Branching Paths at LCGPARIS 2012

Big shout out to Michael Hatik and all the French LOTR: LCG gamers at LCGPARIS 2012 who, whilst also play-testing FFG's new scenario Foundations of Stone, also played through my own Branching Paths scenario.  More info including photos of the event can be found here:

http://sdajce.forumactif.org/t837p120-championnat-des-lcg-samedi-23-juin-2012-photos

Looks like a great time was had by all!  :)

Lost in The Long Dark

From the FFG article here:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3244

The passage twisted round a few turns, and then began to descend… In the pale ray of the wizard’s staff, Frodo caught glimpses of stairs and arches, and of other passages and tunnels, sloping up, or running steeply down, or opening blankly dark on either side. It was bewildering beyond hope of remembering.
    –The Fellowship of the Ring, “A Journey in the Dark”

After surviving a desperate struggle with The Watcher in the Water, the heroes of Middle-earth pass at last through the Doors of Durin and into the ancient mines of Moria. Within those tunnels, your heroes must conduct their search for the source of the increased Orc activity within the Misty Mountains. But as they journey into The Long Dark of those ominous mines, your heroes press ever deeper into a network of tunnels that carves through rock for leagues and leagues.

In the fourth Adventure Pack of the Dwarrowdelf cycle, the ominous dark hangs heavier and closer around your heroes, and the going is slow. The Long Dark is choked with hazards and foes, and heroes must be careful to keep their way. Should they falter, they may find themselves stumbling into disaster…

Finding Your Way

The Long Dark introduces a new, scenario-specific mechanic known as a Locate Test. As your heroes navigate the massive subterranean realm of Moria, the Locate Test challenges their senses of direction. Will they head true? Or will they wander blindly through ancient and abandoned passageways, losing their way for days as their food supplies dwindle or stumbling at last into a goblin encampment?

When a Locate Test is triggered, the first player discards one card from his hand to discard the top card of the encounter deck. Some of the encounter cards in The Long Dark have a bold PASS printed in the lower-right corner. If the first player discards such a card from the encounter deck, then he succeeds at the Locate Test, the heroes regain their sense of direction, and they may continue deeper into the mines. If the encounter card does not have the boldPASS printed on it, the first player may continue to attempt the test, discarding cards from his hand to discard cards from the top of the encounter deck until he either has no more cards available to discard or chooses to stop attempting the test.

Fellowships that do not PASS their Locate Tests, however, may find their situations growing more and more dire. Many of the cards in the scenario have Lost effects on them that may trigger whenever your heroes lose their way. The more of these effects you accumulate in the staging area, the deadlier they become. At the heart of The Long Dark of Moria, fellowships that get lost may find themselves starved, exhausted, and surrounded by hostile Goblins.

The Long Dark is making its way to a retailer near you. Next week, as we continue moving in the right direction, we’ll take a look at a couple of the reasons the Dwarves do not fear the dark!

Something Tookish Woke Up

Something Tookish Woke Up

“The hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains… and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.”
    –The Hobbit
We recently had the privilege to announce the upcoming release of The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. The response has been fantastic, and today we'll take a look at how this first Saga Expansion fits into the rest of the game.
As a Saga Expansion, The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill introduces three scenarios drawn directly from the classic story by J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as a host of new heroes and player cards. Players can use any of their other The Lord of the Rings cards while playing through the scenarios fromThe Hobbit, and most of the expansion's cards can be used in any other deck, for any scenario, but The Hobbit also introduces five unique cards specifically designed for the expansion’s scenarios. These include Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill, 1), an event with the Baggins sphere of influence, and the new treasure cards. These cards are only intended for use in The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill and a second Saga Expansion, slated to arrive in late 2012, that will relate the second and final half of Bilbo’s adventures.
For more information about how these expansion-specific cards make The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill a unique and engaging experience within Middle-earth, we turn to the expansion’s lead developer, Caleb Grace.
Caleb Grace on Bilbo, the Baggins sphere, and elven blades:
While we were working on The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill Saga Expansion, one of the design team's top goals was to bring J.R.R. Tolkien’s story to life with the same unique mix of charm and peril found in The Hobbit. In his classic novel, Tolkien draws his reader into his fantastic world by exploring it through the eyes of Bilbo Baggins. We felt that the play experience of our Saga Expansion should follow suit. While Bilbo Baggins (The Hunt for Gollum, 1) already entered The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game as a playable hero, we wanted Bilbo to be more central to the events of The Hobbit. It wasn’t enough for Bilbo to pass around his card draw; we wanted each player to be able to take turns controlling the story’s central character, so we decided to create a new Bilbo Baggins hero that would be playable only in The Hobbit.
Adding another hero to the starting mix created some resource complications. How do you balance the game for a player who generates a base of four resources? And if Bilbo is just another hero, granting another resource, how is he special? Ultimately, we decided the best way to make Bilbo special was to add a new sphere of influence to the game: the Baggins sphere. By giving the Hobbit his own sphere of influence and giving players opportunities to gain benefits from using his resources within each scenario, we hoped players would feel like they’re reliving Bilbo’s adventures right alongside him.
Just like in the book, the unlikely burglar can either help or hinder his companions. As a free fourth hero, he boosts his controller’s strength, but because the players will lose the game if he leaves play, Bilbo can force players to play more cautiously. Meanwhile, his Baggins sphere resources allowed us to recapture some of the ways Bilbo influenced the company’s adventures, and they really make him stand out. His resources can be used to help the heroes on their journey at different times throughout the scenarios in The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill. Because these resources are so pivotal, we didn’t want players to use cards like Steward of Gondor (Core Set, 26) to gain more, or some of the most unique elements of the quests could be rendered insignificant. Thus, we added the line, “Bilbo Baggins cannot gain resources from player card effects.” This makes sure that deciding when and where to spend his Baggins sphere resources will remain an interesting part of the game.
Meanwhile, the design team had long been eager to explore the idea of treasures in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and The Hobbit seemed like the perfect place to introduce this new card type. Part of the appeal of the game’s scenarios is that they string together to tell a larger story. Each individual scenario your heroes undertake is but a part of the overall narrative. Still, it can be difficult to build continuity between the different chapters of that story when you can change cards, even heroes, along the way. We wanted to present players with incentive to change their approach to deck-building and game-play, and treasure cards gave us an answer; in order to include these powerful artifacts in their deck, players must first discover them in a specific scenario. After that, so long as players use the same heroes who found them, they can use those treasures in subsequent, related scenarios. These treasure cards represent some of the most famous artifacts in Middle-earth, like the elven swords that Bilbo, Gandalf, and Thorin found in the troll’s cave. Accordingly, they have strong abilities in that make them well worth the effort to discover and play in later scenarios.
Thanks, Caleb!
The whole design team has put a tremendous amount of time, energy, and love into The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill to bring it as close to Bilbo’s adventures as possible.

