I want to rebuild the game from scratch and create a serious, free-to-play second edition.
I really like this idea. I was thinking about doing such thing, but lacking graphical skills never really got to doing this. But if there are things I can help in, I'm definitely willing to get involved into this project.
The main thing we have to remember is: it's 99% sure that there will be no LotR 3rd Edition in foreseeable future. Which means that when doing the 2nd one, we should address all the problems we see - this is the only chance to fix them.
I spent some time thinking how a "Fixed LotR TCG" should look, so here's my view on this:
1. Card poolStarting point - movie block. First thing to do is going through all the cards and dividing them into three groups:
- cards that are playable and can be simply copied into the new game,
- problem cards: X-list goes there + a few others (
Lady Redeemed,
Son of Hamfast,
Saruman's Snows etc). Possible choices: get rid of the card, errata it to a toned down version, decide it's not that much of a problem and leave as it is,
- cards that are too weak to be playable. Possible choices: get rid of the card or (if it's interesting enough) errata it to make it stronger. Examples of cards that are IMO interesting enough:
Lady Undomiel,
![[Isengard]](https://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/Smileys/classic/isengard.png "Isengard")
warg-riders.
There are 1717 non-site Movie Block cards (counting promos 56-60 and 62-67, not counting 17 reprints). My rough estimates are that we would end up with 600-700 cards that go to 2nd edition with no changes and further 100-200 that make it after fixing. Which puts us around 800 cards. Now, while I feel that post-Movie sets are generally not playtested well enough, ideas used in them are interesting. Especially those introduced in Shadows - muster, toil, lurker, resistance of non-ringbearer companions, more use of terrain keywords. So I think those sets are definitely worth going through and choosing interesting cards - even though very few will make it without changes and not many even with them (especially as most shadow cards will need to have their culture changed). This way we should be able to add approximately further 200 cards. What I hope we'll get is a 1000 cards game with over 20 viable main deck types both for FP and Shadow, with different subtypes and some cards of general use or providing possibilities of meta game adjustments.
I think this is the absolutely maximum size we should aim at - together with sites a playset will be over 4000 cards. If we want it to be possible to use as print-and-play, more is an overkill. A box of Dominion Base Set (500 cards) costs $25 at cheap online stores and those cards are produced in bulk, I don't think we'll be able to make costs significantly lower than $0.10 per card - so the playset would cost around $400 to make. No reason to go any higher IMO.
2. Backwards compatibilityOne serious advantage we'd have over Decipher is that we're making a game knowing beforehand all the rules that are going to be introduced. So we can avoid problems that have to happen if you're making later sets when the earlier ones are already published. All erratas can be already on cards, wording throughout the whole game can be consistent and clear. The most important example is IMO resistance against signets - on LotR cards they take the same space and because of this a character can't have both. The only reason is that signet characters were printed before resistance was invented and this place is really way better suited for resistance, so that we get 3 numbers next to each other. I think 2nd edition should allow characters to have both resistance (all companions) and signets (definitely only unique companions, probably not all of them) - with resistance below vitality and signet placed somewhere else - maybe in game text box.
3. Site pathI think each format supported should have its own site path. And too many formats is not a good thing to do, at least from the beginning. Maybe even a single format would do - if we're fixing a game, we're fixing it to be good with all cards allowed. The only reason for more formats I see is a problem to decide site path rules - three possible approaches being:
- a site has a fixed site number (pre-Shadows)
- a site has no fixed number (Shadows and onwards)
- a site has only a fixed region, but can be played anywhere in this region (middle ground).
If we want more formats available, I think those 3 (each allowing all non-site cards and its own site path) are interesting. They could use exactly the same site names and art, only game text would be different - a fixed number site
paths allows for more freedom in abilities, while sites with no numbers, giving full freedom during the game, have to be toned down a bit.
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I put all the links posted so far into a single list for easier viewing, if you want, copy this into the first post
BTW, I think templates should have white card borders instead of black - amateur printing will not allow to print right to the edge so white borders give better looking cards.
DwarvenCharacter:
http://postimage.org/image/l3ezmz64v/Non-Character:
http://postimage.org/image/bwwozp0wf/ElvenCharacter:
http://postimage.org/image/7wfwcleq7/Non-Character:
http://postimage.org/image/c6uk86jtb/GandalfCharacter:
http://postimage.org/image/cjr0bh8en/Non Character:
http://postimage.org/image/oa4xsv173/GondorCharacter:
http://postimage.org/image/x1uc63e1b/Non-Character:
http://postimage.org/image/d5ycqjwzz/WraithCharacter:
http://postimage.org/image/kb0do1tjj/RohanCharacter:
http://postimage.org/image/j4c60sfyn/Non-Character:
http://postimage.org/image/g8z2txbyn/SauronCharacter:
http://postimage.org/image/89csz9k9b/ShireCharacter:
http://postimage.org/image/g4htxl6mn/Non-Character:
http://postimage.org/image/dol2guuvj/
Topic: Custom Templates (Read 57564 times)
