Light & Shadow - Experimenting with Keywords

[Thranduil]

I was doing some thinking about my set and decided that I would need some new keywords or mechanics. So I did some brainstorming and thought I'd find out what you guys thought. So here's a list of experiments; you tell me which you like best and suggest improvements for them. Thanks!

Threshold - Ability
I have 2 ideas for this one:
1) The ability triggers when the companion's resistance is 0.
2) Threshold X and the ability triggers when the companion's resistance is exactly X, or possibly X or more.

Aura - Ability
The ability affects only your characters with a twilight cost equal to or less than that of the character with the aura. I'm using twilight so that it can be a Shadow and FP keyword, but I was also toying with the aura only affecting companions with resistance equal to or greater.

Foresee X
When you play this card, you may look at the top X cards of a draw deck and replace them in any order.

Omen - X
When you play this card, you reveal the top card of your draw deck. If the revealed card matches the omen card, you may take the revealed card into hand. Ie. this would look like "Omen - The Witch-King" or "Omen - condition".

Affinity for X
Each card you play that fulfills X costs -1. Ie. this would look like "Affinity for " making each card cost -1.

Protector
While a protector is assigned to a skirmish, the Ring-bearer is strength +2 (or perhaps the Ring-bearer is strength +1 for each protector assigned).

Assailant
While an assailant is assigned to a skirmish, all protector bonuses are cancelled and/or each event you play costs -1 (or -2 for each assailant assigned).

[FM]

Well, since I may be the best suited to post about this, let me!

Threshold - Ability
I have 2 ideas for this one:
1) The ability triggers when the companion's resistance is 0.
2) Threshold X and the ability triggers when the companion's resistance is exactly X, or possibly X or more.

I think resistance 0 is the best choice. However, if you're thinking on using it the same way, "making things bigger", like making characters stronger or cards better, I think you need a different approach so the Shadow player can use it as well. Sure, he'd be able to spot the companions, but then he'd either have to make a deck dedicated to lowering their resistance or count on the fact they would be playing with it. Perhaps counting Shadow/Free Peoples cards in the discard pile (or maybe a specific type of card, for instance, Threshold on minions triggers with minions, on conditions with conditions, so on, so forth) is easier. But I think as it is resistance 0 is the best way to go, so both sides can play with it.

Aura - Ability
The ability affects only your characters with a twilight cost equal to or less than that of the character with the aura. I'm using twilight so that it can be a Shadow and FP keyword, but I was also toying with the aura only affecting companions with resistance equal to or greater.

I think equal twilight cost would be enough, equal or less might prove too overpowered depending on the abilities, and to benefit that many characters I think it'd be easy to make "generic conditions", like "Nazgûl are strength +2" or stuff like this (less messy to keep track of).

Foresee X
When you play this card, you may look at the top X cards of a draw deck and replace them in any order.

I'd like more if you used the whole ability, letting they put any number of them on the BOTTOM of the deck. Might be abusable this way, but I think it's more fun!

Omen - X
When you play this card, you reveal the top card of your draw deck. If the revealed card matches the omen card, you may take the revealed card into hand. Ie. this would look like "Omen - The Witch-King" or "Omen - condition".

I think this is not very useful as it is. I think instead of taking it into hand, you could play it for no cost or a reduced cost. Seriously, it might look abusable, but it's not as abusable as it seems. Or perhaps get a REALLY good effect and then either discard that top card or place it on the bottom of the deck (to avoid too much abuse).

Affinity for X
Each card you play that fulfills X costs -1. Ie. this would look like "Affinity for " making each card cost -1.

This is... confusing. It should actually be "This card is twilight cost -1 for each card you can spot. However, it'd be ABSURDLY abusable, unless you costed it like the Ents, (which are STILL abusable, but at least not very much). Or maybe only counting cards of the same type, or only counting companions/minions?

Protector
While a protector is assigned to a skirmish, the Ring-bearer is strength +2 (or perhaps the Ring-bearer is strength +1 for each protector assigned).

I'd actually like to see a bit more flavor, he should give the bonus while NOT assigned to a skirmish (if he's busy fighting, he can't be protecting the R-b, now can he?). This would also make it less abusable, since this way all you had to do was resolve the R-b skirmish first at site 9 and gg. But to be honest, I don't like this particular keyword very much.

