A bit unrealistic....Decipher did a bad job..

[Mager]

Lotr Tcg features many of the great heroes from the movie and the book.
Gandalf ,for instance, is a very powerful MIGHTY wizard.
Sadly, he was only given a pitiful 7 strength compared to any standard 8+ strength uruk-hai...
LOL? A silly little Uruk-hai can beat the sht out of Our Almighty Wizard?? Isn't that ridiculous?

Moreover, Aragorn is one of the greatest fighter in the movie, he can easily take down a bunch of nazguls with no problem.
But in the game, what we see is that Aragorn can stand no against against a 9 strength Nazgul in a skirmish as he only has an 8.

Legolas in the movie is fast, deadly and strong..  and now in our GREAT tcg he only has 6 strength...and he can't even aim! 
He can only shoot blindly.

Theoden is a renowned horselord , he can crush any orcs or uruks with no trouble, but in the TCG, he has 6 strength and 2 vit....only. 


ZOMG

[Fingolfinfinwe]

Did you want a completely unbalanced game where the free peoples player waltzes to the finish? 

[ket_the_jet]

Keep in mind, at the creation of the game, 6 was supposed to be the base strength for hero characters (Gimli, Legolas, Arwen) while 7 was reserved for the epic fighters (Gandalf, Boromir).

Lesser characters, Haldir, Farin, Fror, Gloin, etc., had base strengths of 5 while "commoner" characters like Lorien Elf and Dwarf Guard had strengths of 4. Now Gimli and Legolas don't seem so bad, do they?

The introduction of more characters in Two Towers was where a lot of the power creep began. I don't know who Ceorl was or why he was as strong as Gimli or Legolas, but he was. Companions and minions alike started getting stronger as the sets increased.

Minions also were much weaker. A strength 9, vitality 2 Nazgul cost . By King Block, a strength 9, vitality 3 minion could cost . By Hunters block, that minion could have cost . So there was power creep on the minion side as well.

But the real point is, they did not want the Free Peoples' player to easily walk to site 9.

Does this make sense?
-wtk

[chompers]

It would be hard to make a game that works when the heroes are rediculously unbalanced compared to minions and other lesser known characters. It certainly wouldn't be using this gaming system.

When you play the game, quite often my strength 8 Aragorn doesn't lose to a strength 9 Nazgul. With the right cards in play, Aragorn can survive an attack of 3, perhaps even 4 Uruk-Hai.
Hey - he can actually beat the Witch King and Balrog - but that didn't happen in the book - oh well.

It is a card game - and it will never exactly represent the Middle Earth world. Note that some of the most powerful companions in the game are neville nobodies. Why? If their game text went onto Aragorn or other main character every other persona of theirs becomes obsolete.

[MuadDib85]

@ Mager: Maybe instead of worrying about strength you should try and use some of the the awesome abilities these characters have.

Or maybe you should concentrate more on not cheating on gccg instead of Decipher's errors.

[TheJord]

This topic will not provide anything positive.

[Kralik]

So I'm cheating by replying to a locked topic, but what about weapons? Conditions? Events? The base strength is only a small part of the fighting experience flavor. Gimli at strength 6 is OK, but with two axes and a vicious AXE STRIKE to the Uruk he takes it down at strength 12! And chops it into bits with dmg+2!

On the other hand, a stray 7 Orc takes a "naked" Gimli and manages to wound him before he shakes it off. But he still is up and kicking with 2 vitality to spare!

Use your imagination.

[MR. Lurtzy]

I always felt they never gave the Balrog enough strength. I mean, he could of easily taken down all of those 20+ strength orcs.

[Gil-Estel]

Yeah, I agree. The Balrog was an ancient enemy, not easily destroyed. I have seen a Durin slaughter a Balrog in 1 strike, that is insane.

[albatross]

Funny story.  I was playing a game recently and I had 10 Moria Orcs piled on my oppoenents Gimli, Bearer of Grudges.  My total strength was 67.  He starts going through the motions and about 6 minutes later he has Gimli at strength 70.  Then I pumped my guys to 71 using Guard Commander, and piled the 10 orcs on Goblin Swarms.  1 site later I overwhelmed him 81 to 26.

Strength 70 Gimli.  I was out of the game from about Shadows until now, I had never seen anything like it.

[stimpy]

I agree with where Kralik is headed... the way I see it, companions appear at first to have low strength, but when you consider all the possessions they get (and keep, whereas Shadow minions / possessions discard at end of turn) it makes a ton of sense. And the game seems to work.

Str 70 Gimli is quite crazy though, I've certainly never seen that.

[MR. Lurtzy]

Yeah, do you have a card list for it?

[MuadDib85]

Strength 70 Gimli.

I have been thinking about this.. and here's what I've come up with (standard format):

The One Ring, The Ring of Doom
Mountain Homestead x4
Proud and Able
Dwarven Bracers
Belt of Erebor
Gimli's Battle Axe, Trusted Weapon
Arod, Rohirrim Steed
Lembas Bread x4
Ring of Fury
Sharp Defense x4
Honed x4
Rohirrim Doorwarden
Celebring, Elven-smith
Elendil's Army

He could get pretty huge..

Just realised if Moria was the shadow, couldn't have been standard format.. I'll leave it here anyway.

[albatross]

I can't remember everything exactly.  I'll just name some cards I do remember.  We pretty much play casual, usually adhering to the Expanded format, sometimes using an x-listed card here and there (but only as a one of).

Axe of Erebor
Sindri
Honed
Memories of Darkness (x-listed, but he only uses 1)
Hall of Our Fathers
Here Is Good Rock
Out of Darkness
Battle To The Last


So he would pump Gimli with Axe of Erebor discarding all cards off Hall of Our Fathers, he would play any Skirmish events on it using Sindri.   Then discard Hall of Our Fathers with Axe of Erebor.  Then lose initiative by putting cards on Here Is Good Rock, which allowed him to use Memories of Darkness to get back Hall of Our Fathers.  Here he had to hope that he would reveal an Out of Darkness or have one in his hand so that he could regain initiative in order to repeat the process.

[ket_the_jet]

Of course, you could run the same trick with Ever My Heart Rises. Voila. Movie Block.
-wtk

[Witchkingx5]

besides that Memories of Darkness is x-listed... unfortunately.

Anyway, I like the idea.

[NateWinchester]

My buddy once ran a deck where in one game, he overwhelmed the Witch-King with Pippin getting somewhere around 50 or so strength.

I still say the most humiliating is reducing a minion to 0.  Man elf voodoo was fun till Cirdan ruined it.