3 hours ago, GILLIES291 said:

Has anyone tried a progression style Carn Dum with the new Burning Brand and/or Boromir rules? Same question for Black Gate Opens and Mount Doom.

@Seastan has beaten Carn Dûm with only the adventure Pack, Lost Realm and a single Core Set, albeit in easy mode.

4 hours ago, GILLIES291 said:

Has anyone tried a progression style Carn Dum with the new Burning Brand and/or Boromir rules? Same question for Black Gate Opens and Mount Doom.

Yes. There are more ways of beating Carn Dum than Boromir with Burning Brand, they're just not as obvious.

And yet, progression style Carn Dum is a walk in the park compared to progression style (solo) Escape from Dol Guldur, so is the issue here really Burning Brand? Some quests are just incredibly difficult, and I don't see the problem with that. Not every quest should be designed such that a casual player can beat it after a couple tries. If they were, there'd be no point in having an easy mode.

For Carn Dum it totally is, Burning Brand is essential and we played it dozens of times with different decks and the only thing that worked for us with our card pool was Boromir and Burning Brand. I would be very curious to see what progression decks you think can have a reasonable chance at beating it without Burning Brand.

And my point is that both of those things are solid choices to take on some of the hardest scenarios in the game so they can actually be beat by casual players. Especially when people such as yourself who has been playing longer used those cards for the same quest at some point as well.

If your reasoning is there are hard quests and they shouldn't be possible to beat unless played on easy mode or with a specific card combination/deck build that's not a great answer and kills the fun for many of us.

You can always impose yourself the challenge of building decks without certain powerful cards like SoG, ABB, AToW, UC...( I myself avoid SoG as much as possible), while other players may have fun using them always. In this situation both sort of players are happy.

If you start adding erratas and forcing them by reprinting the cads, you eliminate one of the above two options and frustrate a group of players. Needed? Worth it?

33 minutes ago, Yepesnopes said:

You can always impose yourself the challenge of building decks without certain powerful cards like SoG, ABB, AToW, UC...( I myself avoid SoG as much as possible), while other players may have fun using them always. In this situation both sort of players are happy.

If you start adding erratas and forcing them by reprinting the cads, you eliminate one of the above two options and frustrate a group of players. Needed? Worth it?

Yes. Both needed and worth it.

Because overpowered cards are unhealthy for the game, regardless of whether or not it is competitive. Just by existing, they warp the meta and restrict the design space.

Errata to op cards relieves those restrictions. It makes it possible for the designers to build new cards in the space that got opened up. Burning brand made it so that almost no lore shadow management was ever possible again. It also made it so that no powerful lore defender could ever be released, because the combo was too powerful. When used, it often completely trivialized the entire combat phase.

Now, there's room for other lore shadow management, and even room for a pretty good lore defender. The game is now better.

Legacy of Durin allowed infinite card draw. By its very nature, unlimited effects are unbalanced and will eventually find themselves part of an infinite loop.

I'm not saying that all the errata that's ever been done has been right, but I think errata for op cards is important, even in a coop game

1 hour ago, GILLIES291 said:

For Carn Dum it totally is, Burning Brand is essential and we played it dozens of times with different decks and the only thing that worked for us with our card pool was Boromir and Burning Brand.

But logically this doesn't follow. If I am unable to win without X, it does not prove X is essential to victory, as it may be possible to win with some Y which I have not tried.

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I would be very curious to see what progression decks you think can have a reasonable chance at beating it without Burning Brand.

I was able to beat this quest in easy mode using only player cards a single Core Set, The Lost Realm, and the Carn Dum AP. The deck and video are here. This is obviously way more restrictive than true progression mode, which would grant me access to almost 5 full cycles of player cards. I am quite certain that with all those options I could improve the deck to the point where it can handle standard difficulty.

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And my point is that both of those things are solid choices to take on some of the hardest scenarios in the game so they can actually be beat by casual players.
...
If your reasoning is there are hard quests and they shouldn't be possible to beat unless played on easy mode or with a specific card combination/deck build that's not a great answer and kills the fun for many of us. 