Assailant
While an assailant is assigned to a skirmish, all protector bonuses are cancelled and/or each event you play costs -1 (or -2 for each assailant assigned).

I don't like this one very much as well, but the second part is NEAT. I'd refrain from keywording it to prevent abuse, but give that ability as a regularly written ability for some characters anyway, specially minions that like regroup events.

All in all, I like where most of this is going, and I specially like Foresee, I could definitely see it being a great ability with a lot of design space, specially with Omen!

[leokula]

Has someone been playing too much Magic lately? LOL wow this all sounds so like Magic. Magic loves turning complex mechanics into keywords and still explain it in every single card (what's the point then? whatever). I like LOTR keywords cause they're very very simple, like fierce or damage+1. I hate Magic's one billion keywords and some of them are in like less than 10 cards, like epic :S so stupid.

I'd toy with unloaded keywords if I was to DC. I think using new keywords makes the cards so not like LOTR, but that's just me. Specially ones that are just equal to ones in Magic like Affinity. BTW Affinity kinda didn't work for Magic, I don't think it would in LOTR; we all seen how powerful toil and toil is far more balanced than the original affinity idea. As for the other keywords, I think you're just turning game text into keywords, so nothing new for me.

[sickofpalantirs]

The only one I like is threshold. sorry.

[FM]

THe idea of keywords is exactly to turn gamte text into smaller words, so that you have extra space on the cards. Also, they only include reminder text for abilities on cards when the abilities are first introduced, or when the card is part of a Core Set (so newer players can have the reminder on them). But I agree, Epic WAS a bad call. And Affinity is crazy mainly because it "cheats" the mana cost of stuff, but since in LotR you basically just add/subtract stuff to pay for costs, it could work. I think toil is the way to go, though. However, thing is, toil is really abusable because a lot of things like wounds being placed or exertions being made, letting toil "combo off". I, for one, would "keyword" Foresee (so it can appear in more cards as even a small bonus, and still leave room for other stuff) and perhaps Threshold, the rest should not appear so much as to justify the trouble of keywording them.
As a downside I should add to the previous discussion, though, that I don't personally like unloaded keywords very much. I mean, sure, Ranger is fine, it makes sense and all, but Besieger? Blech. Unnecessary.
And PS: "Hunter X" is just lame, let's face it.

[Thranduil]

Has someone been playing too much Magic lately? LOL wow this all sounds so like Magic. Magic loves turning complex mechanics into keywords and still explain it in every single card (what's the point then? whatever). I like LOTR keywords cause they're very very simple, like fierce or damage+1. I hate Magic's one billion keywords and some of them are in like less than 10 cards, like epic :S so stupid.

I'd toy with unloaded keywords if I was to DC. I think using new keywords makes the cards so not like LOTR, but that's just me. Specially ones that are just equal to ones in Magic like Affinity. BTW Affinity kinda didn't work for Magic, I don't think it would in LOTR; we all seen how powerful toil and toil is far more balanced than the original affinity idea. As for the other keywords, I think you're just turning game text into keywords, so nothing new for me.

Well I've been having serious trouble thinking up interesting keywords in LotR, which is why I've been using Magic for inspiration because they do have a lot of keywords! My problem is that I don't want every keyword to add to strength like most of LotR's keywords (hunter, enduring) so I'm trying other avenues. I also personally think that LotR has more than enough unloaded keywords, they just haven't actually used them for anything except for very few cases. I won't be throwing new ones around specifically, but I will be featuring the preexisting ones because I think they're great design space (like creature types in magic which make you look at each card twice; once for its abilities, and once for its tribal synergy).

Thranduil

[Anvar]

Threshold - love the idea, though I suspect the name should probably change to make it less magicky. I like the idea of it triggering on resistance 0, but would love to see it appear on FP and Shadow cards. Could it be more of a callout keyword than a proper keyword? eg. 'Threshold - while this companion has resistance 0 he is strength +2', 'Threshold - Shadow: Spot a companion with resistance 0 and exert this minion to draw a card'. Alternatively you could have Threshold only on companions, since shadow cultures already work off low resistance.

