This has already been discussed, they mainly use low threat and Pippin as the base.

Loragorn was really great as a defender since he had 5 HP / 2 Def and could have a burning brand easily, but he is mainly use with Desesperate Alliance combo.

Both this point are being overcome with more and more cards that reduced threat and help defending, so the two new ability of Aragorn III are quite welcome.

Yeah, but they do a lot of tricks to keep them in the staging area so they can be picked off using Aragorn.......

yeah and as previously discussed a vast load of quests can counter this by putting many enemies into play directly engaged with you, by raising threat by a buttload, by having immune enemies and other various methods. Its strong but some people are making it out to be broken and in need of errata which it is not, it is just a very strong combo that will not work for all quests and requires threat reduction, staging area control and avoiding engagement as well as specifically built decks with low starting threat. It requires all four decks to be built around this combo if you want to keep the majority of enemies in staging and "feint" them with Tactigorn. I really don't see him stopping more than a few enemy attacks in any one game if you haven't built all decks involved specifically for that purpose in which case he is really not very different from Haldir who I use to great effect and can also stop a bunch of enemy attacks throughout a game, potentially one almost every turn in some quests. Whats more with Haldir only the player who controls Haldir needs to have engagement tricks and/or low threat and the enemies can still engage other players and be sniped by Haldir before they attack. Dunhere can also potentially be even better than both as you don't have to engage ANY enemies and with a bunch of readying and attack boosts he can kill enemies in staging one by one without Merry's help.

You don't need to convince me, I'm not the one who claims this to be wroth of errata

It is not errata material here. However, I do not get the point of everybody saying that we need to keep the threat as low as possible not to engage ...

Let's say we are a party of four players with 12 brave adventuring heros. With the set up and first quest phase, let's assume that we reveal 3-4 enemis. We did not prepare well our deck to stay low in threat : the 3-4 enemis are engaging us. Ok so what, each of us as to ONLY do a bloc, thing that we normally are all prepare if we start with not a low threat : prepare with a chump bloc or keep a defensive hero like beregond - who is by the way worthless questwise (except siege). And then we just have to watch chaingun Aragorn (let's say chaingorn) slaughter 3 of them assuming the deck pull out one of the 6 cards that ready Merry (fast itch or rohan warhorse).

And bonus to that, if we drawn some enemys with high threat value (that remained in the staging area), we can then pulled them out of it, triggering the drawing pippin effect that can help finding an unseen strike or a straight shot (if weapon are in da place) to finish him off.

So yes, against some scenario, it can be less efficient (let's say rhosgobel for instance ) and surely the deck depends on other players to quest and manage the threat. But the true weakness is when facing only one great immune bad-ass enemy like durin's bane or Smaug.

Ok so what, each of us as to ONLY do a bloc, thing that we normally are all prepare if we start with not a low threat : prepare with a chump bloc or keep a defensive hero like beregond - who is by the way worthless questwise (except siege). And then we just have to watch chaingun Aragorn (let's say chaingorn) slaughter 3 of them assuming the deck pull out one of the 6 cards that ready Merry (fast itch or rohan warhorse).

And bonus to that, if we drawn some enemys with high threat value (that remained in the staging area), we can then pulled them out of it, triggering the drawing pippin effect that can help finding an unseen strike or a straight shot (if weapon are in da place) to finish him off.

You can do as much with any ranged hero and a Dunedain Cache on Merry (except for the Pippin draw combo, of course)

Ok so what, each of us as to ONLY do a bloc, thing that we normally are all prepare if we start with not a low threat : prepare with a chump bloc or keep a defensive hero like beregond - who is by the way worthless questwise (except siege). And then we just have to watch chaingun Aragorn (let's say chaingorn) slaughter 3 of them assuming the deck pull out one of the 6 cards that ready Merry (fast itch or rohan warhorse).

And bonus to that, if we drawn some enemys with high threat value (that remained in the staging area), we can then pulled them out of it, triggering the drawing pippin effect that can help finding an unseen strike or a straight shot (if weapon are in da place) to finish him off.

You can do as much with any ranged hero and a Dunedain Cache on Merry (except for the Pippin draw combo, of course)

Except, that on the right side of the equation, you have that from start and all your resources to boost it (weapon, readying) or secure it (feint). On the left side of the equation, you must found one card that you only have in 3 copy (at the best) and play it with little possibility considering that you most likely will not have more than one hero leadership (a good harvest, may be). So yes, if you are lucky enough to have good harvest and dunedain cache you can match ... Oh wait, then you have two card less in your hand to cope with what is to come ...

