1) The first thing I noticed, was that I often forgot about the ring's "penalty" until some point during the next turn. It's different than something like Thin and Stretched, because it's not your opponents card (it's The One Ring, which is always there), so they will likely forget it too. Maybe that is just part of it being something new and different.
As soon as you play a couple of games with it, you'll be fine.
2) Even when playing with Frodo against a deck that did not add any burdens, the Ring-bearer ended up with 3-5 burdens at the end. If you pack good burden removal, it's probably not so bad. But if using an Alternate Ring-bearer or facing a corruption deck, there's not much breathing room.
Well, this might be a sign that it isn't worth the effort of playing that Ring, as you have to add cards to your Deck that make it playable. It would be more a niche card like
The Snow Ring.
3) Lastly, it does suffer from a bit of a "when things are going well, it's fine; but when things are not going well, they get much worse" effect. If you are having an easy game and your Free Peoples side is doing fine (i.e. you are double-moving a lot), there is no downside. But if you are facing a tough game and your Free Peoples side is struggling (i.e. you are single-moving a lot), this ring just makes it worse. A ring that penalizes me for having a close, down-to-the-wire game, would be something I'd avoid using if I know it's going to be a competitive game.
That doesn't sound good at all... I usually try to afford any "win-more" cards in my Deck, as if you're ahead, you don't really need more to do, as you're ahead and fine, right?
and when you're behind and would need help, you can't really use the card, or at worst, it hinders you.
PLaytested it against discard, and decked out at 5. Yeah... that isn't too good, but fortunately, I still managed to win with my good old Twilight Nazzies Deck (
LotN on
Fell Beast is winning games for me ever since.) Then, I'm actually pretty happy how my Ring is performing, he's good, that's true, but not OP. I once had a pretty bad reconcicle at Site 3, but by discarding al the useless stuff, I won.
And I faced a problem with the Ring: Youcan use the ""Response:" action as often as you like, right? So you can basically ditch any number of cards from your hand to put the Ring.
Eventually, the RIng seems to have two Sides. One is having to discard cards, even good cards you'd actually prefer to keep in your hand and ther other is nearly free cycling, which I found a bit scary. What do you think?