Aura - not sure I get the concept. Is it that the character has an aura that benefits characters of lesser stature? If it only worked on characters with the same twilight cost it could really alter deck construction in an interesting way. I think this idea might have some potential.

Foresee - doing this to your opponent might be too powerful and annoying. Doing it to yourself seems fine, might be a nice mechanic especially for Elves. It isn't very showy however.

Omen - I think this could be fun, and would have to be in a set with foresee for it ot have much value. Could make deck construction interesting, which is good.

Affinity - I assume that you deliberately changed this from affinity for magic. Still, I don't much like choke strategies in LotR and am not a huge fan of this idea.

Protector - surely this should be an X ability. Not sure how I feel about this one. Seems just a bit BA9 to me.

Assailant - not a big fan of it as anti-protector, however, I rather like the idea of making shadow events cheaper for each assailant assigned to a skirmish. It could allow for some devastatingly powerful skirmish events at a large costs. Better yet, the FP player can try to deal with it without putting anti-assailant cards into his deck, simply by being careful about skirmish order. This makes it interesting (and way better than something like site control).

Hope that's helpful,
Anvar

[lem0nhead]

Threshold - Ability
I have 2 ideas for this one:
1) The ability triggers when the companion's resistance is 0.
2) Threshold X and the ability triggers when the companion's resistance is exactly X, or possibly X or more.

Prefer the second. Dont see why a freeps player should benefit from 0 res.

Aura - Ability
The ability affects only your characters with a twilight cost equal to or less than that of the character with the aura. I'm using twilight so that it can be a Shadow and FP keyword, but I was also toying with the aura only affecting companions with resistance equal to or greater.

Sounds an ok idea but kinda complicated for LOTR.

Foresee X
When you play this card, you may look at the top X cards of a draw deck and replace them in any order.

Meh very bland, just making telepathy more streamlined but i enjoy how telepathy decks work, the mechanism is half the fun without using keywords.

Omen - X
When you play this card, you reveal the top card of your draw deck. If the revealed card matches the omen card, you may take the revealed card into hand. Ie. this would look like "Omen - The Witch-King" or "Omen - condition".

Very unuseful keyword. Even if a one in ~60 chance pulls off its hardly very great to have 2 witch kings in your hand.

Affinity for X
Each card you play that fulfills X costs -1. Ie. this would look like "Affinity for " making each card cost -1.

Dont like the actual word itself or the way it is used. Sorry!

Protector
While a protector is assigned to a skirmish, the Ring-bearer is strength +2 (or perhaps the Ring-bearer is strength +1 for each protector assigned).

This one is ok. Giving a keyword to the hunters block rohan companions style is quite cool.

Assailant
While an assailant is assigned to a skirmish, all protector bonuses are cancelled and/or each event you play costs -1 (or -2 for each assailant assigned).

Wouldnt do AND, because i dont like the first bit. I hate how hunters cancel each other out (but thats cos hunter is a crap mechanic with no thought and no imagination). The second bit sounds ok and more feasible.

[Thranduil]

Okay, I think I'm going to run with these for the moment:

Foresee X (look at the top X cards of your draw deck; place those cards on top of or beneath your draw deck in any order)

Herald X (look at the top card of your draw deck; if the card fulfills the criteria X, you may take it into your hand)

Assault -X (while this minion is assigned to a skirmish, each Shadow event is twilight cost -X)

And I'm looking for some mechanics that deal with my main themes, namely resistance and The One Ring. I have not discarded the idea of Threshold, but I'll have to think on it a bit more to get it to work for FP and Shadow players (I'll only introduce a callout keyword if I can make a theme of them). So, what about these ideas:

Unyielding
This companion's resistance is not modified by the number of burdens.

Thranduil

[FM]

I like very much the one that DOESN'T let burdens tamper with it. You might be onto something. I'd gladly see that isntead of Heral, which to be honest, is amazingly narrow even with Foresee (which I still think should be more like scry and let you send some cards down to the bottom of the deck).

[sickofpalantirs]

sending cards down would be cool, maybe replace them in any order beneath or on top of your draw deck.  IDK.  definitly not letting burdens mess with it would be kewl.

[Thranduil]

Shall we have a bit of a sample of what we might be seeing with these keywords?

