I don't think in a cooperative game it makes too much sense of talking about too powerful cards.

Nevertheless, I think Steward is the best of its class.

@Emilius the best I can say is go ahead with your house rules, try them and see how it feels, as long as all the players in the table are happy with them it is fine.

i think changing Steward of Gondor from Action to Refresh Action is a good change

if it were reduced to 1 resource per turn, it would need some other change probably.

Warden of Healing, just take away the ability to ready him altogether. exhaust for 2 healing (spread around) per round at 2 cost is already good, especially since Elrond can double it, and if you find other ways to ready him, you can do that. the built-in readying wasn't really necessary since it had no upper limit

i think once per phase on Boromir is effectively once per round anyway, so i can't say for sure which one i'd prefer, but either one of those probably should have been in place from the beginning. i think they overvalued how much having threat was, especially now that we have valour cards and Blessing of the Valar (and other threat reducers of course) that make you want to get to 40+ threat as quickly as possible and have the means to stay there for a while

Once per phase on Boromir is definitely NOT once per round anyway. Not the way I use him.

23 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

2% is high. 15% between 47 and 56 is insane. And when you will do the math about probability to get multiple cards (like a combo of two cards, or the 3 cards you need the most) the difference will continue to grow. So those cards make every efficiency build do look the same. It is not interesting on a game.

2% isn't high -- it's trivial. To put in perspective, if you have a 47-card deck and a 50-card deck, both wanting a single card of a 3x in your pre-mulligan hand, and you play all the non-saga quests from all six complete cycles once, you'd save yourself on average -- one mulligan.

And it wasn't 15% between 47 and 56, it was 5%. That'd save you about *two* mulligans over the 54 quests, maybe three if you're lucky.

Still, that's just the pre-mulligan hand. If you move to the more reasonable question of "how often will this appear in my initial hand, if I mulligan for it?", Tales from the Cards did a probability chart showing (for a 3x card) 57% for a 50-card deck, 56% for a 52-card deck, 54% for a 54-card deck, 50% for a 60-card deck, and 45% for a 70-card deck -- a 3x in a *70* card deck is more likely to be in your opening hand than a 2x in a 50-card deck, and beginning players only start with two copies of Steward of Gondor.

As Seastan pointed out, even though DR is a cycler it actually cycles two cards, making for an effective 43-card deck. So how much does DR improve the odds for a 3x compared to a normal 50-card deck?

If you mulligan for it, both obviously have the same 57% chance of having at least one copy of the 3x card in it. In the 43% failure case, there's about 30% chance of having one DR, 12% of two DR, and 1% of three DR. Playing one DR lets you look at two more cards (14% hit), two DR lets you look at four more cards (26% hit), three DR lets you look at six more cards (33% hit) -- so all in all, complementing mulligan with DR improves your odds of getting at least one of a critical 3x from 57% to 65% -- that's statistically significant, you'd expect to start with your preferred card in *four* more quests -- out of 54.

This understates the usefulness of DR, especially in a case where your 3x card is unique and you'd love to toss some copies. But game breaking it's not. If you want the most efficient deck possible you'll always have DR in a Lore deck, but not having it isn't a death sentence, and over 90% of the time it isn't going to be the difference between having your key card in your opening hand or not. If including it in a deck makes the deck uninteresting for you, is the small increase in efficiency really worth it?

If you absolutely, positively have to have a card ASAP, Thurindir and a single copy of Gather Information is your best bet.

Now it is true that we're talking probabilites of a single card, rather than a two card combo. Since the probabilities multiply, the bigger deck will lose ground quicker, relatively speaking -- but because we're talking about a two-card combo, the odds get brutal in a hurry -- most of the time, you *aren't* going to have the two-card combo in your starting hand, regardless of cyclers or staying at the 50-card minimum.

This discussion intrigued me so I wrote up a quick simulation that would play 100,000 games with various draw cards in the deck, with the goal of finding a copy of a card (say, Steward), in a 50 card deck after an optional mulligan. Here are the results:

WanI = We are not Idle

DR = Daeron's Runes

UF = Unlikely Friendship

Mirkwood Pioneer is too OP, nerf please.

Thank you guys for your thoughts.

you guys for your thoughts. I am looking forward to the following changes to my next games, to try out how they work.

Regarding Boromir: I have played him with the nerfed ability.

IMO is better with the "limit once per phase".

