Rumours of Rings Deck

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Darksatin
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In an Arda game, it is difficult to play rings (too many cards to have in hand).
So, it could be interesting to have a "Rumours of Rings" deck, with 2 Special Item Rings always available.
But, It could be too easy for the Gandalf player ?
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Thorsten the Traveller
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Actually it is not my experience that playing rings is difficult in Arda. Any rings are in your MP hand and thus it is not really a problem to hold on to one until you score a test card, it does not clog your Play Hand. The more pressing problem is getting Gold Rings, as they are popular and many players want them, as ring items are a possible way to double mp's and are very useful.

With rings reserved on Rumours, there is also no need anymore to trade for them, which is a pity.

Many of the Expanded World cards solve problems with ringplay (especially Scroll of Isildur, Safe from the Shadow and Jewel of Beleriand). The wizard's items can help recycling test cards (Wizard's Test, Ringlore), Saruman can get a WT back also, Gandalf can tap to test....

However, if you play regular Arda it might be a useful idea to start with a Rumours of Rings. You then have to make a separate Ring Deck as well i guess.
Stone-age did not end because man ran out of rocks.
Bruce
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At the last Lure we tried another solution which turned out to be pretty balanced: keeping all the ring special items in a separate pile. When you're allowed to draw an MP resource to fill your MP hand, you can choose to draw from the ring special items pile instead of the standard MP resources pile. You have no Rumours of Rings, this means you cannot know which kind of ring special item you'll get in your hand. The most positive aspect is that you can't get your MP hand clogged with unplayable ring special items. ;)
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Thorsten the Traveller
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But if you have no way of knowing which ring special item, as you say, then that does mean handclog possibly, right? Should the gold rings also go in that pile?

Personally I find handclog rather nonsense in Arda.
a) you have a 5 card MP hand and 8 card play hand, that's a hand size of 13 cards...did you ever manage that in a game of meccg?
b) you can discard one card from either play or mp hand during each end-of-turn phase! this gives you plenty of options before your next turn.
c) trade! got something you don't need? there's often someone who wants it.

The Ring Deck could be useful. Depending on the MP deck of course, as said before, rings are often in great demand. It would mean more equal access to rings for everybody. But yet another deck....? not sure it's worth it, instead of handclog, you got table clog :wink:
Stone-age did not end because man ran out of rocks.
domse
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Thorsten the Traveller wrote: Personally I find handclog rather nonsense in Arda.
I totally agree on this one. I never experienced (or saw somebody doing so) a hand clog in all my ARDA games.
Bruce
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IIRC when I last played Arda discarding/drawing at the ned of turn was only allowed for your 8 cards hand, not for your 5 cards MP hand, that's why a separate pile for ring special items was so necessary. Maybe our table played this rule wrong... :?
domse
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Bruce wrote:IIRC when I last played Arda discarding/drawing at the ned of turn was only allowed for your 8 cards hand, not for your 5 cards MP hand, that's why a separate pile for ring special items was so necessary. Maybe our table played this rule wrong... :?
There is no such ting as "wrong" in ARDA. Everybody plays their own rules (and I like this fact about it!). But in all my games there was the rule that you can choose from which hand you can discard. And with that rule, I dont think you will have a handclog.
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