Virtual cards suggested that might are worth adding.

[Frodo]

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Okay, here's an update regarding our plan to get these Virtual Cards onto GCCG within 2 weeks before the March tourney:

I sent a note to Wiggy asking that he consider letting us cut the 7 cards, if possible., and not need to add any more. If he says No, which I think he will, we will need to add 7 more, like Jambo said, since the set currently has 43 and we need 50. This means we should go ahead and work hard to come up with 7 more. If we don't use them, they can go into playtesting for V-Set #2.

CARDS SO FAR:

Shadowfax: Great Card. Let's make it.

Indur Unleashed: The version that B-took suggested, I believe, on the forums looks excellent! Let's make it.

In the Name of Mordor: Some concerns were brought up. I think that it's a question of whether one should have one, or two, RW followers for the playablity conditions to be met. Does everyone agree that needing two followers certainly does NOT make this card overpowered? But I think this extra follower requirement might make the card too weak. I would love to have someone playtest this in a quick sample game against a Nazgul haz strat. Try it with the requirement of only one follower at first. Remember that you are only cancelling the events your opponent has on the table; so for instance, if he's put down Uvatha and Adunaphel, and you have Adunaphel in your hand, you have to play this card to kill two events. But he's eventually going to put down others, and you only have one or two more copies of this card in your deck. His laying down of nazgul perms will *at least* slow you down; and perhaps this is all it should ever do.

Marcos suggested the addendum:

“Tap all untapped RW and RW followers.”

A problem with this is that the player can merely play this card during the untap phase, before his characters untap, then untap everybody—so for the price of nothing he gets everybody untapped and is able to play his RW followers that org. I don’t mind SOME kind of tapping restriction, however. What about: “Tap your Ringwraith OR two of his followers.” This gives the resource player a choice.

That’s two new cards so far. With the 3-4 new awakened plant enhancers (see the awakened plant thread), plus Huorn (V), we now have 6 to 7 new cards, and so we don’t need any more for V-Set #1 (unless we use only 3 awakened plant enhancers).

As far as Balance Between Powers (V), could someone describe the perceived Balance (V) strategy for me? I do notice that it can make a dedicated Doors OR Gates deck rather powerful. Also, I am strongly against changing cards that were once resources into hazards, or vice-versa, because of the fact that many people are using the physical cards to play Virtual Deck games, and in these games you are only replacing the text boxes--so the card color of the resource/hazard template would not change and would look confusing.

As far as the Great Goblin (V), I like the permanent attack version but I also really, really liked the capturing version. Can't we incorporate the two?

Thoughts on the above?

--Frodo

[marcos]

Indur Unleashed: The version that B-took suggested, I believe, on the forums looks excellent! Let's make it.

remember we already have one, so you don't have to count it forwards the 7 cards to be added in the set

What about: “Tap your Ringwraith OR two of his followers.” This gives the resource player a choice.

i agree with this

That’s two new cards so far. With the 3-4 new awakened plant enhancers (see the awakened plant thread), plus Huorn (V), we now have 6 to 7 new cards, and so we don’t need any more for V-Set #1 (unless we use only 3 awakened plant enhancers).

As i said on the other topic, i prefer to test 3 enhacers and new huorn, and if it works well and it is not much overpowered, add the 4º helper in set 2 along with some new canceller (see the fair travel in wilderness thread)

As far as Balance Between Powers (V), could someone describe the perceived Balance (V) strategy for me? I do notice that it can make a dedicated Doors OR Gates deck rather powerful. Also, I am strongly against changing cards that were once resources into hazards, or vice-versa, because of the fact that many people are using the physical cards to play Virtual Deck games, and in these games you are only replacing the text boxes--so the card color of the resource/hazard template would not change and would look confusing.

You saw my suggested version? A resource that can be played as a hazard (like sudden call) by either hero or minion. What do you think? A Balance (V) strategy could be combine both resources that needs GoM with hazards that needs DoN or help by getting the one you need in play as soon as you can (imagine DoN or GoM x6)

As far as the Great Goblin (V), I like the permanent attack version but I also really, really liked the capturing version. Can't we incorporate the two?

