TLHH DC Project: The Great Eye - Concepts & Discussion

[Thranduil]

Can you play alliance cards as cards of a different culture (for example, can you recover All Powers Assembled with Ships of Great Draught)?
If so, what about cards like It Burns Us: How many times would you wound a minion if you only had All Powers Assembled and cards in hand?

In this form of the keyword, the answer to both those questions is no - it is only the culture it is printed.

If not, why not just use "or" phrases instead of a new keyword ("Play a , [gollum], or minion to...")? It's a little longer, but a lot simpler than adding a new keyword (especially considering all of the other new concepts we want to do).

You could be, but I'm not sure there are actually that many new concepts really on the table - just reusing old concepts, like The One Ring, twilight, search/stealth. The culture alliances is the only new thing we've got going at the moment.

I like alliance a lot for cards with toil and other things that care about culture. Could we use this in conjunction with another keyword that cared about cultures? Maybe counting cards of cultures, doing things to each card of a culture (like MTG Radiance)? That would perhaps make it more relevant, though it might be unnecessary.

[Thranduil]

Random thought: two of these ideas can be combined.

Say if you redefine Alliance: X to mean (you may replace the symbol of this card's culture with X anywhere in this card's game text; this card is an X card). So it has functionality always, and it replaces the culture keyword idea.

Something like:

Uruk Siege Band
Minion • Uruk-hai
Str: 8
Vit: 3
Sit: 5
Alliance: . Damage +1. (You may replace with anywhere in this card's game text; this card is an card).
Skirmish: Exert this minion to make an minion at a battleground strength +2.
G C



Good idea?

[legolas3333]

I probably won't help with this but why not just make your alliance keyword like this


Some Random Dude
Companion - Man
Strength 6
Vitality 3
Resistance 6
Alliance . This card may be spotted as a card.

that way you accomplish almost the same thing, only this way you could play say Banners Blowing on him cause he can be spotted as a man

[Sam, Great Elf Warrior]

Random thought: two of these ideas can be combined.

Say if you redefine Alliance: X to mean (you may replace the symbol of this card's culture with X anywhere in this card's game text; this card is an X card). So it has functionality always, and it replaces the culture keyword idea.

Yeah, although how would this be affect by, say, It Burns Us if you only had this and cards? If you only had this and cards? If you only had this card?

[Thranduil]

I probably won't help with this but why not just make your alliance keyword like this


Some Random Dude
Companion - Man
Strength 6
Vitality 3
Resistance 6
Alliance . This card may be spotted as a card.

that way you accomplish almost the same thing, only this way you could play say Banners Blowing on him cause he can be spotted as a man

I'm not a fan of the spotting keyword as it could be confusing, and only applies when the card is actually in play (though this could be what we want). I think a mechanic that made it straight 2 cultures would be cleaner. And if we're going to just do that, then I suggest we use the culture keyword mechanic whereby you might have a guy like:

Cool Uruk
Minion • Uruk-hai
Str: 8
Vit: 2
Sit: 5
Damage +1. .
G C

making him an card without changing the card template. It would also be affected by things that remove game text keywords like Northwoman.

Yeah, although how would this be affect by, say, It Burns Us if you only had this and cards? If you only had this and cards? If you only had this card?

There are 2 ways you could go down that route:

1) Make it so that you can always choose it to be its printed culture OR its alliance culture (in which case when you used It Burns Us, the card's owner can choose it to be whatever culture he likes)

2) Make it so that it is always 2 cultures simultaneously (in which case It Burns Us revealing just that card would spot 2 cultures.

If we use my latest suggestion for the alliance keyword, then it makes the most intuitive sense to allow you to always choose which culture the card is at any given point (as you can do with its game text), making it a bit more like L3333's point, except that it also works when not in play.

If we just run with the culture keyword idea and lose the alliance, then it makes the most sense to use the second option.

[chompers]

Another card game has had this issue and it was dealt with as follows:

If a card is two cultures at the same time .. say and then the card is both cultures at the same time. It burns us will spot 2 cultures which provides a negative to the obvious advantage of using a much larger card base to support this companion. There are other cards that make this a negative as well.

However, it has been mentioned before that companions that are two cultures simultaneously may lead to issues with culture bleed and may become OP. Perhaps the negatives will balance out some of the positives but allowing a companion to use cards from two cultures increases the chance of a broken combination of cards.

