Council of Elrond

Posted: **Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:38 pm**

1) As far as I know there is no rule which limits the number of (permanent event) cards that you may "play in lieu of a minor item" in your pool. You may only play two minor items or "in lieu-cards" but you may have as many of the perm events as you want in your pool, correct?

2) Similar thing with FW stage cards. You may only play up to three but may have an unlimited number of them in your pool, correct again?

Posted: **Tue Jan 15, 2008 9:02 pm**

MELE Getting Ready To Play wrote:3. Place one to six starting minion characters (no Ringwraiths, no minion agents from Dark Minions) face down in front of you. The combined mind attributes (see page 18) of these characters must be 20 or less. You and your opponent reveal your characters simultaneously, placing any duplicated characters into your play decks. Then organize your starting characters into followers and companies and place them at Minas Morgul (i.e., place a Minas Morgul site card next to them).

4. You may assign up to 2 non-unique minor items to your starting characters (i.e., 2 items, not 2 to each character). These items must come from cards that you have not already committed to your play deck.

Character Draft Tournament Policy wrote:Character Draft

Each Player selects up to 10 characters to put into his or her pool of potential starting characters. This happens before characters are selected for the play deck. Certain cards may be revealed as though they were starting characters. These cards are included in the pool of starting characters, but do not count against the 10 character maximum. Each player reveals his or her first choice for a starting character simultaneously with opponent. If a unique character is duplicated by opponent's selection, both characters are set aside (this character may not appear in either player's starting company).

Each player then selects a second character to reveal (but not a unique character revealed earlier). Each unduplicated revealed character goes into its player's starting company. Each player continues this process until one of the following occurs: the player has 5 characters in his or her company (6 for a minion player), the total Mind of that player's starting characters is 20, the player has exhausted his or her pool of 10 potential starting characters, or the player decides to stop revealing characters (i.e., he or she is satisfied with the starting company). Note that when one player stops, the other player continues revealing characters until one of the four conditions is met. A player may not reveal a character that would bring the total Mind of all of his or her starting characters above 20.

In his or her play deck, each player may now assign up to 10 characters, and this may include any unrevealed or duplicated (set aside) characters from his or her pool of starting characters. Note that the Character Draft differs from the rulesbook in that a duplicated starting character does not automatically go into the play deck, and that its inclusion in the play deck does count against the deck's 10 character maximum.

Allowing players to introduce characters in this fashion minimizes matches where each player starts with very few characters because of multiple duplications.

MEWH Rules wrote:STARTING STAGE CARDS - You must attempt to start with one, two, or three (your choice) stage resource permanent-event cards in play. these cards must have a combined total of three (3) stage points. At least one of these cards must be non-unique. You may not start such a card if the conditions required to play the card do not exist. These cards should be revealed as if they were starting characters with duplicate unique cards being discarded.

The Stage cards you attempt to start with must have a combined total of 3 stage points, one must be non-unique, and you can only attempt to start with one, two or three. This means only including in your pool stage resources which fulfill all these requirements.

For permanent events that may be played in Lieu of a Minor Item, you are only allowed one or two minor items. Each permanent event placed in your pool takes up one of these slots, so I would say there is a maximum of two.

Posted: **Tue Jan 15, 2008 9:28 pm**

In addition I have something similar:

Lidless Eye, Using MELE with METW, The Cards and Decks, Deck Construction wrote:Only Ringwraith players may include minion characters, resources, and sites in their decks, while only Wizard players may include hero characters, resources, and sites in their decks.

However, there is an exception to this: a Ringwraith player may use any hero item resource card as if it were a minion item resource card. Similarly, a Wizard player may use any minion item resource card as if it were a hero item resource card. (..)

Underlines mine.

Because may use [items] is treated here as an exception to may include [characters, resources, sites], it can be concluded that for purposes of deck construction all phrases "may be used as", or "may be played as/in lieu" means also "may be included as/in lieu".

Posted: **Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:32 pm**

Thanks for the replies.
Everything sounds logic but has not convinced me, yet.
There is no doubt that I may play/start with resp. use in my starting company only two minor items (or perm events) and up to three stage cards. But... What prevents me from having more of these cards in my pool to choose from? Sorry if I didn´t get the point, yet.

Posted: **Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:53 pm**

If you are reading "May be played (in lieu)" and "May be included" as two separate things, then yes - nothing can stop you from including in pool as many PE as you want (plus two minor items).
But if so, you cannot include minion items in hero deck. You can use that with some limitations, but you cannot include that.
If "May be played in lieu" does not implicite automatically "May be included in lieu" then "You may use" also does not implicite "You may include".
Treat it both as separate things, or as related things (first causes second) or be inconsistent.

Posted: **Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:15 pm**

Shapeshifter wrote:Thanks for the replies.
Everything sounds logic but has not convinced me, yet.
There is no doubt that I may play/start with resp. use in my starting company only two minor items (or perm events) and up to three stage cards. But... What prevents me from having more of these cards in my pool to choose from? Sorry if I didn´t get the point, yet.

Because in the standard rules you lay down and reveal all the cards (characters and starting stage cards) at once.

The alternate form of character drafting used in tournaments is, as stated, only to lessen the likelihood of multiple characters bouncing.

So the process goes like this:

1) You select up to ten possible starting characters;
2) Of the other cards you are allowed to start with, any that are to be revealed as characters are placed into the pool;
3) Any remaining starting cards may be assigned after the draft is finished.

The character draft in no way touches either stage resources or minor items/permanent events played as minor items except insofar as such must be revealed as characters.

Cards which are revealed as characters during the draft are not, in fact, character cards. Therefore their starting rules remain. Only the rules regarding the play of your starting company itself are altered by the character draft.

Posted: **Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:40 pm**

Bandobras Took wrote:Because in the standard rules you lay down and reveal all the cards (characters and starting stage cards) at once.

Ah I see. This makes sense. You convinced me

Posted: **Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:34 pm**

A bit more of wittering:

Taking into acount dependencies between revealing the cards like Thrall of The Voice, Open To The Summons, Hidden Haven and other cards revealed from pool, I think that this rule cannot be used for determining of validity of other rules/rulings.

Such style of revealing cards (all at once) could lead to situation, where both players reveals Hidden Haven and the starting companies are at the same

. It could lead to illegal company compositions (more than one leader or Orcs/Trolls and Hobbits/Elves/Dwarves in the same company outside Haven).

This rule should be considered as obsolete and as such permanently replaced by draft rules.

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 1:28 pm**

"They" tried to fix it:

CRF wrote:Hidden Haven
· If both players reveal this as a starting stage card, on the same site, at the same time, it is set aside, and may not be played on that site by either player until the game begins.

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 2:07 pm**

So this means that the player who starts the game, may play it first on his/her site. I once had this situation. We didnt know and played it wrong...

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 2:55 pm**

jaded wrote:"They" tried to fix it:
CRF wrote:Hidden Haven
· If both players reveal this as a starting stage card, on the same site, at the same time, it is set aside, and may not be played on that site by either player until the game begins.

In draft it does not cause further problems (illegal company compositions). Player is just unable to reveal Orc if Elf is already revealed and vice-versa.
If all cards are revealed at once, situation may look differently.

Council of Elrond

Cards in your pool

Cards in your pool