Text of this will be toooooooooooooooooooooo long. I think that it just has to have 1 of the 2 abilities. Maybe the capturing ability can be added to a new Gothmog V/ RogrogV

best!
Marcos

[Jambo]

For what it's worth Joe, I think adding of 7 more to reach 50 will make the set more appealing. The proposed tournament will be good exposure and anything revealed as unbalancing can still be remedied.

Anyway, we have the beginnings of a list:

For Awakened Plants:
Huorn
Darkness Under Tree
Radagast the Tamer
Waiting Shadow

Then we have:
In Darkness Bind Them
Shadowfax
In the Name of Mordor
The Great Goblin

That would total 8, so one has to go for the time-being.

I would like to hear Joe's thoughts on In Darkness Bind Them, as the rest of us gave this card the thumbs up. Non-environment hazard long-events other than Ahunts and Balance of Things are generally not used very often. They only work for one turn vs your opponent, can potentially backfire during your own turn and are easily thumped by MT or VoM. This card can potentially revitalise many strategies that depend on long-events; that's a huge number! Not only that but there's some revitalisation of The Will of Sauron. Restrictions on the card prevent abuse of environments like Snowstorm, and already powerful cards like The Balance of Things, however, one question is should also be extended to encompass Ahunts?

If I were choosing one, I'd choose to drop In the Name of Mordor. I'd like to think there might be a more elegant way to solve this using the text of They Ride Together. For example, how about stating on TRT that when RWs are played as RW followers the hazard manifestation is discarded?

Plus, minions being able to vanquish Nazgul perms is something the game's not seen, and the ramifications of this could be quite far reaching...

What do you think?

[marcos]

I would like to hear Joe's thoughts on In Darkness Bind Them, as the rest of us gave this card the thumbs up. Non-environment hazard long-events other than Ahunts and Balance of Things are generally not used very often. They only work for one turn vs your opponent, can potentially backfire during your own turn and are easily thumped by MT or VoM. This card can potentially revitalise many strategies that depend on long-events; that's a huge number! Not only that but there's some revitalisation of The Will of Sauron. Restrictions on the card prevent abuse of environments like Snowstorm, and already powerful cards like The Balance of Things, however, one question is should also be extended to encompass Ahunts?

i love this one, if you want to prevent in darkness bind them from playing it on an ahunt just add "non-unique long events".

If I were choosing one, I'd choose to drop In the Name of Mordor. I'd like to think there might be a more elegant way to solve this using the text of They Ride Together. For example, how about stating on TRT that when RWs are played as RW followers the hazard manifestation is discarded?

Plus, minions being able to vanquish Nazgul perms is something the game's not seen, and the ramifications of this could be quite far reaching...

What do you think?

i like it, but there's something on it that doesn't convinces me yet... dunno really what it is... What do you think if we made TRT worth 3 MPs? a player would be able to make a deck based on it...

thoughts?

[Jambo]

i love this one, if you want to prevent in darkness bind them from playing it on an ahunt just add "non-unique long events"?

Excellent. That also encompasses The Balance of Things nicely too! Do you see any reason for losing the DoN requirement? All I can see is this DoN requirement not helping the many long-events that don't need DoN. Should the fact it's unique suffice?

how about stating on TRT that when RWs are played as RW followers the hazard manifestation is discarded?

Any thoughts on this as a potential solution?

i like it, but there's something on it that doesn't convinces me yet... dunno really what it is... What do you think if we made TRT worth 3 MPs? a player would be able to make a deck based on it...

thoughts?

For all the effort of trying to get all 9 out, I agree that 3 MPs might be more appropriate.

[marcos]

how about stating on TRT that when RWs are played as RW followers the hazard manifestation is discarded?

Any thoughts on this as a potential solution?

i would add that a RW played that way enters plays tapped (some kind of summoning sickness like mtg ) But dunno really... there's something that bothers me with this card and can't find what really is... Maybe it's that the card will have a text that is too long... I like the solution you proposed but i won't like it to be too wordy

i like it, but there's something on it that doesn't convinces me yet... dunno really what it is... What do you think if we made TRT worth 3 MPs? a player would be able to make a deck based on it...

thoughts?