Most of characters in the game have a limitation on their ability: limit once per phase or limit once per round:

i.e., the following heroes:

Glorfindel lore

Beravor

Frodo Baggins

Prince Imrahil

Bifur

Eomer

Grima

Haldir of Lorien

Mablung

Galadriel

Denethor

Argaland

Prince Imrahil tactic

Gimli leadership

Legolas spirit

Kahliel

Fastred

Quickbeam

Faramir leadership

Beregond spirit

Aragorn fellowship

All these heroes and a great number of allies are limited in their actions during each phase or round.

Boromir doesn't.

So he is too powerful.

The point is that there are hundreds of ways to reduce the player's threat. So, imo, the possibility to use a character's ability many and many times in a round is broken...

I am quite surprised not to see the real power cards of the game in your comments. For me, the cards that could need some nerfs are the cards that allows abuse on card drawing. Because card draw effects enable all other abuses.

On the top of my list to be nerfed there is :

Erestor (heros of course)

I disagree. Card drawing is not specific, it is only one of the effects that should be watched in order to balance well all the resource costs (not only resources from hero, threat or cards in your deck can be payed as well with deep knowledge or daeron rune for example).

For example I found Denethor II and legacy of numenor more problematic than Erestor.

When you drive your car and a song you hate plays on the radio, you just change the channel.

When you play LOTR LCG and a card you hate exists, you just don't play the card.

I fail to see why this often turns into complaints or discussions... or why we never hear about encounter cards that are too powerful...

3 hours ago, Lecitadin said:

or why we never hear about encounter cards that are too powerful...

Not particularly bothered about getting into the rest of the argument, but we absolutely do hear about encounter cards that are too powerful, it's just people tend to use different words. The principle is the same though, cards like Sleeping Sentry, Sudden Pitfall, Watcher in the Wood etc do too much for a single card and disrupt the balance of the game.

6 hours ago, Lecitadin said:

When you drive your car and a song you hate plays on the radio, you just change the channel.

When you play LOTR LCG and a card you hate exists, you just don't play the card.

I fail to see why this often turns into complaints or discussions... or why we never hear about encounter cards that are too powerful...

Because important cards like this create an environment. Because of Asfaloth there is almost no longer location with 2 progress needed. Because of Gandalf most enemies have 5 HP or more.

If you want to play the hardest quests you will need to have optimized decks. And they always play a lot of cards in common. I deal with it pretty easily but it restraint creation space of the game. If the cards are better balanced hardest quests will be more easy and we will be able to play against them more different decks. Doesn't sound better this way?

17 minutes ago, Rouxxor said:

Because important cards like this create an environment. Because of Asfaloth there is almost no longer location with 2 progress needed. Because of Gandalf most enemies have 5 HP or more.

If you want to play the hardest quests you will need to have optimized decks. And they always play a lot of cards in common. I deal with it pretty easily but it restraint creation space of the game. If the cards are better balanced hardest quests will be more easy and we will be able to play against them more different decks. Doesn't sound better this way?

Yep, I see your point. And I stand corrected!

On 8/21/2017 at 7:17 PM, Rouxxor said:

Because important cards like this create an environment. Because of Asfaloth there is almost no longer location with 2 progress needed. Because of Gandalf most enemies have 5 HP or more.

If you want to play the hardest quests you will need to have optimized decks. And they always play a lot of cards in common. I deal with it pretty easily but it restraint creation space of the game. If the cards are better balanced hardest quests will be more easy and we will be able to play against them more different decks. Doesn't sound better this way?

Asfaloth came out in Foundations of Stone, Gandalf in the core set. If we accept the premise that quests are harder because of the existence of Asfaloth/Gandalf, the vast majority of content released has already been affected by it. It's too late to make those quests easier, and nerfing either would make those quests harder.

Here's the count of 1-2 progress locations by cycle, ignoring immune ones and ones that can't have progress placed in staging (or increase their quest points in staging):

Core/Mirkwood: 17

KD/Dwarrowdelf: 6 (1 after Asfaloth)

HN/AtS: 7

VoI/Ringmaker: 5

LR/Angmar: 4

GH/Dreamchaser: 3

SH/Haradrim: 5 (so far)

Hobbit: 4

LOTR: 12 (so far)

POD: 10 (so far)

So the perception that 1-2 progress locations came to a crashing halt after Asfaloth is correct. Cause and effect? Perhaps. But lots of things got tougher after the Mirkwood cycle. Core set came with Snowbourn Scout, placing only one progress as a one-time effect. Asfaloth with Glorfindel (and pretty much everyone only plays it with Glorfindel) doesn't care if a location has 1 or 2 quest points. What's the count of 1-progress locations (that can have progress placed in staging, that could be cleared by the humble Snowbourn Scout?

