Broken Cards

[ANGRY]

This is a pretty funny article.

http://natewinchester.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/lotrtcg-10-most-broken-cards/

[Legion]

The word "Broken" is splashed around far too much, but if you replace every occurrence with "Very strong" it's actually a well written article.  It is very much FotR based, but the points it makes are worth noting.  How different would FotR block be if Savagery only gave +4 and fierce if there were 6 companions, or if Sting just revealed the hand saying nothing about Orcs?  I would say very, and perhaps in some ways it would have been even better.  I don't know how I would change Saruman, KoI and I feel Nertea is fine in FotR block (if it was for each over 5 I'd say it's fine anywhere but perhaps underpowered).

Idle speculations, of course, and I would never dream of changing anything.  Except Orc Banner should have been a possession.  That would make Sauron Beatdown viable and is the one thing that if I had time travel, I would go back into the past and change.  Well that and Stand Against Darkness should never be allowed to discard a minion

[ANGRY]

Broken is splashed too much. A number of these cards, I have no problem with them. Yes, they are strong, but the game needs strong cards. Why IS Orc Banner a condition? And yes, Stand Against Darkness is an irritating card.

[simplegarak]

Oh hey my article! =D

Like I said, I drew the article from my days playing all around locally, including awhile after Shadows (but the scene largely died around bloodlines, rotation did hurt us big).

Keep in mind that the cards were "broken" because they either had to invent a new rule to deal with them, or outright ban them.  And yeah, it was a bit FotR focused because set 1, being the very first set, had a few balance mishaps that later sets corrected.  Just like magic, later sets were a lot more balanced and "fixed" than previous.  Not a big deal if you have rotation set up and/or other meta things but at the time?  When all cards were legal?  Man it was brutal (Lady Redeemed haunts my nightmares).  That's not even getting into Fruit Loops.  If you don't have a problem with them, let me build a movie block deck against them and feast on your tears. ;-)

Though I'd be happy to post an addendum of cards released in the last 2 blocks that were broken from those who have played more of it.

[sgtdraino]

Like I said, I drew the article from my days playing all around locally, including awhile after Shadows (but the scene largely died around bloodlines, rotation did hurt us big).

It's funny you should say that, I remember when Decipher first announced that they were going to implement rotation. I knew right away that it was a bad idea, and would turn off players (myself included). To this day, "Standard" remains one of the least-played formats. Standard... ha! Not for most players!

[simplegarak]

I understand Decipher's reasons for going with rotation.  It failed for the following reasons:

1) They "lied" and swore to the players for awhile on the message boards that rotation would never ever EVER be implemented.  Then end up announcing it on the next block.  It certainly didn't help that they said it was to balance out for new players that couldn't get older staples... when they had JUST recently released a set designed and filled with nothing but older cards (Reflections, FYI).

2) Likewise the announcement came after some decisions by Decipher that the players weren't all thrilled about (like the loss of old shadow cultures).

3) The blocks weren't set up with rotation in mind.  Had the sets been designed to be more stand-alone instead of having themes and card intermingle from across sets, it might have worked somewhat.

I had somewhere... ah, here it is (http://natewinchester.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/lotr-tcg/).  Sometimes I think they started panicking when they realized the movies were about to finish and didn't think through what they needed to do long-term.

[sgtdraino]

I understand their reasons too, I just don't approve of them. The formats I like best, are the ones where I have access to the most cards. Rotation is completely contrary to what I like about the game.