For all the effort of trying to get all 9 out, I agree that 3 MPs might be more appropriate.

yep and if you think that TRT will be triplicated, it will give a total of 9 MPs (1 for each RW )

best!

[Ringbearer]

Either we could enhance the text on TRT, but I fear it will be too long. Maybe we could make a permanent-event that helps the effect. It cant be started, but a dedicated player can easily add 3.

Name: TRT helper

Playable on They Ride Together (V). You may reveal a ringwraith follower from your hand to discard its hazard counterpart. You must then play that follower.


Wording might need a little help to circumvene Bane/Lady

[marcos]

You may reveal a ringwraith follower from your hand to discard its hazard counterpart.

"to discard its hazard manifestation" will fit better i think

beware of this:

You must then play that follower.

it can be confusing because in wich phase is that RW played, when can i reveal a RW to discard the nazgul, etc...

i like your idea Bert, that sounds like a good in the name of mordor

some other options:
Powers too dark and terrible
by the ringwraith's word
join with that power

wich one you think that fits better?

also, what do you think about making it worth 3 MPs?

[Frodo]

Just to clarify—I’m not against adding more cards to V-set #1 per se, especially if you all are behind them. I’m just against adding 7 new cards, then being “locked in” by Wiggy into keeping these cards forevermore, even though they haven’t been adequately playtested.

Although it’s also true that I’m a LITTLE nervous about adding new cards so close to a time when I had hoped to finally “finalize” the set… but perhaps the tournament will give us adequate playtesting and round it out more, like you guys said.

That being said, let’s talk about the new cards, then.

First of all, In the Name of Mordor. Jambo suggested a card that would read something like the following:

In the Name of Mordor (V)
Permanent Event.
Playable on They Ride Together. You bring into play a Ringwraith follower even if its hazard manifestation is on table. That hazard manifestation is now discarded.

This card looks okay to me. However, I think I still prefer the old version. Jambo said, “minions being able to vanquish Nazgul perms is something the game's not seen, and the ramifications of this could be quite far reaching...”; however, isn’t that exactly what this newly proposed card is doing? Okay, technically it only squashes one Nazgul permanent event at a time… but remember that for a hazard player to stop the Minion resource player, he needs to keep those perms on the table, so the only time they hurt the Minion resource player is when he’s going to play the RW follower… and then the Nazgul perm goes, poof! One advantage to Jambo’s version though is that it at least allows the hazard player the option of using his Nazgul perm events offensively, whereas the old In the Name of Mordor (V) would get rid of all the events (though the hazard player could tap them in response). Still, what’s wrong with Minions having a clunkier Wizard’s River Horses? Also, the previous version feels a little more interactive to me… maybe it’s just the tapping choices, like the Rws are actually doing something to the hazard Nazguls… I think it feels like they are calling them back to their dark path of duty, and thus it feels kinda like the title “In the Name of Mordor.”

But if you all feel strongly one way or the other, that’s fine with me. If we did go with Jambo’s version, I’d suggest some kind of additional ability that is triggered by discarding the card. It’s become my pet pieve to hate “useless” second and third copies of a card in one’s deck. I’m not sure what that ability can be but maybe you guys can come up with something that helps the RW follower deck. (Maybe it can “pull” certain cards from the deck? Or is there too much pulling action already, perhaps?)

I have to say, even if we made the They Ride Together card worth FIVE mp, I’d still like the solve the problem of getting it to be actually more PLAYABLE. I hesitate to make it worth 3 MP because of the fact that it can be duplicated and that we are now attempting to bolster the strategy.


Balance Between Powers: This card currently reads:

Resource Permanent Event
Environment. Gates of Morning, Doors of Night, and Skies of Fire are all considered to be in play while this card is in play.

