Is it just me, or does it seem like all condition cards should be limit one per character?

Unexpected Courage, Gondorian Fire / Blood of Numenor, Support of the Eagles, Etc.

All these cards, while cool, seem to become confusing / OP / lame when you have more than 1 on a character.

Also seems that Mounts and Signals should be limit one per character.

Do people agree or am I in the minority?

Unfortunately, most treachery-based conditions are one per character, so I can't stack them all on a dedicated victim.

Many of the player conditions are unique, one per player, or not useful in bulk. UC, Fire/Blood are the only widely used exceptions -- you could do multiples of Favor of the Lady or Dark Knowledge, but who does? But UC is a singleton in the core set, and a single copy of Blood/Fire is sufficient if you have Steward of Gondor anyways, so I don't think it's a critical problem.

Support of the Eagles is a Boon, not a condition. I think the errata that needs should be the Eagles trait.

Calls for Mounts to be one per character are common are thematic grounds; I would oppose it for the same reason. The four Hobbits left Crickhollow with *five* ponies, and historically mounted warriors used spare mounts. I also think mounts with non-combat abilities should not be restricted.

I've not seen a call for Signals to be restricted, and I don't see the thematic connection, surely more than one warning (for example) could be received by a person. Restricting them to one per hero would interact badly with their movability, and would also make Rune Master a coaster.

I'll echo Dale entirely, plus mecha-Aragorn/Beregond/Boromir/etc... is a ton of fun and an archetype in itself. They are somewhat expensive especially to play a few of them and usually aren't amazing having multiple copies on, with the main exception being UC, but that one is limited by money hahaha.

I mainly play super heroes too but I find it much more fun and interesting to have to go armored destrier - unexpected courage - magic ring as opposed to unexpected courage - unexpected courage - unexpected courage. How unexpected is it really at that point? 😏

Well played hahaha. And hey for a more robust card pool I can see your point and I also like to play with more variety in my deck. But I also like leaving people the ability to play how they want instead of issuing an errata for anything I find to strong or thematically weird. Half the fun for my wife and I are playing how we want to. And when the game forces unwritten changes on characters or cards it just adds to complexity, hurts newer players that may only have unexpected courage, as well as limits deck-building to the next power card or combo. For a cooperative deck-builder let the people have the tools and a rough framework and make their own journeys.

My wife and I will keep using the original Caldera, Tactics Boromir and Hama in some fun power decks and I say leave the extra rules to the official events (which is what I still think errata should be limited too).

But thanks for the dialogue and another perspective that I'm sure you are not alone in.

While it's all academic at this point, barring the game returning in some fashion after the hiatus AND sporting some new errata, I think my preferred "fix" for Unexpected Courage would have been to give it a slightly higher usage cost:

Action : Exhaust Unexpected Courage to deal 1 damage to attached hero. Then, ready attached hero.


This would do a few things:

• Make the decision to use UE each round a little more interesting (as is, there's no reason to not use it every single round).
• Make healing cards a bit more relevant.
• Provide players a way to self-damage, which creates a few rare but interesting tactical possibilities (e.g. dropping Alcaron's Scroll).

Thematically, I could see this representing the sort of moments when Boromir trumpets the Horn of Gondor as orc arrows riddle his body or when Sam perseveres through the injuries and exhaustion and noxious fumes to throw Frodo on his shoulder and continue up the slopes of Mount Doom. It makes the courageous act more unexpected when not everyone would have endured the pain in order to keep going.

On 1/22/2020 at 6:32 PM, dalestephenson said:

Calls for Mounts to be one per character are common are thematic grounds; I would oppose it for the same reason. The four Hobbits left Crickhollow with *five* ponies, and historically mounted warriors used spare mounts. I also think mounts with non-combat abilities should not be restricted.

That's great and all that four hobbits left with five ponies but when a Three Hunters Beregond's best loadout is 3 armored destriers something is wrong.

EDIT: Four if he has golden belt. Must be a strong belt if you can hang a horse on it.

5 hours ago, RogueSeventeen said:

That's great and all that four hobbits left with five ponies but when a Three Hunters Beregond's best loadout is 3 armored destriers something is wrong.

EDIT: Four if he has golden belt. Must be a strong belt if you can hang a horse on it.

best Beregond loudout does not include Gondorian shield? Way easier to set up than warnings

You can give him Raven-Wing helm, Hauberk of Mail, Mithril Shirt and load him up with four armored destriers.

But you're right, the most convenient way to load him up is Gondorian Shield and three armored destriers.

Still, that's three horses. I know people argue that knights would switch in and out horses when they tire. But the timeframe of the quests seem too short for such tactics. For instance, 1/3 of passage through mirkwood is choosing which path to take at a fork. And what about someone who uses Roheryn to attack an enemy, kill him, and then Arod to place a progress? Isn't that all happening simultaneously? Between engaging someone and finishing them off he switches horses?

Armored Destrier is (and should be IMO) restricted, so loading up Beregond with four armored destrier requires a contract and the extra-restricted attachment -- plus multiple decks since only three can go in a deck. Three and a shield is easier, but there's diminishing returns -- Destrier only tosses shadows on engaged enemies, and there's plenty of ways to repeatably ready without Destrier (or for that matter, U.C.).