•The Mirror of Galadriel, Guide for the Wise
Artifact • Support Area
To play, spot Galadriel.
At the start of the maneuver phase, you may exert a companion with resistance X to foresee X (look at the top X cards of your draw deck; place those cards on top of or beneath your draw deck in any order). Then you may draw a card.
"‘What shall we look for, and what shall we see?'"
L R 27

•Glóin, Dwarven Delegate
Companion • Dwarf
Str: 6
Vit: 3
Res: 6
Damage +1.
At the start of the fellowship phase, you may herald a card (look at the top card of your draw deck; if it is a card, you may take it into hand). If that card is a Dwarf, you may play him; his twilight cost is -2.
"Next to Frodo on his right sat a dwarf of important appearance, richly dressed."
L R 10

Awoken in the Darkness
Event • Shadow
Spot an or card to foresee 5 (look at the top 5 cards of your draw deck; place those cards on top of or beneath your draw deck in any order). Then you may herald The Balrog (look at the top card of your draw deck; if it is The Balrog, you may take it into hand).
L U

•Sauron, Seeking for the Ring
Minion • Maia
Str: 24
Vit: 5
Sit: 6
Damage +1. Fierce.
If Sauron is heralded, you may play him immediately; his twilight cost is -8.
L R

•Aragorn, Last of His Line
Companion • Man
Str: 8
Vit: 4
Res: 8
Ranger. Unyielding (Aragorn's resistance is not modified by the number of burdens).
Maneuver: Exert Aragorn to make an unbound companion resistance X until the regroup phase, where X is Aragorn's resistance.
L R

[FM]

Herald should have to REVEAL the card it it matches the criteria, shouldn't it? I still don't like it keyworded...

[chompers]

With the Threshold idea, a companion with resistance 0 being tempted to take the Ring and attacking the Ring-Bearer (kinda like Boromir) could be interesting. It would easily be overpowered so the fellowship could have the option of returning companion with resistance 0 to hand to prevent the attack or something similar.

I like the idea of Aragorn being Indomitable (resistance not modified). There's a few cards that may become more useful with this keyword.

[lem0nhead]

Shall we have a bit of a sample of what we might be seeing with these keywords?

•The Mirror of Galadriel, Guide for the Wise
Artifact • Support Area
To play, spot Galadriel.
At the start of the maneuver phase, you may exert a companion with resistance X to foresee X (look at the top X cards of your draw deck; place those cards on top of or beneath your draw deck in any order). Then you may draw a card.
"‘What shall we look for, and what shall we see?'"
L R 27

Ok.

•Glóin, Dwarven Delegate
Companion • Dwarf
Str: 6
Vit: 3
Res: 6
Damage +1.
At the start of the fellowship phase, you may herald a card (look at the top card of your draw deck; if it is a card, you may take it into hand). If that card is a Dwarf, you may play him; his twilight cost is -2.
"Next to Frodo on his right sat a dwarf of important appearance, richly dressed."
L R 10

Not very useful. How many of the 8 maximum fellowship phases is there gonna be a dwarf top card? Plus i dont like the word herald it sounds wrong. Id revise phrasing for that mechanic.

Awoken in the Darkness
Event • Shadow
Spot an or card to foresee 5 (look at the top 5 cards of your draw deck; place those cards on top of or beneath your draw deck in any order). Then you may herald The Balrog (look at the top card of your draw deck; if it is The Balrog, you may take it into hand).
L U

Cool. Ditto herald.

•Sauron, Seeking for the Ring
Minion • Maia
Str: 24
Vit: 5
Sit: 6
Damage +1. Fierce.
If Sauron is heralded, you may play him immediately; his twilight cost is -8.
L R

May need a bit more. Overshadowed by other Saurons.

•Aragorn, Last of His Line
Companion • Man
Str: 8
Vit: 4
Res: 8
Ranger. Indomitable (Aragorn's resistance is not modified by the number of burdens).
Maneuver: Exert Aragorn to make a companion resistance X until the regroup phase, where X is Aragorn's resistance.
L R

Awesome card, really cool, though other gorns may see more usage. Indomitable isnt a very nice word either doesnt roll of your tongue. Resolute or Steadfast or Unyielding are much more lotr-ey words etc...