I’m not sure I understand everyone’s reasoning with this card. It seems awfully strong to me. Think about this classic scenario. I could remove all three Gates of Morning from my deck, and replace them with 3 BBP permanent events, and if my opponent draws and plays Doors of Night before I get a BBP, I can throw down BBP and now my Gates strategy is locked down for the whole game and he can only counter it with his 3 Twilights… but since I have 2 more BBPs and 3 Twilights, I will win this environment-war easily. If my opponent gets and draws a Doors of Night AFTER I play BBP, he cannot play his Doors because of BBP’s text, and the same difficulty that I described above for him removing my Gates-strategy would apply.

Now, you could simply counter what I said above by responding, “Sure, your Gates strategy (including all your Suns and Stars and uber-elves) is untouchable, but so is his Doors strategy!”

And I would respond, “What kind of Doors strategies do you think there most commonly are?” I would say two: Doors as a tool to get rid of Gates (minion decks come to mind), and Doors as a tool to play roadblock. The first Doors strategy collapses with BBP, because all those Suns, etc. cannot be harmed. The second Doors strategy is HELPED TREMONDOUSLY… and, come on, do we really want to be helping roadblock decks?

Words of Power and Terror: I do think that something is missing from the Nazgul attack strategy. However, I think it’s a mistake to simply duplicate the Prowess of Age ability for Nazguls. There needs to be a way to make their attacks uncancellable that is not as simple as just drawing the WoPT hazard and playing it; this makes the card more balanced. After playing with different card texts, I think I came up with the perfect solution.

WORDS OF POWER AND TERROR
Playable on an Orc, Troll, Man, or Mumak strike if you reveal a Nazgul from hand. The strike receives +2 prowess. The next Nazgul attack against the company this turn chooses defending characters, the attack cannot be cancelled, and resulting body checks are +1.

This card requires some strategic maneuvering by the hazard player to make sure he can hit the resource player with one of these smaller creatures before unleashing his unstoppable Nazgul. I made it playable during strike assignment to avoid the card being negated by the resource player simply canceling the Orc/Troll attack. And of course, the card is highly thematic. Comments?

In Darkness Bind Them: This card currently reads:
Permanent-event
Unique. Playable if Doors of Night is in play on Will of Sauron or a non-environment hazard long-event (except The Balance of Things) in play. The first attempt to cancel or discard the targeted hazard event discards this card instead.

I like the idea of the card. I don’t see why it needs to exclude Ahunts… these decks are so powerful anyway, aren’t they? And the card is unique. I’m also not so sure that it should require Doors. Let’s try without?

The Great Goblin: This card currently reads:
Creature or Permanent Event.
MP: 2
P/B: 12/7
1 strike.
Unique
As a creature, playable keyed to High Pass, Goblin-Gate or The Under-grottos.
As a permanent event, all non-automatic, Orc attacks of normally more than one strike receives +2 prowess. He may opt to attack from a permanent-event, counting one against the hazard limit, and receive +2 prowess. Also, any company moving through High Pass, or using starter movement from Rivendell to Lorien faces one attack: Orcs, 2 strikes with 8 prowess. If Doors of Night in play, this attack also affects Anduin Vales and Rhudaur. Discard after The Great Goblin attacks.

Rereading this card, I feel it is too powerful. 2@10 and then 1@14 as punishment for crossing the mountains? There’s already so many dangerous drakes that can hurt you for doing this. In addition, it also violates a virtual card guideline I try to implement: there always must be some tiny reason for using the original card. But this card beats the original in all ways. Even just lowering the body of this version by 2, or lowering it’s natural prowess slightly, would suffice.

I like the first suggested version better: "As a permanent event, The Great Goblin may [tap to] modify any one orc attack [(tapping counts against the hazard limit)]: each successful strike takes the defending character prisoner at [the nearest available] Shadow-Hold or Dark-Hold. The Rescue Attack will be this creature's card as though played from your hand." This is something relatively new and makes Orc hazard strategies more interesting. I suggested changes in square brackets. I think that multiple prisoner-taking is too strong, though. How about “the first successful strike takes…” ? Also, we should consider interplay with detainment attacks against minions… I guess it needs to say “non-detainment.”

