Nazgul are Abroad and Half an Eye Open

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Jambo
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Heh, just thought of another thing. Long Dark Reach costs 2 Nazgul from underneath TNaA, and yet only costs against the hazard limit from underneath HaEO! Arrrgh.

One of my decks uses a combination of both TNaA and HaEO and Long Dark Reach, hence the reason I noticed this.

Solution?

Add LDR to the list of exceptions on HaEO?
Add LDR to the list of exceptions for both?
Make the list of exceptions on HaEO cost two Nazgul to play...lol?

Or, hopefully someone else will come up with a better, more ingenious solution! :)
Last edited by Jambo on Fri May 02, 2008 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jambo
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Edit :

Glad no one quoted me. ;)

Exile of Solitude can be played on an at Home during the movement/hazard phase, but wouldn't be able to be played on guard from underneath HaEO (due to the restrictions on what is allowed to be played from underneath HaEO).
Jambo
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New TNaA wrote:When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If there is a Nazgûl in play, you may play non-creature hazards (except Long Dark Reach) placed with this card that have the word “Nazgûl” in their game text as if they were in your hand. You must discard two Nazgul events from play in order to play Fury of the Iron Crown, Morgul Horse and Scimitars of Steel in this manner. Once per movement/hazard phase, hazards targeting Nazgûl creatures do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when any play deck is exhausted.
New HaEO wrote:When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If an "at Home" Dragon manifestation is in play, you may play non-unique hazard events (except Parsimony of Seclusion, Prowess of Age, Long Dark Reach and From the Pits of Angband) placed with this card that mention a named Dragon or the word “Dragon” in their game text or title as if they were in your hand. Once per movement/hazard phase, hazards targeting unique Dragon creatures do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when any play deck is exhausted.
Ok, thoughts on these? Long Dark Reach added to exceptions (it's the only way). I changed the free hazard down to one per m/h phase. It's a little fairer. Otherwise any Nazgul is going to come with Pale Sword and Fell Beast and only for the cost of one against the HL! Stick two TNaA down for the pain, which is quite easy if you stick one TNaA underneath another!

If space on TNaA is an issue, and particularly with only one free hazard per m/h phase per TNaA, one could take out the text for Fury of the Iron Crown. Realistically, all it would take to stop someone abusing Fury on non-Nazgul creatures is for someone to pack The Iron Crown item in their play deck or sideboard. That would be a lot of free MPs. :)
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Thorsten the Traveller
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cards seem right to me. So until the next hole is spotted, this looks like an endversion. Seems to me HaEO is actually more cramped than TNAA.

Exile can be played during m/h phase, but it does count against hl, and you're not even sure opponent will enter. It really gets the short stick, and I still haven't heard why the free hazard shouldn't apply to athomes. Oh well, this is already a great improvement, so I guess complaining isn't in order. There's always Fun with Tidings :wink:
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Jambo
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Suppose if we're adopting the one freebie per m/h phase, which I believe is right (particularly with things like Dragon's Breath), then perhaps targeting 'unique Dragon creatures' could become 'unique Dragons' or 'unique Dragon manifestations'? That would encompass Ahunts, at Homes, and Creatures all in one.
marcos
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Jambo wrote:Suppose if we're adopting the one freebie per m/h phase, which I believe is right (particularly with things like Dragon's Breath), then perhaps targeting 'unique Dragon creatures' could become 'unique Dragons' or 'unique Dragon manifestations'? That would encompass Ahunts, at Homes, and Creatures all in one.
that sounds better to me
Frodo
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>Heh, just thought of another thing. Long Dark Reach costs 2 Nazgul from underneath TNaA, and yet only costs against the hazard limit from underneath HaEO! Arrrgh.
True, but this is itself is not unbalanced; stuffing your deck with the 7-9 requisite Nazgul for LDR is not a complete waste if LDR fails because these Nazgul are playable as very useful events. The 7-9 Dragon creatures, on the other hand, are most certainly NOT useful.
>One of my decks uses a combination of both TNaA and HaEO and Long Dark Reach, hence the reason I noticed this.
Doh! THIS is something I hadn’t thought of. (There’s always something.) Hmm. Still, does this create any bad balances? To use HaEo you must have a Dragon at home in play, which means a minimum of 4 in a deck to guarantee one out within a reasonable amount of time (2 turns); if you are also stuffing 7-9 Nazguls that makes about 12 half-creatures; plus the 3 TNAA and 3 HaE required… all to try and pull-off the LDR that you don’t want cramping your hand… hmm, I think you’re still right on this one, Jambo. Even with 6 haz events required it can still make LDR pretty powerful, I think, and more unfair. But YOU’VE played this kind of deck; tell us about it! I assume combining Dragons and Nazs makes for high playability and success with LDR? If so, yes, add LDR to both cards.
>Ok, thoughts on these? Long Dark Reach added to exceptions (it's the only way). I changed the free hazard down to one per m/h phase. It's a little fairer. Otherwise any Nazgul is going to come with Pale Sword and Fell Beast and only for the cost of one against the HL!
Actually, Fell Beast will always count against the HL. The CRF says this card must be played first, and resolve completely. Then, the Nazgul must be the first card played in the next chain. Thus, the Nazgul being enhanced is not targeted by Fell Beast until the next chain of effects. Furthermore, if we read TNAA, it says, “Once per movement/hazard phase, hazards targeting Nazgûl creatures do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when any play deck is exhausted,” and there is text on Fell Beast which says, “In additionally, target Nazgul…” but this text is merely referencing the word Nazgul, which is not a creature. End result: Fell Beast can never be a free hazard, unless you are playing it only for it’s first playability clause (extra strike). I mentioned this some pages back.