I prefer that cards switch cultures. I also prefer that you have to work to make a companion change cultures. For example - Aragorn is but if you want him to be you will have to work for it by deploying X Elves. He then switches (is no longer ) to . If you lose too many Elves he reverts back to . This attaches a risk to uses an Aragorn because if you start to lose, he will lose the cards that support him. A good deck designer could perhaps work out a way to change the number of Elves in play, so Aragorn reverts from to in the same time to take advantage of a larger pool of cards. You could take this concept further, rather than spotting a culture, you could spot a named companion:

* While you can spot three companions, this companion (Aragorn) becomes
* While you can spot Arwen, this companion (Aragorn) becomes

I have mentioned this idea a few times but it seems to have little support. Is this because it might be a little weak as a concept and perhaps not used very much? Or is it messy to keep track of? Or am i overlooking something more obvious?

[Thranduil]

I think your idea works fine. It is also not exclusive with any of the ideas we've been talking about (it is in fact an sub-set of culture-shifting). What's to stop us making a line of text like: "While you can spot 3 Elves, Aragorn loses and gains " (for the culture keyword model) or "While you can spot 3 Elves, Aragorn loses the culture and gains Alliance: " (for the alliance model). You could even make cultures exclusive by default, ie. that cards can only be 1 culture and if they become a new culture, they lose their old culture.

On the other side, I'm not at all sure that cards having more than 1 culture makes any broken combos at all. I would challenge you to name some.

What it does do is dramatically increase deckbuilding creativity and options, I think much more so than making guys switch cultures.




I'm working on some culture-matters mechanics. I'll post them when I've got some good ideas.

[Sam, Great Elf Warrior]

On the other side, I'm not at all sure that cards having more than 1 culture makes any broken combos at all. I would challenge you to name some.

Load Aragorn, RotN up with Endurance of Dwarves for a free site 9.

[Thranduil]

On the other side, I'm not at all sure that cards having more than 1 culture makes any broken combos at all. I would challenge you to name some.

Load Aragorn, RotN up with Endurance of Dwarves for a free site 9.

Well that doesn't work because Endurance of Dwarves cares about race not culture. But even so, Endurance of Dwarves is not that good (it still gets discarded easily), and you can already pump Aragorn's vitality with things like Ranger's Cloak, Andúril etc. Even say Endurance of Dwarves on Greenleaf, that's quite good, but I still don't think it's broken.

And anyway most (if not all) of the time, we'll be making the guys who have 2 cultures and so we can regulate them ourselves.

[Thranduil]

Check these ideas out. I'm taking some culture-matter mechanic ideas, and also throwing in some of the information manipulation business to see what comes out.

• Mono-culture hate
Spying (F)
Event • Maneuver
Search.
Exert Sméagol and choose a Shadow culture to reveal an opponent's hand; place all revealed Shadow cards of the chosen culture beneath that player's draw deck in any order.

Valiant Charge
Event • Regroup
Exert 2 valiant companions to wound a minion and each other minion that shares a culture with it.



• Multi-culture boost
Union of the Two Towers
Event • Shadow
Spot an card and a card to reveal the top 6 cards of your draw deck; discard a Free Peoples condition for each Shadow culture revealed. Place the revealed cards beneath your draw deck in any order.




• Target culture hate/boost
Corsair Wimp
Minion • Man
Strength: 6
Vitality: 2
Site: 6
Corsair.
Each time you play a or card, ~ is strength +2 until the regroup phase.

Great Enemy
Event • Response
If a or event is played, spot a companion to cancel its effects.




• Imprinting (an MTG term, but hopefully you'll see what I mean)
Friend of the Free Peoples
Condition • Support Area
When you play ~, you may stack a Free Peoples card from your hand here.
Gandalf gains alliance for the cultures of cards stacked here.

Uruk Quarreler
Minion • Uruk-hai
Strength: 9
Vitality: 2
Site: 5
Damage +1.
When you play ~, you may stack a minion from your hand here.
While there is an or minion stacked here, ~ is strength +3 and fierce.




• Culture tokens
•Boromir, Valiant Defender
Companion • Man
Strength: 7
Vitality: 3
Resistance: 5
Valiant. [Aragorn].
While you can spot culture tokens of 3 different cultures, ~ is defender +1.

Corsair Ship
Possession • Support Area
Engine.
When you play ~, add a token here, and then reinforce a culture token of each Shadow culture you can spot.




My overall aims here are to reward multi-culture and punish mono-culture.

