Council of Elrond

Are there any rules where by a single (possibly much larger than normal) Hazard deck is built, which all hazards for all players are drawn from?

Just trying to think of a way where players could focus on what they want to achieve and build in their Resource deck, and the Hazard deck is built to cater for all regions and hazards, hence being larger that normal. I suppose this might dilute the effectiveness of the Hazards, but then since the draw of cards would be dedicated to hazards, maybe this would offset that dilution?

Just wondering how this might work? For example, maybe the hazards could be draw equal to the number denoted by the site destination (plus/minus modifiers), and maybe a couple more, at the start of the moment phase. The "enemy" player would get to see them first, so as to chose if a suitable card can be laid face down as on guard at the destination site, and the rest are laid face up and played by the enemy player as they see fit, if they are relevant. They would be played as normal.

Anyone thought of such a style of game, and whether or not it could work?

Clearly it would be less potent than an "enemy" player bidding their time and then hitting the party with a real nasty combination, but maybe additional cards drawn, for example 2 more than the destination card suggests, or double, to keep bad places bad and good places, still relatively good?

Thoughts would be much appreciated.

Cheers


Padster

If you want to go that route, it might be easier to develop a variant to the Arda format, since it's already halfway to what you're looking for.

I think the Arda rules might give you some good pointers for building this idea.


I guess I am wondering, what is the goal? Is it to simplify gameplay for beginners? Maybe in this case you could adopt the Solitaire rules and have the hazard player rotate around, or maybe have the most experienced players do the hazard playing.

Players (resources):

• Everyone gets 30-50 resource cards in their deck + characters. NO HAZARDS. Twilight should be included in this deck.
• Everyone have a 5-card hand size.
• Everyone draws and discards cards as normal.

Hazards:

• There is only 1 hazard deck of say 60 cards (to account for defeated creatures leaving the deck).
• There is 1 hazard hand of 5-cards. This is kept secret (i would not have it be face up). This way there are several hazard draws/discards so that each player cannot anticipate what is in the hazard hand.
• The hazard hand rotates between players. The player that played before the current player will play hazards (this allows them to concentrate on playing hazards while still having time to prepare for their upcoming turn).
• The hazard player draws 2 cards + the normal number of cards (per solitaire rules).

I'd say that a good way to create the hazard deck would be to simply duplicate one of the challenge decks. Meaning that there could be up to 6 copies of non-unique hazards and up to 2 unique hazards. This lets some of the hazards be defeated for points without diluting the deck. You could also choose 2 separate hazard decks. The Gandalf hazard deck is nice because it is creature heavy without relying on modifiers.

Alternatively, I suggest building a 60-card hazard deck including lots of Orcs, Men, Wolves, and Spiders. Include Doors of Night, minions stir, wake of war, rank upon rank, etc. I would include every orc. Also include 1 or 2 of muster disperses, call of home, and river. Don't include snowstorm, long-winter, or foul fumes. Also include plenty of permanent-events, like the Nazgul and the At-Home dragons (if you have them).

What CDavis7M proposes would be a really good starting point from which to experiment.

CDavis7M wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2020 7:11 pm Alternatively, I suggest building a 60-card hazard deck including lots of Orcs, Men, Wolves, and Spiders. Include Doors of Night, minions stir, wake of war, rank upon rank, etc. I would include every orc. Also include 1 or 2 of muster disperses, call of home, and river. Don't include snowstorm, long-winter, or foul fumes. Also include plenty of permanent-events, like the Nazgul and the At-Home dragons (if you have them).

Building on this suggestion, you'll also want some basic corruption cards (all the "Lure of...", basically, plus things like Dragon-sickness) plus a few (not too many) heavy hitters like Rain Drake, Cave-drake, Bert/Tom/William (trolls), and True Fire-drake in addition to any Nazgul. You want a few dangers in the deck that might punish someone for being too cavalier about traipsing about the deep wilderness or raiding shadow-holds/lands or dark holds/domains.

Just some context, I am the only person I know, locally, who collects MECCG Cards.

So, in an effort to try and introduce the game to others in my circle, I want to simplify/focus deck construction, but not the game itself. To this end, I wanted to remove the need for a player to worry about what hazards to include, and instead have a large 'standard' hazard deck, that all players would draw from, but never have the cards in their hands, and instead the hazards would either be played immediately (on guard, or directly, etc) or discarded. Maybe there could be a visible hazard hand for those that are not played, which itself could be played from, and any empty spaces in that hand, of say 5, are filled with unused drawn hazards until filled and only the excess are discarded.

A player could focus on just building their resource deck, which I think new players would find more enjoyable (and quicker) and could build a good theme around.

