9 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

Shadows of the Past for me is a sideboard card...

What is a sideboard card?

A sideboard card is a card that you include in your deck only part of the time, depending on the details of the quest. For example, Power of Orthanc is a card that is useful against quests with nasty Conditions coming out of the encounter deck, but is a dead card in quests without them.

9 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

A sideboard card is a card that you include in your deck only part of the time, depending on the details of the quest. For example, Power of Orthanc is a card that is useful against quests with nasty Conditions coming out of the encounter deck, but is a dead card in quests without them.

Aaah so you have different cards in a sideboard you can add to the minimum of the standard 50 cards decks when needed.

(one little problem I see is that I only have 50 sleeves with art 😞 🙂 )

Sorry if I asked this question in the thread...

45 minutes ago, wernerkellens said:

Aaah so you have different cards in a sideboard you can add to the minimum of the standard 50 cards decks when needed.

(one little problem I see is that I only have 50 sleeves with art 😞 🙂 )

Sorry if I asked this question in the thread...

You may also swap some of the 50 cards to make room for the sideboard cards you need and stay at 50.

There is not much I have to say about the changes.

The first one would be Keen-eyed Took. Given that Hobbits are really good a throwing stones, he should be a ranged ally, preferably with an attack bonus against enemies with a higher engagement cost. I really do not see any connection between throwing stones and looking at the top card of a player deck.

Dawn Take You All has its uses against Smaug and Wargs, but otherwise is more a multiplayer card, which I am fine with. Not every card needs to be useful in solo games (like Brand Son of Bain) or multiplayer games (like Grima). That being said, I like the idea of dropping the requirement of engaging.

The last thing I want to address is Dain. I am not a fan of global buffs like him, Boromir, Faramir, Sword that is broken, Visionary Leadership, (purple) Brand Son of Bain etc. Celeborn is the only exception, as his buff is limited for a single round. I would rather have the dwarven allies pull their own weight and give Dain something that is useful in a dwarf deck without making the other cards redundant, like cost reduction for dwarves, as they tend to be too expensive without Dain's buff around.

The problem with most Dwarf allies is that without Dain’s buff they are overpriced and bad. They have too little from what matters (willpower, attack, and defence), and too much from what it typically does not matter, hit points.

On 8/19/2019 at 8:50 AM, Amicus Draconis said:

The last thing I want to address is Dain. I am not a fan of global buffs like him, Boromir, Faramir, Sword that is broken, Visionary Leadership, (purple) Brand Son of Bain etc. Celeborn is the only exception, as his buff is limited for a single round. I would rather have the dwarven allies pull their own weight and give Dain something that is useful in a dwarf deck without making the other cards redundant, like cost reduction for dwarves, as they tend to be too expensive without Dain's buff around.

While we certainly aren't going to get rid of global buffs (and changing Dain away from a global Dwarf buff would run up against our stated principles of trying to remain as close to the original card as we can), I can definitely understand where you're coming from here. One of our goals is to make a Dwarf deck without LdDain viable. To do that, we've got to boost the usefulness of at least some of the Dwarf allies (especially in the willpower department).

On 8/19/2019 at 10:42 AM, Yepesnopes said:

The problem with most Dwarf allies is that without Dain’s buff they are overpriced and bad. They have too little from what matters (willpower, attack, and defence), and too much from what it typically does not matter, hit points.

That certainly is the common perception, although I'm not 100% sure that this is true. I've been going over Dwarf allies recently, and with the exception of a few stinkers, they really are decent. They just don't have a lot of willpower to offer.

Here's the list of Dwarf allies:

I seem to have messed up my spoiler tags, and the edit function isn't getting them right.

Here's the commentary that was supposed to be outside of the spoiler tag (for people who don't want to read through me analyzing every Dwarf ally in the game).

