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21
Fellowship / Re: Any decent Sauron Archery lists for fellowship?
« Last post by Witchkingx5 on January 25, 2024, 07:47:46 AM »
of course, you can try starting with something like this:

Shadow Draw Deck:
1x The Balrog, Durin's Bane
2x Morgul Hunter
4x Orc Ambusher
4x Orc Assassin
1x Orc Scout
4x Orc Scouting Band
2x Tower Assassin
2x Ulaire Enquea, Lieutenant of Morgul
4x Hate
1x Shadow's Reach
4x Orc Bowmen
4x Under the Watching Eye
1x You Bring Great Evil

Under the Watching Eye and the tracker package is definitely a must, the rest is a bit more flexible, this version is paired with pipeweed for good cycling, so if you don't have much draw on your FP's side, you can definitely cut down some of the cards. This deck is definitely worse than Moria or Uruks, but very stromg nonetheless.
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The Golden Hall / Re: Announcing VKIT: A tool for producing printable PDFs
« Last post by Witchkingx5 on January 25, 2024, 07:40:55 AM »
Sounds amazing, thank you very much in advance whenever you get to it! :)
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Fellowship / Any decent Sauron Archery lists for fellowship?
« Last post by Grim Metal on January 24, 2024, 07:39:46 AM »
I recently came into a bunch of good Sauron stuff from fellowship. Particularly a playset of both Hate and Orc Bowmen.
I never got into Sauron decks. Anyone know of a good list that would use these 8 cards?
Thanks in advance.
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Valinor / Re: Movie Masters - Sealed using only Boosters
« Last post by Phallen Cassidy on January 23, 2024, 07:50:45 PM »
Beyond the individual card consideration, there's the overall culture consideration. In my playtesting, I found Moria to be one of the weaker shadow cultures; swarming requires more synergy than beatdown, and so is less consistent in limited. Having a powerful card like Goblin Armory at uncommon was an attempt to balance Moria with the other shadow cultures. (While I stand by this general comment, the specifics may be wrong. It's very possible that I was just making poor deckbuilding decisions with my Moria decks, and the culture is actually more powerful than I think.)

Looking at the lists with that in mind, you're right. It's worth discussing whether you want that though. A swarm deck has to comprise of a lot of cheap minions and I'm not sure there's any way to get that together here. I count around 35 cards that'll give you a minion costing 2 or less (including cards which pull other cards and minions that can play for less in some circumstances like Goblin Scavengers with Goblin Armory), out of a pool of, what, 234 cards? Only 10 of those could cost 1 or less. Swarm doesn't usually need very much synergy at all, stupid swarm (playing 1-cost minions regardless of culture) has won tournaments. In this pool of cards, though, you probably do need a lot of it. With that in mind, Goblin Armory doesn't seem very impactful after all. Strange to say, but true.

I think the probability of being able to build a dedicated swarm deck, assuming you pull the Moria pack and start with 10 swarm-enabling cards, is below 1% (and 1/6th of that to get Moria in the first place). Out of 99 Shadow cards you need at least 10 1-cost minions and 5 2-cost minions to get you up to 25, then fill in the gaps with any other swarm-enabling support you may have pulled. 10 successes from a sample of 90 in a population of 2100 plus 5 successes from a sample of 315 in a population of 2100. Instead, the way to go would be a deck that is probably 2/3rds swarm and 1/3rd beatdown -- play the biggest minions you can get and hope that stops opponents while you cultivate a swarm hand for key sites. Something around a 50% chance to at least get that together on top of those 10 swarm-oriented Moria cards from the pack.

All of that assumes that 7 minions on the table is competitive in a format where people are probably not too attached to any particular companion and have little to lose if Enquea kills one. There's a reason cards like Far Harad Mercenaries were printed as commons. If I didn't do anything wrong, swarm decks aren't really going to happen. Now, maybe that's good. I really disliked playing against swarm for my first few years in the game, and it means you don't need to worry nearly as much about RB support. Here Lies Balin is probably not a card worth handing out in that case. Players are led to pick between wounding and beatdown, more straightforward decks that play into the game's core mechanics rather than a deep understanding of the game itself. Up to you, really. Or I did do something wrong and swarm's fine :P

The FP cards being less splashable than the Shadow cards is a deliberate choice on my part, although it's certainly possible it's an incorrect choice. While splashing minions is easy, because they don't stick around, shadow support cards in a multi-culture deck have a high chance of getting stuck in your hand (what if you draw your Moria minions and Dunland support, for example).