You hit upon the most powerful Nazgul combo, of course, but this combo requires an HL of 2, which means with one Nazgul and one Fell Beast against a small company, you can’t do anything else. I’m not saying that this isn’t necessarily balanced, but especially if this is the only Nazgul attack you pull off all game, it would be nice if some kind of fun hazard (beyond a keyability one) was actually playable! Given the above, and that Fell Beast counts as a haz, I would recommend we stick to the 2/per mh idea for playtesting.

Also, partly to keep things parallel with TNAA, but also because all playtesting results have suggested this card is really underpowered, we should keep the 2 per m/h on HaE as well. Dragon’s Breath is playable on very few dragons.

I’d love to have the 2 per/mh affect athomes too--just add “or at homes” to the card. Personally I think it’s fine to affect ahunts as well but I think several of us didn’t like the idea of encouraging these cards any more given their ease of play. (I don’t mind it thought: anyone who adds 3 HaE to a drop-and-draw deck that purely has Ahunts is wasting 3 card slots because the Ahunts will rarely get a chance to be enhanced. Anyone who is actually trying to make a deck that has a CHANCE of using HaE will be forced to add at least 2-3 Dragon creatures to the deck because these are the only ones compatible with the dragon-keyability cards, which call
for creatures.)
>Thorsten wrote:
I thought we established that discard upon empty only increases the recycling ability. Ok so now Fury/Scimitars are no longer a problem, but do you still want to be recycling TNAA each turn? I can also play Summons from under HaEO, so you want to be recycling that each turn? Just play HaEO and summons, discard HaEO and a cave drake 2@12, and then play them both again with third HaEO to repeat the trick each turn. Who needs Dragon boosters anyway when you have Summons?
Thorsten, I might be missing something in your explanation, but because of timing rules it’s not quite as easy to recycle HaEO as you suggest. Okay, so you play your first copy of HaEO with only Summons attached, then play Summons off of it, discarding HaEO. You play a Cave-drake on Summons and attack easily enough, discarding Summons. You draw up your second copy of HaEO, and play it, and recycle your first HaEO and Summons from discard pile to attach it. You play Summons, then you draw up your second Cave-drake for Summons, then attack, discarding Summons. With only one card on HaEO (the first HaEO copy), you know play it. Immediately, you must choose up to 4 cards from discard pile. You can grab that discarded Summons, sure, but you *can’t* grab the HaEo still on table with no cards attached to it, because that HaEO does not get discarded until the HaEO you are playing finishes resolving. So that’s the last play you’ll get out of Summons (until you draw your third HaEO); there is no such thing as “infinite” HaEO recycling with only 2 HaEOs.