So, from my perspective, the problem isn't that the Dwarf allies aren't worth it individually. Nor is it that their cost is sunk into stats like Hit Points that just aren't useful. The trait is a *little* biased towards defenders, but the big problem is that it's hard to ramp willpower. (Not that difficult for attack, unless you deliberately skip the Tactics sphere - Veteran Axehand, Erebor Battle-master, and Azain Silverbeard are all cost-effective attackers). The vast majority of the allies come in at the 3-cost mark. For almost all of them, each ally is worth the investment, but you can't build a deck with all 3-cost allies. You need some cheaper allies to work your board state up to the 3-cost ones. But for Dwarves, those 2-cost and 1-cost allies are mostly utility allies who aren't particularly stat-efficient. Zigil Miner and Blue Mountain Trader and Ered Nimrais Prospector...just don't cut it. (The Hammersmith does, but he is also the stereotypical focus-on-hit-points-too-much ally, and may actually be the source of the perception that the Dwarf allies have).

And you can't cover that lack of willpower ramping with heroes, because the heroes don't have that much willpower either (except Thorin). The best you're going to get is 5 or 6 willpower on turn 1, and it's hard to find good 2-drops to boost that up. Once you can afford 3-drops, you are in business, but it's getting there that is the big problem. It's the same problem that Gondor has. Global boosts like Dain help fill in those gaps, but that makes you reliant on the global boost.

Even with our tweaks, I don't know if this is enough to make Dwarf decks without Dain playable - we may need to alter some dwarf heroes to get extra willpower. (Oin maybe gaining +1 willpower and +1 attack when you control 5 dwarves?) On the other hand, resource engines like hero Gloin, Thorin, and our to-be-fixed We Are Not Idle might be enough to make those 3-drops easy enough to handle.

I really like this version of WANI, it is how the official errata must have been!

@dalestephenson , @Amicus Draconis , what do you think of these changes?

I just got some feedback re: Rumor from the Earth - while the version in my previous post is a fine card as written, it competes with Interrogation, Risk Some Light, and Scout Ahead, not to mention repeatable scrying like Henamarth. In order to give it a different niche, I've mocked up a version that goes in another direction (and maybe shores up a little bit of a traditional weakness of Lore):

What do you think?

In addition, The past week has been crazy - my newborn daughter decided to grace us with her presence - so I'm a little bit behind on uploading the videos we've recorded. But today we'll play some catch up. The Ancient Mathoms Progression series starts the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle!

Ranged and a point of attack on the KET is very thematic and some encounter control in leadership is welcome, as the Longbeard Elder is somewhat unreliable.

Dawn take you all also sounds good, especially with turning the shadowcards face up. I would have been fine without that detail as a multiplayer card, but the more cases a card is useful in the better.

The card draw on Song of Mocking is helpful in any case and changing the action into a response helps with the usefulness of the card. In addition it also allows to protect Beorn now. Maybe the cost should be increased to 2 because of the card draw, the bigger impact than Vigilant Guard and the missing 2 hitpoints which are worth 1 resource. I would also change the text to "When a hero would take any amount of damage...". And you forgot the period after Song.

I prefer the second version of Rumour from the Earth as the only resource acceleration card in Lore so far is Love of Tales. Additional toys for rangers or scouts are also welcome and exhausting one of them for such an effect sounds appropriate.

Is there a reason the attack boost on We do not sleep is restricted to unique characters? Now the card has two effects, one for unique and one for all Rohan characters. And if the event would be too cheap now with an attack boost for all Rohan characters, the cost reduction could be slightly decreased. Otherwise you would have a lot of Rohan characters with 0 attack for the combat phase. What I am supposed to do with a ready Westroad Traveller, an Escort of Edoras or a Westfold Horse-breaker/breeder? Only the breeder would pass as a chump blocker, the others are too valuable to throw them under a troll.

2 hours ago, Amicus Draconis said:

The card draw on Song of Mocking is helpful in any case and changing the action into a response helps with the usefulness of the card. In addition it also allows to protect Beorn now. Maybe the cost should be increased to 2 because of the card draw, the bigger impact than Vigilant Guard and the missing 2 hitpoints which are worth 1 resource. I would also change the text to "When a hero would take any amount of damage...". And you forgot the period after Song.

