The best place to start, as in what leagues to join? For you, it sounds as if Fellowship Block Sealed would be a good entry point: you'll see many cards you are familiar with and some you might not be. Sealed is a great way to get into any forma though, you can learn some of the cards in an environment where nobody can build the strongest decks. It's a fun way to play even those crazy later formats, but what works very well in sealed doesn't tend to work well in constructed (and vice versa). It's been several years since I've been able to play in the leagues on Gemp, so I can offer some broad advice and maybe someone more knowledgeable will chime in.
First and foremost, your companions are going to be weaker in Sealed than Constructed. Most gear for Aragorn, Boromir, Legolas, Arwen, and Gandalf is rare, and the rest are uncommon. The strongest versions of most companions are rare as well. You'll get some, but in sealed minions of 8 strength can win skirmishes even late in the game with no pumps. If that happens in constructed, it's usually because the FP is built to allow it. Damage bonuses also tend to be rarer, so it's harder for skirmish wins to take minions off the table. You'll tend to want / need more skirmish pumps as a result. And since you'll rarely be able to have strong enough companions for a small fellowship, you'll often want to plan to have 9 companions in the deck to replace those that have to die.
So your FP are going to be taking more hits, and will try to compensate with events and numbers. In constructed this would be very difficult to pull off, but the second big difference is that big fellowship hate is harder to find. Some leagues start everyone off with two copies of
Ulaire Enquea, lieutenant of Morgul, but for most you just get what's in your starter deck and packs. Even when
Shotgun Enquea appears (and as an uncommon he will appear), because your FP are probably pretty spread out the damage of losing your "main" companion isn't always that great. In fact, sometimes rather than kill a "main" companion the Shadow player would do better to kill two less important ones.
On a related note, in later post-Fellowship formats multicultural hate is harder to find. Make no mistake, you
will have opponents that pull
Grima, Chief Counselor, or
Desert Stalker or other really harsh multicultural hate in the format. And while your starter deck does what it says and gives you a start, you'll often want to throw in whatever strong companions you get regardless of culture. Half of the justification for creating the first ban list was that tournament decklists were using too many cards of all cultures
in spite of the powerful effects of
Chief Counselor and similar. It's strong -- use it!
The balance of these two things tips towards the Free Peoples. Since Enquea is kind of a foregone conclusion there's less to fear about 5 burdens, and Frodo with a Sword will be a decent skirmishing companion -- he's just 6 strength, but can take 3 wounds and 9 burdens before you lose him. Sam is likewise a great add so that Frodo can take 9 burdens and 4 wounds without costing you the game. In Towers Easterlings can corrupt, but in other formats I don't think there's any sort of cohesive corruption deck that can be built in sealed. Burdens being less impactful and Free Peoples having the advantage means opening bids are often much higher.
There are some specific things to know by format, but here's where my advice won't do as much good. Here are some observations, though. Condition discarding is less common on both sides, so it's easier to rely on conditions without interference. In Fellowship block, site 6 allies are good even if they don't do much since they can keep you alive in a double from 4-6. In Towers,
Treebeard, Oldest Living Thing is a great common pull since he fights at site 8 despite being unhasty. Also in Towers
Southron Commander is put in the deck by every player who pulls it, so you'll typically want to put *more* than 9 companions in the deck as replacements for the ones you may need to discard. As an aside, be aware that if you have 6+ ringbound companions you can't stop the assignment. Other than that, I'm sure you'll pick up the norms for different sealed environments the same way you pick up norms for constructed environments: you try something, it doesn't work, you try something else to avoid the problems of the previous try.
My last comment doesn't come from any league experience, so take it with a bigger grain of salt. But since you expect more companions to die and since burdens play a different role, there are a ton of "bad" cards that can really shine.
Drawn to Its Power for example is very inconsistent in constructed since it ties together unconnected things, but if you have enough Nazgul to support it (and that's a big if!) it can force the Free Peoples player to keep unimportant companions alive when they'd rather kill them for fear of adding too many burdens.
Evil Afoot will have the burdens to be usable and it can recycle
any minion. And since your Shadow is just as likely to be a hodge-podge as your Free Peoples, the multicultural cards like
Hate and Anger and
Malice can sometimes make more sense to include.
I think Sealed is a fantastic way to play LotR, which is why I've been harping on a My Cards overhaul for Gemp -- to make it easier to play that sort of environment without waiting for the right leagues. I hope you give the leagues a shot though, for any format you might care to take up later. There's always one running, and even if you join late you won't miss out on any cards that have been handed out.
Topic: learning limited strategy including sealed galas (Read 2576 times)