I think for the most part, you don't bother with many Shadow support cards in a multicultural deck for this very reason. Even Goblin Scimitar isn't worth using if Moria minions aren't at least 50% of your deck, because odds are when you finally can play it you'll just draw a FP card. I don't know if the counterpart of stupid swarm has one single name, but it's the same concept. In sealed even a 9 strength minion can be terrifying, beating or tying most armed companions. A minion at 12 or more will require significant investment to beat. Cards with no spot cost like Saruman's Ambition and Goblin Swarms make sense with just a few minions of the culture since they're primarily helping you cycle. All that to say, I wouldn't have any concern at all with getting something usable from these pools for a beatdown or wounding deck. One primary culture and really any number of secondary cultures.

On the FP side, companions do stick around from turn to turn, and so cultural enforcement is easier to meet. A two-culture deck that can start one companion of each culture won't have any problem with spotting the necessary characters, provided they can keep them out of the dead pile. I tried to include multiple two-twilight companions in each culture at common to make this possible (this was hardest in [Gandalf], and Leader of Men has switched between common and uncommon multiple times).

I disagree here; just as you really don't need to arm minions, you really do need to arm companions. With your base of 11 cards from one culture and 99 cards split between 6 (and a half), even if you get 20 cards for another culture you may not have the cards to really draw you towards it for your deck. And if the bulk of those are commons that can't really contribute on their own, I would expect a real risk of players having one culture given to them at random and then whatever they can get from the 6 others to fill out a deck. Smeagol being a free starting companion would make him and any decent support a shoe-in for me.

Now, I agree with your hesitancy to just up the number of packs. It's not really sealed when you've got all the cards you want anyway. At the same time, without enough cards to build towards some direction it's still not really sealed. I think there's not enough room for strategy in the current layout. But again, I might be looking at this all wrong. You've done some simulations, maybe you can share a sample deck? Or perhaps PM me the code you used so I can run a few for myself?

Another option for a "base pack" is to format it the same way as the others. A group of 36 cards where you get 11 of them based on rarity. That's what I was thinking, at least, although again it might require the other packs to be restructured and I don't think that's a good thing at this point. But you can ensure that these are characters with little to no cultural enforcement and that the rares are solid starting companions or somesuch. I have not looked at companions the same way I looked at e.g. swarm above though, it's quite possible that things are fine now. That's why I was saying prioritize splashability for Free Peoples commons though, if a player only has 50 reasonably-usable cards then deckbuilding is more about detail than direction.

Ultimately, one of the reasons Draft works so well in Magic is that you can make your deck work after you get your cards. You don't really draft the core, you draft that cards you want to go around that core and then choose the core yourself. The core for Magic, of course, is lands. The draft pack and Hobbit Draft Game base deck basically serve this purpose, just provide it up front. You know what you're building from in those cases, and in Magic where you know what you're building toward. Either way, there's an anchor for it all. I think FPs in particular really need an anchor.

This is a tangent, but there's also an as-of-yet-unused part of Gemp's draft where you pull multiple cards at once. Players could have a choice between, for example, Legolas with two weapons vs Aragorn with his two weapons vs Gandalf with his sword and staff. It would be awfully complicated to wedge such a thing into this concept, I just felt it was worth mentioning for some reason. I guess we've talked about every other way to spice up sealed already so it seemed to fit :P
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Valinor / Re: Movie Masters - Sealed using only Boosters
« Last post by eomund on January 20, 2024, 12:43:08 PM »
Neat idea! Is each booster 11 cards, same as the Decipher ones?

Yes, I've been the same type of boosters as Decipher (11 cards: 7 common, 3 uncommon, 1 rare); it felt appropriate and actually makes the math relatively simple. With the size of set I used, each common appears twice as often as a particular uncommon and five times as often as a particular rare.

Are you intending rarity to correlate to a card's accessibility (how powerful it is) or a card's worthiness (how usable it is)?

Rarity (especially in a reprint-only set) has to incorporate a large number of factors:
  • How powerful is the card?
  • How reliable/niche is the card? (is it a card like Host of Thousands that every Moria deck wants to use, or a card like Moria Archer Troop, which is only good if you open other archers?)
  • How splashable is the card? (from a set design standpoint, splashability can be a positive or a negative, depending on the card)
  • Does the card require multiple copies to be effective?
  • How powerful is the rest of the culture? (more on this below)
As you've noted, many of these purposes pull in opposite directions: niche cards are often less powerful, and so want to be at a high rarity (so players don't open lots of copies of a card they don't want) but also at a low rarity (so players aren't disappointed opening a weak rare). In a perfect world, the answer would be to only include niche cards if they're powerful, but with a reprint-only set, there are going to be compromises.

