What's wrong with Steward of Gondor?

Nothing, really. In most conditions it is the best card for resources acceleration, and some people don't like it, just that.

Please, don't hijack the thread, you can find plenty of discussions about this card in these forums.

inb4 'please don't hijack threads by telling people not to hijack threads by answering off-topic questions and then telling them not to hijack threads'

Curious, Does anybody else strongly suspect that LOTR:LCG 2nd edition is right around the corner? Here is my reasoning:

1. Rings is the the last original LCG still standing after Thrones 1st ed. went down a couple years ago.

2. The last LOTR source material saga box is supposedly going to be announced at any time (I"m a little surprised at how long the announcement is taking).

3. The size of the card pool and scenario difficulty curve have reached a point where it has gotten very difficult for new players to jump in and play the latest expansions.

4. Even the condensed FAQ is like 20 pages long at this point.

5. They've been fairly quiet for a while now, not withstanding the release of Sands of Harad... as if they are working on something big?

My Prediction: Gen Con 2017 announces LOTR:LCG 2nd edition!

I for one would welcome it. There are a lot of substandard card designs (*cough, cough... Steward of Gondor...cough*) and clunky mechanics (*4 players, 1 active location anyone?,) that could be learned from and perfected in a second edition. LOTR:LCG was an experiment that succeeded greatly, and we can already see some lessons learned applied to the design of the new Lovecraft LCG. They've had a chance to experiment with A LOT of game mechanics that could be incorporated into the base game or set up for similar scenario mechanics with more finesse. I also look at how much better designed and more thematic just about every nightmare deck is over it's early cycle predecessors.

Discuss

Hey, just getting in to the game with my buddies. Just starting to look here (been on the Armada forum for a handful of time).

What's wrong with Steward of Gondor?

People think it's too powerful. It's so good at resource acceleration that nearly every deck should include it, and it feels like later quests are designed assuming players have it. It's not a good design when a card game with several thousand cards is designed around just one.

I think a 2nd Edition isn't a bad idea, but not in the sense of what they did with A Game of Thrones (AGoT). I definitely don't think they should obsolete anything that is "1st edition" LOTR LCG, but bring in some fresh new (and "old") ideas. I have been seeing discussion on this community forum about adding Havens and positive/neutral locations, a game mechanic that is (was) used by a card game called Middle Earth Collectible Card Game (MECCG). Anyone not familiar with MECCG can search the internet for the history and game mechanics, but it is (was) a really cool game. Production of the game was a mere four years (1995-1999) and was cut short because the company producing the game filed for bankruptcy and ended up losing all their LotR and Hobbit licenses.

The "1st edition" LOTR LCG is probably considered a Player VS Environment (PVE) aspect. Maybe introducing a "2nd edition" can introduce a Player VS Player (PVP) aspect that utilizes new "2nd edition" cards (locations, hazard card play, etc), but also utilizes most (if not all) "1st edition" player cards. The "1st edition" can still continue to be developed with new cycles and what not, but then a fresh aspect to the game can also be developed.

Welp. Sorry for asking. It WAS brought up in the original post...

Even a search of "steward of gondor" on the forum doesn't yield any discussion about it...

I'll move on. Thanks for the answer.

I don't think we're getting a second edition this year.

Me neither. We are too close for the actual release of pack. If there is a 2nd edition there will be nothing (or almost) printed after the announcement.

No mention of anything related to LotR LCG during the 2017 FFG In-flight report.

Caleb mentioned at Gen Con when someone asked that he doesn't see a need for any kind of second edition. Because it's not a competitive game, there's really no need, and it would also cramp the game's design space, after so much effort was already put into the original design. What would they do... Go back and start at Mirkwood all over again? Design a second-best test of will or steward of Gondor? That sounds like a wasted opportunity and not the best marketing pitch.

I hope they never do a second edition, but that they just keep going. Harad is a good place for newer players to jump in. A large reason why I stopped playing Decipher's LOTR TCG after a number of years was because they basically created a second edition that required new cards and substantial new investment to stay competitive. Again, since this isn't a competitive game, I don't think they'd have the marketing power to pull it off, even if they wanted to do it.

If anyone has watched the whole video, is there any lotr lcg on here? If so do you know what time around? In work and tried skimming through but didn't see it

Twicebornh says there is not LoTR LCG in the video so I think you have both right and there is no need of a third person to look at ^^

This is from the LoTR LCG reddit page. https://www.reddit.com/r/lotrlcg/comments/6umn64/regarding_the_future_of_the_game/

Sounds positive!

8 hours ago, Eldandil said:

Caleb mentioned at Gen Con when someone asked that he doesn't see a need for any kind of second edition. Because it's not a competitive game, there's really no need, and it would also cramp the game's design space, after so much effort was already put into the original design. What would they do... Go back and start at Mirkwood all over again? Design a second-best test of will or steward of Gondor? That sounds like a wasted opportunity and not the best marketing pitch.

I hope they never do a second edition, but that they just keep going. Harad is a good place for newer players to jump in. A large reason why I stopped playing Decipher's LOTR TCG after a number of years was because they basically created a second edition that required new cards and substantial new investment to stay competitive. Again, since this isn't a competitive game, I don't think they'd have the marketing power to pull it off, even if they wanted to do it.

My impression of the last two cycles is that they are designing each cycle to be played in a satisfying way with the core set and that cycle only, instead of relying of all the previous card pool. In this way you don't have to buy the whole huge amount of expansions to be "competitive".

It's great to hear that the game keeps going!

I wonder why don't make "Big Box" editions of the cycles...it would make it easier for both consumers and retailers (since they'd only have to stock one product per past cycle). Guess the only one "losing" would be FFG with extra production expenses, but it might drive sales of the old cycles to compensate for that...