I would've preferred if you could even just have 1 card allowed as a 3x. Most deck archetypes are designed around getting at least one key card out quickly: Steward of Gondor, Vilya, To the Sea!, Heir of Valandil, King of Dale, O Lorien!, Eagles of the Misty Mountain, Treebeard, Light of Valinor, Resourceful, Spirit Imrahil, Legacy of Durin, Visionary Leadership, etc. By imposing a 1x limit you hamstring basically every trait and archetype, which the bonus from the contract does not come close to making up for.

42 minutes ago, Seastan said:

I would've preferred if you could even just have 1 card allowed as a 3x. Most deck archetypes are designed around getting at least one key card out quickly: Steward of Gondor, Vilya, To the Sea!, Heir of Valandil, King of Dale, O Lorien!, Eagles of the Misty Mountain, Treebeard, Light of Valinor, Resourceful, Spirit Imrahil, Legacy of Durin, Visionary Leadership, etc. By imposing a 1x limit you hamstring basically every trait and archetype, which the bonus from the contract does not come close to making up for.

Yeah it is definitely a big restriction that pulls down its power level.

The thing is I believe Caleb mentioned on Card Talk that most people build trait-based decks and he wanted the contracts to try do something different. This contract definitely feels like it steers away from a certain trait and just opens up a different kind of deck entirely.

2 hours ago, MikeGracey said:

The thing is I believe Caleb mentioned on Card Talk that most people build trait-based decks and he wanted the contracts to try do something different. This contract definitely feels like it steers away from a certain trait and just opens up a different kind of deck entirely.

Yeah, that’s my favorite part about this card. By far it’s spurred me to build more decks than the other contracts, and all my council decks are pretty different from typical fare from what is posted on ringsdb. A good deal of criticism about this card boils down to “I wish this were a contract that lets me play my usual style, but stronger,” and I can see where the disappointment would come in, if that’s what you’re looking for in a contract (Burglar’s turn suffers the same fate).

Caleb's approach to design often seems to be:

1- For encounter cards, look at what players are doing in the current meta, then design some quests for the next cycle that defeats that strategy (penalty for large hand size, penalty for ally swarm, throw in a card here or there to defeat a voltron deck, etc)

2-For player cards, look at what kind of decks people are not playing, then create room for those decks (monosphere decks, decks that engage and then don't kill enemies, decks that aim to remove their own allies from play, etc.). Keep in mind: there were reasons to do all of those things before card design made them more desirable, but people weren't doing them. (why keep enemies in play? Forest Snare prevents it from coming back. Once Dunedain hit the scene , you had a plethora of more reasons to keep them around. Why play monosphere? Resource management is more efficient. Some cards enhancing monosphere decks pushed this further).

Council of the Wise promotes a deck type that is pretty much absent from LotR LCG (1x decks). If you can get past the idea that "consistency is defined as drawing the same card or set of cards in every game," this contract is more palatable. Consistency might instead be defined as "drawing cards that perform the same function/role in every game." You can't easily build a deck around a single card interaction (Vilya), you have to spend energy compensating for the limitations of CotW in order to do that (for example: add deck searching items and have a less-than-ideal setup because you end up keeping Heed the Dream and paying 4 to get Vilya into hand instead of starting with it in your hand). Instead, if you build your deck around generalities, like "readying" and "healing" and "willpower ally" and "attacking ally," you can build a pretty good deck that's not reliant on drawing a specific card.

I've been using the benefit of the deck (reward for playing events) as a resource and draw engine, filling up the deck with around 25 0- and 1-cost events, and usually going tri-sphere to allow access to more 0- and 1-cost events. I think what I'll experiment with next is allowing myself to use more expensive events, but do something crazy like monosphere, to make it easier to play the higher cost ones I do get, without hamstringing my ability to play other important cards in my hand like allies.

Anyway, I really like the level of experimentation this contract has driven me into.

Yeah its a lot of fun. I have made 2 decks with this contract and I really enjoyed being able to include events that always got squeezed out of regular decks. Now they are so playable.

Rumour from the earth is a great example. In regular decks people would much rather include Henemarth and be done with it, but now the event is giving you an added bonus, and its repeatable. I have included many seldom used events like Dawn take you All and Fresh Tracks and had great fun using them. You just never know what your gonna draw.

My 1 deck had Gloin using well preserved with the One Ring, so that was easy for set-up. He was accompanied by Beorn and Smeagol, who combo nicely (smeagol turns into stinker, undefended Gloin, make $, Beorn swats him... Repeat).