Thematic "half-decks" for casual play

[henrikbe]

(Posted a similar thread on the meccg.net forum, but then I discovered this forum, with seemingly more activity, so I repost here.)

Hi all!

After about five years or so without MECCG, I just stumbled over a bunch of cards sold cheaply by a former local collector. My first plan was to sell as much as possible on ebay (e.g. complete sets), but when looking through the cards, the temptation became too big... I just had to sit down and try to construct a few decks, and try to get this game on the table again.

So, I got this idea for making casual play more interesting while still keeping the thematic flair of the game. I plan to make a large number of "half-decks", each containing about 20 cards, either hazard or resource (with characters). Each of these half-decks will have its distinct theme, like (for hazards) orcs, trolls, corruption, roadblock, agent attacks, agent influence, nazgul, dragons etc etc, or (for resources) big items, Gondor factions, King under the Mountain, Riddling Game(!), Hobbits, One Ring etc etc. The main point is to make the decks fun to play, not necessarily very competitive. I think it should be easy to come up with at least 20 hazard and 20 resource half-decks, possibly many more.

After having constructed these half-decks, the plan is to play as follows: First, both players get two random resource half-decks and two random hazard half-decks, together with (say) two of each wizard, and possibly some other cards. Then, the players spend a few minutes to look through their deck, trimming them down to 30 resources, 30 hazards, selecting starting characters etc. All unused cards go into the sideboard.

Hopefully, this will allow us to set up a game about as quickly as a sealed deck game, but still retaining the thematic play and the combos that make the game fun.

So, that's the basic idea. However, there are a few issues I'm a bit unsure of, and would like to have comments on before I start constructing the decks:

First of all, all the resource decks must obviously contain at least a minimum number of MPs from different categories. How many MPs do you usually put into your decks? Would 40 MPs be a suitable aim (that is, 20 MPs in each half-deck)?

Secondly, I plan to make all the five wizards available (two of each), in addition to any wizards in the resource decks (for example, if I make a Gandalf/Narya half-deck, it will contain one Gandalf, then it's up to the player if he wants to add one or two additional Gandalfs). I've also been thinking about adding some general cards like 3xTwilight, Many Sorrows Befall, Mouth of Sauron etc, so that these always are available for the players to add to their decks. Are there any other cards that should always be available?
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Henrik

[henrikbe]

Been giving this a bit more thought, and come up with the following: Instead of having general utility cards, like Many Sorrows Befall etc available to both players, I think I'll trim the "Half-decks" a little (to, say, 16 cards + characters), and make two separate, fixed decks of general cards (resources and hazards). Then, before playing, each player is dealt two resource half-decks, two hazard half-decks, two of each wizard, and a number (8?) of cards drawn at random from the each of the general decks (8 resources and 8 hazards). Maybe these general cards can even be added unseen to the decks, in order to add some uncertainty/surprise, and to get rarely used cards like Horses more often in play.

However, I'm still unsure about the number of MPs in each resource half-deck. I'll probably aim for 20 (including character points).

Another thing: I'm considering ignoring the rules about points for different categories (opponent doubles if you have zero, you can't have more than half from one category). Not that I don't like these rules, they just feel a bit to restricted when building half-decks (since each half-deck then ideally should have at least one faction, one ally and one MP-giving item, and this does not always fit the theme of the half-deck very well).

Comments are of course welcome!

Henrik

[zirilan]

Looks like you are building additional fixed decks for sealed game. Since it happend quite often that players had the same fixed decks the character draw was awful.

Useful hazards:

• Foolish Words
• River
• Twilight
• Mouth of Sauron
• Ûvatha the Horseman
• Adûnaphel
• Daelomin at Home
• An Unexpected Outpost

Useful resources:

• Smoke Rings
• Marvels Told
• Muster
• Risky Blow
• Concealment
• Cram

You should aim for 22 to 25 without characterpoints.

[henrikbe]

You should aim for 22 to 25 without characterpoints.

Do you mean for the entire deck? So that it should be enough if every resource half-deck contains 11-13 + characters ?

Henrik

[zirilan]

As for sealed games that amount of is enough. Thought your half-deck format sounds similar to sealed games it would be good to have an equal amount of in the format. So 11 to 13 per half-deck is a good number.