What is important is not so the effect of the combination, but is the fact that you have it from scratch (no card, no resource, on the first turn) available.

I think we all need to stop coming to conclusions before we see it ourselves. Yes, we all understand that the other decks need to have relatively low threat, but it looks as though even decks with 26 starting threat should be low enough due to Pippin's ability and the fact that most enemies that will engage at that point are relatively weak. It still is relatively limiting but you can come up with plenty of fun deck ideas with that limit.

Yes, an immune enemy can break it, but also could have no effect on it if that's the first enemy you engage.

I will put this out there, though: I don't think he should be errata'd because you cannot do this infinitely... you need readying effects, which have a limited supply, BUT considering the built-in readying on Merry, you only need half the readying that you should need and you don't need weapons right off the bat because you are combining two heroes' attack power. It is crazy powerful, but unless you can find an infinite loop, you are still limited to the luck of the draw for readying effects and you still limit the deckbuilding of your friends to pull it off.

/tldr - There seems to be a problem here, but I think its an activation problem not an Aragorn problem.

I am a very new player to the game, this thread has been fascinating. I'm going to work through my understanding of this, slowly, primarily because as a new player I may have misinterpreted what's occurring.

The main issue in the OP is that Tactigorn+Merry+Activation cards allows one deck to effectively negate most of the nastier enemies in an encounter deck (those of 30+ engagement cost). It does this by engaging a chump enemy, killing it easily and then triggering Tactigorn's effect to pull a stronger enemy from the staging area. Since this happens in the Attack part of the Combat phase, the engaged enemy does not get to attack first, does not draw shadow cards, it just dies.

That certainly seems game breakingly bad. But it doesn't seem to me that Tactigorn is the culprit here.

His effect allows him to "choose an enemy not engaged with you and engage that enemy." On its own, this simply yanks a creature out of staging (in this scenario) and that's that, Aragorn is exhausted from the attack. It's a purely defensive power.

Merry gets to "ready another character that participated in the attack" if he gangs up on an enemy. This allows Tactigorn to engage and attack, but that shouldn't matter on its own TOO much because Tactigorn alone is hitting for 3 and you can't do this a second time because Merry is exhausted from the first attack.

It's a nice way to finish off some trash or to protect a deck that's gaining in threat from a next round engagement check. So far that doesn't seem game breaking, it's a nice combo.

Things get ugly, though, because the deck also contains an abundance of card advantage attachments. Three fast hitches and two rohan warhorses in the deck listed in the OP. Each of these are cheap (1 resource) and given the pretty phenomenal card draw of the deck, several are likely to be available in the earliest rounds of the game. All of these can attach to Merry, who potentially becomes a six activation character able to trigger Tactigorn every time Merry activates. Also Merry's martial contributions act as a small attachment buff to Tactigorn allowing them to take down a lot of stronger creatures in the engagement deck. Each time they do this they trigger card draw increasing the chance of getting cheap attachments on the tandem which further increase the potency of the pair.

Assuming I'm reading this right, I see a game breaking problem here like the OP, BUT it doesn't look to me that Tactigorn is remotely a problem. The problem seems to me to be the lack of a restricted tag on Fast Hitch and Rohan warhorse.

Errata Tactigorn as the OP suggests and the reactivating Merry cycle can still be achieved in other ways (as pointed out throughout the thread), just without the 'no shadow card' problem which pushes this combo a bit over the top. But, if you errata Tactigorn you are treating a symptom, not the core problem (excessive activation) and at some point another card will create just as big of a game breaker when paired with the Merry+Pippin+Action Advantage setup.

I could easily be wrong, though, I'm still working through what half the cards in the Mirkwood cycle do, let alone what this new expansion does. So if I completely missed the mark, let me know.

Edits - typos and formatting

Rohan warhorse is restricted, the rest is completely true.

/tldr - There seems to be a problem here, but I think its an activation problem not an Aragorn problem.

I think you nailed, as did someone else before you (though you were wrong about Rohan Warhorse not being restricted). Without the readying, this is very limited. What is worse is that other decks can throw some more Unexpected Courage, Fast Hitch, Cram, or Lembas cards at you as well if you're in need (and probably others that I just can't think of right now). You're still limited by the number of readying attachments you can get on Merry, as I mentioned in my previous post, but the number of enemies generally revealed each turn tends to be far lower than the upper limit of the number of readying attachments you can get on Merry.

