Towers Standard Sealed League - Series 1 Starter Decks

[Merrick_H]

I've been watching many of the games that have been played in the Towers Standard Sealed League and have noticed that A LOT of people have chosen the Three Hunters Deck.  I'm curious as to why you chose the deck you did and if you have any feedback on the deck design or league as it stands thus far.

Regards,

Merrick_H

[Merrick_H]

I chose the Gandalf/Dwarves & Grind because it was a deck that I designed AND I wound up pulling a couple of REALLY good sauron cards that I wanted to try out including a fourth UtWE.  I also pulled a second Have Patience and a Barliman Butterbur, PPP so it seemed like a solid choice overall.

I've really liked the way the games have gone thus far.  No one deck has a huge advantage over the others, although there have been a HUGE number of Hunters/Uruk decks.

[moria_god]

I chose archery because I like to kill companions. Fear the Nazguls!!! Never played Rohan before, banking on them being OP in later series

[bibfortuna25]

I chose Rohan purely because I drew Firefoot. Dwarves would have been my second choice, since I also drew Greatest Kingdom of My People.

[Nicko]

I chose the three hunters starter because of its healing capacities (Legolas, Athelas, Trust and I pulled an elven cloak) which hinder 2 out of 3 shadow sides (archers and grind), it has swarm protection (aragorn, quick as may be, I got defend it and hope) and good skirmishing capacities (Aragorn, Gimli).

On the other side, the trackers' beatdown is quite serious and forces a lot of stops. The only one usable rare card I got is Lurtz, which fits quite well there.

I think the next phases would need a little bit more crowd control and fear a good amount of players would go for easterlings only to get Evil smelling fens and Gollum to bring back enquea when needed.

[sdamico413]

I chose the gandalf starter deck because i decided that this time i would go against what i normally choose. i would normally pick either urukai for minions or rohan for freeps. i wanted to try something different for a change. the sauron part of the deck works really well. the free peoples part is a bit harder. but in my opinion the three hunters deck has too many of the search cards. 3 of each was a bit overkill and gives an advantage.

[sgtdraino]

I chose Gandalf/Dwarfs & Sauron Grind, for a few reasons:

1. I like larger decks, and Gandalf helps with cycling.
2. Especially in Sealed, I feel like condition discard is important if you can get it. The Gandalf deck comes with a Sleep. I got a Saruman's Power in my pulls, and enought Isengard minions to use it.
3. Pulled a couple of (seemingly) decent Gandalf cards, Roll of Thunder and Into Dark Tunnels. I think Into Dark Tunnels is bugged, though; I used it during a game to put Mysterious Wizard back in my hand during a Gandalf skirmish... but it only put ITSELF back in my hand! Consequently, Gandalf exerted twice, couldn't win the skirmish, and died.
4. As mentioned above, I feel like conditions can make or break a sealed deck. The Sauron Grind have some pretty good ones, and I can expect that there won't be much condition discard.

Observations:

The Three Hunters & Uruk Trackers are definitely the most popular. I think that shadow is probably on its own the strongest of the stock options. The decks I've encountered tend to play out plenty of companions. That makes them really hard to swarm, especially with Aragorn. I tend to agree with those who say there is not enough crowd control for any of the decks.

So far not too impressed by Rohan and Archery. The Shadow isn't very strong IMO, and the only advantage your Freeps get, is via your sites, which you can only take advantage of if you're behind, which ain't good.

Gandalf/Dwarfs & Sauron feels pretty balanced to me.

In summation, I'd make Rohan & Archery a little stronger, make Hunters and Trackers a little weaker, and add more crowd control to all of them.

[UnPapayaCoconut]

I chose rohan deck cuz i drew Eomer (the good one)
I still get hammered by the trackers every game, and as I wrote in the gemp chat, i think they have too many conditions, wouldve limited it to 2 weary and 2 many riddles. I don't rate this archery deck very much either, the uruk archers are simply too bad in my opinion.

Either way great work putting this together, always enjoy when there's some new stuff available.