I prefer the second version of Rumour from the Earth as the only resource acceleration card in Lore so far is Love of Tales. Additional toys for rangers or scouts are also welcome and exhausting one of them for such an effect sounds appropriate.

Is there a reason the attack boost on We do not sleep is restricted to unique characters? Now the card has two effects, one for unique and one for all Rohan characters. And if the event would be too cheap now with an attack boost for all Rohan characters, the cost reduction could be slightly decreased. Otherwise you would have a lot of Rohan characters with 0 attack for the combat phase. What I am supposed to do with a ready Westroad Traveller, an Escort of Edoras or a Westfold Horse-breaker/breeder? Only the breeder would pass as a chump blocker, the others are too valuable to throw them under a troll.

Honestly, with the change to Song of Mocking as recommended by Dale, I don't know that it needs the extra card draw. Stepping into Vigilant Guard's space was one of the biggest things I was worried about. But I think that there's still niches for each. Valiant Warrior has the hit point boost, as you noted, and can also save any character (it's particularly valuable for saving 1-hit point questing allies, or preventing "deal 1 damage to the defending character" from murdering your chump blockers/Defenders of Rammas). Song of Mocking takes all the damage but only works on heroes, and only once per round.

I'm going back and forth on We Do Not Sleep. You are absolutely right about there not being many Rohan allies that are good at both questing and combat (and the ones that are tend to already have readying effects built in. On the one hand, 2 cost for global action advantage plus an attack boost is insanely good. At least on paper, when compared to, say, Grim Resolve or Strength of Arms (or For Gondor, for that matter). But when you look at the Rohan allies that are getting the action advantage, it looks a lot less attractive.

I think I'm going to put it in as +1 attack for each Rohan character (Doesn't help the Tactics allies who can't quest, but it does boost battle questing, which could be a fun niche case), and then see how it feels in playtesting.

@Onidsen The tactics allies still can quest with Astonishing Speed, Faramir or Sword that was broken, whereas the only attack boost for the spirit allies is For Gondor!

The second version of Rumour from the Earth addresses a weak spot in Lore and in that respect has some use. But I don't like it -- thematically I want this card to be a scrying card, and just looking at the top card doesn't scratch that itch for me.

But what about the first version? I don't think it's usable. It's true that as a deep scryer Rumour from the Earth competes with Double Back, Risk Some Light, and Interrogation, all Lore cards -- but having different ways to scry in Lore doesn't bother me, and the other scryers have different effects and different qualifications:

Double Back is limit 1 per deck, requires side-quest complete, looks at 5-8 cards (4+# players), puts one in victory display and reorders the other four. It's most commonly used in Victory Display decks, the deep view and reordering is just a bonus -- and since side-quest completion is during the quest phase, the view is prior to combat.

Risk Some Light looks at a fixed 3 cards, but at 3 cost with a Secrecy 3 discount, is not used at all outside secrecy decks. It can put one to bottom and reorder the other two. That's the effect I borrowed for my suggested version, only with a different card count. It can be played in any phase.

Interrogation looks at X cards (trapped enemy's threat), but costs 1. It may discard one but doesn't alter order. As an action it can be done anytime, except that you need a trapped enemy; I don't think it's popular in trap decks but that's clearly the niche it fits best.

First version of Rumour from the Earth borrows Interrogation's effect and cost, but instead of using the active location's threat (my suggestion), it expands the exhaustion to rangers and scouts (reasonable) but only gives a view of *willpower* -- and instead of an action, it's a response to travel. So while Interrogation will let you look at 2-3 cards from an ordinary trapped enemy, a 3-cost scout or ranger has to be exhausted (and pay one cost) to look at *one* card from the deck, and you have to do it immediately before the combat! While it might not be completely useless in the first cycle (suppose you didn't need Faramir or LeAragorn for combat and they happened to be ready), it looks at a *maximum* of two cards. This isn't going to compete with the other three -- the other three are clearly better. I'd rather have the original in my deck, at least it's free.