Furthermore, in order to guarantee to easy discard of HaEO, you can never attach anything to it save HaEO and Summons. So you are also putting all your eggs into enhancing HaEO for a Summons-Drake strategy. Why should that not be a big deal? Well, if you’re going to stuff your deck with three HaEOs that do nothing but recycle Summons, **why not just stuff your deck with 3 Summons**??

>btw.@Memories Stolen. Your average dragon is 2@15, your average char 4/8. Even with 2x Memories he'd be 2@12, so your average char would have to roll more than average to even tie. Either way, with unlimited hazards it's easy to compensate for Memories' loss of prowess.

My main point about Memories Stolen should have been that the most easily playable creature is a Cave-Drake. Multiple Memories Stolen on a Cave-Drake is not too broken, is it? (That takes up 3 SB slots too if you want 3 copies.)

>I thought about chopping out Prowess of Age entirely. There's Dragon's Desolation, Prowess of Age and Prowess of Might and the latter two won't see the light of day if Prowess of Age is allowed for half its function. Plus it would save us some space.

It saves space, but at the expense of card combos. Prowess of Age with HaE allows for a possible (but still difficult to pull off) double play of this card (if you have a second HaE) with only one copy, which is pretty cool to try for. Dragon’s Desolation is SO necessary in a HaE deck already. Prowess of Might admittedly looks weakest at first glance, but this is the only card (isn’t it?) that can possibly screw over the body check for a KuTM deck (and can be played multiple times with 2 HaE), so there’s some use there, though admittedly this is still the weakest card.

--Frodo
Jambo
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Recycling abuse should no longer even be a possibility since the card is no longer discarded if there are no cards underneath it.

Frodo, my worries as you suspect are indeed when you play TNaA and HaEO together. The majority of dedicated LDR decks will use both Nazgul and Dragons. Therefore, LDR should be equally difficult from both.

The issue with Fell Beast is indeed a strange one. To me both effects of the card clearly target a Nazgul creature. Moreover, the card can never not target a Nazgul creature (unless of course someone is trying to play the card for no effect ;)). Fell Beast has no alternative effect which can target an event or another creature type. If the ability to target a Nazgul creature was indirect or not always certain, like LDR for instance, then yes, my belief is there would be an issue. The fact a Nazgul follows in the next chain of effects for the keyability option shouldn't matter..... should it?

I'm fine with the freebies targeting Ahunts and at Homes, but I'm still hesitant over the number of freeibies that can be played from underneath just one. There are many ways to increase the hazard limit, e.g. Parsimony on Agburanar, Daelomin at Home, Power Built by Waiting, Shadow or Mordor, that maybe 2 per turn is excessive on its own. Two of these down will of course give 2 free anyway.

Moreover, the recent CoE digest allows cards that affect prowess and /or body to be played after strike assignment. Therefore, all these booster cards can all be played once the dragon attack is no longer able to be cancelled (apart from Prowess of Age which specifically says it has to be played before strikes are assigned)!

Trying these out might be in order before a final decision is made, but what I would say is dedicated LDR decks are already quite competitive.
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Thorsten the Traveller
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@Memories Stolen. Cave-drake is of course easiest to play, but with Fever/Desolation/Frenzy the idea is this card will also make the uniques see more play. Either way, if Thrain/Thranduil and Elladan are the only ranger/sage/warrior in the company, I will very gladly sacrifice a cave-drake to disable them from tapping for marvels/rivers, or in fact protect against Beorning skin-changers. The card is powerful, without a timely marvels you're doomed, as were both Niniel and Turin. :wink:

@HaEO recycling: Of course you need 3 of them (hence my: "play them both with a third HaEO"), so you can't start right away, unless you take the risky road and play HaEO from sideboard. But the recycling comes with a vengence at the end, when opponent has no more marvels left anyway.
You can add other easily playable stuff to buff the cave-drake attack, so you needn't just play for the summons, the drake is played often enough to ensure good cycling. Add some Desolation just to buff it up more. Or Memories like I suggested.

The question is, will you have two on the table, typically? If you discard upon emptying, then sure, because you can recycle. If you don't discard, opponent might not want to marvel and weather it rather than discard, so you'd have to discard it yourself. Then the up side is you have more free hazards. I think 1 per HaEO is enough. Like Jambo says, there are other ways also to increase HL, making it 2 also means 4 and 6 are possible.

