ARDA VARIANTS
Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2024 5:03 am
ARDA VARIANTS
I’m starting to collect various different ways people have ARDA created. I’m going to try and record the differences for comparison sake. We will start with the Arda Basic Game>
ARDA Basic Game rules
These are the various elements of the basic game (version 5) that is posted here.
Shared Decks (4): The Play Deck, Marshalling Points Deck, Minor Offerings Deck, Roving Character Deck
Special Character Rules: Draft pool is 2 characters of 6 mind or higher plus 10 other characters.
Roving Character Deck Rules? none
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? None.
# of Players Max: 7 (2 copies of each wizard are available for play in larger games)
Game Start
Select your Wizard or Random:? Select
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Choose 1 at a time.
Special Starting Hand Rules? None.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 20
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has items, RINGS, allies, factions)
ARDA Gandalf Gene rules
These are the rules I first played ARDA with when Gandalf Gene built an ARDA deck and started bringing to California gaming conventions.
Shared Decks (4): The Play Deck, Marshalling Points Deck, Minor Offerings Deck, Roving Character Deck)
Special Character Rules: Draft pool includes two characters of 7 mind or greater plus Gimli (6 mind). Strider and Aragorn are both in the opening draft of large characters. If one person draws one and a second person draws the other, then both are shuffled back into a deck with other available large mind characters and the two players each draw one card. As long as the two cards not drawn are each Aragorn and Strider, these will be the other characters available.
Roving Character Deck Rules? n Fram Framson cannot be selected as a starting character by anyone. If you draw him discard him and draw again.
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? Black Arrow goes to largest man on the table in draft. Largest hobbit has first dibs on Sting; Largest Dwarf gets Thorin’s Map, Largest elf gets Emerald of Doriath.
# of Players Max: 5
Game Start
Select your Wizard or Random:? Select
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Choose 2 at a time.
Special Starting Hand Rules? None.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 25
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has (items, allies, factions)
ARDA Wizards of ME Game rules
This is my own version of ARDA that I decided to build after playing Gene’s version for years.
Shared Decks (4): The Play Deck, Marshalling Points Deck, Minor Offerings Deck, Roving Character Deck)
Special Character Rules: Draft pool includes two characters of 7 mind or greater plus Gimli (6 mind). Strider/Aragorn are removed from the pool before the draft.
Roving Character Deck Rules? Strider/Aragorn has text on his card that makes him like Fram. They cannot be in anyone’s opening fellowship. He has to be shuffled in to the Roving Character deck and recruited during the game.
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? None.
# of Players Max: 5
Game Start
Select your Wizard or Random:? Select
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Choose 1 at a time.
Special Starting Hand Rules? None.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 20
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has items, allies, factions)
ARDA Winter/Lure 2024 rules
At Lure of Middle Earth I met members of the Winters family that are now on the second generation playing MECCG. They have their own versions of ARDA that I found very interesting. I’m sure I don’t have all of the rules correct, I tried to ask questions but I didn’t think of everything. Hopefully someone more familiar with the rules can correct them on this board.
Shared Decks (5): The Play Deck, Marshalling Points Deck, Roving Character Deck, Minor Offerings Deck; Tested Ring Deck
Special Character Rules: None.
Roving Character Deck Rules? No Roving Characters are Available on Turn #1
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? 4 minor items delt at random from the deck. You can take up to two of those items and discard the other two.
# of Players Max: 4
Game Start
Select your Wizard or Random:? Random
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Dealt 4 choose 2.
Special Starting Hand Rules? None.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 18/20 or 25
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has (items, allies, factions)
Special Play rules: If you are not playing hobbits, pass any hobbit specific card to a person who is playing hobbits and draw a new card to replace it. Same goes for Dwarf/Elf/Dunidin Gandalf, Cerdin, Elrod or Galadriel specific cards.
Special Treasure cards: If you have special treature cards that apply to Aragorn or Dwarves, you must pass those cards to the person playing Aragorn or a dwarf, etc.
Dark ARDA
Several years ago I took on the challenge to make a Minion version of ARDA using both Agents and Minion Characters as Characters in the draft. It took a lot of tweaking before the game reached its current form, but I now find it to be very entertaining and a very different feel from Hero ARDA
Shared Decks (6): The Play Deck, Major Marshalling Points Deck, Minor Marshalling Points Deck, Tested Ring Deck, Roving Character Deck, Minor Offerings Deck;
Special Character Rules: Agents are Minions and don’t require special card played on them ahead of time. Each player starts with a set of mode cards (Dark Rider, Fell Rider, Heralded Lord) and can play one of them on their Ringwraith while at a Dark Haven.
Roving Character Deck Rules? None.
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? There are Orders from Lugburtz and Rumors of Rings in the deck that can be played opening turn instead of one minor item. If Rumors is taken by a player, they can draw two less treasure cards the first turn to place two Rings at random under the rumors card.
# of Players Max: 9 (3 players are first player at the same time.)
Game Start
Select your Ringwraith or Random:? Select with special rules based upon # of players
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Choose.
Special Starting Hand Rules? See Rumors above.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 20 or 25
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has (items, allies, factions)
Special Play rules: Prone to Violence and Tokens to Show are both always in play.
Special Treasure cards: None.