The timeframe of the quests is not defined at all, but given that Fork in the Road has only two progess required and no other conditions to clear, it's clearly not a third of Passage Throught Mirkwood. Thematically Roheryn/Arod can be explained by Aragorn (for example) running down an enemy with Roheryn, then switching to the fresh Arod *after* killing to check out if there are any more beyond the next ridge. As a post-kill response that places progress, I see no thematic requirement for the rider to switch *during* combat.

Aragorn exhausts to commit to a quest. Then, while he engages an enemy he rides a taxi Steed of the North over to his faithful Roheryn before running the enemy down. Following that he jumps on his trusty Firefoot to splash damage onto another enemy. After that he hops on his buddy Arod to check out if there are more beyond the ridge. Then he readies himself with his second taxi trip on his Rohan Warhorse over to his Armored Destrier, hops on up, and readies himself after defending.

Oddly enough, your long description (using four separate restricted cards, plus two unrestricted) can be covered by the three named horses of Roheryn, Arod, and Firefoot. Roheryn *is* a Steed of the North, Firefoot *is* a Rohan Warhorse (Arod also), and as Destrier is the highest class of warhorse Firefoot the Mearas certainly qualifies. That the additional cards give additional powers no more means that they are necessarily separate horses than that Aragorn with Sword That Was Broken and Anduril is in possession of two separate swords.

The wikipedia article on destriers points out that it would only be ridden in the actual battle or tournament; a knight would ride a palfrey for ordinary riding, with yet another horse bearing his baggage -- one knight, three horses, even without spares. Using one horse for travel, a separate horse for reconaissance, and a third horse for battle would not have seemed unusual at all in medieval times. The best cavalry of historical times were the Mongols, and just three horses per rider would be on the low side for them.

The fly in the ointment is that in Tolkien's world the horses of the Rohirrim were unusually durable, long-lived, and partnered with a specific rider, so it's not likely Rohirrim would use or need to use multiple horses (though as Arod shows, if a horse become surplus they would still bring it along with them). For that reason it would be a better thematic fit if a character were restricted to one *unique* mount -- but having Eomer ride (with help of contract) a Armored Destrier/Rohan Warhorse/Firefoot is *very* thematic, as is Aragorn on Roheryn/Steed of the North. Instituting a rule to *prevent* that from happening benefits no one -- anyone who is bothered by the idea of two (or more) mounts attached to the same character is perfectly free not to attach two mounts to the same character without a rule forcing it!

If Aragorn using two branches of Gondorian Fire to kill the trolls at the Carrock is wrong I don't want to be right. Grimbeorn doesn't seem to mind too much either. I've never seen a bear stand on its hind legs and clap like that!

I do understand what you're saying. And "one unique mount" only might be a better way to handle the situation. However, the "if you don't like it, you don't have to do it" argument never really flies for me because it's opening up a giant rabbit hole. Why make any FAQ with that reasoning? Why nerf Boromir? If people think using his ability more than once per phase is unfair, then they just shouldn't do it etc., etc., etc...

I am generally a heavy critic of official errata, precisely because there's no need for it in a co-operative game. Even a game-breaking combination doesn't justify errata IMO *unless* it can be used by a single player in a pickup multiplayer game. Broken combos in one-deck solo or with multiple players cooperating to break the game harm no one -- but ham-fisted errata *can* harm a whole lot of people playing a card non-abusively. Progression players in the first few cycles using the latest version of cards (including the stealth errata that hasn't hit a FAQ yet) have significantly weaker cards than the original progression players.

At the same time, I'm not at all opposed to those who want to make their own *non-official* nerfed copies of cards they feel are "too strong", though I'm more interested in non-official enhancements than nerfs. Once again, if they wish to make their own variants when playing by themselves or with other like-minded players, that harms absolutely no one and if they enjoy that, more power to them. Play how you want!

Tactics Boromir arguably *can* ruin a pickup game by himself, if he gets Blood, Fire, Steward, sentinel and ranged -- though that's obviously easier to do with multiple players co-ordinating. I think there's enough moving parts that the need for errata wasn't critical, especially since all the parts for Super Boromir were around *years* before they finally nerfed him, but I do concede the potential for harm.

But advocating one mount per character, or one condition or signal per character, seems to me to be driven not by game balance concerns, but by thematic concerns -- it doesn't make sense *thematically* to have the same condition twice, or for one hero to ride two horses simultaneously. There's no end to the possibilities of "doesn't make sense to me thematically" -- mixing dwarves and elves freely (there's no precedent before Gimli and Legolas), using heroes highly unlikely to adventure during the period of the game (Eowyn, all the hobbits), using Ents anywhere but Fangorn, using Eagles away from the mountains, etcetera, etcetera. Sometimes I think these sort of objections have merit thematically, and sometimes I don't even agree with the thematic argument, but agree or not I don't want the gameplay constricted purely for thematic reasons -- if you want to play thematically, you already can and many do. Don't try to ruin other people's fun with needless errata.

Thankfully, the designers of the game have never gone down the thematic errata rabbithole, which really would be bottomless.

R17 I just want to comment on how funny it is to me that you are already looking at this game in ways I never thought about after years of on and off play. Playing with your brother and a friend and I run the "combat" of our 3-player team. It has never occurred to me to put two armored destriers on my main defensive hero, or in my deck with multiple copies of Unexpected Courage I wouldn't dream of putting them on the same hero.

You've also made up my mind that I want a card named "Expected Courage" before the end of the game.

You better come up north for this 2020 Fellowship event!