Sneaking Past The Watcher in the Water, Part One

From the original FFG article here:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3171

“The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”    –Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

Through The Redhorn Gate and along the Road to Rivendell, Arwen and the heroes of Middle-earth have been taxed nearly to their limits by snowstorms, perilous mountain passes, and wave after wave of ferocious ambushes. Now, at long last they have arrived safely at the Last Homely House. Though some of the heroes may hope their journeys through the Dwarrowdelf have come to an end, the truth is that they’ve only just begun.

Elrond, the master of Rivendell, is troubled by the great numbers of Orcs that once again infest the Misty Mountains. Many years have passed since the Orcs posed such a threat, and their return is troubling. Accordingly, Elrond asks the heroes of Middle-earth to explore the mines of Moria for the source of the increased Orc activity. But before the heroes can explore Moria’s vast network of tunnels, they must first gain entrance…

Beneath the gaze of the great

As we look forward to the release of The Watcher in the Water, the third Adventure Pack in the Dwarrowdelf cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, we’ll take a close, practical, three-part look at the game’s new Secrecy mechanic, concluding with a deck list featuring the pack’s new hero.

While we’ve already learned how the mechanic works in an article on deck-building and received design insights in apreview of The Redhorn Gate, these haven’t been “practical” explorations of the mechanic. Why? The game hadn’t yet reached the critical mass of Secrecy cards and effects to make a Secrecy deck viable. The Secrecy cards introduced with the first two Dwarrowdelf Adventure Packs may present some excellent, cost-effective benefits for players who can keep their threat at 20 or below, but they don’t, on their own, offer enough reward to encourage decks built specifically to take advantage of Secrecy discounts.

That may change with The Watcher in the Water. This Adventure Pack introduces only one new card with the Secrecy keyword, but it bolsters the strategy with a number of exciting new cards that provide the card draw, resource acceleration, and threat manipulation that Secrecy decks need.

The aid of the Last Homely House

The master of Rivendell and his daughter lend their aid in The Watcher in the Water. Elrond lends your heroes his counsel before they set forth into the wild, and Arwen Undómiel (The Watcher in the Water, 58), having just traveled with the heroes across the Misty Mountains, offers to travel with them once more as an ally.

Though Elrond’s Counsel (The Watcher in the Water, 59) may soon form a core component of most Secrecy decks, it can easily fit into any deck with a Spirit hero. For the cost only of the card draw, Elrond’s Counsel both boosts a character’s Willpower by one and reduces your threat by three. Threat reduction is always good, and additional Willpower is always welcome, too.

Elrond’s Counsel put to the test

So what’s the catch? First of all, you need to control a unique Noldor character. While the new Arwen ally happens to be a Noldor from the Spirit sphere, she’s the only one. The only Noldor characters currently in the game include her brothers Elrohir (The Redhorn Gate, 1) and Elladan (Road to Rivendell, 28). They belong, respectively, to the Leadership and Tactics spheres. Then, there are only two more unique Noldor characters, Glorfindel (Core Set, 11) and Gildor Inglorion (The Hills of Emyn Muil, 79). This means the most reliable way to receive the benefits of Elrond’s Counsel is to start the game with a Noldor hero paired alongside a Spirit hero. Since the majority of the game’s Secrecy cards currently belong to the Leadership and Lore spheres, a two-hero Secrecy deck might be able to make good use of either Elrohir or Glorfindel.

