Sipilänomics V: Competitiveness boogaloo

I first posted about Sipilänomics, or Finland's fake austerity in September 2015, followed by further posts on unit labor costs, the healthcare reform and the wrecking of the universities. That's almost two years ago. So how's it going?

**

This January, the Economic Policy Council released a report on just that. With regard to the deficit, under the headline "Fiscal policy targets will not be reached" in the summary, the report states the following:

The prolonged recession has had serious consequences for public sector finances. Despite the spending cuts by the current and the previous governments, general government gross debt has increased from 32.7% of GDP in 2008 to 64.3% of GDP in 2016. Debt will continue to grow, the general government deficit is projected to be 2.4% of GDP at the end of 2016. According to current forecasts the deficit will still be 1.5% of GDP in 2019. In fact, the deficit is projected to increase during 2017 due to tax concessions adopted in connection with the competitiveness pact.

So, while the recovery of the Finnish economy, no longer technically in recession, is expected to eventually start eating into the budget deficit, for the moment, debt will continue to go up. This is still nothing even remotely like austerity. In fact, as the report notes, the 2017 budget is being submitted at a value of 55.2 billion euros, which is 800 million more than the 2016 budget, and two billion more than the 2015 budget submitted by the previous cabinet. So just as before, central government expenses continue to rise, and the deficit is getting worse, not better. The key message of the Economic Policy Council report is that the Sipilä government is highly unlikely to meet the goals it set for itself. They've made massively destructive cuts to public spending, yet that spending has continued to increase. By their own standards, they have thoroughly failed.

**

A large part of this failure is the ludicrously idiotic "competitiveness pact" mentioned in the quote above. The pact, negotiated between the government, the labor unions and the employers' organizations after massive public dramatics, shifts some pension payments from employers to employees, and lenghtens working hours by six minutes every day. Yes, really. Both of these measures mean that employers are paying less for labor, and workers get less pay. To offset this pay cut, the government introduced sweeping tax cuts that, we were promised, would mean that employees ended up with as much money in hand as before.

According to the Economic Policy Council, the pact is expected to generate no new jobs, but the tax cuts add 900 million to the deficit (p. 105). The best-case estimate is that in the long term, the competitiveness pact will be cost-neutral; in other words, at best the new jobs or additional value generated will compensate for the tax cuts. The only thing that we can be sure of is that the pact represents yet another transfer of wealth to employers, at the expense of workers and the state. Its impact on the deficit looks set to be at best minimal, if it doesn't actually make things worse.

As I explained before, the whole notion of competing through lower unit labor costs isn't supported by any data. This doesn't seem to deter our right-wingers, whose vision of the future for our country is basically a massive sweatshop. One sure way to get closer to that is to de-educate the population, and that's actually happening: according to the statistics, my age group will be the first in Finnish history to end up less educated than our predecessors. The Sipilä government, of course, has made massive cuts to education, accelerating brain drain even further with entire research teams quitting the country. Not only is this policy well in line with the prime minister's Trumpian contempt for education and expertise, it also serves the right's objective of de-education.

Once again, if you believe in national competitiveness, then declining education levels and overall human capital are a much bigger issue than six minutes more work per day. Joseph Stiglitz called this "robbing from your children".

In the face of the broad criticism the government's education and research cuts evoked, they commissioned a report from the OECD on Finnish research and development. Judging from the Helsingin Sanomat article on the report, the way it's being spun is that the government should give more money to corporations. Surprise!

**

The competitiveness pact is almost certainly going to be a catastrophic failure. Massive amounts of time, effort and political capital were expended to create a deal that cements the baroque corporatist collective bargaining system in place, transfers money to corporations and at best does nothing to reduce the deficit. Or I don't know, maybe people working an extra six minutes per day will cause an explosion of innovation and productivity. I wouldn't bet on it. The people running our country are.

The Sipilä cabinet took power on a mandate of decisive masculine leadership that would fix our economy. It has done no such thing. On the contrary, so far the administration has made massively destructive cuts that are wreaking havoc on our future and dismantling what little remains of the welfare state, only to squander most of the money saved on wealth transfers to corporations, and boondoggles like the "key projects" and the fiasco that is the Talvivaara mine, a combined financial and economic disaster with few, if any parallels in our history. But don't worry, many corporate shareholders, including the Prime Minister's family, are doing quite nicely out of it. You might think that sounds like corruption, but we don't have corruption in Finland so it can't be. I'm really not qualified to correct a Nobel laureate, but when Stiglitz said this administration is robbing from its children, I disagree: to be specific, they're robbing other people's children and distributing the spoils to their own.

