King Sealed League Strategies on Gemp

[dmaz]

I really don't like the fact that the Set 1 Enquea was added. Based on how games I've played and watched already, there is enough crowd control for both starters to punish for 9 companions. When the twilight pool was risen due to extra companions, I saw sauron effective deal with companions by swarming and carefully using the threat pumps to weed out three companions. Although they didn't reach Frodo, this was still solid. I took care of three companions in one move without drawing my Enquea as well. When given lots of twilight, the Raiders can start becoming Damage+6 more often, as well as adding tons of threats that end up getting assigned to companions that they would have planned to kill off later.

Altogether, I think it was a little unnecessarily communistic to throw the Set 1 Enquea in...can't we just keep it to King Block, please?

Anyway, about the starter decks >

I ended up pulling two Raider rares, a rare Faramir, two denethors, and Noble Leaders in my boosters.
About halfway through the pulls I thought I was going to still go with Rohan, but I just couldn't justify letting some good rares go unused
So...even though it wasn't my first choice, I'm going to see if Gondor will see it done

[Eukalyptus]

Hot dog!
Really cool, thanx Euk.. and great that you perform adjustments based on real play experience and top player's feedback.

Thanks, but Sealed was designed their ways before I took over the leagues.

[sgtdraino]

I ended up pulling two Raider rares, a rare Faramir, two denethors, and Noble Leaders in my boosters.
About halfway through the pulls I thought I was going to still go with Rohan, but I just couldn't justify letting some good rares go unused
So...even though it wasn't my first choice, I'm going to see if Gondor will see it done

lol. That's ironic, considering that it was your rather convincing argument that convinced me to go Rohan (when originally I was leaning towards Gondor). We'll see how it goes!

It looks like the Eomer deck (and I assume the Aragorn deck) are indeed the LOTR Online versions, with each player receiving those four additional cards (2 sites, 2 Enqueas). I've updated post #1 with that information.

ETA: Eukalyptus, can you confirm whether or not all players get a Sam in Series 3?

[Eukalyptus]

Nope, can't.

[Nitsuj]

I'm pretty sure that I recall that you do not get any additional bonus cards going into any additional series.  So, if you want a Sam, best hope to draw one or choose the Sam starter.  Sam starter has a lot of frodo saves going for it, if I recall.  "A Marvel" is pretty solid against swarm.

[sgtdraino]

Status Report: So, I think this is my first time playing King Sealed. I just completed Series 1. I chose the Eomer Starter, based on dmaz's reasoning. I think I did pretty well, only two losses, currently ranked 13th. Observations:

It's all about swarm, swarm, swarm. So far this seems to be a very simplistic series, to me. There is pretty good crowd control in the form of Shotgun Enquea and whatnots. Very little in the way of useful event pumps for any Shadow, so few surprises. Also very little in the way of Frodo anti-overwhelm cards. I haven't really found threats to be making much of an impact on the game. The basic FP strategy seems to be bid a little to go first, then get out 5 guys and try to keep them alive as best you can. If one gets killed, play another. Once you get to about site 8, play all the guys you've got and double.

Shadow strategy seems to be build up a hand of fairly cheap guys, and then bomb the opponent with a swarm whenever an opportunity presents itself. You want your FP to go first if possible, so your opponent will get more desperate to double and give you the opportunity to drop the bomb. I believe most of my wins were shadow kills.

So, what about the rest of you? How would you describe your experiences with this League?

[sgtdraino]

I'm pretty sure that I recall that you do not get any additional bonus cards going into any additional series.

Bzzzt! Series 2 cards just got distributed, and it looks like everyone gets an Osgiliath Channel. Post #1 has been updated.

We'll see what happens for Series 3!

[dmaz]

It's all about swarm, swarm, swarm. So far this seems to be a very simplistic series, to me. There is pretty good crowd control in the form of Shotgun Enquea and whatnots........The basic FP strategy seems to be bid a little to go first, then get out 5 guys and try to keep them alive as best you can. If one gets killed, play another. Once you get to about site 8, play all the guys you've got and double.

I made this observation very quickly around the third game of the second serie. I had a rough start to the second serie, but ended up going six straight wins due to what you noticed here, more or less.

I found that if I bid high and go first, people are more likely to drop their shotgun enquea early (50% of the time you get an early draw with him) than hold onto him because they want to get some low cost minions in hand for site 4 and have more options for overwhelming people with my burdens (the burden removal for +2 strength is very solid). Now...once shotgun enquea is out of the question, you can really just dump all the companions you want and run to site 9 as long as you keep the threats under 2 for site 8 (so they can't pull him again). Since I did end up going with Aragorn (ironically, haha), he was able to give solid threat control during the regroup at site 7. And three times I specifically won by double moving from 7 to 9 this way. If you are careful and you play threats correctly you can almost always pull the the double form 7 to 9 if you have enough companions and you've saved some events in hand.

I was very hesitant to be accepting of the shotgun enquea (it still doesn't feel completely right having him)....but I do see how the game might just turn into a bidding match for who goes first if he wasn't in the picture.

I was excited about (once again) picking the not-so-popular starter deck in serie 3 of Frodo, to get my hands on Gandalf, but I'm not sure I will even play anymore, as I just got in trouble for "flaming" Cthulhu. While it was only a 3 day ban (and completely confirmed my presuppositions that this guy has his nose so far enlodged up the mods butts, whilst being malicious within games), his undyingly narcissistic trolling within the community has left such a bad taste in my mouth, it's basically overpowered my desire to participate. That and there were others that were starting to disciple themselves to his ways, which I found annoying.