[Sam, Great Elf Warrior]

Most of these cards are pretty good (I especially like Union of the Two Towers)

Spying (F)
Event • Maneuver
Search.
Exert Sméagol and choose a Shadow culture to reveal an opponent's hand; place all revealed Shadow cards of the chosen culture beneath that player's draw deck in any order.

It seems too powerful and kills event-based Shadows (even if you have a second Shadow culture, they'll just choose the more important one). Maybe "Exert Smeagol to reveal an opponent's hand and make one of that player's minions strength -1 for each card of that minion's culture revealed in this way."

Union of the Two Towers
Event • Shadow
Spot an card and a card to reveal the top 6 cards of your draw deck; discard a Free Peoples condition for each Shadow culture revealed. Place the revealed cards beneath your draw deck in any order.

I really like this one.

Friend of the Free Peoples
Condition • Support Area
When you play ~, you may stack a Free Peoples card from your hand here.
Gandalf gains alliance for the cultures of cards stacked here.

Uruk Quarreler
Minion • Uruk-hai
Strength: 9
Vitality: 2
Site: 5
Damage +1.
When you play ~, you may stack a minion from your hand here.
While there is an or minion stacked here, ~ is strength +3 and fierce.

I'm not sure about stacking cards on characters (maybe make it "When you play this minion, you may discard an or minion from hand to make this minion strength +3 and fierce until the end of the turn."), and making Gandalf able to easily adopt any culture is bound to create a broken combo somewhere (even if not, it's really powerful).

•Boromir, Valiant Defender
Companion • Man
Strength: 7
Vitality: 3
Resistance: 5
Valiant. [Aragorn].
While you can spot culture tokens of 3 different cultures, ~ is defender +1.

Corsair Ship
Possession • Support Area
Engine.
When you play ~, add a token here, and then reinforce a culture token of each Shadow culture you can spot.

These are pretty good. I really like Boromir, although I think Corsair Ship should cost more.

[Thranduil]

I'm not sure about stacking cards on characters (maybe make it "When you play this minion, you may discard an or minion from hand to make this minion strength +3 and fierce until the end of the turn."), and making Gandalf able to easily adopt any culture is bound to create a broken combo somewhere (even if not, it's really powerful).

Well essentially I'm using stacking as a memory aid. It's quite easy to forget that you discarded a minion in the Shadow phase to pump your guy, but harder when that minion is stacked under your guy. But I do get your point.

I'm glad some of the concepts I used you thought were good. I now want to invite everyone to post their own concepts for culture-matters mechanics!

[Sam, Great Elf Warrior]

I'm glad some of the concepts I used you thought were good. I now want to invite everyone to post their own concepts for culture-matters mechanics!

How about companions like Aragorn, DoFP, or cross-cultural cards along the lines of "Do something involving both Culture A and Culture B to do something they're both good at." For example:

The White Council
Event • Maneuver
To play, spot a Wizard and an Elf. Until the regroup phase, each minion who is skirmishing a or companion is strength -1 (or -3 if the companions you spotted both had resistance 7 or higher).

Age of Men
Event • Maneuver
Spot a Man and a Man to play a possession or fortification from your discard pile.

•Treebeard, Keeper of Lists
Follower • Ent
Aid - Exert an unbound or companion.
When you transfer Treebeard to an companion, take an event into hand from your discard pile.
When you transfer Treebeard to a or companion, play a mount from your hand or discard pile.
When you transfer Treebeard to a companion, reveal the top 10 cards of your draw deck to play an artifact revealed in this way (or every such artifact if at an underground site). Shuffle your draw deck.
"First learn the four, the Free Peoples..."

[Thranduil]

Great stuff!

I was thinking, exactly on the lines of your points, that in order to make a culture-matters set, we need to strongly and continuously consider the strengths of each culture.

So I've prepared a little summary whereby each culture that I've put in the skeleton has keywords, themes, phases, card types or effects associated with it, in a 3 tier system.

1) indicates major strengths - should appear at all rarities for very good cost.

2) indicates good strength - should sometimes appear at common, but usually higher rarities, for a decent cost.

3) indicates minor strength - should appear at high rarities, but normally with a high cost.

This is obviously not hard and fast, just my initial thoughts. Any suggestions on it would be greatly appreciated, and I will update it as necessary. Just use it as some reference for now. As soon as I've spent the awful amount of time it takes to make a table in BBcode, I will post the embryonic design skeleton in a new thread.