The way I generated sealed pools opened all packs at once, and so I was always evaluating the rares as a group instead of pack-by-pack. I think that led to me under-appreciating the feel-bad moment of "the rare in this pack isn't very good," because I just lumped the rares that weren't strong in with the rares that were off-culture from the bulk of my pool. Tightening up the power band of the rares is something that may be worth prioritizing more than I have.

Moria can swarm very efficiently with 0 Goblin Armory, for example, and that card is so warping that having 4 of it matters a lot more than, well, really much of anything else.

I think Goblin Armory is a good example of how I tried to think about rarity. Here are the probabilities for opening 0, 1 or 2+ of a particular card in a sealed pool if it's not in the same culture as the culture-specific pack:

CUR
050%   71%   87%   
135%25%12%
2 or more   15%5%1%

and if it is in the same culture as the culture-specific pack:

CUR
030%   54%   78%   
137%34%20%
2 or more   34%12%2%

Goblin Armory is a card that most Moria players will want multiple copies of, but it would warp the environment if they got it too consistently. Uncommon felt like the right spot because players who open a Moria pack will get at least one copy 46% of the time, and will get multiple copies about 12% of the time. That means that you have the chance to build around it, but it's far from a guarantee.

Beyond the individual card consideration, there's the overall culture consideration. In my playtesting, I found Moria to be one of the weaker shadow cultures; swarming requires more synergy than beatdown, and so is less consistent in limited. Having a powerful card like Goblin Armory at uncommon was an attempt to balance Moria with the other shadow cultures. (While I stand by this general comment, the specifics may be wrong. It's very possible that I was just making poor deckbuilding decisions with my Moria decks, and the culture is actually more powerful than I think.)

Shadow sides are naturally much more flexible in accepting different splashes so that probably doesn't need much attention. However, not many cards in FP packs -- especially commons where it matters most -- are really that splashable, so I think most cards in the 9 boosters are basically unusable.

The FP cards being less splashable than the Shadow cards is a deliberate choice on my part, although it's certainly possible it's an incorrect choice. While splashing minions is easy, because they don't stick around, shadow support cards in a multi-culture deck have a high chance of getting stuck in your hand (what if you draw your Moria minions and Dunland support, for example).

On the FP side, companions do stick around from turn to turn, and so cultural enforcement is easier to meet. A two-culture deck that can start one companion of each culture won't have any problem with spotting the necessary characters, provided they can keep them out of the dead pile. I tried to include multiple two-twilight companions in each culture at common to make this possible (this was hardest in [Gandalf], and Leader of Men has switched between common and uncommon multiple times).

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the best solution would be. The randomness is the fun of it. I notice you didn't give multi-culture hate to Shadow packs (a good thing), maybe instead of a culture-specific booster pack you could design some sort of "here's the bones of your deck" base pack?

Having a "bones of your deck" base pack is an idea that I've wrestled with the whole time I've been working on this set. It would help with reliability immensely, but at the cost of making the format feel a lot closer to the already-existing draft and sealed formats on GEMP. I decided to challenge myself to make it work without any sort of base pack, but I absolutely acknowledge that it might be necessary.

Hard to figure out how to remain random enough without either sabotaging players (here's some random stuff, figure something out) or pigeonholing them (here's Elven cards, go play Elves). Selecting a FP pack at the end does solve most of the issue, though inelegantly.

I agree completely! Opening one culture-specific pack felt like the best option to me, and it's the only one I've tested. Some other solutions I considered:
  • Have a fixed list of cards that everyone opens, including 2-3 low-power companions of each culture and some ring-bearer support (like Hobbit Sword), as discussed above.
  • Include a "Companion pack" in everyone's pool that only contains companions to ensure everyone gets enough without having a fixed list. In the end I felt that by adjusting rarity distributions, I could ensure everyone opened enough companions without a dedicated pack.
  • Just open more packs. I think 26 packs (13 per side) would give enough cards in each culture to reliably build a deck without having culture-specific packs, but I was worried about the pool getting too large.
  • Open multiple culture-specific packs, chosen at random. Again, I haven't tested this, but imagine opening 3 culture-specific packs per side instead of 1. You would probably play 2 of those 3 cultures, and the cards in the regular packs would be a major factor in deciding which 2. This might also allow you to open fewer regular packs.