But what if you used active location threat, as I suggested, and kept it an action? Would it freeze out the other three? Some of it depends on the effect. If you give it Interrogation's effect and cost, it has two advantages over Interrogation -- location threat trends a little higher than enemy threat, IMO, and the active location/scout-or-ranger combination is going to be more common than trap use. OTOH, trap decks with rangers with an interest in deck manipulation would want both cards -- Lore *is* the scrying sphere and having two usable scryers with somewhat parallel effects is a *good* thing IMO and not a bad thing. There's also a practical issue in that Interrogation doesn't show up until Dreamchaser cycle, having a usable scry event in the first cycle is a good thing, I think.

Alternately you could weaken the effect to bottom-deck instead of discard, making it a slightly weaker Interrogation. Still worth 1 perhaps, but not quite as good as Interrogation. Nor would it be as good as Risk Some Light, which can re-order and is free (in secrecy deck -- it's unplayable outside). What if it copied the Risk Some Light effect as I suggested? It's not clear how the utility compares to Interrogation -- the reordering is better, but the bottom-decking is typically worse than discarding. But for 3+ threat locations its effect is as good or better than Risk Some Light, other than the exhaustion requirement and the resource requirement. (Again, a secrecy deck trying to manipulate could well want both.)

Another option is to make the effect different than the alternatives -- look at X cards and freely reorder, but no discard or bottom-deck. I'd probably drop the cost to zero in that case. Another is to not mess with order but make it a deeper dive: look at 2x threat cards or threat + number of player cards, giving a deep view beyond Hennamarth but only of informational value. I'd probably keep that at zero cost as well.

On 8/26/2019 at 4:51 PM, dalestephenson said:

The second version of Rumour from the Earth addresses a weak spot in Lore and in that respect has some use. But I don't like it -- thematically I want this card to be a scrying card, and just looking at the top card doesn't scratch that itch for me.

But what about the first version? I don't think it's usable. It's true that as a deep scryer Rumour from the Earth competes with Double Back, Risk Some Light, and Interrogation, all Lore cards -- but having different ways to scry in Lore doesn't bother me, and the other scryers have different effects and different qualifications:

Double Back is limit 1 per deck, requires side-quest complete, looks at 5-8 cards (4+# players), puts one in victory display and reorders the other four. It's most commonly used in Victory Display decks, the deep view and reordering is just a bonus -- and since side-quest completion is during the quest phase, the view is prior to combat.

Risk Some Light looks at a fixed 3 cards, but at 3 cost with a Secrecy 3 discount, is not used at all outside secrecy decks. It can put one to bottom and reorder the other two. That's the effect I borrowed for my suggested version, only with a different card count. It can be played in any phase.

Interrogation looks at X cards (trapped enemy's threat), but costs 1. It may discard one but doesn't alter order. As an action it can be done anytime, except that you need a trapped enemy; I don't think it's popular in trap decks but that's clearly the niche it fits best.

First version of Rumour from the Earth borrows Interrogation's effect and cost, but instead of using the active location's threat (my suggestion), it expands the exhaustion to rangers and scouts (reasonable) but only gives a view of *willpower* -- and instead of an action, it's a response to travel. So while Interrogation will let you look at 2-3 cards from an ordinary trapped enemy, a 3-cost scout or ranger has to be exhausted (and pay one cost) to look at *one* card from the deck, and you have to do it immediately before the combat! While it might not be completely useless in the first cycle (suppose you didn't need Faramir or LeAragorn for combat and they happened to be ready), it looks at a *maximum* of two cards. This isn't going to compete with the other three -- the other three are clearly better. I'd rather have the original in my deck, at least it's free.

