Why did Decipher make redundant cards?

[Kralik]

This isn't a rant against Decipher in general or their later sets, and I don't want to turn it into one.

BUT...

I still can't figure out why certain cards exist when they are completely redundant. Here's one prime example:

Hobbit Intuition either cancels a skirmish (great!) or gives +3 to strength. So what is the point to cards like Halfling Deftness and Noble Intentions*? I suppose the twilight, at the cost of an exertion? So then what about A Marvel in King block? No advantage.

[silver.telperion]

My guess would be to allow the ability more in a deck.  A deck can (for example) only have four copies of Hobbit Intuition.  If a player likes the strength bonus, four Halfing Deftness could be added for more strength boosts.

[Malachi]

Besides, we're talking about commons here

[SomeRandomDude]

Why did MtG make Counterspell and Cancel? Exact same thing, except that the latter costs 1 more mana. Cuz most control decks packed 4 copies of each.

[Kralik]

How many decks are going to have 8x Hobbit Pumps?

[FM]

But that's another issue, then. LotR DID have a problem with deckbuilding strategies, due to the nature of the game, but I'll not delve into this, I'd rather discuss it by PM if need be.

[MR. Lurtzy]

I'd like to hear that.

[Gate Troll]

This isn't a rant against Decipher in general or their later sets, and I don't want to turn it into one.

BUT...

I still can't figure out why certain cards exist when they are completely redundant. Here's one prime example:

Hobbit Intuition either cancels a skirmish (great!) or gives +3 to strength. So what is the point to cards like Halfling Deftness and Noble Intentions*? I suppose the twilight, at the cost of an exertion? So then what about A Marvel in King block? No advantage.

Well, it's all about money, and they had no real reason not to make redundant cards, so, from their point of view, why not?

[silver.telperion]

How many decks are going to have 8x Hobbit Pumps?

I would run 4x each Hobbit stealth and Hobbit intuition in Fellowship block hobbit decks.

[Imrahil]

Light-Footedness

Spot an elf to make the minion archery total -1


I just don't understand...

[MuadDib85]

So then what about A Marvel in King block? No advantage.

I would say maybe for standard format you don't get any of the set 1 cancels/pumps, possibly A Marvel and cards like No visitors, Humble Homestead were meant to be the hobbit equivelant for standard.?.

I don't know enough about this topic... possibly decipher had all formats in mind when putting certain redundant cards in to sets so that you can use a similar strategy with different cards in different formats??

An exert for the cost A Marvel could maybe sometimes be handy to put on one of your hobbits that is going to die anyway instead of giving your opponent an extra twilite to nail you with a nasty event...possibly.

But 1 twilite and an exert is alot to pay for a +3 pump....IMO Hobbit Intuition is an awesome card.

[Kralik]

would run 4x each Hobbit stealth and Hobbit intuition in Fellowship block hobbit decks.

This I can understand, as they are very similar but each has its own strength.

I don't know enough about this topic... possibly decipher had all formats in mind when putting certain redundant cards in to sets so that you can use a similar strategy with different cards in different formats??

Perhaps to have the pump for King-only decks? Someone enlighten me -- had Decipher already scheduled the set rotation for Standard when they made King block? It seems that if rotation was an issue, they could just reprint cards later (like Hobbit Sword, for example...)

[ephen]

Hobbit intuition cancels the skirmishes so if you want to win the skirmish before site 5 a straight pump is better. and cards like a marvel are just so each block has hobbit pumps for drafts and block play. Magic did this quite a bit even printing identical cards with different names.

[Vroengard]

I think it is very easy, the first set is, in parts, very strong, in many cards you can easily see, that it was the first set and playtesting not that far. Both stealth events were TOO strong. I can tell from my experiences on tournaments back then. There were several players with 8 of these. It was horrible. That's why they made the TTT versions very much a light version ( dunno the names of both) 

Same for (my opinion) flaming brand, galadriel, lady of light, thrors map  .... they got banned or errata for reason, even if I still play them as they are...

[Thranduil]

This is not a complete answer, but this is a very important point when it comes to designing games.

It is vital for a TCG or CCG that cards have varying power level. There have to be some completely awesome cards (without being broken, like SftF, CbtR) and there have to be some terrible cards that are never (or almost never) worth playing. The main reason for this is because then it allows the game to very easily differentiate good players and bad players - the better players know what cards are good, so they use those to build their decks while the bad players might consider the bad cards better than they ought (for example, when I first saw SftF, I thought it was terrible! ).

There's also another more obvious reason: without the bad cards, you have no way of judging how good a card is. The fact that there are good and bad cards puts them into context.

Thranduil