Pairing Elrohir with a character like Éowyn (Core Set, 7) means you start both with considerable Willpower to apply toward the quest, as well as the ability to ready a defender to attack. Elrohir’s Leadership icon allows you to make use of the fantastic event, Timely Aid (The Redhorn Gate, 3), and though it’s true Elrohir doesn’t have the greatest Defense Strength without Elladan in play, it’s still possible to bolster his defense with Dúnedain Warning (Conflict at the Carrock, 26) and Arwen’s ability.

Alternatively, you could pair Glorfindel with Frodo Baggins (Conflict at the Carrock, 25) or Dúnhere (Core Set, 9), either one of whom grants extra action potential, either by soaking wounds as threat and releasing you from the need of assigning a defender in certain situations, or by attacking enemies in the staging area, releasing you from the need to defend them. Meanwhile, the Lore sphere benefits from such Secrecy cards as Needful to Know (The Redhorn Gate, 9) and Out of the Wild (Road to Rivendell, 36).

If you build the right support into your deck, any of these starting fellowships provides you the means to push forward on your quest – all while remaining beneath the notice of most enemies. Your enemies might build up in the staging area, and you’ll need to confront them eventually, but if you adopt a good measure of Secrecy and heed Elrond’s Counsel, you should be able to recruit enough allies to your cause to deal with the enemies when the time is right.

Thus ends the first part of our look at how Secrecy hits critical mass in The Watcher in the Water. Check back over the next couple weeks for more previews and a Secrecy-focused deck list!

FFG News - Ambushed on the Road to Rivendell

Fantasy Flight Games [News] - Ambushed on the Road to Rivendell: "Road to Rivendell "

'via Blog this'

Suddenly Aragorn leapt to his feet. “How the wind howls!” he cried. “It is howling with wolf-voices. The Wargs have come west of the Mountains!”
    –The Fellowship of the Ring

Having barely pushed their way through the raging snowstorms along The Redhorn Gate, the heroes of Middle-earth continue their journey to Rivendell, heading down the westward slopes of the Misty Mountains. Though they leave the drifting snow and wintry weather behind them, the Road to Rivendell is not yet clear. Wargs, goblins, and other ferocious enemies lie in waiting to spring their ambushes upon the weary fellowship!

Ambushed on the Road to Rivendell

When we first announced the upcoming release of Road to Rivendell, we mentioned the Adventure Pack would be the first to introduce the new Ambush mechanic. This deadly new mechanic changes the way you encounter enemies, especially in multiplayer games. It forces the first player to tread lightly as your heroes journey westward and northward through the hills west of the Misty Mountains.

Each time an enemy with the Ambush keyword is revealed from the encounter deck, each player makes an immediate engagement check with it, starting with the first player, and players who fail to keep their threat low can quickly find themselves surrounded by enemies. In a four-player game, it’s possible to reveal four enemies and watch with terror as your heroes stumble into the middle of their ambush.

Of course, if an enemy leaps out of the staging area to engage you during the quest phase, it doesn’t oppose your progress with its threat. But before you start thinking that Ambush is a blessing in disguise, consider the true threat posed by an enemy like the Wild Bear (Road to Rivendell, 52). This ferocious predator bears your heroes no malice. The Dark Lord of Mordor does not guide its attacks. Instead, it’s driven by hunger alone, and it adds zero threat while in the staging area. However, if a player gets up to 34 threat, its Ambush keyword means this ravenous beast immediately engages a player, and its Forced response means that it attacks immediately. If a Wild Bear attacks due to Ambush, you cannot fool it with a Feint (Core Set, 34). You cannot remove the threat with a Quick Strike (Core Set, 35). You must simply defend against it or face the consequences.

Wicked tricks and snares

There are plenty of wicked little tricks and snares waiting for your heroes in Road to Rivendell. A Wild Bear attack during the quest phase may lead into the shadow effect of a Sleeping Sentry (Road to Rivendell, 46), triggering the discard of all exhausted characters, including the one who just exhausted to defend the Wild Bear. Or in a multiplayer game, one player may draw the Wild Bear right before the Sleeping Sentry wounds each exhausted character and exhausts each readied character.

Additionally, the first player to draw an Ambush may struggle to defeat multiple foes, and with multiple combatants pressing their attacks each round, the likelihood becomes greater and greater that you may face one of the scenario’s devastating shadow effects. Without a lot of Ranged and Sentinel characters, a multiplayer table will quickly learn that the threat of Ambush quickly outweighs the benefits you gain by drawing enemies out of the staging area during the quest phase.

Scouting ahead

The best way to avoid an ambush may be to send scouts ahead of the main party, and Road to Rivendell introduces an exciting Lore card that can help you navigate around some of the encounter deck’s nastiest surprises. Out of the Wild (Road to Rivendell, 36) can remove some of the encounter deck’s worst threats before you ever face them. At three cost, it’s a little expensive, but nothing unreasonable for a deck that runs a good measure of resource acceleration. Moreover, Out of the Wild features Secrecy 2, meaning if you can keep your threat at or below twenty, you can pick apart the encounter deck for a mere one resource.

