The one thing in The Lord of the Rings the Card Game that does not have the same feel as in the movies and books are allies. There they are regarded with high esteem and honor and they are not thrown away lightly. In the game they are sacrificed with ease and there is no penalty for it (except that they are gone). Not even in the scoring system.

I propose a simple change for the scoring system (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/lotr-lcg/support/LOTR_LCG_Score_Sheet.pdf
).

+ Number of allies killed by damage from enemies and treachery (tally)

/Peter

A lot of nameless men died in the War of the Ring.

ex. The Rohirrim were basically 95% Snowborn Scout, and 5% Eomer taking down an Oliphaunt with a single spear.

True there are many “namles” allies
• Gondorian Spearman
• Guard of the Citadel
• …
and there are many “named” allies too
• Faramir
• Radagast
• Beorn
• …

In the books most allies died in the great war, just after the scoop of the Lotr Card game.

BUT the point is that the players don’t care at all about the fate of the allies along as they succeed in the quest. And since they players are supposed to be the good guys (!!), they should be careful with sacrificing allies. A simple change to the scoring system would fix this.

+ Number of allies killed by damage from enemies and treachery (tally)

PESKPESK said:

Allies are meant to be sacrificed in this game, mostly in order to protect your heroes. But it's really simply a feature of the game; sacrificing allies is also a method of paying for effects - they're just a type of card. Punishing players for playing the game as it's meant to be played strikes me as silly.

THe way the OP has worded it, discarding allies to pay for effects wouldn't be included in the extra score.

Either way, since the re-vamp of the scoring system, with the +10 points per round, I really can't see it making any difference. Even if you care about the scores, chump-blocking is still going to make sense on a basic numbers game- even if you have to kill 9 allies to finish one round quicker!

Part of the mark of a good scoring system is that it's easy to administer. The current system already requires you to keep track of one extra piece of information. Keeping track of how many allies got killed in addition would just be cumbersome.

I like to think of it as the allies becoming incapacitated or too weary to continue. They must return to seek aide rather than dying.

radiskull said:

It’s easy to administer, we play that all “dead” allies are put face down in the discard pile all other cards are put face up. And we the game is finished we count the dead, by checking the discard pile for each player and tally. If a player manages to renew his player card pile or get an ally back from the discard pile, they are not counted.

However how about "will of the west", "stand and fight" and other cards that manipulate allies from the discard pile back into your hand or deck? I agree that a card or cards can try to penalize you for killing allies, but instead of changing the game why not add in some treachery or other encounter cards that do this?