Towers Standard Sealed League - Series 1 Starter Decks

[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)