[UnPapayaCoconut]

I chose Gandalf/Dwarfs & Sauron Grind, for a few reasons:

1. I like larger decks, and Gandalf helps with cycling.
2. Especially in Sealed, I feel like condition discard is important if you can get it. The Gandalf deck comes with a Sleep. I got a Saruman's Power in my pulls, and enought Isengard minions to use it.
3. Pulled a couple of (seemingly) decent Gandalf cards, Roll of Thunder and Into Dark Tunnels. I think Into Dark Tunnels is bugged, though; I used it during a game to put Mysterious Wizard back in my hand during a Gandalf skirmish... but it only put ITSELF back in my hand! Consequently, Gandalf exerted twice, couldn't win the skirmish, and died.
4. As mentioned above, I feel like conditions can make or break a sealed deck. The Sauron Grind have some pretty good ones, and I can expect that there won't be much condition discard.

Observations:

The Three Hunters & Uruk Trackers are definitely the most popular. I think that shadow is probably on its own the strongest of the stock options. The decks I've encountered tend to play out plenty of companions. That makes them really hard to swarm, especially with Aragorn. I tend to agree with those who say there is not enough crowd control for any of the decks.

So far not too impressed by Rohan and Archery. The Shadow isn't very strong IMO, and the only advantage your Freeps get, is via your sites, which you can only take advantage of if you're behind, which ain't good.

Gandalf/Dwarfs & Sauron feels pretty balanced to me.

In summation, I'd make Rohan & Archery a little stronger, make Hunters and Trackers a little weaker, and add more crowd control to all of them.

You summed it up very well

[sgtdraino]

Either way great work putting this together, always enjoy when there's some new stuff available.

I agree, great job. Speaking from personal experience, it's really tough to get something balanced, and it requires a LOT of testing. Heck, think of all the testing Decipher did over the years, and still we run into balance problems. This first sealed league is probably the best opportunity yet to thoroughly test the balance on these decks, to be tweaked and fine-tuned.

I'll add this: It's not perfect, but I do feel it's already more balanced than some of the other Sealed formats!

[ket_the_jet]

I picked the Three Hunters deck solely for drawing Greed in my packs. Crowd control is huge in sealed, and I figured that would be a card that could get me over the hump.

Unfortunately, my other draws were not so friendly (to any of the decks). I feel like the common suggestion is that the Three Hunters deck is the strongest, and it does offer great versatility with extra support cards, but I found the Trackers to be nondescript as minions. I ran into the Dwarven/Tracker deck more than the other two, and Fror was a steamroller against any of the Trackers I threw out there.

Looking forward to round two.
-wtk

[nameuse1]

I chose the hunters because I was more familiar with the card set and drew some decent cards for that starter such as Foul Creation and Grimir.

As someone who doesn't know all of the "real" starter decks particularly well, I will say that it is nice not to have to look up all the starter decks and attempt to determine which is the best.

I probably agree with most of the comments concerning balance above, but must say that I am overall impressed with how well these were balanced   Most of my games have been very very close.

If I could change one thing, I would give each deck a little more fellowship size control. As it stands, I usually risk just playing nine companions and don't get too much backlash; I don't like playing that way but it is effective.

[sgtdraino]

I'll jump on the bandwagon of those who say the Uruk Trackers have too many Search conditions. Those are letting them snipe key characters, or putting wounds on guys even when they lose the skirmish (which makes them just as good as Sauron wounding orcs).

I'll also reiterate the crowd control issue, just played yet another Three Hunters deck that ran a full 9 companions, including +1 Aragorn, and basically walked to Site 9, nothing I could do.

[daisukeman]

First of all, great work you guys and really nice to play this format and overall, something new.

I chose the 3 hunters.

Not only because it seemed to provide the better fps (most versatile: can fight as well as the others, and additionally it has healing options and options to wound minions!!), but because of my pulls.
I guess the versatile part, is mainly because of the 2 athelas, which really make a difference as they end up allowing discard of conditions too.
A starting legolas helps because of that archery point which puts for an easy double to site 3, if exerted minions come into play (e.g, to play conditions).

I did not do too well, basically because I ran very short of minions. The starter decks are nicely constructed but it seems that both the uruk and the sauron ones have very few minions. And not only I got crap rares as usual, but this time I got really really few minions in boosters (max 4?). Possibly my bad for choosing a lot of set 1.
I was really hoping I'd get saruman's power, enquea or nertea (all uncomons), or even sleep caradhras (which would've make me go for the gandalf starter).

But oh well, let's see how series 2 turns out. For the moment and anticipatedly, I can say I'm tilting towards the RBR one...