But what if you used active location threat, as I suggested, and kept it an action? Would it freeze out the other three? Some of it depends on the effect. If you give it Interrogation's effect and cost, it has two advantages over Interrogation -- location threat trends a little higher than enemy threat, IMO, and the active location/scout-or-ranger combination is going to be more common than trap use. OTOH, trap decks with rangers with an interest in deck manipulation would want both cards -- Lore *is* the scrying sphere and having two usable scryers with somewhat parallel effects is a *good* thing IMO and not a bad thing. There's also a practical issue in that Interrogation doesn't show up until Dreamchaser cycle, having a usable scry event in the first cycle is a good thing, I think.

Alternately you could weaken the effect to bottom-deck instead of discard, making it a slightly weaker Interrogation. Still worth 1 perhaps, but not quite as good as Interrogation. Nor would it be as good as Risk Some Light, which can re-order and is free (in secrecy deck -- it's unplayable outside). What if it copied the Risk Some Light effect as I suggested? It's not clear how the utility compares to Interrogation -- the reordering is better, but the bottom-decking is typically worse than discarding. But for 3+ threat locations its effect is as good or better than Risk Some Light, other than the exhaustion requirement and the resource requirement. (Again, a secrecy deck trying to manipulate could well want both.)

Another option is to make the effect different than the alternatives -- look at X cards and freely reorder, but no discard or bottom-deck. I'd probably drop the cost to zero in that case. Another is to not mess with order but make it a deeper dive: look at 2x threat cards or threat + number of player cards, giving a deep view beyond Hennamarth but only of informational value. I'd probably keep that at zero cost as well.

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you - having a newborn around the house has made things a little crazier than they were 2 weeks ago

Anyways, I've come to the conclusion to remove the draw from Song of Mocking, now that it is a response.

Also, after considering the matter for a while, I've added Shadow of the Past to the change list:

That opens up the standard use case quite a bit, as you can find the softball anywhere in the encounter deck, but most importantly, it offers a soft fix for quests like the Ghost of Framsburg - I'm more than willing to take factors like that into consideration. I still maintain that the card is perfectly fine as it is, but the opportunity to fix a number of quests with objectives that are annoyingly easy to lose is enough to make the change worthwhile.

And now, to the big topic.

Rumor from the Earth. First off - you are absolutely right, the first version is completely unplayable, and it's something I should have noticed before I even posted the card for feedback.

It might help to illustrate the process by which I got there, though. I started with the card exactly as you suggested, scrying based on the threat of the active location. The existence of 6-to-10 threat locations gave me pause, however. 0 cost to search *and reorder* 10 cards is incredible value - probably way too much. A single play of the card as envisioned can let you choose what the encounter deck flips for the rest of the game in solo. And the effect can be repeated with multiple copies of the event + Scroll of Isildur

I then discarded the threat-of-the-active-location idea, but I wanted to keep the thematic association with locations that you had identified. So I settled on having it as a response to travelling to a location. But how deep should it scry? The willpower of the exhausted character was the obvious solution, but it should have been obvious that that required expensive and high-wp allies, which makes it a poor use of actions.

So, back to the drawing board, I suppose (although the resource acceleration angle isn't a bad one, and Lore could use it. That said, there are plenty of other lore cards that will likely be getting touched up in the future, and one or more of them may well end up generating resources).

But your point about not having a generalized deep-scrying card isn't a bad one either. Going back to the original idea of threat on the active location, something like this might be restricted enough to not be overpowered.

I still worry about cards like these, though:

Looks like those nightmare cards would also work well with Ghan-Buri-Ghan, Raven of the Mountains, and Needful To Know. I figure if the designers are mean enough to produce cards with obscene threat, we deserve any exploitation of that we can get! In all seriousness, even without nightmare there's still high threat locations that will be seen. But I don't see a particularly deep scry as broken in a way that an ally's willpower is not, at least when re-ordering is not permitted. I can't remember a solo quest where 10 cards was sufficient to cover both reveals and shadows for the entire game, though I prefer turtle to aggro.

And the blog post and video are up for the final 3 packs of the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle! This is the end of Season One of this project. We'll be taking a short break to work on other projects at the White Tower blog, but we'll be back later in the fall with cards from the Dwarrowdelf cycle and the Hobbit Saga boxes!

