Balanced decks wanted!

[Findanniin]

Hi guys.

I'm a bit of a community outsider, having quit LotR years ago.
I've recently created a mod for "Tabletop Simulator" that includes  all the cards of the fellowship block.
The only way to play it for now is to create your own deck.

What I want to create next is a set of "pre-made" decks that are balanced to create fun games when played against one another, for people to just load it up, pick a deck and play.

That's, hopefully, where you come in.

I found this listing of 7 legal fellowship starter decks, but I don't know if they're balanced.
If they are, I think I'd like to add 8 more or so.
Ideally, I'd like people to load up the mod and pick from 1 of 15 decks, and then play it against one of the other 15 decks.

If those started decks are "too underpowered" to stand up against what you guys usually throw together - I could make 2 mods; One with those 7 decks, and one with maybe 10 or so 'balanced' decks this community comes up with?

Any help or pointers appreciated!

For clarity, a list of cards is all I'd need - I can make the virtual decks from there.

The final result will look somewhat like this:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=457342235

Kind regards,

-Fin

[dmaz]

Hi Fin!

First off, I think your project is really cool! Good luck with making that all work. It will be fun for you and your community to have something of your own.

When it comes to developing a balanced pre-made FotR deck, I'm sure that there would be some who would be happy to "throw something together", but I can't guarantee that the end results would be actually be as balanced as you hope for.

If you refer to this link (as well as an additional link refered to within the thread), you can see how much work and testing went into developing the starter decks for our TS Sealed event (which we're still waiting for MarcinS to launch )

http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,9003.0.html

The process itself takes not just brainstorming but also several layers of playtesting with all of the different decks to make certain that one deck doesn't have a serious advantage over another.
Basically, you could develop a deck that, stand-alone, feels balanced, but there are variables that, until play-tested, would remain unknown as to whether or not the deck is too strong or too weak in actual play testing.

The list you gave to the original FotR starter decks I think is a good starting point.

Out of all of the sealed events, many have agreed that FotR provides deck options that don't necessarily give you a certain "path" of exactly which deck(S) to choose. Of course this is also including booster packs that are opened to add to the sealed experience. Particularly the Mines of Moria decks were pretty well balanced when looking at them side by side.

I personally feel that following the FotR starter decks, as a model, would give you a better experience in general, than cooking up some other decks off the cuff.

If you were interested in waiting several weeks to a couple months, I'd be happy, with a few others here to redevelop the FotR starter decks through playtesting. It would take a bit of time though to do it the right way.

Good luck and all the best!

dmaz

[Findanniin]

Heyho Dmaz ,

Treasure trove, that thread! Thanks bundles for the link.
I just read the first page so far, but looks like exactly the kind of stuff I could use and steal... I mean .. erh .. copy?

I've imported FotR Aragorn and Gandalf, in the process of making Deluxe now.
I figure what I'll do is make those 7 decks from that link of mine - and if somewhere in the future you guys were to finish up playtesting more 'intricate / strategic' decks I'll add those as a separate mod.

I have no idea if there's a market for this, but I put my mod up about half a day ago and got 20 subscribers. We'll see .

Can I PM you my e-mail address for you to keep me posted, if you were to get a balanced(i'sh is good enough!) set of sealed decks created?

[dmaz]

Glad to hear it can be of use!
At the rate things are going for us, you might be able to have a tournament for TS on your platform before GEMP gets one in, haha.

Also, if you'd like to see how the final decks ended up, and their suggested format for holding a league, Merrick put that together here:
http://lotrtcgwiki.com/wiki/ts_sealed

You'll notice that the "serie 3" decks have a lack of support cards for Frodo, as you will have already gotten the swords and the stealths from the first two series. So, make note that playing the serie 3 starters as-is, against a serie 1 or 2 starter would have some imbalance because of the lack of Frodo support (but these decks were designed to be played in the order of series, so such imbalance would be avoided).

I'd be happy to keep in touch via email, feel free to shoot me a PM any time and we can coordinate. I've always wanted to "recreate" starter decks for different formats. Should be fun!

[Findanniin]

I don't think organizing tournaments will be happening anytime soon .
Not by me, at least.
It'll all be a lot more casual - so as long as the games don't feel one-sided, they don't have to be extremely well-balanced.
I'm hoping to avoid the feeling you'd get from a starter deck vs one built by a guy who knows what he's doing who throws in all the rares he wants.

After all - Rare or not doesn't matter on TS, you can copy any card as often as you'd like.

Thanks for that sealed deck link, too - bookmarked it. The series 1 would be neat to re-create, but uses cards from the two tower block which I haven started work on yet.

Sent you my e-mail in PM as well!

edit: and considering it's visible to the left of my post apparently, that was quite pointless.