The challenge with a single joint hazard deck, as has already been alluded to, is that it needs to be all things to all Hazards and all Resource Deck types, which might be a bit tough.

So, I thought that maybe having more than on hazard deck, maybe grouped coarsely like so:

Hazard Events
Hazard Creatures

The number of cards drawn for a particular turn gets drawn equally from both Hazard decks, so there is always a chance of events and creatures being thrown at the player whose turn it is. So if a site is due 3 Hazard cards, then 3 events and 3 creatures would be drawn. The non-turn player would still get to choose what hazards get played and in what order. I would think it would need to be potentially quite punishing, as the player whose turn it is only has resources in their hand to worry about.

Or, maybe have a general hazard deck, and then several smaller Hazard deck with region/site specific hazards (events and creatures) in them, i.e.:

General
Freehold
Boarderhold
Wilderland
Shadowhold
Darkhold

And then one hazard from the General Hazard deck is chosen, and then an additional Hazard card from each relevant region in the site path is also drawn. Could get a bit dicey with this method though. But would be much more keyed to the site the player is going to, which more chance of a nasty Hazard to play coming up.

Is this getting too complex?

There has been discussion on solitaire hazard play using a generalized hazard deck consisting of region/site type portions. The problem with this is that even "crappy" hazards can overwhelm you if all of them are playable. Even 1 shadow-hold hazard is pretty bad and you could get several. Zach over on the FB group came up with a variation that uses dice rolls to determine whether the hazards are available or not. I believe there were different thresholds per type. You can see more in his solitaire game video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLYtYfUPydI

Another case for viewtopic.php?f=129&t=4257

CDavis7M wrote: ↑Mon Aug 17, 2020 4:54 pm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLYtYfUPydI

I thought that was amazing! Pretty much exactly what I was looking for, and easily expandable to a multiplayer version too, right?

As far as I could tell (I have not watched it all), his rules were:

Alternate Rules
===============
- Just build a deck of resource cards.
- Standard hand size limited to 5 (not .
- Hazards are grouped by Region/Site type, i.e.: Freeland/hold, Borderland/hold, Wilderland/Ruin & Lair, Shadowland/hold and Darkland/hold. The potential is that one of each card type might be draw if it is in your site path (I didn't quite understand if that included the end site too).
- Each group would be a mix of creatures, short events, long events and permenant events keyed to those specific sites/regions.
- Roll 2d6 for each potential hazard card to be drawn. A result of 6 or below means a card is draw of this type. The site Hazard card number acts as a negative modifier to your 2d6 roll, so more dangerous sites mean there is more chance of the hazard cards will be drawn. So, travelling to Minas Tirth from Lorien, means, potentially Wilderland, Borderland, Freeland (and Free-Hold?) hazard cards could be draw, and there would be a -2 to each roll to determine if the card actually gets drawn. Since EVERY site has a traditional card draw of at least 1, that means the card is draw on a 7 or below.

As I said, I have not listened to it all, but I presume that all playable hazards MUST be played (in the order of the regions passed through?).

My questions would be?

- But what hazards to include? One would need a good spread of each sort of hazard for each type of region/site. Because of the need to cover off any kind of deck, etc, then I guess most of them would need to be fairly general in nature. Then again, if one was setting up a specific suite of players, then one can still tailor the hazards. I think it works!
- What about location specific creatures? I guess one includes them and hopes they can be played.
- Maybe hazard limit should be lower, but more hazards can be drawn (7 or below results in a card draw instead of 6?)? Say hazard limit of 2 +1 for every character over 3 in the party? this would give more choice of hazard cards, but less ability to play them. Maybe unnecessary?
- What about if you move and then chose not to enter the site? I know you don't have to in the normal game. But if you visit a site and then chose not to go in, on the next turn, doesn't the opponent get to draw a second lot of cards relating to the site you are at, or am I miscalling this?
- Maybe for the second turn, where no more has taken place, and the party still intends to stay where they are and enter the site, the only hazards potentially drawn are the site location and the region the party is in, with a negative modifier to whether or not the cards get drawn is one less then when you moved. So If moving to Mount Gram from Rivendell, a Wilderland, a Shadowland and a Shadow Hold hazard card might be draw. And the chances of them being draw have a +3 to target number. So 9 (6+3) or less. If you move there, stay and enter next turn, then only a Shadowland and shadow hold card might be draw, with a target number of 8 (6 + 3 - 1). Dunno where I am going with this really.

Anyway, I really liked his view on this, and I am going to invite some friends round for a game.

Cheers for the link.


Patrick