Also, try running this deck in solo... you just don't have the necessary questing power. 4-player tends to be the toughest way to play as far as I've read/heard, so if you have a way to make one aspect of the game simple... then great.

What is important is not so the effect of the combination, but is the fact that you have it from scratch (no card, no resource, on the first turn) available.

That's just silly. This whole thing is about having a ton of readying effects available to you. That takes setup!

Ryahl you explain it pretty well. I've read my way through all comments and it looks like many people just have to bring the deck to the table when they play in a 3/4p game. While playing this deck 90% of the quests I played lost a lot of flavor because it all became too easy.

It needs set-up?

No, in round 1 you are able to draw 3 cards (at least) and kill 3 enemies. Only 1 ready effect on Merry is needed for this.

In round 2 you will probably attach the second ready effect to Merry attach a weapon to Aragorn, you kill 4 enemies and draw 3 cards by engagements and draw 3 cards by Foe-Hammer. Most enemies are killed by now. Round 3, you attach a 3rd/4th ready effect to Merry, and everything is clearly setup. Ah yes, and you killed 7 enemies.

It needs low threat from all players?

Well not really either. If all players choose to play a deck of cost 28 or less you are already doing pretty ok. Because in the big majority of quests most enemies have a threat of 28 or more. It is clear that only few enemies will have a forced engagement because Pippin gives a +2 to all enemies. So few engagements will happen in the early rounds. From round 3 and on it might occur that some players have a threat of 32+ because you faced some doomed cards or something similar. Well if the amount of engagements will be too high to your liking, you play Take No Notice!. Because you play 2 hobbits and 1 ranger the card is free but all enemies have a +7 engagement cost. So the amount of engagements is reduced. Since you have drawn 7 cards by Pippin alone, 2 by the amount of round, probably 3 by Foe Hammer, and don't forget Daeron's Runes and Peace and Thought. Your deck will only have between 22 and 17 cards left. It's no guarantee but it gives a 89% (with 22 cards in deck left) percentage on at least 1 copy of Take No Notice in hand.

It will not work in solo?

I think it is very likely this deck won't shine that much in solo. But yeah solo or 4p are completely different games to me. This decks eases the difficulty for 3p and 4p games which seems as half of the game to me. This is way to many if you ask me.

The deck is invincible?

Off course not, every deck has his flaws and Brigands look to be pretty good against this deck (Peril in Pelargir, Steward's Fear), just as quests with mainly low threat enemies (Seventh Level, Watcher in the Water) also forced engagements in quests like Blood of Gondor work well against this deck. But if a deck is able to easily defeat the 90% of all quests available without any problems I think something is wrong.

Record for now?

Victories against: Breaking the Fellowship, Road to Rivendell Nightmare, Jouney along the Anduin, Journey along the Anduin Nightmare, Hunt for Gollum Nightmare, Massing at Osgiliath, Fog on the Barrow Downs, Foundations of Stone Nightmare

Losses against: Road to Rivendell Nightmare (Double Sleeping Sentry), Massing at Osgiliath (Doomed 21 in final round by 2 consecutive Massing at Osgilath in stage 4).

Is Tactagorn the main issue?

I think not, the major issue is the possibility to play a lot of action advantage. But since there are so many* (36 cards under Readying on HallOfBeorn) cards that are able to ready on characters I think surpassing this complete card pool seems impossible. It's the major problem but where we stand now in the game working around it seemed the only option to me.

*Some examples: Unexpected Courage, Fast Hitch, Rohan Warhorse, Wingfoot, Heir of Mardil, Erebor Record Keeper, Westfold Horse-Breaker, Spare Hood and Cloak, Miruvor, Lembas, Cram, .....

Finally:

Joezim007:

Also, try running this deck in solo... you just don't have the necessary questing power. 4-player tends to be the toughest way to play as far as I've read/heard, so if you have a way to make one aspect of the game simple... then great.

Well it's absolutely not great!! We all play this game because we are a major fan of the Lord of the Rings and it puts us to challenges. If the challenges go out, why would we still play the game ?

Jban

What is important is not so the effect of the combination, but is the fact that you have it from scratch (no card, no resource, on the first turn) available.

