So we have two contracts now and the way they alter the way you play the game is a lot of fun. They are a little rule bending but the restriction-benefit dynamic is a lot of fun.

I'd like to hear the community's ideas for contracts (not necessarily anything thematic or named... just following the rule-bending, restriction-benefit aforementioned).

Here's my idea:

A: "Your deck cannot contain any duplicate cards.

You may draw a card at the beginning of the quest phase.

When you have discarded 8 cards from play, turn this card over."

B: "You may draw a card at the beginning of the questing phase.

After an ally or attachment has been discarded from play, or an event resolves and is discarded, you may shuffle one card from your discard pile back into your deck."

I couldnt think of a good number, 10 seemed like too much (playing out 20% of your deck seemed heavy) vs 6 coukd be done on the first planning phase. But because we often run decks with multiple copies of a card, it might be hard to find the one card we need to make our decks work. I figure the extra card draw might come in handy.

That's a great idea! What would you name it though for theme reason?

I do think we are getting a Grey Company one and a Hobbit one which I hope would be :

Grey Company

You may only play heroes or allies with the Ranger or Dunedain Trait.

Combat Action: Exhaust this card to choose an enemy engaged with a player, that enemy cannot attack that player this phase.

After you have 3 or more enemies engaged with you flip this card.

Grey Company

You may only play heroes or allies with the Ranger or Dunedain Trait.

Resource Action: Exhaust this card to (choose one): draw a card for each enemy engaged with you or place a resource on a Dunedain or Ranger Hero you control for each enemy engaged with you.

Heroes of the Shire

All heroes you control must have the Hobbit trait. You may start the game with one additional Hobbit hero in play.

After you defeat an enemy with an engagement cost higher than your threat place a resource token here, after there are 4 resource tokens here flip this card.

Heroes of the Shire

All heroes you control must have the Hobbit trait. You may start the game with one additional Hobbit hero in play.

Refresh Action: Reduce your threat by 5 and draw a card.

Forces of Good

Choose a trait, all heroes and allies in your deck must share the same trait.

Reduce the cost to play the first ally each round by 1.

After you have 4 or more allies flip this card.

Forces of Good

Action: Exhaust this card to move an ally from your discard pile to your hand.

If you have less than 4 allies, flip this card.

I would also really love to see a boost for bringing one or two heroes only like:

Last of the Company

You cannot have more than 2 heroes in play. Heroes you control have +X Willpower where X is equal to the tens digit of your threat and can have 1 additional restricted attachment.

Action: Exhaust this card to ready a hero you control and remove 2 damage from it.

If you only have one hero in play flip this card.

Last of the Company

Ready your hero at the start of each phase. Your hero has +X Willpower where X is equal to the ones digit of your threat and can have 2 additional restricted attachments.

Supporting a highlander deck is a neat idea. But what do you mean with discarding cards from play? 8 playercards in the discard pile? Or do encounter cards count?

General Grievous ideas are neat, but partially overpowered. The Dunedain contract buffes a Dunedain trap deck by insane amounts. Also 5 threat reduction PER ROUND for the hobbit contract? Insanity!
Forces of Good seems interresting as usually at least one hero or ally you would like to have doesn't fit the requirement. Reward seems fair (might even be underpowered)

2-hero support is awesome. Also having the contract as more of a backup in case of a hero death is fitting, but don't scale the buff of the ones digit of the threat. Just by going from 29 to 30 you loose so much power. Or you get power by going down in threat. Just seems to swingy. I'd reduce (or remove) the healing on the first side and add i to the second one (ofc only at the start/end of the round, not every phase). Also keep the buff scaling of the tens digit. If you want to give the remaing hero more power have all or a part of the slain heroes added to him (as in add e.g. the slain heroes willpower to the remaing heroes willpower).

I'd like a contract to support high starting threat (something i feel isn't really there aside from some valor effects as starting high reall is more of a burden, even with the higher stats heroes):

Side A:
Your starting threat must be 33 or higher (I went with 33 so you are at least at 30 when going with tactics Eowyn)
If your threat is below 33 treat this textbox as empty (I would have made it that you can't reduce is below but stuff like trouble in tharbad would be a problem).
At the beginning of the engagement phase choose an non-unique enemy, then choose one: This enemy engages you or this enemy doesn't make engagement checks this phase.
Flip this card over, if your threat is ever 40 or higher.

Side B:
Your threat can only be increased or lowered by one at a time (interaction with favor of the valar up to discussion ).
You may, additionally, optionally engage one non unique enemy engaged with another player per teammate during the engagement phase (so up to 3 optional enemies, each from another palyer, + the one from the staging area).

Without playing it, I am not sure the idea is balanced or even fun. You have impact in a multiplaer game by stopping one enemy noone can deal with right now or get more enemies to you and protecting your allies this way as you probably would have to fight a lot anyway. Side B doubles down on this idea. The side doesn't offer great benefits to solo play aside from being able to skip questing without to much punishment.

43 minutes ago, Calvadur said:

Supporting a highlander deck is a neat idea. But what do you mean with discarding cards from play? 8 playercards in the discard pile? Or do encounter cards count?

Resolving events, discarding attachments from play, discarding allies by effects or by destruction would count. Discarding from hand (like noldor) or from top of deck (dwarf mining) would NOT.

With only two contracts left to explore, and with more contracts released, I would like to see if there are any more thoughts on contracts. I like the grey company idea. I also like the idea of the oath of cirion. Not sure what the effects would be but if spirit aragorn is coming in the last pack, it would make sense to have the contract of fulfilling the oath would be pretty cool.

