some final comments on VC set 1: hero

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Thorsten the Traveller
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I wanted to complete my review of all cards, but don't think I'll have time the next days, so here's just my take on the hero resources. Comments don't necessarily have to lead to adjustments, but take it for what it's worth...

Master Esgaroth: nice theme, but have doubts whether it would be worth it to squat there, even if combined with Rebuild, but it could work. card seems ok.

Rebuild the town: man characters have 1 less mind, or cost 1 less mind to control? I suppose the latter would be better for yourself. Fishing from playdeck is nice, but limited, it really only works towards speed and timing, you don't increase the number of times you can play a card, and you would have drawn into them anyway, it can of course be very good for sage events like Into the Smoking Cone or ringlore, but to really make use of this you need Rebuild early on, that means 3 in deck, and two are wasted. I think its use is therefore limited. Nevertheless, a nice card that seems ok.

Ancient stair: ok
Anduin River: card is excellent of course, super Longbottom. But I'm not sure it's what the game needed. Theme is nice. Card seems ok, only the 'immediately after cards are drawn' part might create bit of timing issue, if opponent is faster with hazards than you are, and he can respond to it by snowstorming? then card still goes? normally these things are played at end of org phase, seems to me.

Anduril: personally I'd prefer it if you'd have to get Narsil and would get Anduril for free, bit more dangerous probably. Moreover, you could make it so other player can't play Anduril once Narsil is in play, but now you play Anduril first and if opponent plays narsil before you store you're screwed. Narsil is still a good greater item after all. But otherwise, card is ok.

Armory: I repeat myself for hundreth time, I don't like this with discardable items, well food items at least, for 3 mp and 6 sideboard cards needing 6 characters to tap I don't think it's overpowered, but still, what do miruvor and potion of prowess have to do with armory?
Card is ok, it might not be clear to some whether this is in addition to a free minor, but I guess with a little thinking you'd figure it out.

Cup of farewell: i don't understand the first 'who is not Arwen or Galadriel' part. In fact, I would make it for all female characters the same: leave the site where female is present (any players Arwen/Galadriel). What situation would splitting without leaving the site justify this for? The only negative I can see is that you need to move your men before you move your women.
But, this has been discussed, I didn't get it then, so I'll withdraw from this card...

Ent-draught: nice, limited in use, but nice. Question is what we aim for with virtualizing. In a competitive deck this will not be used, in a cool theck it will...so does it deserve a spot in the set?

Fair travel dark domain: Useful to support Tower Raided, though actually I found I even didn't have a spot for it in that deck...card is ok.

Fate of Ithil: as said before, the penalty for sauron player is way too big. If we keep this, we must design a card that does the opposite for minions also and/or removes the effect of this card. But why isn't -1 hand and +1 hl enough? seems good to me, and you get 1 mp to boot. This card is easy to play, and if you miss the roll, there is no penalty, so you can try it with 1 palantir easy, and the cc is no issue then.

First of the order: nice. seems ok legal/mechanic wise

Horns 3x: there could be a slight issue with the calculation because of rounding down, it could be interpreted that each mp fraction must be rounded down, so 1 mp cards would be worth nothing. Why not just state: add the mp value of (x,y,z) to this card (round down)?
this card is played on company, which means if you subsequently split or loose rohan mp, this card is decreased. Is that the intention? otherwise it will remain a last turn thing.
otherwise ok, nice theme, nice to boost the rohirrim a bit.

Morannon: da bomb, though time will tell if attack is not too big...

Reforging: bit strange to reforge in the middle of wilderness, but gamewise it's perfect.

Fax: playability range might prove too good, but gandalf is to date the worst wizard, most people would think. card ok

Tower raided: nice mission, especially if you play it with Tower Raided ;-)

Wondrous maps: seems like a very useful card, not problematic. It remains to be seen if ice overestimated the power of playing 2 items per site.
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Frodo
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Great comments, Thorsten!

Master of Esgaroth: I have doubts too. Only time will tell, I guess.

Armory: We can say “except Cram, Miruvor, and Potion of Prowess”. But of course, Healing Herbs is only slightly harder to discard… shouldn’t that be there as well? And ideally, I’d like to allow battle-gear hoard items. I think we’re running into the old problem of what a card should ideally do and adding too many restrictions.

In role-playing games when a town supplied its adventurers with stock from its armory, this included magical potions, if the town had any…

Rebuild: Agree with assessment, including the ok.

Adnuin River: Timing-wise, it’s worded like Here is a Snake. If opponent responds with Snowstorm, that’s easy… Snowstorm hits the table. Then Anduin River resolves. Then Snowstorm’s passive condition resolves. Snowstorm, since it is a long-event, can never be faster than a short. It’s trickier if they Skinchangers in response…. Actually, that’s not tricky either; they haven’t moved, so it would fizzle Anduin River.

Anduril: I guess we could add “Opponent cannot play Narsil.” What do others think?