That's just silly. This whole thing is about having a ton of readying effects available to you. That takes setup!

But I am sure that we are not playing the same game if you think that you can run a deck Merry + dunedain cache + ranged as efficient as this one. May be the words I used to explain how it is critical in 4 players games to be in action at first turn are not so clear, or may be you have some solo player reflex that does not help understanding.

Please feel free to share some 4players games experience with us with both decks and tell me ...hum honnestly ... What would be the best.

I'll admit that I am one more person entering this discussion without having actually tried out the deck, though I might give it a whirl in a 3-player game at some point to see how it feels, but my gut instinct is that you're selectively ignoring the points that would cause problems for this, those being the fact that there are enough low engagament cost enemies to go past this strategy and some of them are actually still pretty dangerous, and the fact that Aragorn only works if you kill the enemy. Since you're devoting most of your deckspace and resources to readying effects rather than attack boosts or allies with decent attack (I know there are some of those in the deck, but you can't play everything at once), you may well be put in a situation where your attack power is only the 5 of Aragorn+Merry. How many enemies have a combined Defence+Hit points of 6 or more (factoring in Aragorn)? I don't know, but I feel like it's a pretty decent number.

Also, I definitely agree that if there is an issue (on which I am not convinced), it is with the readying, and so probably with Merry, rather than with Aragorn. As far as Merry+Rohan Warhorses go, I have a deck with Eomer/Merry/Boromir (And indeed I originally intended Boromir just to be a placeholder until Tactagorn was released) which once set up has been known to reliably clear the board of enemies every round against Nightmare Seventh Level. It never felt too powerful to me, and I find it hard to believe this is that much better (though a notable difference will be made by including card draw to get the key pieces in play more reliably).

Finally, one of the joys of a co-operative game like LotR is that if you personally feel that something is overpowered, but the designers disagree and therefore don't errata it, you can still feel free to impose your own personal bans. I myself avoid Outlands like the plague unless I want to steamroll quests, mostly avoid serious Dwarf synergy, and make a concerted effort to keep Spirit Glorfindel out of my decks, because I find those things to often be too powerful and/or too easy. I don't expect Tactagorn+readying to make it onto my list of deck combos to avoid, but we each have our own preferences and if you don't like it, don't play it.

Tactigorn gives -1 def to all enemy engage with him so with no equipment Merry + him would kill a 6 points def+life enemy.

Merry + boromir would swing for 4 points (in your deck) not equiped where as Merry + Tactigorn would swing for 6 (not equiped)

And as you mentionned there is some monster at 5-6 points to be taken care of rapidly.

So, yes, the deck is not that powerful, especially because it is so orientated in combat and cannot react well if power questing is needed at one point of time. And yes, one thing that makes it efficient is a swing for 6 + one for 4 (if nothing is played) right from the start.

I think, from reading some comments, that many of the readers think that we are asking for errata for a deck that's simply very strong.

While debating what should be worth errata-ing and what shouldn't would surely deserves its own thread, I think that saying that we need to errata something that makes one or more aspects of the game trivial is a good starting point. What do you people arguing against errata-ing Tactagorn think? Can we agree on this?

Assuming that we can find some some common ground, it remains to be proven that that deck combination is strong to the point of making one aspect of the game (combat) trivial.

Why do I think the aforementioned statement is true?

- Empirical Evidence

1) Direct experience: having witnessed that making tabula rasa of all enemies from round 1 more than once is actually a very convincing argument. Please, consider joining us on OCTGN for a game if you don't believe my claim.

- Reliability

2) It doesn't take time to setup: the combination starts rolling as early as round 1, unlike all the other combinations that boast a similiar power level.

3) It doesn't require many cards to be effective, nor a specific card: this is linked to point nr.2 but it's not just that; not only this deck is quick, it's also very consistent, since not having to rely on the slim chance of drawing a few crucial cards means it will work beautifully 90-95% of the times, and very good all the rest.

3-bis) It boasts an enormous amount of card draw, a large part of which is provided by a Hero (Pippin), meaning that it's always available from the start. This makes it incredibly easy to find all the cards you need.

- Power

4) It is capable of killing virtually every (from a purely numerical standpoint; more on this later) enemy that comes out of the encounter deck, since even with 5-7 revealed cards per round in a 4p game it is not likely, for the vast majority of quests, that there will be more than 4 enemies; to kill 4 enemies only 2 readying effects on Merry are needed. See points 2,3,3bis.

