are instructed to add the Search objective to the staging area with the Off Track side faceup. While Off Track is in play, players cannot place progress on the main quest because they are searching in the wrong direction. While On Track is in play, progress can be placed on the main quest, but the scenario becomes more challenging because the spiders grow more vicious as the heroes draw closer to their lair.
Track
Track is a new keyword in the scenario Beneath the Sands that represents the heroes' efforts to locate their missing companions somewhere in the spiders' labyrinth. After the players travel to a location, if they are off track, they discard X cards from the encounter deck, where X is the active location's Track value. If any of the discarded cards has On Track printed in the lower right corner, then the players flip the Search objective to On Track. If the encounter deck is ever empty while the players are resolving the Track keyword, shuffle the encounter discard pile into the encounter deck and continue resolving the Track keyword. When the Search objective is flipped from Off Track to On Track, discard all resources on it.
Example: Mercedes is playing "Beneath the Sands" and the Search objective is Off Track. During the travel phase, she chooses to travel to Nest of Vermin with Track 3. After she resolves the Travel effect on Nest of Vermin, she resolves its Track keyword by discarding the top 3 cards of the encounter deck. However, there is only 1 card remaining in the encounter deck, so Mercedes shuffles the encounter discard pile back into the encounter deck and discards 2 more cards from the top, for a total of 3. One of the discarded cards has "On Track" printed in the lower right, so she discards each resource on Off Track and flips the Search objective to On Track.
Valour
Valour is a trigger that appears on some player cards in the The Haradrim cycle. Actions and Responses with the Valour trigger, presented as "Valour Action" or "Valour Response," can only be triggered by a player whose threat is 40 or higher.
If an event card has two effects, one with the Valour trigger and one without, you may only choose one of these two effects to trigger when you play the card. You may still only choose the effect with the Valour trigger if your threat is 40 or higher.
Do Not Read
Do not read the following until the heroes have won this quest.
(The narrative beneath this heading on the sheet is story text and is not reproduced.)