Obviously, if you aren’t running A Test of Will (Core Set, 50) or Hasty Stroke (Core Set, 48), the Sleeping Sentry is a good candidate to remove from the deck, but Out of the Wild can do more than help you avoid the most troublesome encounter effects. In scenarios like The Hills of Emyn Muil or The Redhorn Gate, where you need to draw into the encounter deck’s victory points, Out of the Wild can filter out the cards that will just cost you extra turns. Remove encounter cards without victory points, and the chances increase that you’ll draw into cards that have victory points.

The Road to Rivendell is long and full of peril. You’ll need to remain wary to avoid Ambush, but there’s little time left for you to delay. The time is coming to resume your escort mission as you seek to bring Arwen safely home to Rivendell.

Heroes in The Redhorn Gate, Part Three

From the FFG article here:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3084

“If Gandalf would go before us with a bright flame, he might melt a path for you,” said Legolas. The storm had troubled him little, and he alone of the Company remained still light of heart.
   “If Elves could fly over mountains, they might fetch the Sun to save us,” answered Gandalf. “But I must have something to work on. I cannot burn snow.”
   “Well,” said Boromir, “when heads are at a loss bodies must serve, as we say in my country. The strongest of us must seek a way.”

   –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Two weeks ago, we explored how different combinations of heroes might each tackle the unique challenges of The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. Decks take on different personalities and the game plays differently depending on your choice of heroes in your starting fellowship.

We believe this variety is a good thing. Players have different personalities, and they should be able to build and play decks that suit them. In solo games, a player’s deck establishes the tenor of the entire game. In multiplayer games, however, a player’s deck influences part of the game, but not the entirety of it. It’s impossible for a player to change the shape of the entire game with just one deck among two, three, or four, but players may certainly still play decks that suit their styles. In fact, multiplayer offers more room for specialized roles than solo play.

Today, we look at some of the current multiplayer archetypes and explore some of the cards that make help these decks quest successfully.

What’s your style?

As the player card and hero pools for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game expand, players gain more options for deck customization, allowing for greater focus on a theme or role than the pre-constructed decks from the Core Setoffer. Many of these reconfigured decks benefit from the combination of heroes and player cards from two or more spheres of influence, combining complementary cards from each sphere to reinforce the deck’s overall purpose.

Below, we identify a few multi-sphere deck archetypes and look at how the heroes play into each of them:

TANK
Heroes: Gimli (Core Set, 4), Boromir (The Dead Marshes, 95), Frodo (Conflict at the Carrock, 25)

The tank’s role is to engage as many enemies as possible, and destroy them. Frodo may seem out of place, but he acts as the “armor” that allows the player to engage more than he can safely block. Absorbing enemies is just as important a part of the tank’s duties as is destroying them.

As long as you don’t hit fifty threat, you generally want a higher threat than your teammates so that you’ll draw enemies out of the staging area before they’re forced to engage your friends. Boromir and Frodo can both raise your threat. Just be careful that you don’t put yourself at risk too early. The Galadhrim’s Greeting (Core Set, 46) is an expensive event for the deck, but it can help you stay in the game longer to support your friends.

Also, allies with Sentinel can help you better defend your teammates. The Gondorian Spearman (Core Set, 29) and Winged Guardian (The Hunt for Gollum, 4) can both block attacks directed at your teammates, and a Feint (Core Set, 34) can come in handy, too. Meanwhile, as you focus on absorbing hits so that your teammates won’t, you can expect to suffer some casualties, making the Horn of Gondor (Core Set, 42) a perfect fit.

HEALER
Denethor (Core Set, 10), Eleanor (Core Set, 8), Glorfindel (Core Set, 11)

The healer’s role is to keep the party alive, both by healing damage and by mitigating the dangers of the encounter deck. While other players focus on questing, attacking, and defending, the healer plays a quieter and subtler role away from the front lines and all the game’s primary action.

Denethor’s ability to scout the top card of the encounter deck is more useful in games with fewer players because he grants you information about a greater percentage of the encounter cards you’re due to face. On the other hand, Eleanor’s ability provides greater impact in games with more players, where you’ll face more cards and it’s more likely a single treachery card may steer your heroes off their course. Critical to your use of the deck is knowing when to use these heroes’ abilities, rather than keep them ready to support your teammates by defending against enemies.

Still, you can supplement these abilities with cards like A Test of Will (Core Set, 50) and Hasty Stroke (Core Set, 48) to lessen the impact of surprises from treachery and shadow effects. And when your scouting fails, you can still help your teammates recover quickly from their bruises with Glorfindel and cards like Lore of Imladris (Core Set, 63), Daughter of the Nimrodel (Core Set, 58), and Beorn’s Hospitality (Core Set, 68).

Apart from Glorfindel, your heroes aren’t much good in a fight, but they are clever. Even though you want to direct your focus elsewhere, if you can prompt some Infighting (A Journey to Rhosgobel, 58) among your foes, you may be able to help your party finish off wounded enemies.