The Economic Policy Council estimates that in order to reach the fiscal goals they set for themselves, the Sipilä cabinet needs to come up with at least a billion euros' worth of cuts on top of everything they've already done. Reaching their long-term goals would require another billion. So in theory, their choices are to either start making even more massive cuts at huge political cost, up to and including the cabinet breaking up and a new election being called, or jettison their goals and admit to the nation that they failed. As Sipilä famously promised that he would either get results or get out, either alternative should mean that we'll finally be rid of him.

This is all well and good in theory. In practice, however, you have to remember that we're dealing with what is almost certainly the most incompetent cabinet in Finnish history, led by a complete moron who is as belligerently ignorant of politics or the economy as he is unable to tolerate the slightest criticism or dissent. We may think there are two choices before them. Somehow, they'll find a third way that's even worse. It's what they've done so far. Sipilä already appeared before Parliament in February, where he lied about the deficit and lied about long-term unemployment, which may give us some pointers on what's to come.

The lesson in all this? Don't elect an ignorant jackass to run your country just because he acts butch and claims to be rich. My heartfelt condolences to the Americans. We can't seem to get rid of ours either.

War of the Ring: Three Is Company

Last summer, I got myself a copy of the War of the Ring boardgame, and was lucky enough to get to play it as both the Shadow and the Free Peoples. However, these were both two-player games, and they left us wondering: if a two-player game was such a massive, exhausting and epic experience, what would a three-player game be like? Obviously we had to find out.

**

The three-player version of War of the Ring has one player controlling the Free Peoples and two splitting Shadow duties: one controls Sauron's forces, while the other plays as Saruman, commanding Isengard, the Haradrim and the Easterlings. I took the latter role while my brother picked Sauron. We did a little bit of role-playing and agreed to not co-ordinate our actions; it's not as if Sauron and Saruman saw eye to eye on anything! We figured it'd be more fun this way.

The rules for a three-player game involve the Shadow players splitting event cards between them and taking turns to use their shared action dice. To compensate for each Shadow player's relative action disadvantage, the lone Free Peoples player can't use an action on units of the same nation twice in a row. Other than those things, though, it plays pretty much exactly the same as a one-on-one game. So here goes!

Right off the bat, the Free Peoples got into serious trouble. After several unsuccesful Hunt rolls, they ended up stuck at the Fords of Bruinen for ages, racking up considerable corruption and losing both Legolas and Gandalf. We reckon that the crebain found them, guided some wargs in, and eventually our troops:

With the Fellowship struggling to make their way to Lórien, we decided to press the issue, and went on the attack. Saruman's forces stormed out of Isengard, the Haradrim massed outside Pelargir, and the Witch-king led the forces of Mordor to Minas Tirith.

The result? Stalemate. The Uruk-hai were defeated outside Helm's Deep and had to retreat. The brave defenders of Pelargir fought off the Southron horde. Finally, in a massive field battle outside Minas Tirith, the armies of Mordor inflicted grievous casualties on the Gondor defenders, but the line held.

Meanwhile, the Fellowship was once again in trouble in the Parth Celebrant: Gimli had set off on a personal errand across Mirkwood - where he spent the rest of the game - and Pippin had become separated from the fellowship, finding himself in Fangorn. He eventually made his way to Edoras, where he raised a Rohan army and led it east, where they nearly routed the Witch-king's retreating forces!

This stalemate cost the Free Peoples troops they could hardly afford to lose, but it cost the Shadow time we couldn't afford. After the massive losses on both sides, there was a lull as both sides built up their forces, and the fellowship made use of this to sneak all the way down to Minas Tirith. Here, Aragorn and the other remaining companions stayed behind to lead the battle, while Frodo and Sam, soon joined by Gollum, made their perilous way toward Mordor. By this point, as the Shadow players, since our initial gambit at a military victory had failed, we had to divide our efforts between trying to stack the Hunt pool against the fellowship and wearing down the remaining Free Peoples armies. Soon enough, we were making progress: an Easterling horde took Dale and the Woodland Realm, the dwarves sitting out in aloof neutrality and Gimli still lost somewhere in Mirkwood, and penetrated as far west as the Carrock. Boromir fell heroically in the defense of Pelargir, but eventually the Haradrim took the city, and the Corsairs of Umbar landed in Dol Amroth. A combined Mordor-Isengard force stormed Helm's Deep, routing Rohan for good.