My bet is there will be some Return of the King contract to go with the new Aragorn in the last set. The next set will probably have Wilyador and a nature contract:

Call of Nature Contract named using a clever phrase from the books

Side 1: You may only play or put into play Creature, Beorning, or Ent allies.

Forced : When you have (6 or so?) Creature, Beorning, or Ent characters in play, flip this card.

Side 2: You may only play or put into play Creature, Beorning, or Ent allies.

Action : Exhaust this card to ready a Creature, Beorning, or Ent character.

Dunedain need the buff the most and it does fit our grey company hint so I really think that will be one. And as much as I would still like the. "Forces of Good" contract idea I posted earlier (a boost for all heroes and allies having the same trait) I feel like one of the other hints is leading towards a four hobbit deck. So with that in mind here are my revised ideas for the final contracts:

Grey Company

Each hero you control and all allies in your deck must have either the Ranger or Dunedain Trait.

Enemies engaged with you have -1 attack.

After you have 3 or more enemies engaged with you or with Trap cards attached flip this card.

Grey Company

You may only play heroes or allies with the Ranger or Dunedain Trait.

Resource Action: Exhaust this card to (choose one): draw a card for each enemy engaged with you or with a Trap card attached.

If you have less than 3 enemies engaged with you or with a Trap card attached, flip this card.

Heroes of the Shire

All heroes you control must have the Hobbit trait. You may start the game with one additional Spirit Hobbit hero.

After you defeat an enemy with an engagement cost higher than your threat place a resource token here, after there are 3 resource tokens here flip this card.

Heroes of the Shire

All heroes you control must have the Hobbit trait. You may start the game with one additional Hobbit hero in play.

Refresh Action: Reduce your threat by 2 and draw a card.

Really hope we do get some sort of Grey Company contract as Dunedain are one of my favorite archetypes. If it was as written that would make Dunedain trappers a bonkers deck.

You are right. I forgot about the hobbit hint... dang.

7 hours ago, RogueSeventeen said:

You are right. I forgot about the hobbit hint... dang.

Haha and like specifically one of them a Star which I take to be spirit.

1 hour ago, General_Grievous said:

Haha and like specifically one of them a Star which I take to be spirit.

Perhaps. I hope theres some way to reduce threat though, because even with low threat hobbits a starting deck with 4 heroes is still in the 20s.

I was hoping it was a contract that says "flip only if all the heroes you control have the hobbit trait" and the other side is a hobbit hero you add in (with zero starting threat).

54 minutes ago, player3351457 said:

Perhaps. I hope theres some way to reduce threat though, because even with low threat hobbits a starting deck with 4 heroes is still in the 20s.

I was hoping it was a contract that says "flip only if all the heroes you control have the hobbit trait" and the other side is a hobbit hero you add in (with zero starting threat).

That's a great idea too, then it could specifically summon one of the terrible Hobbit heroes, which if gotten for free isn't a bad deal

I interprete this line as "build a deck with 4 heroes and no allies. The lowest cost hero has no threat cost" or alternatively "build a deck with a single ally, which must be unique. Put this ally into play. This ally becomes a hero."

Contract:

"I am no man"

Single side:

Your deck cannot contain any male characters. You cannot control any male characters.

All heroes you control gain +5 (willpower), +5 (attack) and +5 (defense).

Response : After a character you control is removed from play, you may raise your threat by 5 to put that character back into play.

Response : If you feel that a male hero in play has more resources than they should, you may take a resource from that hero's pool and add it to the resource pool of one of your heroes.

Response : If you feel that you do not have enough cards in your hand, you may search your deck for a card and add it to your hand. Then shuffle your deck if you want.

You cannot be eliminated from the game due to your threat. If your threat to Sauron's patriarchy is higher than the other players, it is because you are just that awesome.

So we got variations on a number of these, we got The Grey Wanderer for 1 hero decks, Council of the Wise for singles decks, and Bond of Friendship for 4 hero decks. I still feel, though that 2 hero decks aren't really worth playing (Messenger of the King doesn't count). How would a contract that is for 2 heroes work that isn't simply discount Grey Wanderer? What else should we see? A contract that prevents you from including cards from any sphere could be interesting!

I think with a two hero deck you do really need the readying or even something like:

Unbreakable Bond

You may only have two starting heroes and they must share one Trait in common.

Setup: Search your deck for two non-unique cards with the same name and a cost of 2 or less and put them into play.

Response: After one of your heroes readies or takes damage, exhaust this card to ready another hero you control.

On 10/2/2020 at 2:59 PM, General_Grievous said:

I think with a two hero deck you do really need the readying or even something like:

Unbreakable Bond

You may only have two starting heroes and they must share one Trait in common.

Setup: Search your deck for two non-unique cards with the same name and a cost of 2 or less and put them into play.

Response: After one of your heroes readies or takes damage, exhaust this card to ready another hero you control.

I would say free 2x 2 or less is WAY too powerful. Considering you are probably going with two courages, or even a double circlet, you are pretty OP out the gate. Might I suggest that they get added to your hand rather than put into play?

So two hero combos face the same issues and upsides as grey wanderer -- less threat, less resources, less actions. But imagine if you could run it with a stat boost:

Once per round, you may choose WP, attack or defense. Your starting heroes get +2 until the end of the round.

In WP, you get essentially a cirdan/eowyn level of questing boost. But a +4 pooled attack is given only with Beorn. And two sets of +2 defenses even on average heroes suddenly gives you a pair of tanks.

It is in the versatility of this effect that makes it appealing.

That could work as well, I was just going with the number 2 theme. But added to hand is fine as well, or cost of 1 or less and into play. I was trying to help negate the loss of resources with a strong early game punch.