Moses2813 said:

All of your posts have added nothing to the conversation and only attacked the poster. You attacked my post in an ,assumed, attempt to de-evaluate anything I had said.

You then,IMO, attacked Big Jim needlessly about his, disparaging remark. Yet still not adding anything of benefit to the OP that pertained to his thread.

Now this. Once again you derail the topic just to make a point and add nothing to the original.

Stay on topic and address the topic. Try to help Boris out instead of all of this extra crap. That is what I mean when I say, "You are coming off as a troll."

Boris, I can have a deck list for you to try in a bit if you like it is Tactics heavy focusing on dwarves. I built it to compliment the posted Dwarf Deck from FFG but it has shown some promise as a solo deck on it's own. I am also working on a Secrecy deck using Boromir. but it is still early to do anything with.

Dwnhmcntryboy said:

I'd like to see what you came up with. I'll try it out. You're right, by the way - 50% win ratio sucks. I need better rates than that for the time I am killing playing the game.

Finally got to proxy two of your concept cards. I loved the Arwen and even drew her finally. I liked The Art of War as well. For me, it was fun to use the new cards.

If you ever do this again, put me on the PM list. I can avoid getting called names and you do not have to spend a bunch of time defending your ideas.

Dwnhmcntryboy said:

Please, you need to calm down. I attacked no one. I disagreed with you and Big Jim and felt the OP had put together 5 cards that were right on the mark. That is on topic and I do not feel that I have to "help out" or "set the OP on the right track". The OP has stated this to you as well.

Moses2813 said:

The cards aren't right on the mark though. One of the cards is to reduce threat for playing allies…how is that logical? The more allies you have, the bigger your party, the more noise you make, etc etc. If anything, that card should have been "If you play no allies this round, lower your threat by 3."

The Arwen card is also not on the mark. It forces you to play with 2 heroes to start. Sure, secrecy is awesome. But then you may or may not luck in to drawing her, and having to raise your threat by 6 basically negates the whole idea of running a secrecy deck in the first place. It also has no hitpoints on it, but since it's 6 threat, 3WP and 2D, I'm going to assume she has 1 hitpoint in following with every other card (with the exception of Bilbo, whose threat is 1 higher than the totals on his card). She is frail and absolutely not worth it.

The Art of War is also meh. I like the reducing threat for killing an enemy, but the putting a progress token on the quest needs to go as that completely negates the need for Blade of Gondolin. It shouldn't have both the ability to give quest progress and threat reduction. That makes it a no brainer to use. If it was a restricted attachment that only reduced threat, that makes the player think about whether he should play Blade of Gondolin or the Art of War.

And finally Fearless Leadership. Completely broken card. Killing enemies with Tactics is already pretty trivial, why make it even easier by allowing them to kill everything before it ever engages the player? It's not fun and completely ruins the fun factor of having to decide who to defend/attack with and how best to quickly kill off engaged enemies.

Boris_the_Dwarf said:

Just because _you_ want every scenario to be winnable with any kind of deck you may come up with doesn't mean that it would be a good idea.

I've mentioned many times that I feel the game doesn't work particularly well solo. It's also true that the Tactics sphere is a bit of a 'trap' for players new to the game. But what you're proposing would be the death of the game, imho: Making every sphere alike is a bad, bad, bad, idea!

Cotillion37 said:

Hitting this point by point:

"One of the cards is to reduce threat for playing allies… how is that logical?"

It's logical in the same sense that you have to have a big party to overcome staging threat totals as rounds progress. Otherwise, your threat goes up. If all you ever have are three herores, then yeah they may make "less noise" but they are also race to the line of defeat.

Fearless Leadership isn't broken, it just gives the Tactics sphere what it needs in a way that (IMHO) is in flavor with the concept of that sphere - the ability to defeat enemies quickly so that the heroes and allies can quest. Quest = progress tokens = cleared stages = victory vs. the inability to defeat enemies = rapidly increasing threat = defeat. Look at the other cards in the sphere and then explain to me realistically how this isn't in flavor.

I also fail to see how these suggestions destroy flavor, and no one who has claimed that has offered to answer that question.

Without getting into the specific (I share many of the concerns about these cards expressed early in the set) about the rules of the cards, I wanted to make a brief point about the names.

You can not have a card in one sphere that uses the name of another sphere in its design. Having a Tactics card called 'Fearless Leadership' is incredibly confusing. Change the title!

I am not a Tolkien expert by any means, but the 'Art of War' (which I see as the most playable of the five cards) evokes images of Chinese military philosophy in my head, rather than ents, elves, dwarves or the armies of mordor.

Just wanted to point out that the Arwyn "Hero" in your deck would be completely neutered by the Arwyn Ally and Objective cards should they be in play before your hero came up.

I think the above best illustrates why all spheres should not be able to do all things. LotR is a game where you have to constantly change your deck based on scenario. IMO it is best to have a core deck Idea, like playing a Tactics based deck, with what is commonly known as a side board. This game is meant for players to collaborate to build decks to defeat scenarios. It is not in the spirit of the game to have 1 sphere or deck be able to do all things. That is where I see the failing of so many of your cards. They break that spirit of the game and thus the mechanics.

All except your last card. I do like it I think tweeks are in order for it but it definitely fits the Tactics theme.

Boris_the_Dwarf said:

Your Tactics cards ruin flavour because quest progression/threat reduction is not the strength of the sphere - brute strength and killing enemies is.

The whole point of having the Fellowship capped at nine people was so that they didn't draw attention to themselves when taking the ring to Mordor. Sure maybe it would have been easier to race to Mordor with an army, but it would be guaranteed that an army would oppose them when they got there. Playing more allies to lower threat is just ludicrous as it draws more attention to your party from a logical perspective. Yeah, it is possible to get out a lot of allies with Tactics, but you're also going to be wasting a resource to play that card, meaning potentially one less ally to play. Nothing about that card makes any sort of sense. It would be far better if the effect was to lower your threat by not playing allies that round (something that you can do once you already have enough allies out and don't need to play more, which will be a number of turns in to the game when you are going to need the threat reduction). You're also going to have to save resources to play enough allies to make the threat reduction worth it, so you're going to have college funds for your children on your Tactics heroes. It hinders you in the turns prior simply because you won't have enough allies out for potential threats because you're saving to play allies and your Last Alliance card (so the threat reduction effect is greater).

And Fearless Leadership is broken. Playing the game is going to be a complete joke with that card because enemies are all going to be dead before you get a chance to engage them. And it's an attachment, meaning you can do it every single turn. It's also not restricted, meaning you could have a Rivendell Blade and Rivendell Bow on your hero for massive damage. You would never have to engage and defend against enemies, which ruins all the fun of playing the Tactics sphere. Sure it has the chance of making me win faster, but it's at the cost of fun. Someone else suggested that it be an event instead of an attachment, and I find that far more reasonable.

I respect your opinions about the cards, but I'm glad you're not designing the game as you would likely ruin my favourite sphere if these cards were included without massive changes. I realize you don't think that Tactics is a viable sphere solo, hence your ideas for these cards, but Tactics is perfectly viable solo and I have no issues powering my way through quests with the Spirit/Tactics deck I posted earlier in this thread.