- Effectiveness

5) It works against the vast majority of Quests: with the plethora of quests currently available, every deck has its nemesis - more than just one usually. So saying that there are a few enemies or a few quests that make Tactagorn+Merry deck ineffective is not a valid argument, since the same can be said of *every deck*. It's more a matter of quantifying of many quests are only a few and how many are actually more than just a few.

Quoting Jban himself, the quests this deck will struggle against are Peril in Pelargir, Steward's Fear (not that much if you ask me, but it surely is weaker against those), Seventh Level, Watcher in the Water, The Blood of Gondor (sure, this deck will have to defend as well in that quest but having the ability to kill so many enemies means it's simply not so broken in this case; however it's still more powerful than most other decks), The Three Trials, as PsychoRokca said, and probably a couple others that don't spring to my mind right now (The Battle of Lake-Town requires too specialised of a deck to be counted as an exception for this deck; it is itself an exception).

So, a grand total of 6-8 quests out of ..over 40? Sounds pretty darn effective.

- Focus

6) This deck is not broken solo and much less powerful in 2p (but still crazy strong). This deck doesn't quest very much, if at all. This deck is not so great against quests with lots of locations and few enemies (Hills of Emyn Muil, for example).

However these are all moot points. Why? Because to be broken this deck just has to make trivial one aspect of the game in a specific player mode. It doesn't need to beat solo Nightmare Dol Guldur to need errata (while the opposite is certainly true ). 3-4 players games are part of the LOTR LCG: not the only aspect of it, but surely not one that can be ignored.

Conclusion

I think that if Tactagorn + Merry makes combat trivial in 3-4 players game, then errata is needed. Since plenty of arguments have been shown to prove this, people who reply that there are other card combinations that are broken are not providing useful material for this discussion.

If you think deck X you've built is broken and makes card Y need Errata, I'm fine with it. Post decklist, say why etc. etc.

For example, a Hero such as Loragorn looks incredibily powerful and easily exploitable until you realise building a deck with him that is actually broken is far from easy, if there is one at all. Sometimes things look broken but they are not. In this case, however, we've provided both evidence and arguments. If you think we're wrong, feel free to prove it.

However, apart from a few posters, what I've seen so far are mostly statements not backed by evidence nor by arguments, just generic "i've never tried the deck but it looks like..." "this deck is just as strong if not stronger because there's a guy in it that once in blue moon can kill a Mumak"-like arguments.

I'm afraid with that kind of statments the risk of a "clash of opinions" becomes unavoidable.

To sum it up, what makes this deck broken is its ability to reliably kill all enemies that appear on the board almost immediately and doing so from turn 1.

Furthermore, we should consider the relative aspect of it: the next best combat decks pale in comparison .

If given the choice to play this deck or another combat deck, playing another will mean that, 95% of the times, you're making a clearly suboptimal choice.

I'm obiouvsly free to choose not to play with this deck (as many people do with outlands) if I think it makes the game boring. But then I'm doing something I'm not supposed to do: as a player, my goal is to try my best with what I've been given. In deciding what is too powerful for me to use I'm taking on the designers' role. Sure, I can do without receiving official confirmation that this deck is broken but the best thing would be having the designers take care of the problem. Why? Becuase the people who play this game form a community and I think it should be -and probably is- designers' goal keeping the community unite.

Quoting PocketWraith:

"Finally, one of the joys of a co-operative game like LotR is that if you personally feel that something is overpowered, but the designers disagree and therefore don't errata it, you can still feel free to impose your own personal bans. I myself avoid Outlands like the plague unless I want to steamroll quests, mostly avoid serious Dwarf synergy, and make a concerted effort to keep Spirit Glorfindel out of my decks, because I find those things to often be too powerful and/or too easy. I don't expect Tactagorn+readying to make it onto my list of deck combos to avoid, but we each have our own preferences and if you don't like it, don't play it."

Being a cooperative doesn't mean you play alone. You have to reach an agreement with people you play with if you wan to change the rules, which obviously are the accepted standard.

For example, I don't like playing the Gandalf + Sneak Attack combo because of a lot of reasons.