ADVENTURER
Aragorn (Core Set, 1), Éowyn (Core Set, 7), Imrahil (A Journey to Rhosgobel, 50)

The adventurer’s role is to focus as much on questing as possible, and a starting fellowship of Aragorn, Éowyn, and Imrahil can quest with the best of them. Players have long debated whether or not Éowyn is critical to success in the game. She’s not “critical,” but it’s hard to argue that her four Willpower isn’t helpful. In a four-player game, she can quest for as much as eight Willpower if each player sacrifices a card to fuel her ability.

Aragorn and Imrahil fit the deck because they both share two Willpower and the ability to ready themselves after questing. Aragorn readies if he pays a resource from his pool, making him an excellent candidate to serve as the Steward of Gondor (Core Set, 26), and Imrahil readies whenever a character leaves play, meaning that he can react swiftly if your Snowbourn Scout (Core Set, 16) or Westfold Horse-Breaker (Core Set, 6) is struck down by an enemy or rides off to ready another hero.

Plus, Aragorn is Middle-earth’s greatest ranger and the rightful heir to Elendil’s throne. Accordingly, he gets a little extra love and benefit from some cards like Celebrían’s Stone (Core Set, 27), which not only gives him two extra Willpower but also adds a Spirit icon. This means the fellowship can play two-cost allies like Westfold Horse-Breaker and Escort from Edoras (A Journey to Rhosgobel, 55) each turn, rather than needing to save for them. With their extra Willpower, the quester can race forward to put progress toward your quest each turn.

Heroes in The Redhorn Gate, Part One - A spotlight on the heroes of The Lord of The Rings: The Card Game

From the original FFG article here:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3045

Aragorn was the tallest of the Company, but Boromir, little less in height, was broader and heavier in build. He led the way, and Aragorn followed him. Slowly they moved off, and were soon toiling heavily. In places the snow was breast-high, and often Boromir seemed to be swimming or burrowing with his great arms rather than walking.
    Legolas watched them for a while with a smile upon his lips, and then he turned to the others. “The strongest must seek a way, say you? But I say: let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running over grass and leaf, or over snow – an Elf.”

   –The Fellowship of the Ring

With the completion of the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle and the release of Khazad-dûm, players now have far more heroes from which to choose as they build their fellowships, but how do you decide which to include? Are there any hard and fast rules about the best ways to combine heroes from different spheres? Have you ever wondered why The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game limits players to three heroes in the first place?

Let’s start by addressing the last of these questions first. While it’s true that players can choose to run fewer than three heroes, it’s generally not advised.

The rule of three

A two-hero fellowship (or even a solitary hero) may be able to make progress toward the quest for a period of time, while slipping beneath the notice of any enemies in the staging area, but eventually the mounting threats of locations and enemies are likely to catch up to a small party. The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is intentionally balanced for three heroes.

The game’s designer, Nate French, explains:

Three is a really strong number for game design. It presents possibilities for different approaches to games that can appeal to different types of players. When you play a game, having to focus on three options can lead you to a balanced approach that works like a tripod leaning equally upon all three sides (a tri-sphere deck, with one hero from each of three different spheres), or you may take a split focus between a major sphere with support from a minor sphere (a deck with two Spirit heroes, and one Tactics hero, for instance). Still another option exists, and you can focus all your efforts on a single point of interest (a focused, monosphere deck).

Having only two options for heroes would be too limiting in possibilities; it creates situations that are all an either/or or a perfect mix. Four options, on the other hand, would start to enter the territory of allowing players to do “everything” right out of the gate, which would lessen the meaning and impact of selecting heroes in the first place.

Another nice aspect of having three heroes in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is that you have three major points of focus each turn: questing, defending, and attacking. With three heroes, your hero base can cover the three main points of the game. With four options, you would start getting to the point where you’re trying to spin too many plates at once. Card games are filled with constantly shifting rules as cards enter and leave play, and adding another multiplier can just prove overwhelming.

Split or focused spheres?

Nate offers both a nice definition of the challenges The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game offers fellowships and a similarly succinct definition of the various approaches players may take to building their fellowships. Each turn players need to divide their fellowship’s attentions between questing, defending, and attacking, and as they consider how best to meet those demands, players can choose to combine two or three spheres of influence, or rely upon the strengths of a single sphere.

Of course, your concerns for deck construction will be slightly different if you’re building for solitary play than if you’re building for multiplayer games. In multiplayer games, players can split the game’s three main tasks (questing, defending, and attacking) between the two decks, so that one player may be responsible for questing while the other may do the dirty work of defending and attacking. In solitary play, however, one fellowship must balance all three tasks.

Many players have long noted they’ve met with greater success when running at least two spheres, whether split between multiple players or combining heroes from different spheres in a solitary deck. This is because the spheres each excel at different aspects of the game (and different tasks). While there are no hard and fast rules about combining the spheres of influence, strong decks must have plans built into them to commit Willpower to the quest, defend and destroy enemies, draw cards, generate resources, and survive the nastiest Treachery cards the encounter deck can throw at them.

Typically, Spirit cards provide high Willpower and efficient means of canceling Treachery effects, Lore cards provide excellent card draw, Leadership provides resource acceleration, and Tactics provides you the means of surviving and quickly defeating even the nastiest enemies. If you draw upon the strongest and most appropriate cards for your deck’s theme from two or three of these spheres, you can gain the traditional benefits of both (or all three) spheres, and you may be able to focus your deck even more keenly than if you hewed to just one sphere.

