A Chance Meeting / We Have Come to Kill

Any rule erratum or clarification submission for the upcoming 2018 ARV should be posted here.
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Thorsten the Traveller
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the Jabberwock: Here is what the MELE Player's Guide says about We Have Come to Kill:
Perhaps you should have led with that :wink: .
Could you also provide the page? I'm guessing it's not from the rules section but from the card entry section or strategy guide?

Ok, so by clarifying ACM, saying it's used to bring in "an additional character in one turn", things got actually less clear, as there is no such general restriction rule. And then WHCtK comes along suggesting there is indeed such a rule.
Bandobras: Since the one character limit only exists for playing a a character during the organization phase, WHCtK only applies to that process, since it specifically mentions that limit.
Or, it was sloppy wording again and should have 'during the organization phase' added, just in case it's played during that phase. :wink:

Having 2 different ICE documents explaining how they thought both these cards should work, that's a compelling argument even if it's not fully sound.
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Theo
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Not to be overly cynical, but I don't see the authors of the player's guides anywhere under the list of game designers, or even official playtesters. There is zero reason for me to believe that their understanding of the rules was any greater than any other enthusiastic thoughtful player, or that their guidance constituted official overrulings for the game.
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the JabberwocK
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Theo wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 5:55 pm Not to be overly cynical, but I don't see the authors of the player's guides anywhere under the list of game designers, or even official playtesters. There is zero reason for me to believe that their understanding of the rules was any greater than any other enthusiastic thoughtful player, or that their guidance constituted official overrulings for the game.
I think you're being overly cynical. 8)

ICE manufactured the Players Guides. I don't know if you've read any of them, but the Companions and Players Guides are meant to supplement and expand upon the limited and sometimes confusing and contradictory rules books. They are also quite nice for those who don't have a magnifying glass available to read the rules. :D

I will post an image of the authors from the L.E. Players Guide below. Coleman Charlton and Michael Reynolds were contributing authors, and they were the primary game developers of Middle Earth The Wizards. Pete Fenlon is also a contributing author who was on the original Wizards Design Team. Mike Reynolds was also the Playtest Coordinator.

These publications were directly made by the appropriate people in charge and intricately involved with game design at ICE and they should be respected the same as the rules books. They are actually improvements and refinements on the rules books IMO.
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the JabberwocK
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the JabberwocK
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Thorsten the Traveller wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:01 pm Perhaps you should have led with that :wink: .
Could you also provide the page? I'm guessing it's not from the rules section but from the card entry section or strategy guide?

Ok, so by clarifying ACM, saying it's used to bring in "an additional character in one turn", things got actually less clear, as there is no such general restriction rule. And then WHCtK comes along suggesting there is indeed such a rule.
Yes, in hindsight, we should have used the Players Guides as a reference on all of the errata proposals where they are relevant. I did not think of this until late in the game, but certainly something to keep in mind for next time. My mistake.

It is on page # 128, and is in the Resource Events section where they break down each card individually.

I don't see the problem with the ACM clarification. ICE clearly states you bring characters in during the organization phase (under normal conditions) and that only one such character may be brought in. I think anything further is needless semantics. WHCTK is referencing the "rule that's not an explicit enough rule" apparently, although it was clearly explicit enough for them.
dirhaval
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Here is the game notes for A Chance Meeting from the
Middle-earth The Wizards Player Guide
#3334


A Chance Meeting allows you to play a character outside of the organization phase and/or
bring in an additional character in one turn. Tactically, this gives you many options.
In addition to simply being able to reinforce a company, you can have a company of strong
fighters move to a site, face the hazards and automatic-attacks, and then bring in a scout
who plays a scout skill card during the site phase. The scout would not have to
face any automatic-attacks and risk being tapped or worse. Combining A Chance Meeting, a scout in hand,
and Thorough Search allows you to play an additional item at a site with no foreseeable risk to the scout.



Middle-earth The Lidless Eye Player Guide
#3342
You may have noticed that many of the cards in this section allow you to recycle a character you drew at the wrong time. We Have Come to Kill gets around this problem by letting you bring in a character while you at a site doing something else. One of the beauties of this card is that it does not have to be played during the organization phase when you normally bring characters into play. You could even use We Have Come to Kill to bring a character during the site phase, after the automatic-attack has been faced. That character comes into play untapped, having effectively avoided the automatic-attack and all creature hazards that turn.


Help me with this: A practice deck given with a guide to play has a Fell Rider Ringwraith tap a site, then play Burning Rick, Cot, Tree. How is that possible unless the minions tapped the site first to play the item and let the Ringwraith travel there to burn? The deck has WHCTK.

I know that one or two of the player guides speaks of the cards elsewhere in it, so that may shine more light on the cards.
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the JabberwocK
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Bandobras Took wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:37 am I would love to see texts of the player guides come up on the site if possible. It would be nice to have sources of insight into ICE's intentions available to the player base.
I would be willing to scan them all in and upload them to the home page (time permitting). However, I have two concerns I would need to resolve prior to doing this:

1) I'm not sure about the copyright implications.

2) We cannot ignore the fact that there are collectors in our community who may not even play the game, but do invest in the game and its related materials. Considering the Guides can sell for hefty amounts these days, I wouldn't want to do anything which might devalue them and upset this portion of the MECCG community. (If indeed it would upset them, I don't know).
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Bandobras Took
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I'm assuming the guides have artwork; I'm suggesting a text-only version rather than scans of actual pages. More work, but fewer copyright issues.
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dirhaval
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The only artwork are the cards - nothing like the MERP books.
The METW guide has 50 pages of commentary and strategy (wizards, havens, creatures, roadblock,
tournaments, example decks.

Then each card is shown with background book material, game commentary, and the quote found on the card.
Some commentary is useless, River, but Sapling of the White Tree has that one sapling is discarded.
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Theo
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the Jabberwock wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 4:05 am I will post an image of the authors from the L.E. Players Guide below. Coleman Charlton and Michael Reynolds were contributing authors, and they were the primary game developers of Middle Earth The Wizards. Pete Fenlon is also a contributing author who was on the original Wizards Design Team. Mike Reynolds was also the Playtest Coordinator.

These publications were directly made by the appropriate people in charge and intricately involved with game design at ICE and they should be respected the same as the rules books. They are actually improvements and refinements on the rules books IMO.
Thanks for the picture; all the references I found only listed Craig O'Brien as the Author for the MELE Player's Guide, in addition to a couple other folks for the METW Player's Guide.

If you want to push the underlined portion in what I quoted, perhaps that should be made "official". I am certainly against it. There is an intentional difference between the meaning of "rules" and "guidance" (and "summary" while we're at it), and documents written under those respective titles should be interpreted in the context in which they were housed. Or perhaps we need another split: rules published as such, DC rules, and also Player's Guide "refinements."

Objectivity is often confused with cynicism. The phrase contributing author may mean they reviewed to a nicety every implied concept that appears from any of the contributors, but again I doubt it. :|
One [online community] with hammer and chisel might mar more than they make...
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Bandobras Took
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Craig o'Brien was (I believe) the first NetRep ICE had for the game. As far as METW was concerned, his word was law.

Anybody with a better memory than I have, feel free to correct me. :)
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