Hazard Decks Tutorial

Resources and tutorials for new players, or for old players looking for a refresh.
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zirilan
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Hazard Strategies

There are quite some hazard strategies that proved themselves to be working well. Due to deck construction guidelines a hazard deck shall have 30 cards in total, at least 12 out of them creatures. The hazard deck will consist of two parts, hazard creatures and hazard events. In general those two parts shall work well together.
The most import thing about MECCG is speed. The toughest creature, the biggest combo, the greatest trick won't help you if your opponents calles the council befor you gather up your own stuff. So the main idea of a successul hazard strategy is about slowing down opponent or even deadlock him. This can be preformed in various ways: NOTE: Make sure that your hazard deck goes hand in hand with your own resource deck! Avoid sites with an automatic-attack that your own enhancers make more dangerous. Play either Doors of Night strategy or Gates of Morning strategy. Watch out your site path while having permanent-events or long-events hitting it on the table.


Hazard creatures

Playing hazard creatures follows two basic goals. Tapping out opponents company (so they will not be able to play marshalling point resources in their site phase) and getting characters wounded or killed. There are two main possebilities of keying creatures. On one hand you can play them keyed to a site/region symbol and on the other hand you can play some creatures keyed to region names. It is wise to have a great spectrum of creatures keyable to each of the possible site/region symbols and or names to hinder your opponent from freely moveing around middle earth.

List of hazard creature types
There are 20 different creature types available in MECCG. There are site and region symbols next to the creature types to get a better impression on where you will most likely be keyed to.
  • Animals [-me_wi-]
  • Awakened Plants [-me_wi-]
  • Bears [-me_wi-] [-me_wi-]
  • Dragons (region specific)
  • Drakes [-me_wi-] [-me_wi-] [-me_sl-] [-me_cs-]
  • Dúnedain (region specific)
  • Dwarves [-me_bl-] [-me_wi-]
  • Elves [-me_fd-] [-me_bl-] [-me_wi-] [-me_wi-] [-me_sl-]
  • Giants [-me_wi-] [-me_wi-]
  • Maia [-me_fh-] [-me_fd-]
  • Men [-me_fh-] [-me_bh-] [-me_fd-] [-me_bl-] [-me_wi-]
  • Nazgûl [-me_dh-] [-me_dd-]
  • Orcs [-me_rl-] [-me_sh-] [-me_dh-] [-me_bl-] [-me_wi-] [-me_sl-] [-me_dd-]
  • Pûkel-creatures [-me_sh-] [-me_dh-]
  • Slayer [-me_bh-] [-me_bl-]
  • Spawns (region specific)
  • Spiders (2) [-me_rl-] [-me_wi-]
  • Trolls [-me_sh-] [-me_dh-] [-me_wi-] [-me_sl-] [-me_dd-]
  • Undead [-me_rl-] [-me_sh-] [-me_dh-] [-me_wi-] [-me_sl-] [-me_dd-]
  • Wolves [-me_bl-] [-me_wi-] [-me_sl-]
NOTE: The prize you pay for powerful creatures is a limited keyability.


[-me_cc-] Corruption [-me_cp-]

Corrupting opponent characters is a real nasty way of getting rid of them. The feeling of lose a character like Boromir II while fighting Orcs is less harmful than losing him by a failed corruption check. Technacally it is the same, the character is lost but it makes a big difference at haveing fun playing a game of MECCG. Heavy corruption deck will be a pain in the ass for Hero and Fallen Wizards opponents and sue they won't be keen in playing against those hazard decks again.
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Corruption based decks work best with an Undead hazard creature theme because most of the Undead creatures force a wounded character to make a corruption check with a propper malus to the roll.


[-me_tap-] Tapping Out [-me_tap-]

A tapped character won't play a thin this turn. A tapped site is worse to play big marschalling point cards. A combinatin of tapping opponents sites and or characters makes out a good tapper deck. How many times did Adûnaphel save your day by simply tapping out the key character in the last turn?
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Tapping Out decks are often played with detainment attacking creatures so you do not risk losing marshalling point creatures to your opponent. One may think that without wounding and killing opponents characters a hazard deck isn't that good but in the end a game of MECCG is all about speed. Tapped out means losing time and by that losing the match.


[-me_aa-] Automatic-attack Enhancers [-me_aa-]

Arouse, Awaken, and Incite will make it a pain to enter certain sites. All this cards have a drawback, the opponent may just wait a turn to enter the site. Since the game is all about speed your opponent has to either risk entering or losing the game due idling out. The probably best about playing this strategy is that your opponent can fight his way through the attack but won't get a single marshalling point for the beating the attacks. You will need a bunch of this cards in combination to be real devastating. Bluffing is part of this strategy, since your opponent can't be sure what is lurking onguard or not.
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[-me_gi-] Influence Destruction [-me_di-]

Once it is too late you'll notice the Damocles-sword hanging over your head. Most time the player does not keep track of his free general influence he'll be punished by cards like Muster Disperses + Call of Home. By systematically lowering the opponents general influence, raising the mind value of his characters and blocking the possebility of characters having followers the factions and characters are far more vulnerable to influence attacks.
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An influence destruction deck is best played with an influence away resource deck (Wizard with Wizard's Voice or Elrond with Vilya).


[-me_eye-] Roadblock

"You shall not pass." - Gandalf
Well, this quote sounds cool every single time I watch Lord of the Rings. But in a game of MECCG this quote is more behated than corruption it very self!
Forcing your opponent to bounce back to his site of origin does even prevent him from playing stuff this turn, even if he has some marschalling points in his hand playable at his tapped site of origin. Losing multiple turns because you got bounced back or Lost in Free-domains or Riverd is really frustrating. Not only you lose time (what is bad enough itself) but moreover you lose handsize while marshalling points and keycards overcrowd your hand. As hazard player to protect the Snowstorms as well as the defending player to get rid of them the aspect of roadblock enjoins everyone to put 3x Twilight into his own deck and Promtings of Wisdom to the sideboard.
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Roadblock decks are best played in solitary games except you don't mind a powerful slap in the face by your opponent. That and you should play a squatter deck, move in Free-domains or Under-deeps.
Theskyscreams
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:01 pm

A lot of the links here do not work. We should fix them some how.
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the JabberwocK
Ex Council Chairman
Posts: 1156
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2011 4:46 am

Theskyscreams wrote:A lot of the links here do not work. We should fix them some how.
Yes, I am aware. This is a result of us transferring everything over from the old web server and out-dated forum this past April. It is on my list of things to fix, but it is a tedious process and must be done manually one link at a time. I will get to it when time permits.

Thanks for mentioning it.
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