3 hours ago, Teamjimby said:

Fireside Song is another great example. You have the huge restriction of needing both Songs and Hobbits, but most likely it will only be as good as a Celebrian's Stone. If it cost 1 or did something else, that would be totally playable in the right deck, like it's supposed to be.

I've had success with Fireside Song, especially playing Shelob's Lair in campaign mode with a thematic Frodo/Sam/Galadriel deck: the only allies it contains are Core Gandalf and Elrond, and I avoid having them attack or do damage. Not having allies was not a problem once Sam was questing for 6+; he finished one playthrough with 6 songs on him (I was proxying Song of Hope, and Sam had four resource icons from different songs; Resourceful meant he could pay for anything I drew). Permanent willpower boosts in a non-swarm deck (where Sword that was Broken and Faramir are less useful) are rare in the game: Celebrían's Stone is unique, Strider (which I was playing, not counting Frodo towards the 2 hero limit) has significant restrictions, and other options don't boost a character's willpower by more than 1.

There aren't many great songs that can attach to Hobbit heroes, but when the neutral song attachments provide +1 willpower on top of access to additional spheres and resource smoothing, they're quite good. With Mirror of Galadriel and Silver Harp to tutor, I included two copies of Song of Battle to provide access to a useful card like Dagger of Westernesse (my only Tactics card, with 2 copies). I certainly don't think Fireside Song is overpowered, but it is the key card that provided enough willpower to recreate Frodo and Sam's tiny fellowship and still beat a challenging quest (Sting and Phial of Galdriel also helped). I haven't tested it fully, but it should also help for beating Shadow of the Past without killing any Nazgûl (using Frodo/Sam/Spirit Pippin, with Out of Sight and Hobbit Sense).

I did have Greenwood Archer appear during a combat phase A Very Good Tale-ing last night, which was a very nice way to add 5 attack to my Silvan deck's field when the Ringwraiths were starting to mount up.

If we are talking about powerful cards from the cycle, how has no one mentioned Hunting Party yet? Only 1 resource to discard most Trolls or Mumaks? Yes, please! Having trouble with that darn Wraith on Wings during The Battle of the Pelennor Fields? Now you can send him straight to the victory display. Debating how you are going to deal with that Corsair Warship? Once again, BOOM! Straight to the Victory Display.

Of course you also have to reveal an additional encounter card, but there are many quests with non unique enemies that are significantly more awful than the average encounter card. And you can wait to use it - you don't need to save up a resource to play it as the enemy is revealed. You can keep that big dumb high engagement enemy sitting in the staging area for a while, and when you are worried about having to engage it, swap it out for another encounter card that is likely much nicer. Hunting Party rules.

Fair enough, Hunting Party can be good for certain quests. Although it discards the enemies (instead of defeating), so they don't go to the victory display.

1 hour ago, Teamjimby said:

Fair enough, Hunting Party can be good for certain quests. Although it discards the enemies (instead of defeating), so they don't go to the victory display.

Hmmm yeah, I think you might be right. Otherwise Saruman ally would remove victory point cards from the game permanently. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't gone in the FAQ yet since the blurb in the rulebook seems pretty ambiguous to me.

That's got me wondering how many non-unique, non-immune enemies have victory points. Here's the list:

Core: Hummerhorns (1), Hill Troll (2), Marsh Adder (1), Chieftain Ufthak (1), Dungeon Jailor (2)

Khazad-Dum/Dwarrowdelf: Cave-Troll (2), Great High-Troll (2), Elder Nameless Thing (3), Nameless Thing (5)

HofN/ATS: Lt of Mordor (1), Black Numenorean (1)

Isengard/Ringmaker: Mugash's Guard (3*)

Lost Realm/Angmar: none

Havens/Dreamchasher: none

Harad/Haradrim: none yet

saga before Flame of West: none

Flame of West: War Mumak (2), Wraith on Wings (4*)

Upcoming still has it "On the Boat". Curious, but not unheard of.

2 hours ago, Bullroarer Took said:

Upcoming still has it "On the Boat". Curious, but not unheard of.

Looks like they took out the date that was in the original version of the article. I'm guessing it was simply a mistake.

1 hour ago, sappidus said:

Looks like they took out the date that was in the original version of the article. I'm guessing it was simply a mistake.

Oh wow, good catch on them changing the article text! I guess we'll have to wait a little longer.

On Mon Jun 26 2017 at 11:14 PM, Authraw said:

Oh wow, good catch on them changing the article text! I guess we'll have to wait a little longer.

I'll use Beregond's two resources to play Wait No Longer! The pack should arrive very soon.

If it only worked that way.

On 6/21/2017 at 4:42 PM, dalestephenson said:

If only Love of Tales hadn't received errata!

Errata in a cooperative game with no OP support is meaningless. The only person affected by that is the person (or persons) who chooses to employ it into his games.

Where are the spoilahs?

5 hours ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

Errata in a cooperative game with no OP support is meaningless. The only person affected by that is the person (or persons) who chooses to employ it into his games.

For a solo player this is certainly true, however there's two cases where errata is not meaningless:

1) When playing with others the others may not ignore errata. This may affect the deck you wish to play.

2) When sharing decklists with other players online -- if a pre-errata card is important to it, the decklist will not be useful to the vast majority of players that don't ignore errata.

Of course, this also means that already published decks are affected by new errata. In the case of Love of Tales this affected few decks, in the case of Master of Lore the card received errata quickly enough that it also affected few decks. The Horn of Gondor errata affected many, many decks that were already published, including probably every Eagle deck that had been made to that point.