(Couple of minor points: mill = discard from top of draw deck, bounce = return to hand, the words "follower" and "ally" are essentially interchangeable, I included the unloaded traitor keyword just in case it was any use, not because I particularly want to use it, twilight = the twilight keyword, not the tokens, and words surrounded by *asterisks* are either themes that I have moved from where they are in the current state of the game or have simply been added)



1) fellowship draw, mountain, conditions, mill, pumps, recursion, damage, tales, *valiant*
2) underground, search, foresight, tokens, maneuver wounding, possessions
3) healing, choke, archery, pipeweed, regroup wounding, artifacts, maneuver/regroup draw


1) forest, sanctuary, events, direct wounding, adding threats for effects, shrinking minions, healing, stealth, tale, archery, foresight
2) river, artifacts, revealing, burden removal, liberating sites, *spells*, culture tokens, alliances, resistance, maneuver condition discard, maneuver draw
3) conditions, discard from hand, moving, choke, twilight, The Ring, cancel skirmishes, rangers


1) battleground, events, adding burdens for effect, pumping, shrinking, sites, flood the pool, spells, alliances, condition discard, resistance
2) dwelling, mountain, followers, revealing, threats, healing, discarding minions, search, pipeweed, culture tokens, skirmish/maneuver wounding
3) underground, fetch, bounce, tales, foresight, burden removal, moving


1) marsh, events, skirmish wounding, burdens, threats, pumps, sites, moving, choke, search, stealth, *traitor*, Ring-bound, regroup actions, resistance, The Ring
2) revealing, fetch, recursion, healing, *ambush*, cancel skirmishes, cancel events/abilities
3) mountain, character discard, follower discard, twilight, possessions (for Shelob), Shadow/Free Peoples interaction


1) battleground, possessions, maneuver wounding, healing, sites, regroup choke, defender, ranger/knight, culture tokens, fortifications
2) conditions, threat removal, cancel skirmishes, liberating, artifacts, damage, *valiant*, alliances, pumps, stealth
3) sanctuary, fetch, archery, tales, pipeweed, moving, Ring-bound/unbound


1) battleground, events, condition discard, exerting, damage, search, spell, tracker, *besieger*, *traitor*, *engine*
2) conditions, revealing, mill, site control, bounce, archery, weather, foresight, The Ring, alliances, wound prevention
3) *dwelling*, discard, fierce, *pipeweed*, culture hate


1) plains, events, skirmish wounding, threats, *fetch*, ambush, archery, *search*, raider keywords, *traitor*, culture tokens
2) battleground, possessions, pumps, site control, fierce, stealth, possession discard, mounts
3) *sanctuary*, damage, *engines*, resistance, *follower discard*, alliances


1) underground, conditions, adding burdens, shrinking companions, recursion, flood pool, stealth, *besieger*, *engine*, swarm, condition discard
2) battleground, possessions, skirmish wounding, mill, damage, tracker, search, resistance
3) adding threats, sites, moving, archery, mounts


1) plains, possessions, events, liberation, moving, valiant, villagers, culture tokens, possession discard
2) battleground, healing, bounce, defender, *knight*, fortification, alliances, fetching
3) followers, regroup draw, discard, sites, direct wounding


1) *battleground*, conditions, discard from hand, direct wounding, burdens, mill, shrinking, site control, search, tracker, besieger, The Ring, *resistance*
2) *river*, events, shadow draw, fierce, *spells*, *traitor*, engine, swarm, condition discard
3) recursion, twilight, archery, revealing, assignment


1) dwelling, followers, removing burdens, cancel skirmishes, healing, stealth, pipeweed, *villagers*, Ring-bound, The Ring, resistance
2) forest, removing threats, fetch, choke, tales, *valiant*, culture tokens, alliances, events
3) recursion, sites, twilight, revealing, assignment


1) battleground, conditions, wounds, site control, healing, damage, *search*, *trackers*, assignment, wound prevention
2) shadow draw, adding threats, mill, pumps, fierce, *besieger*, resistance
3) possessions, *engines*, culture tokens, follower discard


1) forest, conditions, burdens, sites, fierce, search, stealth, twilight, The Ring, resistance, follower discard
2) *marsh*, threats, recursion, healing, spell, Ring-bound, assignment, possession discard
3) artifacts, Shadow draw, *weather*, foresight

[Thranduil]

And obviously an extension of Sam's idea above is to have guys like:

Númenorean Descendant
Companion • Man
Str: 7
Vit: 3
Res: 6
While you can spot an companion, ~ is resistance +2.
While skirmishing a or minion, ~ cannot take wounds.

ie. culture love and culture hate, allowing you to have effects that you would not normally have in a particular culture.