In addition, the Progression series is up to the Hills of Emyn Muil ! The last 2 videos for the cycle will be coming out at the end of this week.

Well howdy, everyone! Been a little while, hasn't it?

The project is back from hiatus for the new year! There are two orders of business for the near future - the first is to work through Khazad-dum, the Dwarrowdelf cycle, and the Hobbit boxes. And there are some cards that really need some help in these packs, so I'm excited to get to them.

On that note, we have the cards we want to touch from the Khazad-dum deluxe box ready for presentation:

First up is Dwalin:

We expanded his ability to work against all enemies; but kept an added boost against Orcs, just as a nod to the origins. I have no problem with cards that have expanded use cases against certain traits, I just don't like cards that *only* work against certain traits.

Ever onward is a tricky card to make into a worthwhile choice. We attempted to make it better by reducing the cost and applying the benefit to every player; however, this may create some problems with Doom Hangs Still and might be a little too powerful. Any suggestions for a different way we could take this would be appreciated. At the very least, we want to take this card out of the realm of "maybe useful in a solo deck, but next to useless in multiplayer."

I like the changes to Dwalin, Veteran of Nanduhirion, Ancestral Knowledge, Blade of Gondolin, Guard of the Citadel and Wandering Took.

Dwalin was just too specialized against Orcs and now he is actually useful against almost every quest. I cannot say, whether he really needs a limit, given that he has none so far and I find other dwarves to be more worthy of readying like Gimli, both Thorins or Dain.

The Veteran of Nanduhirion would be a fine card, if it was not for Dain's buff, but giving him some readying is a good idea in order to use his attack more. And the Boots of Erebor help him to attack more often. He probably should have a limit to his action, as unlimited attacks per round with enough healing can get out of hand fast. Similar allies like the Knight of Dale already have a limit.

Opening up Ancestral Knowledge for any location is a good move to counter location lock. Maybe the four progress should be also restricted to dwarves for thematic reasons, but that is not super important for me.

Given that Boots are used for travelling, the Boots of Erebor could help with this aspect of the game. I would also like something similar to Arod or Warden of Arnor, but the boots are not unique and less restrictive then the title.

While I love the new combat action on Horn of Gondor (so thematic), I am not yet sure, whether I like it triggering of discarding allies. Eagles or fine in my opinion and Rohan has Théoden, Gúthwinë and Gamling to make allies cheaper and even recur them. Imagine the combination of Théoden, Grimbold and Gamling: 2 Willpower and a Feint every round for only 1 tactics ressource, that is insane. At least the horn must be exhausted to do so, thus it will not be overpowered.

Dropping the Orc requirement on Blade of Gondolin is a good idea, as it will widen its usability for many quests.

Brok Ironfist , sigh. Even with a second dwarf from the discard pile he is really expensive. Kili and Fili together have about the same stats as Brok for half the cost with more flexibility and buff potential from Dain. His ability does not synergize with many other dwarves like Erebor Toymaker, Dwalin, Bifur, Glóin, Fili, Kili, Bofur and Erebor Hammersmith. A readying similar to a Knight of Dale without the need for valour would make his stats more useable and be more worth his cost in addition to the dwarf fetching mechanism.

The Guard of the Citadel can now guard a hero and use his spread out stats, I like the idea. The same goes for the Wandering Took : more support for a Hobbit swarm deck.

On 8/19/2019 at 12:42 PM, Yepesnopes said:

The problem with most Dwarf allies is that without Dain’s buff they are overpriced and bad. They have too little from what matters (willpower, attack, and defence), and too much from what it typically does not matter, hit points.

I agree to some degree, but that was accounted for, the same allies would be too strong with Dain.

6 hours ago, Amicus Draconis said:

Given that Boots are used for travelling, the Boots of Erebor could help with this aspect of the game. I would also like something similar to Arod or Warden of Arnor, but the boots are not unique and less restrictive then the title.