Unfortunately, it was all in vain, because the fellowship, teetering on the edge of corruption, made it to the Cracks of Doom.

Almost unbelievably, the game ended in as close a shave as my first attempt: the Shadow had nine victory points and was closing on a tenth when the Fellowship made its last move on the Mordor track. This time, the Hunt pool was so depleted that it came down to pretty much a coin toss: about half of the tiles would have either stopped the Fellowship or inflicted enough corruption to end the game. The coin landed on the other face, so to speak, but once again, it's hard to see how the game could have been much closer.

**

Once again, a thoroughly exhausting but awesome time was had. Finally, some observations. Based on our very limited sample of three games, my feeling at this point is that playing as the Shadow is harder. At this point, this is just a hypothesis, but having tried both, I think the Free Peoples have the easier job because you have a clearer focus: get the Fellowship to Mordor and try to survive until they reach the volcano. A Free Peoples military victory is, in my mind at least, either something you go for from the beginning, or a response to mistakes by the Shadow side. In any case, I think the Free Peoples side is in this sense at least easier to play. The Shadow player(s), on the other hand, need to divide action dice and units between hunting the Fellowship and pursuing a military victory. This is complicated by the fact that paradoxically, the closer the fellowship gets to Mordor, the less opportunities the Shadow has to hinder it. At least in this game, once the Fellowship made it to Minas Tirith, there wasn't a whole lot we could do except draw character cards, try to get new Hunt tiles into play and generally hope for cards we could use to harass the Fellowship. Based on our few games, co-ordinating all this seems a lot harder than focusing on getting the hobbits to Mordor.

Our experience of the three-player format, however, was overwhelmingly positive. In so far as there's a point to this blog post, it's to encourage anyone with the opportunity to play War of the Ring to try it with three players, because it really is that much more fun. Not only is it a more social experience, but especially if the two Shadow players refrain from directly co-ordinating, it creates lots of interesting dynamics. I wish there was a way for the Saruman player to hunt the Ring himself! Even without that, though, splitting the Shadow side really makes for a much better game.

All in all, War of the Ring remains one of the greatest board games I've ever played. Next time, we're trying an expansion!

LotR LCG: Doom

Doom, doom rolled the drum-beats, growing louder and louder, doom, doom.
- the Lord of the Rings, book II, chapter V

John Howe: Grima Wormtongue, no year given.

**

I have some unusual friends. One of them has never read the Lord of the Rings, but having seen some movies named after it, they were quite taken with, of all characters, Gríma. As it happens, I'd been toying around with the idea of building a Gríma deck for some time, so obviously I took advantage of the opportunity.

Grìma is one of the few heroes in the game to have a deck type named entirely after himself. His ability to lower the cost of cards at the cost of threat for everyone makes him a powerhouse in solo play, and a somewhat unwelcome visitor in multiplayer. Combined with Keys of Orthanc, he can effectively play a two-cost ally per turn for free.

Having Gríma and a whole bunch of Doomed cards around is going to mean lots and lots of threat. What we need, then, is a hero who can do something to counteract that: Lore Aragorn.

An additional bonus is that in multiplayer games, Celebrian's Stone will give Aragorn a Spirit icon, letting us play Desperate Alliance, which may make other players a little less upset by their skyrocketing threat. Aragorn also lets us make use of the Sword that was Broken, which is not only excellent in general, but also very handily gives him a Leadership icon for extra resource smoothing.

Our third hero needs to be from the Leadership sphere, because some of the crucial Doomed cards I want to try out here are in Leadership. We could really use a defender, and luckily enough, there's an arguably perfect thematic choice available: Erkenbrand.

We'll be hoping to get Self Preservation on him so he can take a hit and keep on using his shadow-cancelling ability. The combined threat of 31 is a bit high, but we'll see how it goes.

With the heroes chosen, it's time for the deck itself. The point of this exercise for me is to try out the various Doomed cards, so we'll start with those. From the Voice of Isengard, we have Deep Knowledge for cards, Legacy of Númenor for resources and The Seeing-Stone to find other Doomed cards. For allies, we get Orthanc Guard, Isengard Messenger and, of course, Saruman.