Ploughmen to plough, otters to swim

While a deck’s “personality” may be most clearly expressed in a multiplayer game, even single-player decks can express dramatically different approaches to the game, starting with their selection of heroes.

QUESTER: Dúnhere (Core Set, 9), Éowyn (Core Set, 7), Theodred (Core Set, 2)
Starting threat: 24

A quester focuses on committing as much Willpower as possible to the quest, while facing as little resistance as possible. Éowyn and Théodred quest each turn, while Dúnhere skirmishes enemies in the staging area. Cards that reduce threat, such as The Galadhrim’s Greeting (Core Set, 46) and Gandalf (Core Set, 73), are key to the success of this deck as they allow Dúnhere to attack without ever first having to face an attack.

FIGHTER: Éowyn, Gimli (Core Set, 4), Legolas (Core Set, 5)
Starting threat: 29

Unlike the quester, the fighter doesn’t shy away from getting down and dirty in combat. While Éowyn focuses on the quest, Gimli can take some hits and gets stronger for them. Legolas rewards you for fighting by adding progress tokens each time he helps defeat an enemy. An Unexpected Courage (Core Set, 57) on Gimli makes him a formidable combatant, and a couple copies of Blade of Gondolin (Core Set, 39) make felling foes even more rewarding.

SAGE: Beravor (Core Set, 12), Bifur (Khazad-dûm, 2), Bilbo (The Hunt for Gollum, 1)
Starting threat: 26

Knowledge is power, and knowledge in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is best represented by the cards and options in your hand. This focused trio of Lore heroes provides tremendous card draw, and you can add to it with Gléowine (Core Set, 62). The Lore sphere features a great number of cards to reduce the threat in the staging area and can convert card draw into Willpower via Protector of Lorien (Core Set, 70), but you’ll probably want to include some Songs to splash cards from other spheres.

PROTECTOR: Boromir (The Dead Marshes, 95), Eleanor (Core Set, 8), Frodo (Conflict at the Carrock, 25)
Starting threat: 25

This fellowship plays its low starting threat against the optional threat increases it can trigger from Boromir and Frodo to gain extra actions. As with the quester, the protector benefits tremendously from cards that reduce threat, allowing Boromir to quest, defend, and attack every turn. Cards you play to boost Boromir, such as Blade of Gondolin and The Favor of the Lady (Core Set, 55), provide tremendous rewards as he can use them all every turn.

JACK OF ALL TRADES: Aragorn (Core Set, 1), Beravor, Frodo
Starting threat: 29

Starting with three spheres, this fellowship can do a little bit of everything. Aragorn allows you to play Steward of Gondor (Core Set, 26) to accelerate your resources, while Beravor accelerates your card draw. You’ll have a lot of options in your hand every turn, and Aragorn and Frodo provide you with action advantage. Aragorn can pay resources to ready himself after committing to the quest, and Frodo can serve as a “defender” even while exhausted, absorbing damage as threat in times of need.

Looking ahead

Are you wondering how these archetypes may change with the release of The Redhorn Gate and the subsequent Adventure Packs from the Dwarrowdelf cycle? Next week, Part Two of this series takes a look at the impact Secrecy is likely to have upon your starting fellowships. Then, in two weeks, Part Three takes a closer look at multiplayer roles and the new hero from The Redhorn Gate!

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game - Foundations of Stone

Fantasy Flight Games [News] - Foundations of Stone:

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“Something has crept, or been driven out of dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.”
–Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Foundations of Stone, the fifth Adventure Pack in the Dwarrowdelf cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game!

Deeper into the Dwarrowdelf

In the Dwarrowdelf cycle, several of Middle-earth’s heroes escort Arwen Undómiel safely to Rivendell. There, Elrond expresses his concern about the increased Orc activity the heroes noted through The Redhorn Gate and on the Road to Rivendell. He requests the heroes search the Misty Mountains for the cause of the region’s increased Orcish presence, and their search leads them first to the Doors of Durin, where they must battle The Watcher in the Water. Only after they manage to survive the perilous combat do the heroes enter Moria and wander The Long Dark.

Onward and deeper, they press into the mines of Moria. Hazards slow their movement and threaten their health. Orcs confront them at every turn, but with little sign of true leadership or organization. Still, the heroes feel they are ever closing in upon the true source of the Orcish activity. Their search leads them deeper and deeper, down into Moria’s Foundations of Stone.

Trapped!

The new scenario in Foundations of Stone traps the heroes in treacherous underground currents, washing them into the dark waters where the nameless things lair. Older and fouler than Orcs, they will test your heroes to the utmost limits of their resilience. Confronted by an Elder Nameless Thing (Foundations of Stone, 126), washed into the dark, watery recesses of Middle-earth, and with no one to rely upon but themselves, will your heroes survive the trials they face below the Dwarrowdelf’s Foundations of Stone?

Relics lost beneath the mountains

While heroes face all-new dangers and quest mechanics in Foundations of Stone, they find unexpected treasures far beneath the mountains. A pair of powerful Artifacts show up in the least likely of places–the encounter deck–that can give your heroes the edge they need to survive their battles with nameless things. Dwarf characters, especially, will take heart from the discovery of these items, including Durin’s Helm (Foundations of Stone, 120).

