Reading through the new Council rules, I notice that the initial use of Insight to learn about what approaches might work has been removed. That's too bad; I liked that.
Similarly, the Reluctant/Open/Friendly mechanic seems under-utilized. Sure, it can be used as-is to adjust difficulty, but it could also be used to make Councils more variable. Maybe a Gandalf or could raise this factor (can we call it "Disposition") one level, or an Extraordinary Success could be spent to raise it one (instead of adding two points to the tally) and a failure on an Eye of Sauron could lower it one. That could be done either exclusively in the introduction, or on any Interaction roll.
Alternately, a player could declare their intent to either rack up successes *or* change Disposition. Or use Insight to learn which skills have bonuses/penalties (assuming those are added back in).
I dunno, it doesn't feel like there's enough richness to the Councils. It's a simple algorithm: choose you best skill that you haven't used yet, roll the dice, hope for the best. The only decisions to be made are how to roleplay the various skills, as you work your way down the list from your best skills to your worst skills. But there's no point where you have to choose between various strategies. There are no trade-offs, which are the essence of what makes a game (any game, not just RPGs) interesting.
As an example, I'd like to be thinking, "Hmm, my best skill here is Song, but we've figured out that he doesn't have much patience for Singing. I'm not sure whether I should go for it anyway..."
Or am I missing something?