And I will withhold my completely unsound comments from the Fell Beast issue :wink:
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Frodo
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It’s strange that the conversation went from not allowing unlimited hazards from HaEO, to allowing only one. Thorsten, you really changed your mind on this?

Today I played against Beornd. My game using HaEO reminded me of this hazard’s problems in other games, too. There are so many ways the dragon attacks, especially in the East, can be made ineffectual: Noble Steeds, the need to cut the hazard limit to SB in possible dragons, the opponent lowering his hazard limit himself, Bard Bowman (V), etc. I did not draw more than one HaE by my third hazard turn, which is about right for average draw. This means that I was only benefiting from the 1/extra hazard per turn. Yes, there are cards a hazard player can use to add to the hazard limit, but the reasoning behind the extra hazards with these host cards was to allow a fair amount of these (often weak) cards to be played without having to “tap into” any other hazard limit-enhancers you may or not be playing. (And it is WAY too clunky to set up a Parsimony combo just to add ONE to your hazard limit, since Parsimony itself will use up a free hazard. Ironically, this was actually a cool possibility before when all hazards targeting unique dragons were free.) You spend so much time trying to **set up** the dragon combo, or at least playability, then something goes slightly wrong and you don’t have enough hazards to deal with it (Mouth, River, etc.) or even to play a single weaker creature attack first. At one point I could have played a Memories Stolen, then I realized that it was too late in the game—two of my rivers were in my discard pile, and he had two rangers anyway. None of his party were sages. Even if they were, unique dragons don’t all pick defenders. I could care less about eliminating a diplomat skill. And reducing a dragon from 15 to 12 prowess (Thorsten’s average prowess calculation is not a good estimate; by mid-game there are SWORDS!) is not a good idea against the big heroes who tend to frequent more dragon-playable places anyway and never have an average starting prowess of 4.

Also, Memories Stolen is not a free hazard on a Cave-drake. So whether or not this is a strong card on a Cave-drake does not affect the issue of whether we should allow more free hazards on **unique** dragons.

Still, I think Thorsten asks the right question when he says:
>The question is, will you have two on the table, typically? If you discard upon emptying, then sure, because you can recycle. If you don't discard, opponent might not want to marvel and weather it rather than discard, so you'd have to discard it yourself. Then the up side is you have more free hazards. I think 1 per HaEO is enough. Like Jambo says, there are other ways also to increase HL, making it 2 also means 4 and 6 are possible.
But I only partially agree with the subsequent analysis--that is, recycling this quickly might only happen with a Cave-drake focus that abandons trying to key the bigger dragons with the exception of the also easily-playable Desolation. Otherwise, as far as the recycling issue, how frequently are these cards truly recycled? Jambo wrote that, “I don't think I've seen anyone play all cards from underneath one yet.” I haven’t either, save once or twice in 12 games when it was my 2nd host hazard and there wasn’t enough cards I wanted to stack on it, and then the one or two on it got played. I do admit that I am not trying the “just enhance a cheap cave-drake with playable hazs” approach, which could have faster recycling; though this still depends on an opponent who sees the strategy yet keeps walking into Cave-drake playable areas and the HaE coming up. But for other approaches, real games seem to be showing very different results that we theorize out here in the forum; it’s very clunky to maneuver this hazard strategy in the direction you want it to go.

Personally, if one mechanic had to go, I’d rather see 2 hazards per turn allowed then give HaEO the ability to be discarded when it was emptied. If Thorsten is right about the cave-drake balance, **which he very well may be**, then eliminating this from HaEO would help steer people into using it for what it’s meant to be: pumping up big dragons! (Kinda like our problem with TNAA used for wrong purposes.) However, this is the only place I can truly see recycling being a problem.

So our questions become:
1) Do we test recycling, or dump it right away?
2) Recycling or not, do we test a free HL of 2 per/mh on HaEO?

I say a definite yes to number 2. Number 1 I’m not sure about.

Regarding TNAA:
Jambo, you might be right about Fell Beast. It might be a really strange card that has an “extended target.” I am going to have to ask Mark about it; we can assume for now that you are probably right, and I am reading the CRF too literally. But maybe not. Anyway, if Fell Beast is free, than yes, it should not be more than 1 free haz per turn.