[daisukeman]

Forgot to mention: regarding my pulls, I guess this is also a good reason why people choose mostly the 3 hunters: if you get decent C/U elven stuff or gondor stuff, you're better off chosing that one.
In my case, I got 2 The seen and the unseen, got a gondor shield, an extra athelas, a faramir from set 4 (all common) and an elf skirmish event.

I think the 3 hunter deck should cut off Gimli and 1 athelas --posibly replace for 1 strength of arms, forewarned, phlial of galadriel, arrow and blade, or some other "sophisticated crap" cards. And this way, anything you get for dwarves makes you at least consider more the dwarf deck (and avoids abuse of quick as may be).

[Not a Zombie]

I chose hunters cause I didn't want rohan or sauron. Just personal preference.

[ramolnar]

I chose the Tracker deck because I usually don't play trackers plus I opened a Defend It and Hope. I don't think any of the Shadow sides are good enough. In the one game I played, neither FP was in any danger whatsoever.

Looking at the decklists, shadow/FP balance is only going to get worse. None of the shadows combine well, but FPs keep getting better. That's one of the huge problems with Cumulative sealed on GEMP. To have "even" series 3 and 4, the FP need to be underpowered in series 1. And there's almost no sufficient amount of crowd control. Maybe if every deck had 4 Enquea things would be more interesting.

[daisukeman]

hmm, yes please more shadow fire powerrr.
I possibly agree about the Enquea part, because overall it was true: fps really got the advantage over shadow.
Though we could try this little by little, as in putting 1 more in every deck.

Or, another interesting alternative would be to add one rare to each shadow (i.e, sauron orcs --as well as dunlands really need rares in order to be successful). So for sauron, you could put in one Hate, for uruks: one savagery to match their numbers, while for archery you could put one weapons of isengard.

[Eukalyptus]

We discussed this at length and no rares are gonna be implemented in the decks (highly unlikely at least and DEFINATELY not such power rares). The main problem (imo) is that no, or barely, any deck has any given card 3x to not render booster pulls useless. Which is a point I completely support.

The freeps getting stronger was done with intent, but the more you get into the later series, the more you'd have to combine, as we threw the natural combos into the same series to prevent them. The Three Hunters deck originally had the Elven Comrade instead of Archer of Mirkwood if I recall correctly. That change alone should be sufficient. Maybe change the Gimli to another non gimmick one, but that's about it I think.

The shadows not combining well is not true. The archery shadow from S1 blends very well with the Southron shadow from S3, while the Easterling Shadow has Gollum and ESF which can help any S1/S3 shadow a great deal. S1 Uruks also pairs nicely with the S3 machine Uruks. Dunland, Nazgul and Isengard Men/Orc shadows pretty much stand for themselves, that is correct. But Dunland is very limited in what we could do without going into the rares, same goes for the Nazgul. The Isengard Men/Orc shadow was made for diversity, I'm sure there can be a nice combination found with the S1 archers or Easterlings.

That being said, I think the S1 archery shadow lacking of minions. Two Southron Bowmen should do the trick imo.

[Vordan]

I choose Gandalf/Dwarf to try them and for the shadow as i got nertea (helps swarms, and can take back insurgent, as only 2 are too low imho).

What i found:

1) Without good pulls the fp really struggle, especially vs tracker, who stomp them easily.

2) The shadow has some swarm potential, but if you don't pull it off, you do much like nothing to the other fp and they just run

3) this shadow need many minion to swarm so bigger deck (found myself many times decked out and short of minion with 38/38), but bigger deck lead to less chances to get your fp condition/possession out as you don't have 4x, but at most 2x (leaving out boosters).

4) shadow draw/potential reside principally to insurgent, and i think this deck need a 3th copy as 2 in a big deck may lead to never draw him (happened four times)


That sayd i found out that the three starters are:

- gand-dwarf/swarm - has potential but you really struggle to pull it off

- three hunter/tracker - solid fp (nearly un-swarmable, got direct dmg, heal and fighting), probably the strongest shadow in s1 (as you can throw minion to stop and you just need a couple condition or event to get a stop; many times minions are enough)

- rohan/archer - decent fp, with fight/heal capacity (but no anti-swarm, direct dmg), shadow just throw out arrow and possibly even swarm (imho the shadow that can grow better with boosters, as many c/u greatly help this one)