However, when I build decks for MP, if I have leadership, I also play SA+Gandalf (unless my card draw is abysmal) because otherwise I'll build an inferior deck that could severly limit the chances of victory of my team. In addition to this, when the designers decide how they'll design the new cards for Leadership, they need to keep in mind Leadership is already blessed with SA+Gandalf, so it'll probably get minor bonuses compared to other spheres, otherwise it would become too good. But if I don't play Gandalf, I'll probably have a harder time playing Leadership. Having card that makes other cards obsolete only forces quests to become stronger ("power creep") and, instead of adding to a game's wealth, it subtracts from it since part of the card pool becomes useless.

Point is, if a game is well-done (and I believe this one is), it is balanced under the assumption that it's played "rules as written" . So writing your own set of rules only imbalances the game or makes it even more imbalanced if it was so in the first place.

Having a game that it's cooperative is no good argument to have it be imbalanced. Imbalances make the game boring and harder to enjoy, which is the reason why people play.

As an aside, I'll state again that Merry is the problem, IMO. At ground level, he provides a strong attacker with one extra action and a small-to-medium boost for the first, which is already good. However, being another character means he has two free restricted slots, so he can make use of the Rohan Warhorse without needing to choose between raw power or multiple attacks, which is the dilemma all other Tactics heroes have to face.Furthermore, being a Hobbit, he has access to Fast Hitch.

These things together make a total of 9 (Warhorse, Hitch, Courage) cards providing permanent readying effects available for Merry; his strength is that they immediately translate into an equal amount of extra attacks for your stronger attacker instead of a small Hobbit. Maybe limit his response to 1-2 per round.

Putting aside for the moment the power of Aragorn and the good deck building, let's consider errata for a moment. In general it is not needed in this game because there is no competitive atmosphere. Even the infinite loop decks that get created by the very clever among us don't really need to be errata'ed because they don't hurt anyone. The same situation exists here. Glaurung campaigned for errata against Dain for a long time and nothing (rightfully) happened. It was an undoubtedly a powerful deck but unless the is a competitive meta game there is no need for errata.

My opinion, slag me if you want, but Tactigorn does not need errata.

Is depend what mode to play…. If you play standard who cares .. Nightmare mode need a good decks otherwise you lose! So if you plsy this game long time you eventually mistly move to play Nightmare mode since stanard become to boring for expirienced player( only if you dont play some specific thematic decks and those decks a weaks).

For my experience with this deck, I played half a dozen games with it from 2-4 players.

1/ the deck is crap in solo : please try, you would pass one quest out of 5 at the best. It is very difficult in 2 players mode except if the second deck is pure questing and cancelation

2/ it is not 6-8 quests that the game is not fit to : if you add all the quests where you have ennemis already engaging (the ones you mentionned) + the quests that are orientated to location + rhosghobel + All the quest where you only face one big enemy (durin's bane or the lonely Mountain or other) + all the quests you need to dig into encounter deck to find golum or a sign of him (it?) or whatever you need to find, you will see it is not that many quests where chaingorn can actualy show its true power.

3/ Encountered decks, especially in nightmare, have so many ways to dismiss this combination : there is so many creature with engagement forced effect that are nasty, not to mention condition that can pop on Aragorn (the highest threat hero of this player). And also so many enemy making when reveal attack that the deck is not happy with.

All this to say that I will not deny the power of it, though for me, this deck is far from errata material. The first time, I was faced to the issue was with a Merry + Legolas + rohan warhorse on a 3 players table just after Merry was released. The effect was impressive (another player was playing Brand). Combat was indeed easy and Legolas as usual was sniping every single target, but moving to the next scenario (I cannot remember which one) where we thought that we would pass easily considering our fighting ability, we get stuck and lose it in few turns.

Edit 2 : [for instance the Brand / Merry combination is an infinite way to kill 6 points enemies (def+life points) engaged with the Merry player as combined these 2 heros readies each other. How ever it needs the build of 2 decks just for the purpose of combat (Merry-sam-pippin + Brand-Beregond-x), which is not effective (or efficient)]

Again comparing to other card, I do not see this as broken as Blue mountain trader or Will of the west that created so many changes in how to break the game in creating huge number of loops that the game has not been designed for.

So no errata for Merry for me, but I guess we will have much more encounter card that would make him difficult to work (location : forced : when a character readies it takes one damage if it is not the first time of the round he is readying).

And then, we will have a blue card costing one spirit resource : response : cancel a forced effect of an encountered card for the rest of the phase.