Discover Dwarven Artifacts, face the terrifying nameless things, and move closer to the root of the increased Orcish presence within the Misty Mountains when you travel beneath Moria’s Foundations of Stone.

The Long Dark of Moria

It was after nightfall when they had entered the Mines. They had been going for several hours with only brief halts, when Gandalf came to the first serious check. Before him stood a wide arch opening into three passages: all led in the same general direction, eastwards; but the left-hand passage plunged down, while the right-hand climbed up, and the middle way seemed to run on, smooth and level but very narrow.
    –The Fellowship of the Ring

Fantasy Flight Games is pleased to announce the upcoming release of The Long Dark, the fourth harrowing Adventure Pack in the Dwarrowdelf cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game!

After a brutal conflict with The Watcher in the Water, several heroes of Middle-earth pass through the gates of Moria and begin to scout its ancient tunnels for the root of the increased Orc activity in the Misty Mountains. But it has been many ages since the Dwarves last gave light to the mines. The way is dark and choked with foes and hazards. The ominous dark lingers ever before your party, closing in around you, making it difficult to tell one path from another, and you must be careful to keep your way…

Lost in the mines of Moria

The Orcs of Moria are multitude, but your heroes seek signs of the forces that draw the Orcs together and drive them out into the mountains. As your heroes begin their journey into The Long Dark, they find pockets of Goblin resistance, but with little organization save for that provided by Goblin warlords. To discover the deeper roots of the increased Orc activity, your heroes must delve deeper into the Mines.

The Long Dark introduces 60 new cards, including a new hero, three copies of each player card, and an all-new scenario that pits your heroes against bands of Goblins, the hazards of traveling in the dark, and the risk of getting lost. As your heroes travel through the Dark, Underground realm of Moria, they must navigate carefully or suffer the consequences of losing their way. Any wrong turn may tax your heroes’ energy and limit their options, discarding cards from your hand, or it may lead into a host of Orcs, spiders, and rock adders.

The wealth of Moria

“The wealth of Moria was not in gold and jewels, the toys of the Dwarves; nor in iron, their servant.”
    –Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

The Long Dark poses unique challenges to your band of heroes, but it also provides them with new resources. Four new allies offer their assistance, and your heroes can make use of a number of new events and attachments, including sturdy Ring Mail (The Long Dark, 80).

Originally shown in the announcement of the Dwarrowdelf cycle, Ring Mail has already spurred conversations among fans on our community forums. With the release of The Long Dark, you will be able to better protect your Dwarf and Hobbitcharacters from the hordes of Orcs and Goblins that harry your fellowship through the mines. Perhaps, the extra defense your heroes gain from their Ring Mail may be the edge between success and failure in their quest.

Don your Ring Mail, stock up on provisions, and prepare yourselves for adventure as your party sets foot into the mines of Moria and confronts The Long Dark that awaits them. This challenging and suspenseful Adventure Pack is scheduled to release in the second quarter of 2012!

Boromir's Guide to Deck Construction, Part One

Fantasy Flight Games [News] - Boromir's Guide to Deck Construction, Part One:

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“Believe not that in the land of Gondor the blood of Númenor is spent, nor all its pride and dignity forgotten. By our valour the wild folk of the East are still restrained, and the terror of Morgul kept at bay; and thus alone are peace and freedom maintained in the lands behind us, bulwark of the West.”
–Boromir, The Fellowship of the Ring

One of the reasons The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game has entertained so many fans and enjoyed a great deal of success is because it appeals to people across a range of player archetypes–Bilbo, Pippin, and Boromir alike. The game’s narrative structure makes it easy to find a story in every game. Because it’s a Living Card Game, novelty seekers can find new cards to try in their decks and new challenges to face with each monthly release, and enough of the scenarios and their enemies pose sufficient threat to challenge the hardcore Boromirs, who seek glory through conquest. In fact, some of us are still waiting for the combination of cards that will allow us to beat Escape from Dol Guldur solo with a measure of consistency.

The lone traveler’s journey

The game has also found a good measure of success due to its rich solitaire play, but while confronting the challenges of Middle-earth may lead to memorable game experiences, they can also frustrate players with less experience in games with deck construction. The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is unique among these games in that players compete against the forces of Shadow, as controlled by an encounter deck and its artificial intelligence. Still, the encounter deck has its fair share of devious tricks and an arsenal of deadly weapons. Accordingly, it is no simple thing to master the encounter deck and succeed at your quests.

Now that the Khazad-dûm Expansion has arrived, players will face a whole host of new challenges, and some have already wondered how they will fare against the goblin hordes of Moria.

Today, then, we begin a three-part series of deck-building tutorials aimed at the new solo player, but one that should contain helpful information (and reminders) for players of all experience levels.

Sharpening your blade

There’s much to be said for the decisions you make while playing a game, but we begin any conversation about success in a card game by looking at the deck.