I think what I would try is splitting up rarity by splashability and power. So commons are the "any deck can use this if they want" sort of cards: namely companions but also some gear or generally-helpful conditions. Usable, but perhaps not very good.

The big issue I found with making splashability a primary consideration is that there are a large number of important cards that are unsplashable: most possessions can only be borne by a single culture, and most skirmish events only affect a single culture. When there was an option between a splashable and non-splashable version of an effect, I tried to go with the splashable option, but often that option wasn't there (ex: Rider's Spear) or I felt both needed to be at common (ex: Rider's Mount and Horse of Rohan). Again, without creating new cards, there are compromises to be made.

The last thing I'll note is that no matter what, everyone needs RB support. If you don't get Hobbit Sword you are in trouble from the start. That's the sort of thing that could go in a "base pack" I mentioned earlier. Of course, most Shire cards you pull are going to go towards this so you'd have to be very unlucky to wind up totally unarmed.

Ring-bearer support is another tricky one. As you say, Shire cards automatically fill this role to some degree, and I've tried to make sure common in that culture fills that role, with cards like Bounder, Hobbit Sword, and multiple strength-boosting events. Like I mentioned above, I tried to make a set that wouldn't need a base pack, but giving everyone a couple of Hobbit Swords might be necessary.

In response to your specific cards comments:
  • I also really like Dagger Strike and Servant of the Secret Fire! I wish Decipher had made more cards like these.
  • I tried to avoided cards that call out specific cultures and races in your opponent's deck, but Disquiet of Our People and Here Lies Balin, Son of Fundin are worth considering (like Frying Pan).
  • I completely avoided cards that call out signets (like Forth Eorlingas) so that I didn't have to worry about whether the set contained an appropriate balance of signets.
  • Rohirrim Bow should be in the set at common for exactly this reason! Looking back over my posts, it seems I used an old version of the Dwarven and Rohan lists (the other cultures are all correct). I'll fix that now!

Thank you so much for your detailed feedback! It's amazing to finally talk about this set and get some different perspectives on it.
26
Lothlórien / Re: Alternate Ring-bearers in Decks
« Last post by eomund on January 20, 2024, 10:21:12 AM »
Interesting! I'm not surprised that they're only useful in fairly niche cases, but I might actually try some of those ideas out to see if they can be made to work. If anyone has decklists I'd love to see them!
27
Lothlórien / Re: Alternate Ring-bearers in Decks
« Last post by Phallen Cassidy on January 19, 2024, 08:34:51 AM »
The only serious deck I've seen with an ARB played normally is a Hobbit deck in Movie block, where Bilbo is in the starting fellowship to take advantage of Practically Everyone Was Invited and be an extra point of strength for Great Elf Warrior. If his text becomes a liability you kill him off. This works around the biggest downside of using Bilbo as your Ring-bearer, which is that Sam can't take the ring from him. I don't see the list posted here though. My main suggestions would be A Talent for Not Being Seen so that when you meet the twilight requirement for Bilbo you're really only giving 1 extra twilight, and using Master Proudfoot to meet the twilight requirement and get some cards out of the deal. Or better yet, The Red Book of Westmarch would go nicely here and then you can abuse initiative with A Light in His Mind and Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom to remove any burdens that Bilbo is adding -- and then some.

Come to think of it, I want to say I've seen another take on this using his burdens as fuel for The Shire Countryside with Samwise the Brave ensuring that opponents don't break the scale. Might be thinking of a different deck though. At any rate, Practically Everyone Was Invited is probably the reason to do it. Chance Observation is also a natural fit. Although, even without the allies, Chance Observation being a +5 looks attractive to me. Anyway, there's not space for everything here in any one deck. Lots of meaningful directions one could take a deck that starts with Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Bilbo instead of Sam.

