Author |
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How playable is Long-stemmed Pipe?
5 (best) |
[ 0 ] 0% |
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4 |
[ 1 ] 12% |
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3 |
[ 3 ] 37% |
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2 |
[ 3 ] 37% |
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1 (worst) |
[ 1 ] 12% |
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Total Votes : 8 |
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Cobra |
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:08 pm |
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Joined: 12 Jul 2005
Posts: 1202
Location: Austin, TX, USA
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It’s a pipe... and a pipeweed? A condition, not a possession? For twilight, not ? This card is just hopelessly confused.
The come-into-play effect seems like half of a cool combo, but I’m not quite sure what the other half might be. (Maybe Rise of Saruman will feature a card for each culture that counts certain cards in the discard pile -- so far we’ve seen the very bad Orkish Marauder for Orcs, and the very good Ring of Artifice for Dwarves.) At the moment it seems primarily useful with a Men event-retrieval deck, which can pull skirmish events from your discard pile but not from your draw deck.
How about the condition-removal ability? The regroup-phase timing is less than ideal, and you have to discard not only Long-stemmed Pipe, but another pipeweed card as well, which presumably has its own reason for being on the table. The Gandalf culture has far better options for condition removal.
I wouldn’t call Long-stemmed Pipe bad exactly, but decks have so many better cards available that I can’t imagine this one seeing any serious play. |
http://cobracards.com -- Web's best deals on Trading Card Games. |
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Anonymous Prodigy |
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:23 pm |
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Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 4197
Location: United States
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Pretty weird text....I’ll be surprised if this shows up in decks. |
I had to put something here. |
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LeoKula |
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:34 pm |
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Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 479
Location: SP, Brazil
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the only cool thing I noticed is that you don’t have to spot gandalf to play it and use the discarding condition abilitie... maybe with the hobbits it’ll come in handy if they can easily play again those discarded pipeweeds. |
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NBarden |
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:44 pm |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 5468
Location: I don't know...
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Anvar |
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 3:39 pm |
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Joined: 28 Jun 2006
Posts: 251
Location:
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Gandalf may have better condition removal, but Shire doesn’t. No need to use Gandalf at all, and this gives pipe decks a way of getting rid of conditions.
Anvar |
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sickofpalantirs |
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 3:45 pm |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 7750
Location: somwhere, over the rainbow way up high. There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.
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weird. thats really weird that it is pipeweed. still at least there aren’t any bad spelling errors. |
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DáinIronfoot |
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 5:08 pm |
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Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 4594
Location: Beltsville, MD, USA
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sickofpalantirs wrote: still at least there aren’t any bad spelling errors.
LOL I hear you there!
Yeah, in a standard deck this is all but useless unless you’re in a serious crunch. But it’s so culture non-specific that I can see it being splashed in with all manner of cultures, especially . It also works well with Men and, ironically, Ents.
So it might not be ideal, but it works well enough and distinguishes itself by being so easy to splash. I give it a 3. |
Best regards, Dáin, Vice Aftokrator of the Chosen Ones
Check out Lasting Alliances, The Road Ahead, and Ages of Middle-earth, three of my five dream card sets that make up Wars of the Ring. Oh, and I have a trade list now!
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Pywils |
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:37 am |
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Joined: 14 Jan 2007
Posts: 100
Location:
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does the title LONG-STEMMED PIPE sound like
a possession or a condition?
a pipe or pipeweed?
funny stuff |
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yerkamig |
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:44 am |
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Joined: 25 Jan 2007
Posts: 240
Location: Corvallis, OR
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The old pipes were pretty much unplayable when put all together, so I’ve been holding my hopes high that the new stuff was more workable.
This has got to be the tip of something bigger. It’s too weird, not to mention expensive. What better way to keep interest alive for a set that’s way overdue.
*edit*
I think if you’re going to design new pipeweed you have to ask what was wrong with the old pipeweed. It just took up too much deckspace. All the pipes and pipeweed turned into a Gandalf’s Cart deck real fast. I was the only one in my meta who even tried to stare down a Lord of Angmar holding nothing but a Gandalf’s Pipe. I still have hoofmarks from that.
The card drawing and discarding on the old stuff was close, this just expands on that. |
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Merrick_Hale |
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:15 am |
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Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 445
Location: Austin, Texas
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That is why you should only use a certain number of pipes and not try to use all of them. I have a fellowship block deck (pipes were pretty worthless after fellowship block) that is surprisingly durable that does pretty well as a balanced deck, meaning it can run with the Freeps or kill with the shadow. The basic deck is:
The One Ring, Isildur’s Bane
Frodo, Old Bilbo’s Heir
Companions (7)
Sam, Son of Hamfast (Starting)
Gimli, Dwarf of the Mountain-Race (Starting)
Gandalf, Friend of the Shirefolk
Aragorn, Heir to the White City
Merry, Friend to Sam
Boromir, Son of Denethor
Legolas, Greenleaf
Allies (3)
Albert Dreary, Entertainer from Bree x2
Bilbo Baggins, Retired Adventurer
Possessions (17)
Gandalf’s Cart
Gandalf’s Pipe
Frodo’s Pipe
Gimli’s Pipe
The Gaffer’s Pipe
Aragorn’s Pipe
Old Toby x3
Longbottom Leaf x3
Glamdring
Sting
Hobbit Sword
Gimli’s Battle Axe
Ranger’s Sword
Events (7)
A Wizard is Never Late x2
Sleep Caradhras x2
Hobbit Stealth x3
I know, this deck has Gandalf’s cart in it, but I usually wind up pitching it with some Longbottom leaf since the deck gets rolling so well. I think the key to the old pipeweed decks was to have multiple targets for the pipes you do play or to have ways of getting the pipes on people early. For example, 2 shire pipes with 4 eligible bearers (2 in the starting fellowship), 3 ways to get Gandalf, Boromir and Aragorn for Aragorn’s Pipe and I play with The Prancing Pony and Gimli is in the Starting fellowship. That way pipes don’t sit in the hand and choke.
This deck has amazing healing power, card drawing power, choking power and usually gets a good amount of time to get set up when paired with Moria. By site 6 I usually have out at least 4 of the pipes and have lots of options for burden removal, healing and twilight removal which I can just get back when I use Bilbo to cycle pipeweed back into the draw deck. It is not uncommon for this deck to leave the sanctuary at site 6 completely healed, get bloodied at 7 but then be able to be completely healed and have an empty twilight pool before doubling from 7 into 9. It is really hard to stop because of the number of tricks it has up its sleeves and only really dies if I flood the pool too early and someone is able to drop the perfect bomb or a 6 minion swarm at an early site (usually can only be done with moria thus the mass amounts of condition removal). It is by no means invincible, but it is a pretty solid pipeweed deck that uses all but Bilbo’s Pipe. |
Aaron Rhinehart
Rider of Rohan (retired)
DAgent #417 (retired)
This Incognito is a smooth operator - Lem0nhead |
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