Although I normally agree that ignoring errata is a sensible choice, it does mean that you have to constantly evaluate whether new cards, designed under the assumption of the errata, break when using the old rules. Probably the major challenge for the old Horn of Gondor rules is Tactics Imrahil. We play Horn of Gondor by the old rules, and Tactics Imrahil is a bit silly with it.

Response: When an enemy is added to the staging area, exhaust Horn of Gondor to add a resource to the hero resource pool.

That is how Horn of Gondor should have been errated from the very begining.

I like that one better than the current errata.

17 hours ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

Errata in a cooperative game with no OP support is meaningless. The only person affected by that is the person (or persons) who chooses to employ it into his games.

This is a non sequitor. Even in solo play it's not meaningless. It's only meaningless to the subset of players that only play solo and choose to never employ any errata. That's a much weaker statement.

And I'd suggest to anyone in that camp to take a look at the errata anyway. Like many others I think certian rulings could have been better, but in some cases, such as the Zigil Miner, it takes an outright broken card and turns it into a card that is not only balanced, but really fun.

If errata in a co-op game is meaningless, so is any other rule in that game. Errata are just new rulings added to the game, you can choose not to follow them but they basically prescript the most balanced and non-broken way the game should be played, just like the rule that says you draw 1 encounter card per player during the quest phase.

The only player card errata I think were really badly done are Horn of Gondor and Master of Lore.

8 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

The only player card errata I think were really badly done are Horn of Gondor and Master of Lore.

Frankly, as a player that came in after those errata, I don't even think that those errata were done poorly.

In my opinion, neither card is unplayable now, they just aren't top-tier powerhouses. I find both of them useful in the right circumstances.

Horn of Gondor isn't unplayable now, but it's *not* nearly as useful in hundreds of published decks (including a second breakfast by the game's designer) . Introducing a new card that doesn't exhaust and rewards for chump blocking I wouldn't have an issue with. Changing the existing card so it exhausts I could understand, even though it would makes the card marginally less useful. Changing the existing card so it works *differently* is a problem; it also specifically works much less well with the two tribal traits that are most developed in the first cycle of the game (Eagles, Rohan). The only saving grace is that as a 1x card in the core set, it was not common enough to be essential for new players anyway.

I don't find Master of Lore useful in the right circumstances; I've put in a mono-lore deck, but not because I have any illusions that it's worth it. Master of Lore takes a minimum of three turns to pay for itself, for a fragile ally with no other special abilities -- that's not good value even if you have a steady stream of 2+ cost itself. The *original* master of Lore wasn't a "top-tier powerhouse" because it only reduces to a minimum cost of one, it could be worth it in the right deck but was only "broken" when combined with an actual resource generator that *didn't* exhaust, the aforementioned pre-errata Horn of Gondor. If the designers had done the right errata for Horn of Gondor then, or even the wrong errata that they would later do when a different broken deck was invented, there would've been no need for the Master of Lore nerf.

4 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

Horn of Gondor isn't unplayable now, but it's *not* nearly as useful in hundreds of published decks (including a second breakfast by the game's designer) . Introducing a new card that doesn't exhaust and rewards for chump blocking I wouldn't have an issue with. Changing the existing card so it exhausts I could understand, even though it would makes the card marginally less useful. Changing the existing card so it works *differently* is a problem; it also specifically works much less well with the two tribal traits that are most developed in the first cycle of the game (Eagles, Rohan). The only saving grace is that as a 1x card in the core set, it was not common enough to be essential for new players anyway.

I don't find Master of Lore useful in the right circumstances; I've put in a mono-lore deck, but not because I have any illusions that it's worth it. Master of Lore takes a minimum of three turns to pay for itself, for a fragile ally with no other special abilities -- that's not good value even if you have a steady stream of 2+ cost itself. The *original* master of Lore wasn't a "top-tier powerhouse" because it only reduces to a minimum cost of one, it could be worth it in the right deck but was only "broken" when combined with an actual resource generator that *didn't* exhaust, the aforementioned pre-errata Horn of Gondor. If the designers had done the right errata for Horn of Gondor then, or even the wrong errata that they would later do when a different broken deck was invented, there would've been no need for the Master of Lore nerf.

Not saying that the way things ended up couldn't have been handled better from a historical perspective. But as I said, my perspective is post errata. I didn't have the experience of having hundreds of decks invalidated. If I had, maybe I'd think the errata was wrong too. But I didn't. And as I said, I don't see a problem with it.

As far as master of lore goes, Warden of arnor has used the card productively in his progression series. Or pair it with Grima, where it pays for itself the turn after you've played it.

2 hours ago, Onidsen said:

Not saying that the way things ended up couldn't have been handled better from a historical perspective. But as I said, my perspective is post errata. I didn't have the experience of having hundreds of decks invalidated. If I had, maybe I'd think the errata was wrong too. But I didn't. And as I said, I don't see a problem with it.

As far as master of lore goes, Warden of arnor has used the card productively in his progression series. Or pair it with Grima, where it pays for itself the turn after you've played it.

Cost reduction doesn't work like that. When you spend Grima's reduction on a MoL, you are giving up a reduction you could have used on another card.

3 minutes ago, Seastan said:

Cost reduction doesn't work like that. When you spend Grima's reduction on a MoL, you are giving up a reduction you could have used on another card.

Fair enough. That's a good point. I'll own my mistake there.

Ancillary to my overall point - which was meant to be (I may have gotten sidetracked) that I don't have a problem with the errata of MoL. Doesn't even mean that I couldn't think of ways they could have done it better - just that I don't have an issue with it as it currently stands. YMMV