Towers Standard Sealed Deck Lists and Replays

[dmaz]

I don't see a Southron shadow, unless the archery is serie 3 is Southron. A lot of wasted Raider card pulls if there isn't a Southron theme. However TTT uses wounding/swarmy Southron and Movie uses archery so there really isn't anything left. I looked at site control but Southrons really don't do anything with sites outside of Southron Archer, which is rare. Other than super twilight adding which could be used for skirmish wounding, not sure what else to do with Southrons. Not real helpful but just wanted to throw it out there.

THIS could be the deck we need to combine with Shoulder to Shoulder maybe...
There wasn't a whole lot of interest in Southrons and no suggestions for them until now.
We could try to come up with a deck that is a little different than the BoHD Starter of Mounts and wounders...but like you said the options are low.

The most unique thing I could think of would be combining Southron Invaders with some of the set 6 southrons that cost -X when you can spot a southron. Has LITTLE bit of a swarm factor and throw in Howl of Harad and a bunch of Whirling Strikes to capitalize on the TONS of ambush you will have. Could have something there anyway.

Since Shoulder to Shoulder is a really strong fellowship strategy it might be a good idea to combine it with this, since this shadow wouldn't really mesh perfectly with any other shadow, since it involves spotting, thus Southron dedication.

[dmaz]

That 4th deck is what we need... but Look to my Coming must be assembled in order to make possible a good match against that Sauron, and that's the most powerful shadow I think... It's NOT an imposible task, of course!
Several Well Stored with Weland and Guma... or several copies of Let Us Be Swift...

So we keep Look to My Coming in Serie 2 with the Bersekers and develop some kind of new deck theme for Rohan in Serie 1.
This would broaden the options for deck combinations. Rohan or Gandwarf with Look to My Coming. Sounds pretty cool

[dmaz]

As a general statement too:

When we look at the decks lined up, there might SEEM like there is an obvious choice. Example: I will just go corruption all of the way with Easterlings/Nazgul/X.

However, remember (and this is why I love sealed so much) that you might pull an Eomer, Third Marshal of Riddermark and Firefoot in your boosters. Or you might pull a Ranged Commander and Weapons of Isengard.

We do the best we can to provide a variety of combination options with the starter decks, but there's always the booster pulls that come into play. You NEVER know

ADDED: I think it is good to keep Rohan Fellowship out of the corruption-themed decks to make a little bit of a handicap for going that route. There are a LOT of good Rohan rares, uncommons and commons that help quite a bit with the TT site path, so depending on your booster pulls you could end up getting compelled to branch out from one path.

[Merrick_H]

From a project management perspective here is what we need to do:

• Nail down the deck types that we want to have for both shadow and fellowship
• Determine what series we would like to see the various halves in so that we limit, or create the obvious "best paths" to take e.g. Corruption/Nazgul, Archery/grind, Hobbits/wingfoot, Rohan/Gandalf
• Pair deck halves that will work well together
• Build decks as possible and play test

We need to start locking down cards so that we can playtest.  I'll see if I can get Marcin to create a format that has all cards available and uses towers sites and call it "Towers Standard Sealed".  That way we can make the decks with the actual cards we want to use and then limit it later to the sets that we actually wind up using.  I don't particularly want to use very many cards outside of sets 1-6, but there have been some very good and balanced suggestions thus far that I would like to consider for use in the starters.

[Eukalyptus]

Revised Towers Standard would be better imo.

Out of curiosity: what are the out of format cards that you think are balanced?

[Merrick_H]

Knight's Mount was a really good one.  The Far Harad Mercenaries seems pretty good as well. Farin, SOE is a solid Dwarf companion.

Cards that round out a theme without overpowering for the environment.

[Eukalyptus]

Yeah, I agree.

[Merrick_H]

Nothing is concluded yet

We have had some good playtesting so far and have gotten close to final decisions on at least two decks. This is pretty good for not being into October yet I think!

It looks like both you and Merrick have some ideas that could kill two birds with one stone, actually!

We want the Sauron deck and Archery decks to be in the same serie if possible
It would be nice to have the choice of Rohan in Serie 1

What if we made a third deck for Serie 1 which was some new kind of Rohan strategy and the Sauron deck?

That 4th deck is what we need... but Look to my Coming must be assembled in order to make possible a good match against that Sauron, and that's the most powerful shadow I think... It's NOT an imposible task, of course!

Several Well Stored with Weland and Guma... or several copies of Let Us Be Swift...

By the way, I prefer to kill 2 orcs with one flying axe...

I vote YES.