Edited for all language mistakes (there must be plenty others) but be forgiving, english is not my mother language

Limit tactagorn 1 per phase is ok to me. Anyway, no limit is also ok to me.

For me tactagorn is not overpowered. But it is true that, all cards keep the same level so far. I always test decks, even decks with new cards, playing JorneyAnduin. But when i test the tactagorn-hobbits decks, i feel the power of the cards has increased for a new level up.

I think it is not so bad, even it is unavoidable. In fact, i am amazed how designers have kept 3 complete cycles (player cards speaking about) in a same level of difficulty.

@Bullroarer Took

"In general it is not needed in this game because there is no competitive atmosphere. Even the infinite loop decks that get created by the very clever among us don't really need to be errata'ed because they don't hurt anyone."

I understand your claim but I don't agree with it for the reasons I provided above.

By the way, I think Dain is a borderline case. In general, it usually is hard to decide what is broken and what isn't. But I understand what you're saying has nothing to do with how powerful a given deck is, it is more a matter of general guidelines. Still, Master of Lore was errata'd due to the infinite loop he allowed in conjunction with other cards, so the designers do not agree with you on this point: they believe errata is needed in some cases.

What we're arguing is precisely that, since errata is something the designers are willing to consider as an option, Tactagorn+Merry is errata-worthy.

But not slagging you at all.

@Glaurung

Playing thematic decks might allow you to re-scale the difficulty of quests that are too easy played with decks built using the whole card pool. However, part of what makes this game so interesting is the possibility to make attempts at building powerful decks that can crush even the harder quests; this is the deckbuilder's challenge for excellence, and one that is taken away by the need to define our own boundaries when decks become too powerful. A very complex matter to discuss though, and surely one that would deserve its own thread.

@Courchevel

It's not elegant but I'll quote myself since there's no point in writing again things I've already written:

"6) This deck is not broken solo and much less powerful in 2p (but still crazy strong). This deck doesn't quest very much, if at all. This deck is not so great against quests with lots of locations and few enemies (Hills of Emyn Muil, for example).

However these are all moot points. Why? Because to be broken this deck just has to make trivial one aspect of the game [that is, combat] in a specific player mode. It doesn't need to beat solo Nightmare Dol Guldur to need errata (while the opposite is certainly true ). 3-4 players games are part of the LOTR LCG: not the only aspect of it, but surely not one that can be ignored."

If there is not much to fight in a given quest, it's not Tactagorn's fault. Still, having one deck handle all combat leaves the other 3 decks free to focus on other aspects of the game - which usually means you'll have little trouble winning, if those decks were built well.

Quests that count against Tactagorn are those in which other combat decks perform better than Tactagorn. What I'm arguing is that there's only a handful of those, since even the Blood of Gondor is a quest in which this deck will fare a lot better than most other ones - if you don't agree, feel free to provide as an example another deck that can kill 3 6-8 hp enemies in turn 1. A deck that could handle on its own the attacking part in a 4p game right from the start is crazy strong.

Brand + Merry allowing to kill infinite enemies (not just 6-points since you can make use of weapons and other boosts) is just another argument in favor of errata-ing Merry, if you ask me, since it clearly shows Merry is prone to being abused. The fact that it's not efficient doesn't derive from the fact that it requires two decks for combat (if you're playing 4p), it's because Merry-player needs to find a way to engage all enemies and defend them, that is precisely what Tactagorn allows him to do in this deck (by skipping defense or letting others defend some).

I think Brand, Merry, AND Tactigorn should all be limited to once or twice per phase. The more that I think about it, the more that I realize they each contribute pretty strongly to the issue. The amount of readying given by Merry and Brand is what enables most of the attacking numbers, but Tactigorn is what enables you to skip defending. Merry and Brand can kill to their hearts' desire, but you aren't able to eliminate the most dangerous part of the game with them. Even without Brand and Merry, if you can buff Aragorn up enough and get him enough readying, this combo still works, though it requires plenty of setup which can be accelerated in multiplayer.

Let me know how your "ultimate, all-powerful, it breaks the game" deck does against The Master's Malice, then we can talk about errata.

http://hallofbeorn.com/Cards/Details/The-Master's-Malice-HoN

Let me know how your "ultimate, all-powerful, it breaks the game" deck does against The Master's Malice, then we can talk about errata.

http://hallofbeorn.com/Cards/Details/The-Master's-Malice-HoN

Seriously?