While players may find many different card combinations and ways to approach the challenges before them, there are a number of larger, universal concerns that touch upon deck-building in any game, including The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. No matter the scenario you intend to conquer, you’ll want to consider how your deck may provide you with action advantage, card advantage, and resource acceleration. Additionally, every card designer at some point talks about “synergy,” and it’s important to be able to recognize whether or not your deck is filled with synergies between cards, or if it’s a combination of 50 cards all seeking to do their own thing. Meanwhile, each card game introduces its own game-specific concerns, and in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, it’s always worth trying to maintain as low a starting threat as possible, and including some means of reducing it should it start to rise.

Today, we’ll go into a bit more depth about action advantage and card advantage.

Action advantage

Action advantage refers, generally, to the idea that you can do more than your opponent each turn. In a head-to-head game, like A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, you might gain action advantage through “board control” or a stronger “board position.” In short, if you have more and stronger characters on the table than your opponent, you’re more likely to win challenges and the game. In The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, your heroes are limited in what they can do by the number of times they can exhaust. Do you choose to quest with your hero, defend, attack, or exhaust to use a special ability? Each of these is an “action,” and the more actions you can take, the better.

Part of the solution is to include allies. A lot of allies. Many successful decks are almost half full of allies. Allies who can quest allow your heroes to attack or defend. Allies who block enemies for your heroes allow your heroes to quest or attack. Allies are good and help you gain action advantage.

Another part of the solution is to build your deck around heroes who can ready themselves. Aragorn (Core Set, 1),Prince Imrahil (A Journey to Rhosgobel, 50), and Boromir (The Dead Marshes, 95) all come to your fellowship with built-in means of readying themselves. Still, there are other means of readying your heroes. Spirit heroes can help others find Unexpected Courage (Core Set, 57) or recruit a Westfold Horse-Breaker (The Hunt for Gollum, 6), and now, with the release of Khazad-dûm, your Dwarf heroes can get a boost from the Erebor Record Keeper (Khazad-dûm, 11).

Khazad-dûm introduces another card that clever players may use to find action advantage, Ever Onward (Khazad-dûm, 5). Certainly not the most glamorous of cards, Ever Onward may appear at first glance as though it’s merely a safety net. However, if you know you won’t fall deeper into threat by failing at your quest, Ever Onward can afford you a single turn in which for three-cost, all your characters remain ready to confront the enemies with which they are engaged, allowing you to withhold them from questing and assign them, instead, to defense and attack.

You can even find action advantage from cards that don’t provide you with extra actions but can let you “cheat” around the need to take actions. For example, Dúnhere (Core Set, 9) and Quick Strike (Core Set, 35) can let you attack enemies without first having to defend against them. They can save you the need to heal your characters later, prevent nasty shadow effects from resolving, and free you to focus on questing successfully.

Card advantage

Card advantage comes primarily in four forms. One is card draw. The more cards you can draw, the more options you hold in your hands. Another is subtler but no less effective, and that is the ability to do more with fewer cards. The final routes to card advantage are search and recursion.

There are only a handful of cards in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game that accelerate card draw, and the best of them are ubiquitous among top players. Beravor (Core Set, 12) almost always receives the first copy (or two, or three) of Unexpected Courage when she’s present in the party. While it may seem like a waste of an action to exhaust her to draw cards rather than quest, defend, or attack, nothing could be further from the truth. Card draw is the backbone of versatility. The more cards you hold in your hand, the likelier you’ll be able to find the perfect response to any threat. Furthermore, if another of your heroes is a Protector of Lórien (Core Set, 70), you can convert Beravor’s card draw directly into extra Willpower toward the quest. Bilbo (The Hunt for Gollum, 1), Gléowine (Core Set, 62), and Ancient Mathom (A Journey to Rhosgobel, 56) also provide excellent card draw, as can Gandalf (Core Set, 73), when he isn’t busy wounding enemies or lowering your threat.

Gandalf’s versatility serves as an excellent illustration of the second type of card advantage. Not only is he a powerful ally with tremendous benefits while questing, defending, or attacking, but he also offers your party the pick of his three exceptional abilities whenever he comes into play. At five cost, he’s not cheap, but the combination of Gandalf andSneak Attack (Core Set, 23), both reduces the wizard’s cost and allows you to play him more times. This combination offers classic card advantage. Dwalin (Khazad-dûm, 1) offers similar card advantage with his ability to reduce your threat each time he defeats an Orc. The mines of Moria are filled with Orcs, after all, and if you can boost his strength, Dwalin can both clear away your enemies and control your threat, saving you a card slot you might otherwise spend onThe Galadhrim’s Greeting (Core Set, 46).

Finally, cards that search your deck, reorder the cards on top of your deck, or pull other cards out of your discard pile may not provide you with more options in your hand, but they may ensure you hold the right cards. Dwarven Tomb(Core Set, 53) can be as good as any Spirit card in your discard pile. Gildor Inglorion (The Hills of Emyn Muil, 79) is good not only for his excellent statistics; his ability to manipulate the top three cards of your deck can help you find the cards you need earlier than you would otherwise. Gildor’s search ability can also ensure the success of your Zigil Miner (Khazad-dûm, 9), leading to rapid resource acceleration… a fundamental of deck-building.