Starting in Shadows, the way that sites were played changed. Now, instead of having 9 set sites and only being able to play the site with the appropriate number each time your opponent moved to the next site, you have a set of sites you can choose from, and play the site you want to play next.
This increased the strategy of the game significantly as you could now choose to play a site whose text benefits your Shadow side if your opponent is ahead of you and moving to a new site. You could also choose the site with the highest Shadow number to give you the maximum number of tokens if you have a lot of minions to play.
Site manipulation also became very popular using cards like Ulaire Nelya, to give your Shadow side extra benefits, or to set up a better Fellowship phase for yourself when it became your turn:
The rules for the new adventure deck are simple:
- You still only get 9 sites in your adventure deck.
- You cannot have more than one copy of any given site in your adventure deck.
- You can have no more than 3 sites with the same Shadow number in your adventure deck.
- The 3rd site and the 6th site on the adventure path automatically gain the keyword Sanctuary.
One of the most exciting changes was the introduction of old sites with the new freedom to play them at any point in the site path, not just site 1:
