Please Fill the Gaps In For Me: a LOTR History from ROTK block to now

[Waldron_man]

They're longer available for retail sale from my local store, though I'll eventually make them available for resale.  Shortly after posting the above, I bought all 9 of them, and opened them all.  Some good pulls.

Interesting situation:  These had been displayed near the cashier for years, and the sales of the LotR product here have been stagnant, even with mark-down.  However, I happened to be there during a lunch break this week, when I overheard the store-keeper field telephone questions about LotR card availability.  This motivated me to purchase the starters immediately; and trading motivated me to open them. 

At the same time, I also overheard that they 'unearthed' a sealed Rise of Saruman booster box, which I snapped up as well.  I hope the caller didn't drive far looking for it. 

This store had plenty of Hunters-block product until recently, and they didn't know the value of it.

[rubbercarp]

Anytime I see a random card or gaming store, I always pull off the road and go in... just in case =)

[HAL_9OOO]

I wish I could do that, I don't even think we have dedicated gaming/card stores in my area. ARe there any chains or names you guys think i should search for in Yelp? Unless any of you live near Laurel, Maryland that is .

[Jerba]

Another person near DC! We really do need to get an event together around here...

[Faelach]

I just found an old article from the RotK era of the Decipher website that sheds some humorous light on how ridiculous the game got from Shadows on.  Here's the link: http://decipher.ruddog.com/content/2003/09/092303lotrrotksnider.html.

The part I'm referring to is the part about the Evil Men culture.  I quote:

"Easterlings, Southrons, and Dunlendings were all the same culture: Evil Men. This made for some really wacky combos, and some very complicated 'limited play' choices."

Though it was interesting on how even D thought it was a crazy idea when it first came up.

[simplegarak]

I just found an old article from the RotK era of the Decipher website that sheds some humorous light on how ridiculous the game got from Shadows on.  Here's the link: http://decipher.ruddog.com/content/2003/09/092303lotrrotksnider.html.

The part I'm referring to is the part about the Evil Men culture.  I quote:

"Easterlings, Southrons, and Dunlendings were all the same culture: Evil Men. This made for some really wacky combos, and some very complicated 'limited play' choices."

Though it was interesting on how even D thought it was a crazy idea when it first came up.

Faelach, I'm sending you my medical bills for splitting open my sides from laughter.

My favorite quote was:

"Many Gondor-generated effects made minions roaming all the time, not just while they were in a skirmish. This made certain cards from Fellowship of the Ring (like What Are They?) extremely problematic. "

 

[menace64]

I only got halfway through reading this thread, but I had some points I wanted to make.

The reset at Shadows was, by Decipher's own account, necessary because they no longer had access to enough still-frames to give each shadow culture enough minions and verbs. Their testimony was that if new cultures were introduced, they'd be able to recycle some older card images and keep the cultures going.

That, as it turned out, was a load of crock. For your enjoyment, here is a breakdown of *new* images that Decipher used throughout sets 11-19 that could easily have been fit into the older shadow cultures. I even broke it all down into subcultures where the images appeared to fit, just to better illustrate that at no time were any of these themes in danger of "running out of images."

Dunland - 53
Isengard, Men - 15
Isengard, Orcs - 12
Isengard, Trackers - 27
Isengard, Uruks - 91
Isengard, Wargs - 16
Moria, Goblins - 30
Raider, Corsair - 9
Raider, Easterling - 20
Raider, Southron - 40
Sauron, Besiegers - 20
Sauron, Orcs - 18
Sauron, Trackers - 17
Sauron, Trolls - 7
Sauron, Uruks - 2
Wraith, Orcs - 20
Other (Bree, Mouth of Sauron, Barrow-wights) - 21

I didn't even use all of the cards. I skipped right over some of the lesser-quality images, or ones that are sort of similar to other cards we already got in sets 1-10.

There was just no reason to group shadow cultures based on race. The Wraith culture only ever got 6 non-Nazgul cards, and they were in a special set of their own - after Battle of Helm's Deep, we never saw more Dead Marshes cards. The Uruk culture was all about the Uruks of Isengard with exception only to 2 cards, which were the sole representatives of the Uruks of Cirith Ungol in post-Mount Doom sets. If I recall correctly, Decipher's chief concern was that cultures like Dunland and Moria wouldn't be properly supported; obviously that was not true. The Men culture is absolutely awash with really nice, striking pictures of Dunlendings, and they had a plethora of goblin images that ended up getting lost in the bland, pointless Orc culture.

Even underrepresented subcultures would have been fine with a little ingenuity. Isengard Men could have received all of those Bree-men cards. The trackers of various cultures could have been made to work together; same with trolls.

The only weak parts here are the Corsairs and Uruks, but since they were pretty much one-off niche subcultures, would anybody have thrown a fit? I highly doubt it.

No, what the 'reset' shadow cultures illustrates, painfully, is that Decipher could not design new, alternative and creative strategies for the existing cultures, and had to resort to a gimmick to keep things moving along. The cards that came out in the new cultures were boring and unimaginative, and were only different due to the slightly-shifted coloration of their templates.

[Jerba]

Nice post Menace! The breakdown is super interesting, thanks for looking into it. I agree with you on the stupidity of the culture reset. Huge mistake that really hurt the game, imo.

Great job!

[Faelach]

Amen. Amen. Amen.  I had actually never heard the "image reasoning" for the reset, but found that interesting none the less. 

[ununtrium]

I totally agree. When I think about building a shadow deck of post-movie block cards, I choose cards based on the old cultures to give the deck an "even theme feel", if you know what I mean.