Why did Decipher make redundant cards?

[Gil-Estel]

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

And this makes LotR tcg part of literature, for since the beginning of writing the contradiction of good vs bad is an important theme in lterature

Sorry, Thran, for making fun of your comment, but I couldn't agree with you more! But maybe it is also a way of good players to improve their skills. It is not that hard, especially with all the decklists on this site to make a good deck, but to make a deck with less used cards, that is a challenge....

[Ringbearer]

And not to wonder how many pumps there are in King Block. Some cards seem worse then older cards because in retrospect cards where a little bit powerful. Thats why in TTT block the hobit cancellers didnt give strength bonuses, and thats why there are no hobbit cancellers at all in king block.

[FM]

In fact, that`s more of a flavor reason. Hobbits pretty much evaded stuff all around in the beggining of movie 1. In movie 2, they still evaded quite a few things, although only Pippin and Merry did so, which is why the cancelling is fairly limited to them. In King Block, they were all tossed into the fire of action, so they didn`t get to evade stuff at all, they all had to "fight" at some point (be it real battles or internal ones).

[Elessar's Socks]

Haha, and I thought Swords to Plowshares was bad: "But it gives my opponent life!"

Not sure if Decipher ever released a similar article, but Magic has a good read here about bad cards--both why they exist by nature, and why they might be purposely created regardless.

[Malachi]

That's a very interesting article to read. Even if I don't know Magic at all, in this aspect all CCg are similiar anyway 

[FM]

There's an article on the MtG section, by our own La_Sin_Grail, who used to be a mod at CC, that follows a similar path.