Movie block vs Shadows and beyond

[legolas3333]

me and my bro and friends actually play what we call "expanded movie" with cultures and cards from sets 11-19 but with pre-shadows mutipath http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,2049.0.html

[Treebeard13]

The site path I just looked at as challanges that happened to be named after locations in Middle-earth.  Wasn't crazy about the new cultures.

Why not just remove the One Ring from the game then? Just have the Fellowship get to site nine? Every preceding block, site nine was closer to Mount Doom than site eight, etc. And the idea that you could play a game without leaving the Shire and actually ending up at Bag End! Well, that's just terrible. 

I was simply pointing out that this was how I dealt with the change - I didn't need to have the path follow a guided tour through Middle-earth with the goal of reaching Mount Doom.  The change was made, I had no say in the matter and that was that.  Besides, as soon as the fellowship split up it was always possible that the site path would jump around - Helm's Deep to Osgiliath and back to Rohan.  To me the variable adventure path added some new strategy elements, not unlike alternate Ring-bearers.  Based on how the game was going you could play any number of different sites.  I liked the change but I understand how some people might not.

Chuck

[Treebeard13]

me and my bro and friends actually play what we call "expanded movie" we play movie sites with cultures and cards from sets 11-14 but with pre-shadows mutipath http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,2049.0.html

That's interesting.  But for the new cultures doesn't that make a lot of sites ineffective?

Chuck

[Calam]

I bought a few Shadows boosters here and there, and I think I grabbed a couple of the starters, but I stopped buying the cards after that.  I would have continued playing in spite of the irritating changes and banning the earlier sets, however they drove away all the people I was playing with at the time and it was pointless for me to buy cards when I had nobody to play with.  I had absolutely no interest in starting from scratch in the online game, either, and I had been hearing that Decipher was having issues, so I just let it go.

Personally I really liked Reflections.  I actually got a lot of good cards from other sets in those boosters.

The fact that cards were x-listed did not bother me so much... what bothered me more was how many of them there were.  There really ought to be only a small handful, but it seemed like every set, new holes were found in the game and more awesome cards became useless.  It would have been more efficient to simply create new cards that countered the less-drastic loopholes.  Frankly I think it's poor design that they didn't do that.

Creating a new cardpool after the RotK block by banning sets, slapping cultures together, and even the new "every companion having resistance" thing bothered me.  I can see where they struggled to come up with new ideas after the movies ended.  Still, they should have quit while they were ahead.  It's better to stop making sets and keeping the game balanced and fun, than to try to milk a slowly dying cow and driving down the popularity of a very valuable card franchise.  Decipher made some horrible management decisions, IMHO.

[legolas3333]

me and my bro and friends actually play what we call "expanded movie" we play movie sites with cultures and cards from sets 11-14 but with pre-shadows mutipath http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,2049.0.html

That's interesting.  But for the new cultures doesn't that make a lot of sites ineffective?

Chuck

no, not really, theres good sites that have different wording such as deep of helm and shores of nen hithoel that will work with shadows cards

:EDIT:
Bag End
Hobbiton Party Field
Uruk Camp
Hollin
The Bridge of Khazad-dum
Deep of Helm
Deeping Wall (imagine this with saruman, SoS)
Caves of Aglarond
Shores of Nen Hithoel
Nan Curunir (technically, if we played with wargs)
Orthanc Balcony

and all the free peoples culture specific sites work as well since those didn't change.
i once made a deck with saruman, of many colors and Deeping Wall and Orthanc Balcony
theres also sites like Brown lands, anduin banks and pelennor plain that work for any archery deck
and it prevents the horn deck which is a big bonus (no dammed gate stream)

[Gil-Estel]

I have little problem with the newer series, little problem with the newer sites, I like the element of tactics added to the game, I have never had problems with reflections, for a long time these boosters were all I bought, just for the fun of it.
The problem lies in the lack of cultures, I love culturespecific decks, or well thougth rainbowdecks. I dislike the fact that certain cards weren't 'clever', i.e. way overpowered in combination with others. With the right amount of testplaying those mistakes would have been avoided.

But the biggest problem I have is that the balance has shifted. At first you were to keep your fellowship safe, and that was not an easy task. 2 9 strength Uruks could cause quite some damage. You had to make choices and certainly you didn't want to generate too much attention, in other words make too much pool. Nowadays with the powerlaunch powerdecks around some make like 20-30 pool setting up a massive fellowship and not having to fear too much. That is what I dislike most, some fellowships are so NPE to play against, just for them being so strong, and more important being set up so fast.

[jdizzy001]

I know exactly what you mean gil.  I've been pondering how the power creep could have been eliminated or severally diminished.

If decipher had stuck with their original plan and kept companions at str 4 and 5.  If you look at sets 1-3, only specific characters had a str higher than 5.  They should never made str 6 average.  It should have been lower like 4 or 5.  This would have made the game more challenging.  honestly, aren't legolas and gimli paragons of their race?  Suddenly come set 4, they are no better than anyone else, and you could have 8 companions of str 6 or better.  where as before you could have 1 8, 2 7's, 2 6's and four 3's.  Had the average companion been str 5 or 4, the game would have maintained its "sacrificial" feel as opposed to the feel we have now.

