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[DáinIronfoot]

I look at Decipher (at least in relation to LOTR TCG) and I see two seperate companies, pretty much. There's the Decipher that existed during the Movie Block and early on in the post-Shadows world. They were creative, innovative, smart, and fun. They designed a wonderful card game in LOTR TCG and were excellent stewards of it, creating new twists that only further enhanced the familiar game that was already beloved. They mixed new ideas with the old rather seemlessly and gave us a LOT of great, great cards.

But then I see another Decipher that came into existance around the time of the Hunters Block. This Decipher was lazy and sloppy in their card design, saw only the here and now, and didn't care what the fans of the game thought about what they were doing as long as they kept opening their wallets. True, only a handful of cards from this period were truly broken or blatantly shoddy, but even most of the rest were just BORING. The innovation was gone.

So you're right: overall, LOTR TCG is an excellent game, which is why I and others love the game so much...and why I'm so passionate in my verbal dismay about how it was driven into oblivion. I prefer to look back at pre-Hunters block (though even Hunters had some good stuff mixed in) and see what is almost entirely good, clean, fun card design. It's when I look beyond that that I get distressed and disappointed as the new, boring Decipher took over. That's partly why I design DCs: they hearken back to the good times. The inventive times. Not the boring, sloppy crud that was foisted on us near the end.

In short: in answer to your question, yes. Overall, Decipher's body of work was brilliant card design, and Decipher a great designer. But that Decipher is long dead. And THAT is why I must be won over BEFORE I invest my time and money in another one of their products like Fight Klub.

[leokula]

I think that about hunters onward, that's more of a personal opinion.

Hunters brought a new keyword, a new movie-ish deck (the three hunters) new trackers, a new awesome threat deck for Orcs, a new Ferny, new site control options and a new Aragorn's Bow .

RoS had the fighting frodo mechanism, it allowed a lot more for gandalf men, brought the coolest sarumans (not the follower one, the S ones) we'd seen since KoI, Faramir RB, the thrones (awesome), the missing dwarf for discard, completely remade pipeweeds and a site that allowed you to play dead unique companions.

T&D brought the new horns, which is a total new way of playing followers, the monstruous Gil-galad, a total revamp on elvents, galadriel's silver ewer, the artifact all elves fans have been expecting.

If that's not creativity, I don't know what is Maybe some people hated all of this, but it was creative.