Durins Heir - I would like to address something that seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about this process. This is my personal opinion, so please take it as it is. You are thinking as a passionate player and as a constructed deck designer. You are trying to create the most efficient and powerful constructed decks that you can from the card pool available while limiting yourself to commons and uncommons. That is not what we are trying to accomplish with the
Starter Deck design for this league. Keep that in mind, these are starters. It is the bare minimum you need in order to have a solid core for a deck while allowing you to be able to customize it based on cards that you receive in the product you are given. By definition that is a ring bearer, a one ring, a 9-card site path and
30 cards per side. We imposed the restriction of 3 of any given card per starter where possible to make it so that booster pulls are not wasted, while not crippling the deck so much that the theme of it doesn't hold together. We also don't want to make one starter too powerful on its own. Yes constructed Gondor is pretty good in many places, but we are not aiming for constructed gondor. We are aiming to create sealed type decks that are different from the decks we have seen before.
Additionally we want to design the decks in such a way that they have weaknesses and no one deck, or pairings of decks outshines all the others. This is why in the process of play testing we have stripped cards from some decks that were natural choices and added other cards in their places. Thus stripping
LUBS from the Valiant Rohan. Rohan can fight and heal and do some manner of directed wounding. If we give them condition removal and site liberation as well, they have too few weaknesses. None of the other fellowships have as few weaknesses as Rohan does.
There are a few things that you keep coming back to and keep fighting for: a gandalf themed deck, Rohan consolidation, additional decks for more culture coverage and making it so that you can use Gondor in multiple series.
The first two points are somewhat coupled - if we consolidate the two Rohan decks, we can make room for a Gandalf Themed deck. This is true, however the only way to get a Gandalf Themed deck is to go with Ents and that has some serious issues as Eukalyptus has laid out. The only overlap you get from the Rohan decks is being able to use some of the allies between decks, and sharing weapons. It will be very difficult to effectively use the
Trust Me As You Once Did side of the second Rohan Deck with the Rohan deck of the first series without making the decks too large, so players will have to focus on either making fighting Rohan more effective, or trying to get themselves some additional Frodo support (
TMAYOD).
Your point about additional decks for more culture coverage is valid, but as was said earlier, we are trying to replicate the feel of the Revised Movie Block league. In that, of the 9 decks, on the shadow side there are 2 that have uruks, 2 that have archery themes, 1 isengard orc, 1 Nazgul, 1 Dunland, 1 Shelob/Gollum and 1 easterling. As I pointed out earlier, this leaves out MANY major shadow themes of movie block including Moria swarm, corsairs, Sauron orcs of ALL varieties,
Warg Riders etc. We are trying to cover as many bases in Towers Standard as we can while still following the recommendations that we received from players in the poll that dmaz put up to start this whole process. Some of the deck types that people recommended are not possible as they require rares to make them work (
HIDAN, Last Alliance of Elves and Men strict hobbit hospital etc.) Sticking with 9 decks naturally gives us limited slots on both the shadow and and I think we are filling them well while still giving the variety in choice.
As for making a path
for Gondor in each series, none of the themes that we have come up with seem to have much overlap with each other. Knights and rangers don't mix well without diluting the strategy of either too much, UB and RB rangers don't mix well as the RBR rely on making minions roaming to do many of their tricks. Gondor just doesn't mix the way that Rohan does in Towers Standard.
Part of the challenge of designing starter decks for a league is that you don't want to make one choice too obvious or powerful. That is why the decks that we have designed are paired as they are, both from a Fellowship/Shadow
perspective as well as a Series
perspective:
Serie 1:Gandalf & Dwarves/Sauron Trackers (Grind) - Gandalf + Sleep has the capability of destroying the Sauron Trackers has anti-7 with
The Number Must be Few.
Rohan Allies/Moria & Isengard Archery - Rohan Allies Heal while under the threat of massive amounts of archery if they floood the pool. The deck can put out a LOT of archery (almost too much with just 6 companions)
Three Hunters/Uruk Trackers - The Hunters do decently against the trackers due to their strength pumps, defender +1 Aragorn. We don't want to give out too much goodness here and Defender +1 Gorn makes this a very tempting choice with as powerful as that ability is, particularly if he is armed with a sword. Good anti-6 with Enquea
For previously stated reasons, we need the archery and grind decks in this series to prevent cross-breeding.
Serie 2:Knights/Dunland Discard - An interesting pairing as the high strength and cheap Dunland characters fight high strength companions.
Unbound Rangers/Twilight Nazgul - UB rangers have high strength companions and a bit of additional frodo protection through Arwen if you get a super powered
Enquea, Ringwraith in Twilight with sword,
Fell Beast and 3 burdens. Additionally, this and the three hunter decks are the only ones to have
Athelas to control some of the "plays on a companion" conditions outside of global condition removal.
Ringbound Companions/Easterlings & Gollum - Easterlings are less effective at adding burdens vs the RB Rangers, First place we offer a Sam for frodo protection, the Frodo allows for some burden removal, but overall the fellowship is weaker than either of the others in this series.
For previously stated reasons, we need the easterlings/Gollum and Twilight Nazgul decks in this series to prevent cross-breeding between the two strategies.
Serie 3:Shoulder to Shoulder/Southrons - Both sides add pool that the southrons can use
Hobbits & Smeagol/Rohirrim Traitors - not a terribly strong fellowship or shadow (probably the weakest on their own in this series, but the fellowship offers a significant amount of Ring Bearer support as well as being the only other place that you can get a Sam. This makes it a tempting choice if you have run into swarming or other direct damage/burdening issues in the previous two series.
Gandalf & Rohan/Berserkers - Rohan exerts the berserkers and makes them a bit stronger, Rohan combines ok with the previous rohan deck and Gandalf provides a little
TMAYOD support for the RB.
Experimental fellowships and shadows go here to fill in some holes you may have missed. People will generally be choosing their starter in this series based on where their current holes are. Giving only two options to guarantee sam and 2 options to get gandalf and 2 options to get Aragorn means you have to choose decks that are not necessarily compatible on the shadow side to have some of the best companions in the block.
I guess to sum it all up - we are creating sealed deck starters that should not match the power of constructed decks that follow the themes that people requested in the initial poll to kick this off while not providing one "Best" deck path from series to series. This is a bit of a tall order, and I'm willing to bet we will get some things wrong our first go at it. Heck Decipher definitely did and they were professional game designers, but I'm pretty impressed with what we have come up with thus far and look forward to testing and adjusting it more.
Topic: Towers Standard Sealed Deck Lists and Replays (Read 40142 times)