While I love the new combat action on Horn of Gondor (so thematic), I am not yet sure, whether I like it triggering of discarding allies. Eagles or fine in my opinion and Rohan has Théoden, Gúthwinë and Gamling to make allies cheaper and even recur them. Imagine the combination of Théoden, Grimbold and Gamling: 2 Willpower and a Feint every round for only 1 tactics ressource, that is insane. At least the horn must be exhausted to do so, thus it will not be overpowered.

Brok Ironfist , sigh. Even with a second dwarf from the discard pile he is really expensive. Kili and Fili together have about the same stats as Brok for half the cost with more flexibility and buff potential from Dain. His ability does not synergize with many other dwarves like Erebor Toymaker, Dwalin, Bifur, Glóin, Fili, Kili, Bofur and Erebor Hammersmith. A readying similar to a Knight of Dale without the need for valour would make his stats more useable and be more worth his cost in addition to the dwarf fetching mechanism.

Thanks for the comments! (I love the way you break up the commentary with the bolded names, btw, it's an excellent means to keep track of where your focus is in a long response.)

The Boots of Erebor certainly could help with travel - I'm a little concerned about encroaching on Thror's Map territory in terms of ignoring travel effects. On the other hand, how would something like this feel:

That is more restrictive, but might be worth it in combination with the HP boost.

For the Horn of Gondor , that's a valid point - I still think that the Rohan discard is not where it needs to be, personally, but the Horn of Gondor change was even more about giving it back some of the utility it had lost without breaking the game again. In some sense, just making it work again in some of the old decks that got invalidated by the errata. If it turns out to be too powerful, I wouldn't have a problem dropping the discard text again.

Brok Ironfist - the hope is that Dwarves will have enough resource generating ability to be able to afford him; he explicitly slots in a mining deck right now, and those can really generate resources. 6 leadership to get Brok alone isn't worth it, but Brok + Gimli? That's 2 resources for Brok's stats, plus pulling an ally that you mined away back onto the table. Or perhaps the best-case scenario: Brok + Soldier of Erebor.

My thought is that Brok is probably worth playing just for his stats at about 4 cost. Maybe still a tad overcosted there, but probably worth 4 with Dain's buff for sure, and maybe even without it. Which means that pulling an ally of 3 cost or more is a good trade (not to mention that you're getting an ally from the discard pile that you might not otherwise get), if you can handle 6 resources up front. Which I'll admit is the core issue. But I think a dwarf mining deck can handle it.

But I guess that's something that playtesting will figure out.

19 hours ago, Onidsen said:

Thanks for the comments! (I love the way you break up the commentary with the bolded names, btw, it's an excellent means to keep track of where your focus is in a long response.)

You're welcome and thanks!

Quote

The Boots of Erebor certainly could help with travel - I'm a little concerned about encroaching on Thror's Map territory in terms of ignoring travel effects. On the other hand, how would something like this feel:

That is more restrictive, but might be worth it in combination with the HP boost.

Thr´or's Map came to my mind as well and Map of Rhovanion, but your idea sounds good: It will effectively be +1 Willpower, when you have travelled in the previous round. A cost of 0 might be a bit on the cheap side for a hitpoint and one point of willpower, but on the other hand there probably will not be a location to travel to each round.

Quote

For the Horn of Gondor , that's a valid point - I still think that the Rohan discard is not where it needs to be, personally, but the Horn of Gondor change was even more about giving it back some of the utility it had lost without breaking the game again. In some sense, just making it work again in some of the old decks that got invalidated by the errata. If it turns out to be too powerful, I wouldn't have a problem dropping the discard text again.

Playtesting will help here for sure. And do not forget, this version of HoG could also make Sneak Attack for free, as if this event was not powerful enough already.

Quote

Brok Ironfist - the hope is that Dwarves will have enough resource generating ability to be able to afford him; he explicitly slots in a mining deck right now, and those can really generate resources. 6 leadership to get Brok alone isn't worth it, but Brok + Gimli? That's 2 resources for Brok's stats, plus pulling an ally that you mined away back onto the table. Or perhaps the best-case scenario: Brok + Soldier of Erebor.