Why must every quest in this game beatable by a casual player with a limited cardpool at the standard difficulty, when that's the exact use case that easy mode was made for?

Does psychological toll of knowing you're playing on "easy" mode take the the fun away for you? I'm sorry if this is the case. But if the game were such that every quest, at normal difficulty, could be handily beaten by a casual player with a limited cardpool, it would take away the fun for many, many more people. People that would be left wondering why FFG went to the trouble of printing gold rings on certain encounter cards, since no one ever needs to take them out.

Again, why all this angst over a single quest? There are over 100 other quests that are not Carn Dum. Some of them are so easy that I get no enjoyment out of playing them. But I don't complain about them. I don't try to argue that player cards should be weaker so that those quests can be played at a difficulty level that I find fun. I just accept that with over 100 quests, not all of them are going to be my cup of tea. So ignore them and play a quest I enjoy. Which is easy because again, there are over 100 of them.

6 hours ago, Onidsen said:

The game is now better.

This is totally false. The true statement is the following: The game is now better FOR YOU.

I am glad you feel like this, and that you have found a way to justify the erratas. I am sure there are others that feel the game is better now, but there are other who feel the game is worse now, and it is every time erratas appear.

At least in something we agree, I also think that not all the errata that's ever been done has been right

Jokes apart, I also understand that some erratas were needed. Like Horn of Gondor that would make Silvan decks unplayable. But man, they fail badly with this errata.

This weekend we started playind The Voice of Isengard. It is a **** of a cicle in multiplayer. We were playing with Erkenbrand as main defender to asses the impact of the new errata on A Burning Brand. It was really tough but we managed so far until the Dunland Trap. I wonder though how one would beat those scenarios if Unexpected Courage would get errated, specially the Dunland Trap.

I an sure one can make specific decks for each scenario, but most people don’t have the time for that. I think that is a playing style that should be left for nughtmare mode only.

On 5/4/2019 at 1:23 PM, Onidsen said:

Heh, great minds think alike. I like one more than the number of players, just to make it more worthwhile in solo, but your version is perfectly serviceable.

I like your version better or else in solo Rhovanion Outrider would just be a better and cheaper norther tracker. At least with your restriction the extra cost would be somewhat justified , and as a new player that thinks that sometimes the game is too hard... I actually dont mind that rule on northern tracker. I remember when playing Journey down the Aduin (however you spell it lol) all location build ups would just get nuked by this guy and make locations trivial. With x being 1 more than the number of players he's still great and would get the players involved (mentally active) in where they should place progress tokens if there are too many of them.

On 6/17/2019 at 3:55 PM, Yepesnopes said:

Who is up to the challenge of making a deck that abuses Elvenking + Galadhrim Weaver to recur infinitely an event like Light the beacons?

or sneak attack for gandalf, and its perfect seeing as the event is in sphere! I'm already building a deck for this to enjoy before the errata lol

Courtesy of @feelyat in the CotR Discord… Thrór's Map in the latest reprint:

What's next? Spirit Glorfinsel threat cost 12?

We only have 1 year of new content, do we really need new erratas? Do the developers really need to spend their little time doing this??

Fantastic sideboard card reduced to a questionable sideboard card. Why do the designers hate new progression players so?

Strider's Path isn't strictly better than Thror's Map with this revision, but it's close. And having a unique symbol on a disposable attachment seems pretty pointless.

Thror’s Key just got a whole lot better.

24 minutes ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

Thror’s Key just got a whole lot better.

At this pace, even Spirit Pippin will eventually get a lot better...

My copy doesn’t say to discard it

I mean, if it was either this or Caleb just abandons the concept of Travel cost and starts printing "Forced: After this location becomes the active location..." onto every location, I guess I prefer this.

There is no abandon of the concept of Travel cost, there is no opening new deck building possibilities, there is not even a broken card (map gets errated but Northern tracker does not?) There are 6 packs left. There are only new erratas.