Darkness Under Tree: Do we want ALL characters to be able to tap and cancel their respective attacks? I remember the rules judges went back and forth on the Nameless Thing ruling. Maybe we should be crystal clear and write, “One or two of these attacks may be cancelled by…” Also, isn’t a pumped up, 15 prowess, two attacks Old Man Willow keyed to double wilderness serious trouble? If any of his characters are tapped out, they are meat! Since an additional attack is almost always better than an additional strike, perhaps the prowess bonus should be only be +1, or nothing. Thoughts?

Huorn: How do we feel about the fact that minions will get no kill points for this card, but then have to face a serious Ent-beatdown keyed to single wilderness? Even heroes can get beatdown by an enhanced Old Man Willow keyed to single wilderness. I think the large benefit allowed by extra Ent-creatures means that the Huorn card needs some kind of limiting. I don’t see why it should pick defending characters, for one thing. We could drop the prowess to 9 or 8, like a Light-drake. Remember that the prowess booster automatically makes even the original Huorn a better card, so we don’t have to go too crazy on this one. This would also meet the requirement that the card differ from the original version in some slight fashion so anyone who felt inclined to play a Huorn (even just for fun, since it has no strategic value as a choice over other cards) would see a reason to use the original version (if he wasn’t doing an Ent beatdown strategy). Thoughts?

Okay, so here are the—

7 New Cards To Add
Shadowfax
Huorn
Darkness Under Tree
Radagast the Tamer
Waiting Shadow
??In the Name of Mordor
?? <XX>

One Card to Change
Indur Unleashed (Btook version) (Jambo, you can go ahead and make this one)

It has taken me over an hour to write all this! Wow…

Frodo

[Jambo]

Hehe nice post Joe! I say we go ahead with these new 7 cards. I can understand why wigy needs 50 card slots maintained for the set because of the way GCCG is set up. Removing cards without replacing them reorders cards that people own, e.g. from 3 assassins they could now have 3 whatevers. Wigy did say that removing cards isn't a problem as long as there's then something to fill the vacated space.

Re In Darkness Binds Them
Only yesterday I removed the requirement for DoN. There are plenty of cool long-events which don't make use of DoN so there seemed little reason to maintain its requirement. The non-unique clause was simpler than stating specific cards that it couldn't effect like The Balance of Things for instance. Effects of Ahunts are already pretty massive when they get through, and therefore I didn't feel that making that any more certain was necessarily wise. I want this card to expand on other lesser used long-events and also The Will of Sauron, and I feel it would be used mainly for Ahunts which is not what was intended. Should it be unique, should it be cannot be duplicated - can people advise?

Re Words of Power and Terror
I really like your version. It would have my vote. It's cool it can be duplicated too. One thing though, it will really eat up some HL to get this Nazgul out - one creature attack, this card, then the Nazgul and any playability helpers required.

More to follow....

[marcos]

wooooooooooooow, what-a-post...

ok, my thoughts:

RE In darkness bind them: i think it is ok the way it is

RE In the Name of Mordor (V) : i prefer the new version, and make TRT worth some more MPs. The quest is pretty hard already, and as i said before, heroes have some hard quest rewarding big MPs (like KuTM), balrog has one too (Lord and usurper). Why not give minions a new quest that rewards big MPs???

RE Balance Between Powers: you are right on this one... 6 DoN or GoM is too powerful

RE Words of Power and Terror:: awesome version i like it

RE The Great Goblin: yes, 2@10 and then 1@14 that is too much, but the first suggested version also helps the orc lieutenants deck, won't it be too strong? anyway, i like the 2 versions and any is ok with me

RE Darkness Under Tree: i think the card is ok as it is since it will encourage the play of cards as ford/hidden ways, trickery, etc, that doesn't see much play. Also think that most heroes plays forearmed + risky blows + some swords weapons and lots of generic cancellers like vaishment, concealment, escape, etc. About the tapping thing, i wrote in first instance the following:
"A character can be tapped to cancel ONE of this attacks"
isn't it clear enough?
about a pumped up, 15 prowess, two attacks Old Man Willow keyed to double wilderness being a serious trouble... isn't a pumped up elford at 17 prowess and 3 strikes a more serious trouble?