My thought is that Brok is probably worth playing just for his stats at about 4 cost. Maybe still a tad overcosted there, but probably worth 4 with Dain's buff for sure, and maybe even without it. Which means that pulling an ally of 3 cost or more is a good trade (not to mention that you're getting an ally from the discard pile that you might not otherwise get), if you can handle 6 resources up front. Which I'll admit is the core issue. But I think a dwarf mining deck can handle it.

But I guess that's something that playtesting will figure out.

You have a point here, the only problem I see, is that dwarf mining is found mostly in tactics and spirit, with the exception of Soldier of Erebor and Ered Nimrais Prospector, so Leadership might not be the best choice for a sphere.

Man, so much discussion, I wish people would pay at least half the attention to my rework project when I was busting my *** of on it.

Is totally jelly.

My take:

I like the change to Dwalin. Making him useful in non-Orc scenarios goes a long way is all he needs to be a useful hero. Between his two attack, no ranged, and the limited supply of enemies to kill, I don't think a limit needs to be placed on his ability.

Ever Onward seems well balanced for a card you play when you unexpectedly quest unsuccessfully -- but why would you play it that way? If it covers all players, the way to use it would be to send no one questing (OK, maybe Spirit Bofur for one resource) and devote everybody to combat. It's true that Ever Onward in its current form is only useful for solo decks, but it's actually quite a powerful card in that format if you essentially skip questing. I see two options to change how it works to be applicable to multiplayer:

1) If you're going to let every deck ignore questing, you need to pay for it. Increase the cost with the number of players.

2) If you want to turn this card into a cover-for-unsuccessful questing, akin to Free to Choose, don't grant a blanket threat increase exemption, make it a cheap response conditional on actually questing -- e.g. reduce the threat taken according to the number of questing characters, so that the no-quester option is foreclosed.

Ancestral Knowledge is vastly more useful when it can be used on staging -- I would restrict the 4-point underground/mountain effect to dwarves, though, for thematic reasons.

Boots from Erebor with readying does crimp on Cram, both from having a second beneficial effect and from being useful on characters. Since it's restricted to dwarves/hobbits that's OK mechanically, but thematically Cram itself is strongly associated with dwarves (including the card artwork), so making Cram obselete for dwarves is a thematic miss. Placing progress on the active location is a nice bonus and ties into "boots", but placing on the active location is also the least useful to place. Discarding for travel effect makes it Thror's Map after the stealth errata. (Though if you used the word "travel" like Strider's Path does, it at least would synergize with the Burglar contract, which would be thematically appropriate....)

The thing about the boots is that aside from Gimli/Gloin (and your reworked Veteran of Nand) there's not a particularly good reason to put it on dwarves. Hobbits are more fragile, but there it's the heroes that are buffed, and Bill is a more efficient way to boost everybody. For any "character" attachment I want to see a reason I'd want to put it on an ally, but dwarves and hobbits have so little in common it's tough to think of a thematic or mechanical boost that would be attractive to both groups. Maybe a mining hook?

For Horn of Gondor, I love the exhaust to scare an enemy -- much more thematic than resource generation. For resource generation I absolutely think adding discard is justified, and since it exhausts it wouldn't be overpowered even if it were still just "leaves play". Making you choose betwen generation and enemy-scaring makes the card more interesting and flexible.

Brok Ironfist's enter play makes him effectively cheaper in a dwarf deck and works with mining (although too few cards actually like to be mined). Neither of those are viable in the core, so poor Brok really needs something that would make him generically useful. 4 cost might do that, though his ability is still pretty useless. Six is a lot of resources to collect, so how about this:

Response: When Brok Ironfist is played from your hand, you play may another ally from your hand at no cost.

Now saving up for Brok is worth it, and you're not gambling that something good is in the next five cards. Since it's played from your hand it can't be abused by Sneak Attack, and it gives you two free allies instead of one if you lose a dwarf hero.

I like the changes to Guard of the Citadel and Wandering Took.