Post Data: I just mentioned that point of Gandwarves to say those Gandalf themes cannot be connected... Gandalf needs a deck for himself alone as centerpiece.

IMO Southrons should be in Serie 2, with mounts and maybe archery...

I would propose a rohan allies/well stored deck for series 1 that is just rohan to pair with the Sauron Trackers/Grind

[dmaz]

I would propose a rohan allies/well stored deck for series 1 that is just rohan to pair with the Sauron Trackers/Grind

That was my general take on it as well. Pretty straightforward and solid.

I'm a little busy this evening but I'll be back to address some of the things you brought up.

We have a general path for pairing, and now if we decide to include Rohan in Serie 1 (I'm ok with the legwork for playtesting a little more) this could potentially lock down Serie 1 so that we just need to define the specific card changes through a little more play-testing.

I've already started building the proposed serie 2 decks, and will post them soon to confirm that they are more or less what everyone was envisioning, and get any last feedback before playtesting them.

Thanks again for all the hard work guys!

[Merrick_H]

Just as an FYI, I'm keeping the first post of this updated with the latest and greatest deck lists, proposed ideas and such so that people can have a single place to go to look for the latest information and don't have to sift through 15 pages in three different threads to keep up with all the changes and proposals.

[BigRedMF]

As an alternative to creating a new card pool, perhaps we could just test them under pre-shadows multipath? I realize there still may be 1 or 2 cards that are post movie.

[Merrick_H]

Several replays below, all dmaz vs. Merrick_H

The first three are Dwarves & Gandalf/Archery vs. Rohan Allies/Sauron Trackers

http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Merrick H$eg8vtf50f7vwy0a4

http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Merrick H$y6hmqf84dyvzcvbz

http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Merrick H$lc8mdak3fab70d0d

If the free people's player moves too quickly, the archery will kill them.  The trackers did decently vs the Gandalf/Dwarf deck as they couldn't clear the board, but the double sleeps (fetched with Barliman) made their conditions hard to stay on the table.  Rohan can skirmish and heal, so it is an interesting deck and should be able to do pretty well.  Quite possibly the strongest free people's side.

Remaining 2 games are Ringbound/Easterlings & Gollum vs. Rohan Allies/Sauron Trackers

http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Merrick H$937b36lzprhe2s3l

http://www.gempukku.com/gemp-lotr/game.html?replayId=Merrick H$dtw4ae6y909od19y

Both won by the RB, once due to poor shadow draws, the other time due to the lack of having a sword on frodo making it VERY risky to run.  Frodo got to 8 burdens so corruption is a very real danger.  Good games.

[Not a Zombie]

Only the first replay worked

[BigRedMF]

Regarding the proposed shadows

Rohirrim Traitors
Grima, SoG x3
Unferth, GB x3
Rohirrim Traitor x4
Saruman, SotE x3
Isengard Retainer x2
Isengard Servant x2
Isengard Smith x2
Isengard Worker x2
Desertion x4
Twisted Tales
Men Will Fall x4

Might I suggest One of You Must Do This, Wizard Storm, and/or Abandoning Reason for Madness? Potential to remove 1 SotE and maybe either 1 Desertion or Men Will Fall?

Southrons
3x Desert Warrior
3x Southron Bowman
1x Southron Commander
3x Southron Invaders
3x Southron Marcher
3x Southron Runner
3x Southron Traveler
2x Far Harad Mercenaries
2x Mumak
2x Southron Spear
2x On the March
3x Whirling Strike

This seems to be in line with what I was thinking. It seems to have the tools to do the job, the only thing left is to test and see if it can stand up to the FP!

[BigRedMF]

I really like the fact that we have basically covered every subculture on both the shadow side (with the exception of site control and wargs) and the fellowship side (with the exception of Ents), which means booster pulls in general should at least have a deck they could call home.

Since it looks like we haven't decided on the last deck yet I have a couple suggestions that hadn't been mentioned.

Is there any interest in a good old pipeweed deck? I know there already is one in Revised Movie, so I understand if this doesn't take off. But put it in Serie 3 and you've already had the opportunity to get Gimli, Gandalf The Grey Pilgrim, Aragorn, and several Hobbits to make use of pipes, and some players may find it a good good pairing with some of the swarm-y shadows to allow larger deck sizes.

You could also consider making a deck centered around Aragorn signets (maybe that is what the Hard Choice deck is?) or Theoden signets. And finally Elven telepathy.

For shadow, I don't think it would be real fun to have a Nazgul blade-tip/black breath deck in the mix, plus there already is one in Revised Movie. Perhaps a standard uruk-hai deck? We do already have Moria swarm on the list as a potential candidate, it would probably pair well with pipeweed.