Cup of Farewell: This was an old discussion (http://www.councilofelrond.org/forum/vi ... .php?t=709), but basically people didn’t like the way you could get two minor items out of it per turn (when it was worded “splits from a company with a female character, or leaves… Galadriel/Arwen”) by having Galadriel/Arwen there, splitting a company, then moving away. We can’t word it your way so that it only says “leaving the site”; it needs to say "when splitting from a company," because otherwise the female character may have split off from the site and done her m/h phase already, and then the next company “leaving the site” will no longer be “leaving” a female character behind. Does that make sense?

I’m going to skip some of your other comments, because they fall under the same (very important) topic of “what are we aiming for? Will this correct problems? Wilthis be used in a competitive deck?” Unfortunately, even after four years, we simply **don’t know** how many of these virtual cards will be used. We have to make guesstimations.

Fair Travels in Dark Domains: I found I didn’t have a spot for it either!! Then I FORCED a spot for it, and found just how amazing it was… it can even cancel Doors of Night!

Horns: You said “Why not just say, “add the mp value of (x,y,z) to this card (round down)?”” Um, because then you’d get a huge number, because you aren’t halving anything! Or did you mean to say something else? I can think of only two ways to put it: either “add half their MP value to the MP value of this card when it is played (round down total)” or “add their MP value to the MP value of this card when it is played (halve the total, round down).” I think the first way is best, agreed?

Your second issue about the MP value being decreased if the company loses some of its Rohan characters/items is very important. I can’t remember anymore what the intention of the card was; I wouldn’t mind the MP value being fixed once it was played, and perhaps this is why we added the weird phrase “when it is played”. Actually, yes, that WAS the intention. But now that I think about, I can’t in good faith see how we can invent a card that has a MP value both players must **remember** based on past plays, rather than seeing it clearly defined in front of them. This would suggest that the MP value of the card must always be equal to the current company strength. But that solution would create another big problem: you could always add more stuff to the company after the big ride in order to bolser the MP value of it later on. This would result in cheesy plays (which I think players in American Nats were doing) of moving just one character, like Eowyn, through the whole massive onslaught, with a Miruvor on her so that she wouldn’t die. Then you just add all your other stuff from other companies later on to get the guaranteed points. Grr… what do we do?

I think the only solution is to have players remember the value of the card from memory. In GCCG this is easy; face-to-face it will probably not be as difficult as I thought, given that the number will have huge importance since you are subtracting it from all those attacks. In fact, I think we already thought this all out before, and you, Eric, are just confusing me by bringing it out up again. :D “When it is played” was the only quick words I could think of to suggest the MP value was fixed. Other suggestions, or good enough, plus a note in the VC clarifications?


Fate of Ithil Stone: I just read over the past few threads on this card. Some of what people wanted to see got added, but some stuff just can’t be put easily into words. It should be pointed out that the card is played on a character, so if you kill the character, you remove the effects of this card. But if most of us agree, we can make it so that it says “-2 handsize for a Sauron/Lidless Eye player” (do I have to phrase it this way? Is a Lidless Eye player also a Sauron player?). It is unfortunate that the Lidless Eye player cannot be punished more than the Sauron player, though. Thoughts everyone?


Shadowfax: It does seem really strong, especially the taking of Shadowfax into hand, though of course that’s the only way to give him the quick Ranger ability. I guess it all comes down to just how bad we think Gandalf is; I can’t really see a way to limit it further without going too far.
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Thorsten the Traveller
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a few quick replies for clearing things up:

Horns 3x: yes I meant of course "add all and then half", the crucial part being half the amount, which I forgot :wink: . I think it's not a problem the card is worth less when a horse dies, but rather, since it's played on a company the company must all stay with the card. Thus I'd say play it to MP pile. It's a minor thing though, this card doesn't give tactical bonus and you want to maximize mp's, so you'll play it as late as possible.

Cup: my point exactly, but why is it problematic that you must first move the men, and then the women? isn't that how it went with Galadriel? she stayed, the fellowship moved. I'd say that is only a minor drawback if it makes the card easier to understand.

Fate: ok yes, didn't think about the killing character part, that makes it somewhat more balanced. Sauron/Lidless the same penalty seems fair to me. Still, this card would scare me out of playing sauron/lidless in a virtual tourney for sure, so the Dark Lord must retaliate somehow.

Fax: only play at ruins would be good I suppose, ruins and border means virtually everywhere, but moreover it means also good combo with squatter ally decks, so it can be abused there. The speed is good, but ruins makes it more dangerous. Ruins, or Edoras.

but now I'm discussion again, so I should stop :wink:
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Frodo
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Thorsten, can you clarify: with Horns, Horns, are you saying we should add "Place this in MP pile", like in the last line, so as to prevent the problem of company sensitivity AND to prevent the player thinking its value is being continuously redefined? I think that would work, but I'm just checking.

Frodo
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Nerdmeetsyou
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sounds like a simple solution.
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