To keep the Doomed theme going, I also included Herald of Anórien and Mirkwood Pioneer, and used the latter as a dubious thematic justification for throwing in a card I'd wanted to try out, i.e. Mirkwood Explorer. A final event was Waters of Nimrodel. The allies were rounded out by the geographically appropriate Gléowine, Warden of Helm's Deep and some good old Snowbourn Scouts.

**

52 cards; 16 Leadership, 26 Lore, 10 Neutral; 26 allies, 13 attachments, 12 events, 1 side quest. Starting threat 31.

Erkenbrand (TAC)
Gríma (VoI)
Aragorn (TWitW)

Allies: 26 (12/11/3)
Warden of Helm's Deep (TAC) x3
Herald of Anórien (TTT) x3
Orthanc Guard (VoI) x3
Snowbourn Scout x3
Mirkwood Explorer (TTitD) x3
Gléowine x2
Isengard Messenger (VoI) x3
Mirkwood Pioneer (TNiE) x3
Saruman (VoI) x3

Attachments: 13 (7/2/2/2)
The Sword that was Broken (TWitW) x2
Celebrian's Stone x2
Roheryn (FotW)
Steward of Gondor x2
Self Preservation x2
Keys of Orthanc (VoI) x2
Ring of Barahir x2 (TSF)

Events: 12 (3/6/3)
Legacy of Númenor (VoI) x3
Waters of Nimrodel (TAC) x3
Deep Knowledge (VoI) x3
The Seeing-stone (VoI) x3

Side quests: 1
Gather Information (TLR)

Multiplayer sideboard:
add Desperate Alliance (OtD) x3

**

Our first trial run was Passage through Mirkwood, with the Doom deck and my Amazons, both to test the deck and introduce the game to a new player. We had no real trouble at any point, and after some straightforward questing, Saruman dropped by to see to Ungoliant's Spawn. We next joined Team Boromir for a three-handed swing at Hunt for Gollum, which also went pretty smoothly. Incidentally, this was the first time I got to use Súlien, and she was excellent at dealing with a staging area full of locations. Both Erkenbrand and the Wardens of Helm's Deep were excellent. As sometimes happens in this quest, we found a grand total of one single copy of Signs of Gollum, which ended up going on Loragorn, because by then Gríma's questing army, bolstered by the Sword that was Broken, was steamrolling through the quest.

Because we managed to deploy such an impressive questing horde in such a short time, I'm actually thinking I need to add Faramir to make it even sillier. Speaking of silly, Trouble in Tharbad is excellent fun with a Gríma deck.

The first time we ran into any trouble was when we tried Voyage Across Belegaer. We set off three-handed with Gríma, my Amazons and our Beorn deck, and at first, everything went smoothly; we were thrown off course by some treacheries, but managed to clear a pile of locations, and Gríma's gang and the Beorn deck sank a Scouting Ship. It's quite entertaining to visualize how Beorn's sentinel defense works at sea. Then, however, we got into trouble. First, we hit a storm, with Winds of Wrath decimating our allies and Thrown Off Course doing, well, just that. To top it all off, a Scouting Ship also engaged us. Still, we survived - only for the next staging step to bring us two Light Cruisers and another Scouting Ship. Unfortunately, Gríma's antics, a Legacy of Númenor and some Deep Knowledges had left our threats high enough that all of them engaged us, and in the ensuing battle, all the heroes of the Beorn deck died, and Gríma's ship sank, ending our journey. That was the first time the increased threat got us into trouble we couldn't get out of.

**

So what have we learned? Certainly that having Gríma along makes for a somewhat different game. Funnily enough, we've mostly had the Gríma deck along in three- or four-player games of either the Grey Havens, the Dream-chaser cycle or the Sands of Harad, where threat hasn't actually been that big of a deal; the increase in threat has been somewhat offset by the faster buildup that cards like Deep Knowledge and especially Legacy of Númenor offer. Obviously decks relying on low threat, like hobbits or Dúnhere, will be completely hosed by the rising threat, but so far, in multiplayer games we've found Gríma makes less of a difference than we might have expected.

Anyway I would most definitely recommend trying a Gríma deck. It's excellent fun, and you really get all the key components from one deluxe expansion. Here's ours in its final form:

53 cards; 25 Leadership, 16 Lore, 10 Neutral, 2 Spirit; 25 allies, 14 attachments, 12 events, 2 side quests. Starting threat 31.