RE Huorn: i don't want it to be a crap like the original, what about reducing his prowess by 1 and adding 1 strike or 1 attack? And about the fact that minions will get no kill points for this card, we cab add: "If this creature is defeated by a minion player that controls blackbole, that player receives MPs from any defeated awakened plant that doesn't have an (*)"
Or maybe make him playable at some other regions? maybe? you know, mirkwood is a dark and obscure place...

RE new cards: we are starting doing this with Jambo, but we need to be clear enough with how the text are going to be...

just my 2 cents

[Jambo]

Re Huorn

I have to admit I have my reservations over the potential strength of the huorn, particularly as straight off the bat it can be followed an old man willow or two, all keyed to a single wilderness. It was one of the reasons that I suggested leaving the huorn as it is, and making the boosters better. I always felt that a creature keyed to a single wilderness should only become good when boosted anyway.

On that note I had suggested removing the huorn and having the "attacker chooses defending characters, the extra attack and the additional playability of other APs following a huorn" all included into Darkness Under Tree and/or now Waiting Shadow. This way it would also include attacker chooses defenders into OMW! This also wouldn't completely negate the original huorn as a viable creature card as was one of Joe's original design intentions behind the VCs.

Now, at the original time I suggested this I didn't also include Radagast the Tamer and Waiting Shadow wasn't proposed. However, if we are now including these two, can we not move the extra abilities of the huorn card to DUT, thereby in process freeing up one extra slot of the 7 for something else, maybe In the Name of Mordor, Great Goblin or Joe's Words of Power and Terror?

If so, we could then have:

Darkness Under Tree (with the extra huorn card abilities included)
Waiting Shadow
Radagast the Tamer

In Darkness Bind Them
Shadowfax
And two from The Great Goblin (capture or prowess?), In the Name of Mordor and Joe's Words of Power and Terror?

That would add up quite nicely I think. Thoughts?

[Jambo]

Re Great Goblin and trying to combine things:

Creature or Permanent Event.
MP: 2
P/B: 12/7
1 strike.
Unique
As a permanent event, you may tap The Great Goblin to modify any non-detainment Orc creature attack of normally more than one strike (tapping counts against the hazard limit): Each successful strike does not harm the character, but takes the character prisoner at Goblin Gate or The Under-grottos. The Rescue Attack will be this creature's card as though played from your hand. Discard The Great Goblin if prisoners are rescued.

What do you think? Could add + to prowess, but maybe too powerful or not needed. Currently it will untap, so can be used once per turn while The Great Goblin is in play. Could give it a clause like Power Built by Waiting?

[marcos]

yep, 1 against the hazard limit to untap (2 against hl is too much IMHO). And add a prowess bonus to him as rescue attack will be ok

i don't want it to be a crap like the original, what about reducing his prowess by 1 and adding 1 strike or 1 attack? And about the fact that minions will get no kill points for this card, we cab add: "If this creature is defeated by a minion player, that player receives MPs from any defeated awakened plant that doesn't have an (*)"
Or maybe make him playable at some other regions? maybe? you know, mirkwood is a dark and obscure place...

i'd say:
huorn V:
[ ]
[ ]
P/B: 9/-
Creature
Awakened Plant. One strike, attacker chooses defending characters. May also be played at Druadan Forest, Old Forest, and Wellinghall. May also be played keyed to Heart of Mirkwood, Sothern Mirkwood, Western Mirkwood, and Woodland Realm; may also be played at sites in these regions. Any Awakened plant hazard creature can be played keyed to or on a company that has faced Huorn this turn. If Huorn is defeated by a minion and put under the control of a character as a trophy, any Awakened Plant the controller of the trophy's company defeateats gives his kill MPs (even if it doesn't have an [*])

thoughts?

[Ringbearer]

My thoughts about in the name of mordor, as I mentioned before:


In the name of Mordor(V)
Permanent Event
Playable only if They Ride Together(v) is on table. During the organisation phase, you may reveal a ringwarith from play to discard his/her hazard counterpart. You must then play that ringwraith as a follower, and this counts against the one character a turn limit.