I’m starting to collect various different ways people have ARDA created. I’m going to try and record the differences for comparison sake. We will start with the Arda Basic Game>
ARDA Basic Game rules
These are the various elements of the basic game (version 5) that is posted here.
Shared Decks (4): The Play Deck, Marshalling Points Deck, Minor Offerings Deck, Roving Character Deck
Special Character Rules: Draft pool is 2 characters of 6 mind or higher plus 10 other characters.
Roving Character Deck Rules? none
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? None.
# of Players Max: 7 (2 copies of each wizard are available for play in larger games)
Game Start
Select your Wizard or Random:? Select
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Choose 1 at a time.
Special Starting Hand Rules? None.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 20
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has items, RINGS, allies, factions)
ARDA Gandalf Gene rules
These are the rules I first played ARDA with when Gandalf Gene built an ARDA deck and started bringing to California gaming conventions.
Shared Decks (4): The Play Deck, Marshalling Points Deck, Minor Offerings Deck, Roving Character Deck)
Special Character Rules: Draft pool includes two characters of 7 mind or greater plus Gimli (6 mind). Strider and Aragorn are both in the opening draft of large characters. If one person draws one and a second person draws the other, then both are shuffled back into a deck with other available large mind characters and the two players each draw one card. As long as the two cards not drawn are each Aragorn and Strider, these will be the other characters available.
Roving Character Deck Rules? n Fram Framson cannot be selected as a starting character by anyone. If you draw him discard him and draw again.
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? Black Arrow goes to largest man on the table in draft. Largest hobbit has first dibs on Sting; Largest Dwarf gets Thorin’s Map, Largest elf gets Emerald of Doriath.
# of Players Max: 5
Game Start
Select your Wizard or Random:? Select
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Choose 2 at a time.
Special Starting Hand Rules? None.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 25
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has (items, allies, factions)
ARDA Wizards of ME Game rules
This is my own version of ARDA that I decided to build after playing Gene’s version for years.
Shared Decks (4): The Play Deck, Marshalling Points Deck, Minor Offerings Deck, Roving Character Deck)
Special Character Rules: Draft pool includes two characters of 7 mind or greater plus Gimli (6 mind). Strider/Aragorn are removed from the pool before the draft.
Roving Character Deck Rules? Strider/Aragorn has text on his card that makes him like Fram. They cannot be in anyone’s opening fellowship. He has to be shuffled in to the Roving Character deck and recruited during the game.
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? None.
# of Players Max: 5
Game Start
Select your Wizard or Random:? Select
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Choose 1 at a time.
Special Starting Hand Rules? None.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 20
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has items, allies, factions)
ARDA Winter/Lure 2024 rules
At Lure of Middle Earth I met members of the Winters family that are now on the second generation playing MECCG. They have their own versions of ARDA that I found very interesting. I’m sure I don’t have all of the rules correct, I tried to ask questions but I didn’t think of everything. Hopefully someone more familiar with the rules can correct them on this board.
Shared Decks (5): The Play Deck, Marshalling Points Deck, Roving Character Deck, Minor Offerings Deck; Tested Ring Deck
Special Character Rules: None.
Roving Character Deck Rules? No Roving Characters are Available on Turn #1
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? 4 minor items delt at random from the deck. You can take up to two of those items and discard the other two.
# of Players Max: 4
Game Start
Select your Wizard or Random:? Random
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Dealt 4 choose 2.
Special Starting Hand Rules? None.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 18/20 or 25
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has (items, allies, factions)
Special Play rules: If you are not playing hobbits, pass any hobbit specific card to a person who is playing hobbits and draw a new card to replace it. Same goes for Dwarf/Elf/Dunidin Gandalf, Cerdin, Elrod or Galadriel specific cards.
Special Treasure cards: If you have special treature cards that apply to Aragorn or Dwarves, you must pass those cards to the person playing Aragorn or a dwarf, etc.
Dark ARDA
Several years ago I took on the challenge to make a Minion version of ARDA using both Agents and Minion Characters as Characters in the draft. It took a lot of tweaking before the game reached its current form, but I now find it to be very entertaining and a very different feel from Hero ARDA
Shared Decks (6): The Play Deck, Major Marshalling Points Deck, Minor Marshalling Points Deck, Tested Ring Deck, Roving Character Deck, Minor Offerings Deck;
Special Character Rules: Agents are Minions and don’t require special card played on them ahead of time. Each player starts with a set of mode cards (Dark Rider, Fell Rider, Heralded Lord) and can play one of them on their Ringwraith while at a Dark Haven.
Roving Character Deck Rules? None.
Minor Offerings Deck Rules? There are Orders from Lugburtz and Rumors of Rings in the deck that can be played opening turn instead of one minor item. If Rumors is taken by a player, they can draw two less treasure cards the first turn to place two Rings at random under the rumors card.
# of Players Max: 9 (3 players are first player at the same time.)
Game Start
Select your Ringwraith or Random:? Select with special rules based upon # of players
Minor Item Rules for Selections: Choose or Random? Choose.
Special Starting Hand Rules? See Rumors above.
Special Starting Location Rules? None.
MPs Required to Call Council? 20 or 25
Scoring Special Rules: MP = X2 if no other player has (items, allies, factions)
Special Play rules: Prone to Violence and Tokens to Show are both always in play.
Special Treasure cards: None.