Other Notes:
Jambo, I was just thinking, isn’t it an option to only prevent Long Dark Reach from underneath HeO? So in a Nazgul and Dragon deck, you must still discard two Nazguls from play to pull off a Long Dark Reach. Is this too strong, or is that totally okay? Also, we need to add "...as if they were in your hand (not onguard)" to both cards now, since I thought of an even more powerful abuse: technically you could be stacking any 4 hazards from the sideboard on TNAA/HaEO, then getting them back into your hand!

Btw, the benefit of only YOUR deck exhaust discarding HaEO helps slightly.

Frodo
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New TNaA wrote:When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If there is a Nazgûl in play, you may play non-creature hazards (except Long Dark Reach) placed with this card that have the word “Nazgûl” in their game text as if they were in your hand. You must discard two Nazgul events from play in order to play Fury of the Iron Crown, Morgul Horse or Scimitars of Steel in this manner. Once per movement/hazard phase, hazards targeting Nazgûl creatures do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when your play deck is exhausted.
New HaEO wrote:When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If an "at Home" Dragon manifestation is in play, you may play non-unique hazard events (except Parsimony of Seclusion, Prowess of Age, Long Dark Reach and From the Pits of Angband) placed with this card that mention a named Dragon or the word “Dragon” in their game text or title as if they were in your hand. Twice per movement/hazard phase, hazards targeting unique Dragons do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when your play deck is exhausted.
This is where we're at just now then. I've still left the recycling part out if that's a realistic concern? Twice per m/h phase for HaEO, once for TNaA. It would be nice if you could get an answer about Fell Beast from Mark or someone more in the know, but I don't think it'll matter too much anyway. The typical play would be Fell Beast, Nazgul, Pale Sword and with only one TNaA in play that would use 2 HL. It would still be same even if Fell Beast was free, as Pale Sword would then have to count instead.

One interesting theme I thought about for HaEO was following something similar to the Nazgul discard in TNaA, however, we could use at Homes instead! e.g.:

"You must discard two at Home events from play in order to play Parsimony of Seclusion, From the Pits of Angband, Prowess of Age or Long Dark Reach in this manner."

Then we could allow all cards and have LDR from both! ;)
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Thorsten the Traveller
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Testing is always good, why not test both?
There is indeed a difference between theory and practise. However, the games can be deceiving too. You seem to have had a desastrous game rather, against opponent who was well equiped to counter your strat. Generally speaking it's fair to assume you aim to exhaust in 6 turns, then you should have one every two turns on average, right? And if you have drawn them all, it is more difficult for opponent to stop you from having two on the table because you can get them back.

Isn't the question then, how much do you need the free HL to make the strat. effective? The main objective is making combo's possible with the reservation of cards, hence increasing mainly frequence of dragon attacks. Second, you need 1 extra hl for playing the keyability card. If you have hl to spare to play Blood/Terror/Memories/Subtelty/Velocity, that's cool, but I suppose your strat. doesn't rely on it. Hence the risk of overpowering with 2 freebies is greater than hampering it with 1, I'd say?

btw. The problem with cave-drake and recycling is not only is it more popular for it's keyability, also it's psychological, people 'know' the card (we are creatures of habit), and most of all, we want to play something every turn, even if it's less damaging. So as great as HaEO is, it might be used less for spectacular combos. But, on the other hand, you'd have to recycle Cave-drake as well, and you can recycle only so much. Then again, there's True Fire-drake, and Rain-drake...people even now sometimes play the Summons strategy in tourney's, because it also speeds up the deck! So I think recycling is not such a good idea, because of this and because you want to promote the big guys, like you say.

btw. why do you sideboard in the dragons Frodo, if you are playing Dragon hazard strat.? Even Eacaraxe can fly with Dragon's Desolation! :wink:

About the proposition to make LDR etc playable discarding 2 athomes, it might be worth a try. But athomes of course are not as useful as nazguls, so the penalty is far less. And on the other hand, it might result in a complete dump deck again with 18 athomes/nazguls...
maybe allowing Parsimony to counter having only 1 freebie is also ok. Problem of course is people might use it for completely other strats. Agburanar will come around so often, you might become friends with him :D
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marcos
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ups, being away from the forum is not good when you people write that extensive posts :lol:
Frodo
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In theory I like the discarding of two athomes idea, but Thorsten spelled out the issue--discarding two Nazguls is far more of a penalty, not just because they are useful as events, but mainly because they *are useful in the playdeck* as prime targets of LDR itself. However, the dragon athomes CANNOT be targets of LDR, therefore it doesn't cost a haz player anything to dump them. We can easily imagine a deck with 9 nazguls and 9 dragon at homes and 3 Dragons (= 12 creatures) a bunch of LDRs (1 every 1.5 turns played perhaps). So I am leaning towards leaving the restrictions.

However, Thorsten read my mind when he made the comment about Parsimony... I realized the other night that when Parsimony was excluded, this was only because hazards were infinite on Dragons then, and I had realized that Parsimony could be used too easily as a HL-booster on any company. There's no reason to exclude it if only 1 or 2 hazs are now free. Even more importantly, I kept thinking "whether we make 1 or 2 hazs free is still not going to give HeO the boost it needs, or fix it problems"; then I realized that allowing PARSIMONY could do just that. 'Cause one problem with the deck is simply holding onto the dragons and/or the possible drakes that you might need... this would help with the clog, AND the access. To explain further I'll answer Thorsten's query about why I was sb-ing for dragons if you only need one with Desolation. I have found that the most playability with Dragon attacks comes NOT from Desolation, etc. but strategically figuring out where the opponent will wander, sbing the right ahunt, then keying Ahunts to their very special regions (like Smaug Ahunt to Horse Plains or the other guy to mirkwood; OR from keying dragon creatures to their Doors of Night "hunting areas", like Bairanax, Scorba, etc. But this is still a very difficult metagame to play because even if you choose correctly, you might not draw the card up. Parsimony would make it more possible to get the card you need, though you'd still need to sb the dragon into the discard pile.

So let's take Jambo's new versions and keep the restriction clauses, save that Parsimony is now allowed, for the new batch of playtesting. (But if people really think the worries about LDR are unfounded and we can keep the discard an athome thing, okay.)

Btw, does Prowess of Age give the large bonuses (+4, +9) PER COPY of PoA played, or is that the total bonus provided when multiple copies are played? If it's the total bonus only, then let's keep this restricted. If it's PER COPY, then the old text that allows this card to be played "for its prowess bonus only" should remain, since this might be the **only way** such a combo will ever see the light of play.

Frodo
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Discarding Nazgul is more of a penalty, but having at Homes in your play deck is more of penalty. So it's even.

The idea behind discarding the at Homes was more about creating an interactive balance between having to have the necessary at Home on the table to allow you to play cards from underneath HaEO and discarding at Homes to allow you to play a better or more dangerous card. For example, if a player only has two at Homes on the table, and decides to use a parsimony or prowess of age from underneath HaEO then that would remove his two at Homes thereby preventing the player from being able to use any more cards he may have underneath HaEO (at least until there's another at Home back on the table).

In that sense it's immaterial whether the cards are Nazgul or at Homes. If there are no at Homes or Nazgul on the table, you won't be playing any cards from underneath HaEO or TNaA.

If a player decides to put 9 at Homes in his play deck then that's a lot of hazard play which isn't going to do much damage to your opponent. Leucaruth at Home isn't useful, Scorba can be killed. In fact many can if your opponent has Wormsbane. At Homes still cost against the hazard limit of course and as events they're nowhere near as useful as Nazgul, so packing 9 has its drawbacks too; not only the fact it massively dilutes your hazard portion. If your opponent keeps MT your HaEO, there's a lot of useless hazards in your hand.

One of your comments Frodo was about the hassle of getting your Dragon combo out, say with LDR or Dragon's Desolation, and then your opponent simply cancelling it. Well picture the scenario where discarding your only two at Homes on the table can let you play just one Prowess of Age to prevent that cancel card... :twisted: You get your Dragon out, but then you know your ability to play cards from underneath HaEO is now compromised. If people believe it's too powerful, then perhaps increase the number of at Homes that need to be discarded to 3. You might find that your opponent starts targeting your at Homes with their MTs. ;)
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