The Last Homely House
Middle-Earth => Archives of Minas Tirith => Topic started by: thetimewarptrio on June 05, 2014, 04:25:38 PM
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What's the gameplaying logic behind having King sites be the only ones allowed when playing "Movie"? I understand how it makes sense as far as the source material, but for a card game I feel like it's kinda dumb. King sites in my opinion are the worst as far as abilities. Also, sure, a multipath doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you go from Moria Lake to Helm's Gate and then back to The Dimrill Dale, but as far as gameplaying purposes go it makes a lot more sense, for reasons that I won't list here because you should already know them.
Thoughts?
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"Movie" block is a snapshot of the game as it was just before the release of Shadows, so what we call Movie is more accurately called King Standard (as noted in this wiki article (http://lotrtcgwiki.com/wiki/Format)).
Personally, I agree that the multipath approach should have been what solidified as Movie block, but at the time it was just a way to play "Not-Shadows" so people kept playing what they knew. There are various rulesets for a movie multipath floating around, but none ever seem to have gotten very popular.
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THE Multipath format (the one defined on gemp) is very popular in France, and has been played during the last Nationals the last month ^^.
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I stand corrected, then. I guess I ought to try that one out on gemp.
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THE Multipath format (the one defined on gemp) is very popular in France, and has been played during the last Nationals the last month ^^.
What is the multipath format as defined on gemp?
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From what I can tell, you can pick which block you take your sites from. Doesn't matter which block (Fellowship, Towers, or King), but all the sites you pick have to be from the same block.
Which honestly isn't a whole lot better (though it is definitely an upgrade). What I'd like to see is a complete rebalance of each site from each block to make them more like the Shadows path, but with a Region number as well (as I've seen suggested here and there), so you'd have a Shadow number of 0-3, a Region number of 1-3, and rebalanced text (such as what was done for Bridge of Khazad-dum, though perhaps not quite as vicious with the nerf-bat).
I think I'd leave the sanctuary keyword in, though, and make it so only sanctuaries can be played at site 3 and 6, which anchors the path somewhat and prevents things like Steward's Tomb at site 6.
So that gives us a system that's firmly between the rigid Movie system and the overly-flexible Shadows path. A system such as this would have players picking a 2 Region 1's, a Sanctuary 3, 2 Region 2's, a Sanctuary 6, and 3 Region 3's.
This would avoid problems with cards that were balanced around being only played at certain parts of the site path (especially site 9's), while making things more interesting strategy-wise. Limiting particular sites to a particular region would also keep sites from being too weak--if you don't have to worry about site X being played in the first two regions, you can be a little more lenient in how powerful it is.
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What I'd like to see is a complete rebalance of each site from each block to make them more like the Shadows path, but with a Region number as well (as I've seen suggested here and there), so you'd have a Shadow number of 0-3, a Region number of 1-3, and rebalanced text
During the 2nd Edition project this was one of my ideas (my view of the 2nd Edition was: take Movie, remove/errata the few problem cards, remove unnecessary unplayable cards, add non-problematic post-Movie cards, add some new cards to fill the gaps in underdeveloped Movie archetypes and finish this with making a brand new sitepath going from Shire to Mount Doom and working with all cultures and decktypes existing). Unfortunately most of the team decided they want to make a completely new game as AFAIK finally the project crashed under too big workload.
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That's the problem with fan projects like that; feature creep is a problem even large corporations struggle with, and fans need to be particularly aware of it. It's better to pick a single aspect and get that out the door, then iterate onto the next bullet point, etc.
This seems approachable, though. I'm curious to see what your other ideas were.
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Be careful Zurcamos, your comment is just vulgar and stupid.
Multipath is a format defined by the french community, the goal was to bring a balanced and interesting site path for all the movie meta. There were some lacks for moria swarm, dunland or even archery crowd control.
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Dunland get Crashed Gate from King Block. That's by far the best site they could want. OK, they lose some breathing space at 2 and 3, and quite like Ring of Isengard at 8, but that's almost nothing in comparison to a very likely site. Also No Retreat through First Circle ends most fellowships. I'd stick with King Block to be honest. Moria could have done better, though. I agree with you there.
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You don't even know about what you are talking about. We were 10-15 players to create this format.
So just calm down.
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Dunland get Crashed Gate from King Block. That's by far the best site they could want. OK, they lose some breathing space at 2 and 3, and quite like Ring of Isengard at 8, but that's almost nothing in comparison to a very likely site. Also No Retreat through First Circle ends most fellowships. I'd stick with King Block to be honest. Moria could have done better, though. I agree with you there.
Yes, but on Crashed Gate, the players can add 3 threats, and Dunland don't use threats :/. I agree with First Circle+No Retreat.
But in the multipath, you have the choice to avoid archery on the earlier sites, search Saruman at the sites 5 and 9 and use Ring of Isengard.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. No need to get hostile on this thread guys, seems a little ridiculous to me.
My small friend group that plays together just uses open sites, which is fun but not terribly practical to be honest. After this weekend, everyone else is on the verge of banning my one deck that spams 4 copies of Dark Places and mostly underground and marsh sites, (not to mention Hobbit Farmer and Thror's Map) because we end up playing with all my sites in which my deck ends up dominating. Obviously, there are ways around my abuse of this, but not everyone wants to/can play condition discard.
Thought about a variation of sorts of regions, except going with sites 1-3 from Fellowship, 4-6 from TT, and 7-9 from ROTK. No region numbers, just keeping the shadow ones, but still. It would limit the multipath a bit and take a few sites away from my Dark Places spam.
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I actually went through yesterday and compiled a list of sites and modified them to fit the pattern I described in my post. I modified some of the game text to line up more with the post-Shadows copies, and in some cases tried to clean up things like enduring Nazgul abuse.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iaFWJJaSRerZm-JCdMmwXUrWOLr9ARXQAsM8fL1uwBk/edit#gid=0
Dunno if this would even be feasible to use; I'd need to playtest with it and I don't have any opponents to play against IRL.
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Interesting. What would be the best way you'd see fit to playtest this? Might try it this weekend if I'm not met with too many objections.
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Probably to print out the spreadsheet and refer to it while using the physical cards. If we find it's at a reasonably balanced level, I can 'shop some images that can be printed out to be used in lieu of the cards themselves.
The other way would be to do the shops first and then use them in a program such as gccg or lackey.