P.D: No faqs yet, so it can still be a fake of course...

If needed, I'd prefer a change that increases the cost but preserves the general usage, e.g.

Discard a card from your hand to...

Pay 1 resource to...

Return Thror's Map to your hand to...

Attach to the main quest.

Exhaust attached hero to...

Raise each player's threat by 1 to...

But tbh I don't see the need to make the change at all.

Im so glad to see this change. A simple 1 cost repeatable effect that completely avoids travel costs is overpowered and poor design. Look at the second quest from Shadow in the East; Thrors map completely breaks that quest.

Thank you Caleb for fixing this broken card and others like the ridiculously overpowered burning brand.

On 9/7/2019 at 11:56 PM, Seastan said:

I mean, if it was either this or Caleb just abandons the concept of Travel cost and starts printing "Forced: After this location becomes the active location..." onto every location, I guess I prefer this.

That's been done before. But those weren't the only two choices available.

17 hours ago, MikeGracey said:

Im so glad to see this change. A simple 1 cost repeatable effect that completely avoids travel costs is overpowered and poor design. Look at the second quest from Shadow in the East; Thrors map completely breaks that quest.

Thank you Caleb for fixing this broken card and others like the ridiculously overpowered burning brand.

I'm looking athe second quest from Shadow in the East. If you have Thror's Map (requires playing Lore), you can avoid the following travel effects:

1) Hillside Manor -- random discard from hand

2) City Forum -- raise threat 1 per each resource on it (gets resources only when active location is explored)

3) Side Street -- replacement location from deck added

4) Catacombs -- each discard card from encounter deck, if enemy it is engaged.

Catacombs scales against more players, but 3+ players means location control is already a priority and there's only two in deck. Side Street seems nasty and is required at game start -- but you advance in the quest by exploring *active* locations -- ensuring another location to travel to next turn can actually help the player. City Forum's only raises by 1 if you go there first chance. Hillside Manor just discards a random card. These are annoying effects that would make packing Thror's Map worth including in a deck, if you're playing Lore, which isn't true for a lot of quests. But those aren't *remotely* game-losing effects that cause the quest to be broken if you somehow avoid them. If playing Lore I'd add Thror's Map, but I certainly wouldn't mulligan for it.

Now it's certainly true that Thror's Map is a cheap repeatable way of avoiding travel costs, which is exactly what it was designed to be and what it was long-ago errata-ed to be. You may correctly say that the existence of Thror's Map reduces the popularity of Strider's Path, or that it precludes a lesser, non-repeatable travel avoider or a more expensive travel avoider.

But here's the thing -- look at those travel effects again. Is it worth a deck slot *and* a lore resource to avoid one of those effects? I don't think so. Lesser cards are blocked not by Thror's Map because they are lesser, but because they are inherently weak. Thror's Map was a useful sideboard card for literally years; now it is a coaster. And for what? So you can rejoice in the moral purity of a quest where a tool is taken away to control what happens? So you can deprive *other players* of a card you yourself were *never* required to play? So players with a limited card pool starting the game late in his life -- the people who are currently getting this card that veterans got many years ago -- have one less arrow in the quiver? So the exciting world of forced travel effects can be opened up for the whopping six remaining known quests, as if there weren't past quests featuring obnoxious "Forced: when X becomes the active location" when experiencing travel effects was *actually* "necessary"?

I appreciate that the designers have to errata card sometimes to remove "broken" combos that a single player could induce in pick-up multiplayer, though I've always advocated that such fixes should be designed to preserve the common usage of a card. I totally reject the idea that the designers should, years later, deside to nerf non-broken powerful cards to protect the integrity of quests from players. *That's* what I call bad design.

If they were going to make it so useless, the least they could've done is attach it to the location when used, so that the woodmen could get powered up.

5 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

for the whopping six remaining known quests

I wonder if these reprints are part of some sort of preparations they are making for the "new iteration" of the game

6 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

But here's the thing -- look at those travel effects again. Is it worth a deck slot *and* a lore resource to avoid one of those effects?

Yes.