Mirkwood: 4

Dwarrowdelf: 0

Numenor: 0

Ringmaker: 1

Angmar: 0

Dreamchaser: 0

Harad: 0 (so far)

Hobbit: 3

LOTR: 2 (so far)

POD: 1 (so far)

Scout's been nerfed worse than Asfaloth -- in the main cycles, since Mirkwood only one card (the self-clearing Tharbad Hideout) can be cleared by it. This can't be explained by Asfaloth.

Gandalf came out in the core set, so *every* quest was designed knowing that Gandalf can kill 4-hp-or-less non-immune enemies. The very real power creep in enemies can't be blamed on him. Here's how the ratio has changed between 4-hp (non-immune/toughness) enemies and 5-hp (non-immune/toughness) enemies:

Mirkwood: 2/2

Dwarrowdelf: 7/2

Numenor: 3/11

Ringmaker: 7/8

Angmar: 4/6

Dreamchaser: 10/8

Harad: 5/5 (so far)

Hobbit: 2/3

LOTR: 10/14 (so far)

POD: 6/7

As you can see, the ratio from Mirkwood isn't out of line with later cycles, but the raw count of 4-5 hp enemies is much lower than other cycles. I don't think we're seeing a Gandalf effect at all, just inflation of enemy HP since the beginning of the game.

It's a fair point that a more balanced card pool would lead to more uniform power levels, but producing a more balanced pool by reducing the power of more powerful cards would change it from a situation of "you need more powerful cards to beat tough quests" to "you can't beat tough quests". If decks without staples can't beat a quest, weakening staples won't help that. There's only two possible cures:

1) Release *easier* quests, so a wider variety of decks can built.

2) Release *more powerful cards*, so a wider variety of decks at a high power level can be built.

To be fair, I think #2 is what the designers are trying to do, to create cards that are as powerful as existing staples *within a narrow context*. Asfaloth itself is an example of such an effect, it is really only powerful in a Glorfindel deck. The same could be said for Vilya or Mirror of Galadriel. The more overpowered-but-narrow cards exist, the larger the variety of overpowered decks can be constructed.

Meanwhile, with few exceptions most staples are found in the Core Set, which is where generally-useful-and-powerful cards really *should* be. The problem with the core set isn't with the cards that remain useful in every deck, it's the cards that weren't generally useful even with only the core set, and that become entrenched in the binder once the card pool fills out.

On 21/8/2017 at 11:45 AM, Emilius said:

Regarding Boromir: I have played him with the nerfed ability.

IMO is better with the "limit once per phase".

Most of characters in the game have a limitation on their ability: limit once per phase or limit once per round:

i.e., the following heroes:

Glorfindel lore

Beravor

Frodo Baggins

Prince Imrahil

Bifur

Eomer

Grima

Haldir of Lorien

Mablung

Galadriel

Denethor

Argaland

Prince Imrahil tactic

Gimli leadership

Legolas spirit

Kahliel

Fastred

Quickbeam

Faramir leadership

Beregond spirit

Aragorn fellowship

All these heroes and a great number of allies are limited in their actions during each phase or round.

Boromir doesn't.

So he is too powerful.

The point is that there are hundreds of ways to reduce the player's threat. So, imo, the possibility to use a character's ability many and many times in a round is broken...

So I was right and playing the correct Boromir in the last months

?

1 hour ago, Emilius said:

So I was right and playing the correct Boromir in the last months

?

I'll eat my hat if anyone (NOT IN THE KNOW) has been playing the correct Hama…

30 minutes ago, sappidus said:

I'll eat my hat if anyone (NOT IN THE KNOW) has been playing the correct Hama…

What kind of hat do you have...

31 minutes ago, Bullroarer Took said:

What kind of hat do you have...

A cake hat! Made of cake!

When people start talking about nerfing cards it's usually because they haven't played the nightmare editions. That's your real solution to "OP" cards.

On 8/21/2017 at 0:28 PM, Lecitadin said:

When you drive your car and a song you hate plays on the radio, you just change the channel.

When you play LOTR LCG and a card you hate exists, you just don't play the card.

I fail to see why this often turns into complaints or discussions... or why we never hear about encounter cards that are too powerful...

Because this is a masochistic community of players.

And Mirkwood Pioneer is still not erratta'd to this very day...

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 0:28 PM, Lecitadin said:

When you play LOTR LCG and a card you hate exists, you just don't play the card.

If playing alone, this holds true even when it's an Encounter card. "Oh, this card again? I must not have shuffled well enough. I'll just put it back, shuffle, and try again."

...not that I've done this, mind. >_>

<nonchalant whistling>