V1: The One Ring (alpha playtests)

[Elessar's Socks]

That said, it'll be confusing when players leave the "V" off their deck lists when it's "obvious" which version to use.

Come to think, auto-link could help with the transition.

[FM]

I like design a lot, and I usually design based on 2 things: flavor and playability. I like that you guys are addresssing a MAJOR issue: design space. Decipher lacked a lot on this. I'd also like to throw some things out there, as far as Ring design is concerned:

I like the idea of a discarding Ring, depicting the MAJOR amount of resources that went into destroying it (they waged WAR as a DISTRACTION!). To fix minor problems and make the wording easier, you could make the discarding a maneuver action (limit once per turn), since Shadow cards won't wound the RB and exertion gets around wearing the Ring. Also, a different aspect of the Ring, also depicting the effort from everyone into taking it to Mount Doom, would be to make a Ring that demanded wounding (twice?) companions to wear (not tied to the RB specifically). Also, to depict the increased danger, you could also make a GOOD ring (only good statuses) that, whenever you moved, it demanded that you shuffle cards (shadow cards?) from the Shadow player's discard pile into his decks (it gets dangerous because they get more resources to kill you). Anyway, just random ideas to show more design space you could use.

[Kralik]

How about you decide on a ring to test and then publicly ask GCCG players to test it on the ... *ahem* Playtesting Table?

[hyvee_doughboy]

Not to sound too pessimistic, but at this rate, it'll almost a year to get 12 cards out.  I understand that we want to take time to think through and play test cards.  However, don't think it needs to be done 1 card at a time.  Really, we can play test ALL of the V cards simultaneously.

I'm suggesting that we open threads on all cards and let everyone weigh in on their opinions.  Give a week or so for people to respond, and then play test with all cards.  I don't see any reason why someone can't play test a ring, gimli, another FP card AND at least one shadow card in the same deck.  It'll certainly speed up the process and keep people interested. Otherwise, we're wasting a lot of play testing time.

Just my 2 cents, though I doubt I'm the only person that feels this way..

[TheJord]

I have to agree. Calls for this process to slow down have in fact killed it off.

[Ringbearer]

I suggested it before but apparently people wanted to do 1 card at a time.

[hyvee_doughboy]

I suggested it before but apparently people wanted to do 1 card at a time.

I think it's time to reevaluate that decision :-)

For those people who wanted to go through one at a time, I'd like tom hear their opinions on how this process is working.  If they believe it's going well and at the right pace, then that's one thing.  However, if they agree that this is just painfully slow, then we can adjust things.

I'm not trying to run things, be a boss, or anything like that, I simply want to see things moving.  At the beginning, therenseemed to be a lo tof excitement, but I don't see any of that any more.

If things don't keep moving, people are going to stop caring and well lose a lot of valuable opinions.

[Tbiesty]

I think it's time to reevaluate that decision :-)

I completely agree.  We are well capable of discussing multiple ideas at one time.  Let's get this thing moving again.

I think we have a solid version of The One Ring here:

The One Ring, The Ruling Ring (V)
Strength: +1
While wearing The One Ring, each time the Ring-bearer is about to take a wound, add a burden instead.
Response: If bearer is about to take a wound and not wearing The One Ring, discard 3 cards from hand to wear The One Ring until the regroup phase.

Let's open up some more topics, etc. and talk about ideas for the other cards for this set.

[TheJord]

So how do we start using it?

[Tbiesty]

I can't do anything for GCCG, since I don't control the updates.
However, for those of us that play with real cards, here are "card slips".

Click here to download the playtesting card inserts.

[Kralik]

Updates for GCCG are a bit involved, but I don't think it needs to be updated for all of the playtesting. Just announce your intention to test the new ring and go with the new text as you play! If you really want to you can edit the XML file yourself and drop the text in there so you can see it with CTRL-H.

[Ringbearer]

If I am not mistaken, the size for a set needs to be fixed. So when we have set a goal for all cards, they could be implemented in GCCG. Afterwards is just re-editing images and adjusting the xml file.

[FM]

And as far as I'm concerned, you could simply go with Kralik's solution. Announce you're playtesting cards X, Y and Z, with texts A, B and C, as shown on the following URL (and post the url). Simple as that.

[FM]

I think we have a solid version of The One Ring here:

The One Ring, The Ruling Ring (V)
Strength: +1
While wearing The One Ring, each time the Ring-bearer is about to take a wound, add a burden instead.
Response: If bearer is about to take a wound and not wearing The One Ring, discard 3 cards from hand to wear The One Ring until the regroup phase.

You think this wording is actually cleaner than what I suggested a while before (next to Kralik's second-to-last post so far)? Or it wasn't even considered/read?

[hyvee_doughboy]

I think we have a solid version of The One Ring here:

The One Ring, The Ruling Ring (V)
Strength: +1
While wearing The One Ring, each time the Ring-bearer is about to take a wound, add a burden instead.
Response: If bearer is about to take a wound and not wearing The One Ring, discard 3 cards from hand to wear The One Ring until the regroup phase.

You think this wording is actually cleaner than what I suggested a while before (next to Kralik's second-to-last post so far)? Or it wasn't even considered/read?

I think the main thing is that the other idea came in after the deadline for submitting ideas.  If we kept entertaining new ideas forever, we'd never finish :-)

That point aside, maneuver rings play a lot differently than response rings... have to play way ahead, and a lot of things can go wrong when the unexpected hits.  Also, if we allowed the discard during maneuver, it would mean a free 3 card discard every maneuver. Note that the response version actually requires that you're about to take a wound before you can discard.   

Regarding how "clean" the text is, I think it is pretty clean. The infinite discard abuse is now prevented, and I think the wording makes sense.