[ket_the_jet]

Amazing point jdizzy001. I never thought about how companions got stronger and stronger...wow.

I think that five for the standard "guy" (or gal!) of a race would make perfect sense. But man...I really never thought like that about companions getting stronger and stronger.

I look at my Dwarf deck now and think about where it was during Towers Standard: Farin, Dwarven Emissary, Fror, Gimli's Kinsman, Thrarin, Dwarven Smith with an Endurance of Dwarves, 20 pumps...those were the days!
-wtk

[Kenddrick]

Well, from a begginer's point of view, I feel that the removing of number on the sites and allowing them to be placed anywhere on the site map does offer more stragety and thinking. But, I think it totally kills the flavor of what the LotR is about. The journey should always start at somewhere near Hobitton, then end at Mount Doom. Having the journey start at Mount Doom and ending at Bag End totally kills the flavor.

[Alazzar]

Companions DEFINITELY got stronger and stronger.  However, escalation wasn't just one-sided -- it was across the board.  Minions got stronger as well, and there have definitely been times in the game's history where Shadow was more dominant than Free Peoples.

I mean, think about it -- back in the day, a 9-strength minion had a better-than-decent chance of winning a skirmish.  Then people like Durin and Cirdan started runnin' around, and 9-strength minions became laughable unless they came in large quantities.

Rubbercarp actually pointed out an excellent example of this to me recently.  Take the Uruk Guard from Fellowship and compare it to the Uruk-hai Guard from Black Rider.

Exact same home site.

Exact same game text (well, not word-for-word, but same effect).

Exact same cost (that part is important).

However, the newer minion has 2 more strength.  Just... 2 more strength.  For free.  It's like he has a built-in weapon.

And we're not talking about a strength-3 vs. a strength-5, or something; yes, that's a 2-strength difference, but it's no big deal.  Going from 9 to 11 could very well make the difference between winning and losing against a reasonably well-equipped companion.

Honestly, the main reason for escalation is likely just from a business standpoint.  If the newer cards are stronger, you can't just keep playing the older cards, or else you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.  Yes, it sucks for the players, but we have to remember that Decipher was a company, and that means that its #1 goal is making money (unfortunate though that may be).  After all, if they're not making money, then they stop producing games, and then we're all kinda screwed.

Sure, they could have avoided escalation and just made different companions instead of definitively stronger ones, but then a lot of people would just keep using the older ones, even if some people used the new ones.

On top of that, there's the fact that a lot of the companions from Fellowship block were retardedly good, probably because the game was new and the designers just didn't realize what impact those companions would have on the game.  Has there ever been a Legolas as good as Greenleaf?  Some might argue that Dauntless Hunter had a bigger impact on the game in a certain time period, but he was very one-dimensional and only usable in a single style of deck.  Greenleaf is one of the greatest splash companions of all time.

And Sam, Son of Hamfast -- there's a reason he was on the X list, and there's a reason corruption decks were almost completely inviable in the early days.  I remember that the number of decks I could build when I first started playing was directly proportionate to the number of Sam SoH I had.  If I had 8 Sams, I could make 8 decks.  He ALWAYS got a card slot in ANY deck most people made.  Can you think of any Sam since then that can make such a claim?

So the thing is, they started out with stupidly powerful companions to begin with.  With that in mind, they could either A) just make weaker companions, in which case no one would care about collecting them because of their clear inferiority, or B) make stronger companions.  They went with option B for the most part, and "stronger" could have meant either "better special abilities" or "higher strength."  Throughout the years, it seems as though they leaned towards higher strength (or abilities that resulted in higher strength, like the aforementioned Durin and Cirdan).

But, I don't know.  Maybe shadow escalation happened first.  It's hard to say.  Whatever the case, if one side got stronger, the other had to get stronger to match it.  And they could never really go BACKWARDS in the strength department, because, once again, no one would buy new cards if they were decidedly inferior to the old.

[Treebeard13]

Along the lines of minion power escalation was the cost reduction strategies they were put in place.  Forest Nazgul could become rediculous - very cheap, high powered and fierce.

Again, it really came down to too small a staff towards the end. 

Chuck

[FingolfinFinwe]

I honestly find the current Standard format to be the most entertaining format since Fellowship block.  There are just a few cards that give good reason for an x-list/restrict list, but overall I think it is still pretty balanced.  It's in Expanded format where you start to have more problems imo ( and obviously much worse in Open ).

With the 22 current standard decks I have put together (I know.. it's pathetic) I have pretty much covered almost all the main strategies provided in the post-shadows realm.  For the most part, the fellowships tend to struggle to make it to the finish.  During Towers & King block it was more of a race to the end in which a player once and a while got toasted along the way.  Currently, most of the victories with my decks are accomplished through shadow kills.  This is the way I like it.  

But maybe I'm just better at working with the bad guys  

[ket_the_jet]

I would say that each of my three Movie Block decks is based on Shadow kills with a strong enough fellowship to run to site nine if necessary.

Uruk Rear Guard is to blame. One guy bigger than Lurtz, Servant of Isengard. Or in general.
-wtk

[ket_the_jet]

The more I think about it, I am incredibly disappointed that the Nazgul are not among the strongest minions in the game.
-wtk

[MR. Lurtzy]

Witch-king is always way overpriced.