Erkenbrand (TAC)
Gríma (VoI)
Aragorn (TWitW)

Allies: 25 (14/8/3)
Faramir x2
Warden of Helm's Deep (TAC) x3
Herald of Anórien (TTT) x3
Orthanc Guard (VoI) x3
Snowbourn Scout x3
Gléowine x2
Isengard Messenger (VoI) x3
Mirkwood Pioneer (TNiE) x3
Saruman (VoI) x3

Attachments: 14 (7/2/3/2)
The Sword that was Broken (TWitW) x2
Celebrian's Stone x2
Roheryn (FotW)
Steward of Gondor x2
Self Preservation x2
Keys of Orthanc (VoI) x2
Song of Kings (THfG)
Ring of Barahir x2 (TSF)

Events: 12 (3/6/3)
Legacy of Númenor (VoI) x3
Waters of Nimrodel (TAC) x3
Deep Knowledge (VoI) x3
The Seeing-stone (VoI) x3

Side quests: 2
Send for Aid (TToR)
Gather Information (TLR)

Multiplayer sideboard:
add Desperate Alliance (OtD) x3

**

As a sort of followup to this, I'm seriously considering a Gríma-Na'asiyah-Kahliel deck...

Let's Read Tolkien 29: Strider

Frodo, Pippin, and Sam made their way back to the parlour.

After an entirely succesful minding of Ps and Qs and certainly not drawing any unwanted attention to themselves, Frodo and company withdraw to their parlour for a conversation with Strider. The latter introduces himself, and offers Frodo information, but for a price: the hobbits must take him with them. In an unexpected attack of common sense, Frodo is skeptical, and demands to know who Strider is and what he wants. Strider applauds this, and admits that he overheard the hobbits agreeing to not mention the name Baggins. This interested him, because he and his associates are looking for a hobbit named Frodo Baggins.

Frodo and Sam burst out of their seats at this, and I'm wondering what on earth they were going to do. Strider, however, calms them down with a sobering warning: black horsemen have been seen in Bree. This sobers Frodo into self-reflection; perhaps, he says to Sam and Pippin, they shouldn't have gone to the common room at all. It's testament to Strider's self-control and leadership that he doesn't sarcastically applaud this. The reflectiveness quickly fades, though, with Frodo admitting that yes, some men on horses have been chasing him, "but now at any rate they seem to have missed me and to have gone away". Somehow, Strider isn't impressed by this, and tries to convince the hobbits that not only will the riders not give up that easily, but that they also have allies in Bree - Bill Ferny is named - who will be quite eager to tell them about Frodo's performance mishap. The hobbits can't possibly follow the Road any more, because the Black Riders will surely catch them, so Strider reiterates his offer to guide them. As he's trying to persuade Frodo, he even has a bit of a flashback about the riders, and then puts the question:

"Strider can take you by paths that are seldom trodden. Will you have him?"

Sam speaks up, and says no: they know nothing about Strider, and shouldn't trust him. Frodo disagrees. He thinks Strider isn't really what he looks like, but doesn't understand why. As Strider is about to explain, Butterbur shows up with candles and hot water. Strider steps back into a corner, and while Nob hauls water to the hobbits' rooms, the innkeeper addresses Frodo. He makes a series of apologies for his forgetfulness, but eventually gets to the point: he has a letter, to Frodo from Gandalf, which he never remembered to have delivered. Gandalf had also asked him to help Frodo out if he ever came to Bree, which he's also apparently only just remembered. Apologizing profusely and more than a little scared of Gandalf, Butterbur promises to do anything he can to help. Black riders, he too reports, have been asking after a hobbit named Baggins, and "that Ranger, Strider" has been asking questions as well. At this, Strider reveals himself; Butterbur is skeptical of taking up with a Ranger, and Strider retaliates by calling him fat. It has actually been several chapters since someone was fat-shamed! Unless you count naming a pony "Fatty", in which case it hasn't.

Unfazed by the insult, Butterbur offers to lodge the hobbits at his inn until the trouble blows over, but Frodo has to decline. He and Strider explain that the Black Riders hunting him come from Mordor, which scares the crap out of poor Barliman. It's agreed that the hobbits will leave at dawn. When I say hobbits, by the way, I mean Frodo, Sam and Pippin; no-one's noticed that Merry's missing until Butterbur asks after him. Barliman now gets to be the Beorn of the piece and pass judgement on the traveling circus:

"Well, you do want looking after and no mistake: your party might be on a holiday!" said Butterbur.