Sorry, got too off topic...I might be able to motivate myself to participate in sealed, as there is a large community active, and enough people for me to be able to play, whilst avoiding those that are unpleasant to play with (I seriously doubt I'll ever go back to My Cards/All Cards/Or Daily Tourneys)....I'd really like to get the Gandalf dynamics to work in Serie 3...even if I don't get a Sam.

Has it been confirmed whether there would be a Sam for everyone? That might encourage allow for a balanced distribution of Starter choices in serie 3....or maybe then everyone will just pick gandalf so they can have the best of both worlds, hahaha.

[sgtdraino]

I found that if I bid high and go first, people are more likely to drop their shotgun enquea early (50% of the time you get an early draw with him) than hold onto him because they want to get some low cost minions in hand for site 4 and have more options for overwhelming people with my burdens (the burden removal for +2 strength is very solid). Now...once shotgun enquea is out of the question, you can really just dump all the companions you want and run to site 9 as long as you keep the threats under 2 for site 8 (so they can't pull him again).

I got beaten by at least two Aragorn decks, and both ran full fellowships. It didn't even seem like they were particularly concerned about Enquea, since losing a single guy still leaves them with 8 more. They were generally able to just power through whatever I threw at them. I noticed that Frodo in the Aragorn deck was often much harder to overwhelm, because those guys generally chose the Pippin deck for Series 2, and got 3x Dagger Strike. No nice powerups for Rohan Frodo.

Since I did end up going with Aragorn (ironically, haha), he was able to give solid threat control during the regroup at site 7. And three times I specifically won by double moving from 7 to 9 this way. If you are careful and you play threats correctly you can almost always pull the the double form 7 to 9 if you have enough companions and you've saved some events in hand.

Yep! That is what I experienced playing against Aragorn decks in Series 2. I am very surprised, however, that virtually none of my opponents made any effort to go first, which I feel definitely offered an advantage.

I was very hesitant to be accepting of the shotgun enquea (it still doesn't feel completely right having him)....but I do see how the game might just turn into a bidding match for who goes first if he wasn't in the picture.

Honestly, I don't really feel like the one Shotgun Enquea even makes much of an impact. Either your opponent is sticking with 5 and he's useless, or he's busting out a full 9, and it's just a minor annoyance for one turn. I may need MORE crowd control than what I've packed so far, because frankly it doesn't seem to be effective against larger fellowships.

Has it been confirmed whether there would be a Sam for everyone? That might encourage allow for a balanced distribution of Starter choices in serie 3....or maybe then everyone will just pick gandalf so they can have the best of both worlds, hahaha.

So far there has been no confirmation on whether or not everyone gets a Sam. Eukalyptus says he doesn't know.

[dmaz]

Honestly, I don't really feel like the one Shotgun Enquea even makes much of an impact. Either your opponent is sticking with 5 and he's useless, or he's busting out a full 9, and it's just a minor annoyance for one turn. I may need MORE crowd control than what I've packed so far, because frankly it doesn't seem to be effective against larger fellowships.

I was just browsing Mount Doom, and there doesn't appear to be any solid crowd control from the decks or the boosters. The closest thing to crowd control, which anyone might have a reasonable shot at pulling would be Easterling Pillager, I think. This could be a nice surprise corruption card if the FP player has filled Frodo up with burdens from threats and was planning on killing him off to have Sam go on. Nonetheless, despite it being a common, it's still unlikely that everyone will be seeing one.

I could have easily overlooked something...does anyone else know of any crowd control in Mount Doom?

[Eukalyptus]

Far Harad Mercenaries. I don't think of Easterling Pillager as crowd control since he needs another Easterling to spot and almost all Easterlings of King Block are not exactly the most effective minions in this format.

[dmaz]

Far Harad Mercenaries. I don't think of Easterling Pillager as crowd control since he needs another Easterling to spot and almost all Easterlings of King Block are not exactly the most effective minions in this format.

Thanks Euk, I had overlooked the spot an Easterling part...that does make it a little less effective. As you suggest, even if you pulled 3 other Easterlings, it's not like they would be very great minions to use.

On the other hand, Far Harad Mercenaries can spot any raider man, and triggers at the start of each skirmish. If your opponent thinks they're sitting pretty, waltzing from site 7 with 8 companions and no threats, they will be in some serious trouble if you throw one of those guys down on a Mumak. That would really be a nice pull for this next serie

[bibfortuna25]

Yes, everyone gets a copy of Sam, Needer of Vittles in series 3.

[UnPapayaCoconut]

Mordor orcs got the guy whos 18 and fierce with 6 companions out. Not great, but decent.

[dmaz]

Figured it'd be ok to post this since we're already well into serie 3.

I got a nice booster pull (the rare gorn) and snookered myself into playing ome serie 3.

I was doing very well in a few games, but I just have to post this replay. I got completely WRECKED by the Wraith Orcs against this guy's deck. He combined the conditions that gave him bonuses for initiative along with heaving archery using those orcs that add to the archery total.

http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=dmaz$s00t8xoiaz3ei957

While he did admit that his shadow draws were pretty much timed perfectly (getting the conditions out right away, etc), it's still pretty darn impressive.

Normally, in sealed, if a few companions die early, you end up limping along and eeking it out till maybe site 8 before you crap the bed, but this was just murder.

I guess I could take from this that there are things other than site 4 game text to worry about, if you bid a little high to go first