For the others... I could see someone, somewhere building a silly deck off Gimli, Bearer of Grudges and Fallen Lord? Maaaybe throw Isildur, Bearer of Heirlooms into a Knight deck with Frodo as the Ring-bearer for corruption? Even in those cases, you don't really gain anything since you have to protect a substantially weaker Ring-bearer. Any cards you save on countering corruption you lose there. Frodo has the rule that you can't use him unless he's the Ring-bearer, the rest just have no reason to try.
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Lothlórien / Re: Alternate Ring-bearers in Decks
« Last post by Tunadan on January 18, 2024, 05:43:55 PM »
I have toyed with using Boromir BOC's discarding ability as a normal companion, but it never panned out. Ig they decided to add costs so free companions won't work.
29
Lothlórien / Alternate Ring-bearers in Decks
« Last post by eomund on January 18, 2024, 04:32:30 PM »
Do any decks use alternate ring-bearers as regular companions (ie, not as the ring-bearer)? I find it strange that Decipher made sure to give all of them twilight costs so that they could be put in the draw deck, but many of them are designed so that they don't have any useful abilities unless they're wearing the One Ring.
30
Valinor / Re: Movie Masters - Sealed using only Boosters
« Last post by Phallen Cassidy on January 18, 2024, 02:04:04 PM »
Neat idea! Is each booster 11 cards, same as the Decipher ones? Designing a balanced environment is tough, but I've never seen this sort of approach before. I do think you'll want to make sure you don't have any bum rares, especially when some of these uncommons and even commons are some of the best cards in the game. It's all in a context though. Are you intending rarity to correlate to a card's accessibility (how powerful it is) or a card's worthiness (how usable it is)? Having one copy of Dangerous Gamble makes more sense than having 4 (it is less usable), but it is not very powerful compared to Relics of Moria which you're intending to make less accessible. Personally, I'm not sure you needed to move as many staple cards to the common/uncommon level as you did either. Moria can swarm very efficiently with 0 Goblin Armory, for example, and that card is so warping that having 4 of it matters a lot more than, well, really much of anything else. I appreciate that you want anyone who pulls Moria to have a good shot of at least 1, but that's why I asked the question. It seems some are ranked lower to be more accessible while others are ranked higher to be more usable. That different perspective isn't necessarily bad, though I think it'd be important to make clear up front.

Similarly, with the culture-specific pack you're basically telling players "go for these cards." The contents of the other 9 booster packs can very clearly be separated into "splash" and "core" based on whether they're in that culture. Shadow sides are naturally much more flexible in accepting different splashes so that probably doesn't need much attention. However, not many cards in FP packs -- especially commons where it matters most -- are really that splashable, so I think most cards in the 9 boosters are basically unusable. If someone gets enough Dwarf support to throw Dwarves in with their Elves then great, if not then oh well. That's pretty much how sealed goes, though I think it kind of betrays the ingenuity of it all to see the same thing happen here.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the best solution would be. The randomness is the fun of it. I notice you didn't give multi-culture hate to Shadow packs (a good thing), maybe instead of a culture-specific booster pack you could design some sort of "here's the bones of your deck" base pack? Perhaps containing just companions, even just some basic version of the other 8 members of The Fellowship. Gets tricky for Rohan though. And it's not as if any FP deck is going to be able to competently include 4-5 different cultures anyway. Hard to figure out how to remain random enough without either sabotaging players (here's some random stuff, figure something out) or pigeonholing them (here's Elven cards, go play Elves). Selecting a FP pack at the end does solve most of the issue, though inelegantly.

I think what I would try is splitting up rarity by splashability and power. So commons are the "any deck can use this if they want" sort of cards: namely companions but also some gear or generally-helpful conditions. Usable, but perhaps not very good. Uncommons would then be the better cards that may require a bit more devotion, and rares are the best cards. The good news is many cards already follow this, the bad news is you would still have to redo everything :P And it's not even a rule that works all the time. So yeah, I don't know. Something to consider I guess.

The last thing I'll note is that no matter what, everyone needs RB support. If you don't get Hobbit Sword you are in trouble from the start. That's the sort of thing that could go in a "base pack" I mentioned earlier. Of course, most Shire cards you pull are going to go towards this so you'd have to be very unlucky to wind up totally unarmed. I really like that Gondor gets Dagger Strike and Gandalf gets Servant of the Secret Fire for commons though. Maybe Dwarves can have Disquiet of Our People or Here Lies Balin, Son of Fundin? Rohan could get Rohirrim Bow or Forth Eorlingas. The Elven cards that fill this role best all have their own problems, from near-useless to annoying to rightfully rare, and Smeagol's best card would be Don't Follow the Lights which is already in a good spot as uncommon. If one-and-a-half cultures out of 6 don't have any common-level options then that's not so bad anyway.
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