No objections whatsoever. While Nob is sent out to look for the forgotten Merry, Frodo finally sits down with Gandalf's letter. Briefly, it tells Frodo to leave at once and try to find a man called Strider. The letter is dated Midyear's Day; Frodo, never having received it, only set off in late September, and by Fonstad's reckoning, arrived in Bree on the 29th of September: over three months after Gandalf left the letter there. As Frodo says, if he'd only gotten the letter sooner, they'd be safe in Rivendell already, perhaps even without seeing a hint of the Black Riders.

After the letter authenticates Strider, so to speak, the hobbits agree to follow his lead. Strider's plan is to leave the road as soon as possible to shake off pursuit, and make for Weathertop, a hill north of the Road, and from there to Rivendell. The idea is that this will also give them a chance to find Gandalf, whose absence worries both Frodo and Strider. As this is being discussed, Merry bursts in, reporting Black Riders in the village. He'd gone out for a walk, and apparently almost stumbled across Bill Ferny talking to a Black Rider. The rider's breath had stunned him, but Nob had luckily happened on the scene and woken him. Strider reckons that the Black Riders must now know everything that had transpired at the inn, and that they may well attack it in the night. It isn't their style to storm lit and populated places, especially when they know that they'll have all of Eriador to hunt the hobbits across, but Strider nonetheless strongly suggests the hobbits sleep in the parlor rather than in their rooms. This is done, and Frodo and company camp out on the parlor floor, with Strider watching over them.

**

If the previous chapter could've been a short story, this is almost a short stage play: all the action takes place in a parlour in the Prancing Pony, with characters entering and exiting and occasionally reporting on what goes on outside. Strictly speaking, the scope of the story has narrowed dramatically: this is basically a dialogue between Frodo and Strider in a single room. In terms of the evolution of the story, however, while Butterbur and Nob are still around for some rustic comedy, the Shire and its birthday-parties, and even the perils of the Old Forest, are falling steadily behind. The threat Frodo and company have to contend with is now the active malice of Mordor.

I have to admit that of all the characters in Tolkien's works, I think I'm most fond of Strider. He accords very well with my sensibilities, and given the very young age at which I first read the Lord of the Rings, has almost certainly had a hand in shaping them as well. One of my favorite bits is in this chapter:

"But I must admit," he added with a queer laugh, "that I hoped you would take to me for my own sake. A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship. But there, I believe my looks are against me."

I sympathize strongly. However, we barely get to know Strider at all here; we know he's a weather-beaten ranger who looks for all the world like a brigand, that his name is Aragorn, and that he's friends with Gandalf. The real content of this chapter is the cautious conversation between him and Frodo, which may not be up there with the Bilbo-Smaug dialogues, but that I nonetheless enjoyed. To the extent that any wider points are being made, the one that gets repeated by both Frodo and Pippin is that they didn't really suspect Strider of evil, because he "looked foul and felt fair", whereas a servant of the Enemy would have been the opposite. So certainly the hobbits seem to have a great deal of faith in their witch-smelling powers. To Tolkien, one suspects, intuition was another kind of providence.

It's also fascinating to realize that Barliman Butterbur damn near won the War of the Ring for Sauron before it even started. It was sheer luck (providence) that a Black Rider showed up at Bag End the night Frodo left, rather than, say, a few hours earlier. In fact, by all indications, if Gandalf's letter had been properly delivered, Frodo and company could have taken a leisurely stroll down the Road to Rivendell with no trouble at all. Thorin and company, traveling in no hurry, took about a month to get from Hobbiton to Rivendell, so Frodo could easily have been there in August. According to the timeline in Appendix B, the Black Riders only crossed the Isen on September 18th. So if Butterbur wasn't useless, and if Gandalf hadn't inexplicably trusted him, all the travails Frodo and company had to get through to get to the Last Homely House East of the Sea could have been avoided. Again, you'd think that if divine providence wanted to get Frodo to Rivendell, you'd think it'd have been a damn sight easier to remind Butterbur in, say, July, but like I said, it's not like the idea of providence actually makes any sense. I'm sure there's a fat joke in this somewhere.

There really ought to be a Shadow event card in War of the Ring called Mind like a Lumber-room, that prevents the Fellowship from moving that turn.

Next time, into the wild.