Why would you want to do this, though? Is it fun?

spalanzani said:

It's not really fun, no. Once you draw the combo it's almost anti-climactic really, and the game is basically destroyed. I guess the motivation for doing it though would be good scores in the quest log or the prize support in the game night kits, etc. That kind of stuff. That's what worries me more than anything. And to be fair, the Zigil Miner deck wasn't really "fun" to play either but people still did it a LOT for whatever reasons.

spalanzani said:

this is exactly my take on these things. part of me thinks the designers of these decks set out to make a dekc that will break the game. (thats not aimed at you mattropolis by the way…or anyone else for that matter….i know youre just putting this out there for interests sake)

i guess what i mean is that there are people out there good at making these decks..really good, and i guess they just need to accept that once in a while a card wil come along that will chain react with previous ones to create a break in the game. all we (or they) can do is wait for the next errata and in the mean time either enjoy the broke game (if thats what they like) or pretend the card doent exist as i did with zigil.

i feel lucky that im not good enough at this game to have this problem

rich

iddqd … the konami code, game genie… there are plenty of people who enjoy unlimited power modes, whether intended by game developers or not. I wonder, though, what do you think the fix for this will be? Limit Master of Lore's effect to 1 card in a phase (or 2 or 3)? Limit Erebor Hammersmith's ability to once per round? I would really hate to have them come down on Legacy of Durin or the Horn of Gondor.

spalanzani said:

Honestly, we ended up running this combo just to see if we could pull it off. And it WAS hilarious to see three decks empty on third turn. Especially because our third player had no idea what we were doing. But it boils down to the same problem as Zigil Miner. A great card (Master of Lore) that is actually quite easy to warp into a broken combo. It was just nice this time to be an ally when Mattropolis decided to try out one of the horrible combos he discovered.

The Janitor

GrandSpleen said:

Master of lore seems like one of the issues, and we may run into more issues with this card later on, but for this specific case it may be easier to focus on the horn of gondor, and only allow the response to take place in all phases except the planing phase, I think this wold break the infinite cycle because resources would eventually run out, and would not be replenished each time hammersmith leaves play. This would work right?

I don't think this change to the horn of gondor response would at all diminish the quality of the card, since, at least in my games, allies really leave play durrin the planing phase. Although, I may be missing some strategy that is important to another player. I certainly missed the one in the topic of this post.

As with the old Ziggy, I don´t see a problem. I tried them like most of us did and after a few games didn´t bother with them anymore.

And for everything that involves the importance of a good score ( game nights or tournaments ) just make a restricted or banned list.

Problem solved.

Would any legitimate strategies be nerfed unduly if Born Aloft was limited to once per phase?

Very cool. I1 more unbalanced things in the game. And again Beravur and again unlimitd draw and unlimited hand size. As i always say any game with unlimited draw and unlimited hand size is always will be unbalanced. And like always the broken cards is Beravur, Will of hte west.

The big problem of this game is UnLIMITED DRAW AND UNLIMITED HAND SIZE!!!!!

Mattr0polis said:

I read that post in BGG, and I was not the guy who said "There is no five card combo that breaks a game", but I agreed with him, because when he said those words I think he was referring to a solo play.

You play exclusively 2~3 player games, and 2~3 player games are very easy even without this combo.

Only quest that is actually difficult for 2~3 players are Massing at Osgiliath and if the other 2 players can hold off the enemies for first 2 turns (which is how long it takes to set up the combo according to your post), you can win that scenario without this combo as well.

I admit, whomever came up with this combo is very creative and insightful, but the combo itself doesn't really create a situation where it turns an unwinnable quest into winnable one…. it just makes a winnable quest to be winnable with unneccesarily amount of cards in hand/play.

I've toyed around with this combo in solo player using various combination of Dwarven heroes. I still consistantly won against scenarios that I have won without using this combo, and I have still lost against scenario that I have lost without using this combo (namely Dol Guldur)

But being able to draw your entire deck in single phase, however impractical it is, shouldn't exist and I think errata on Legacy of Durin (a limit three times per phase or something like that) can easily fix this.

Ellareth said:

We don't play exclusively 2-3 player but a large majority are. That said, the game is still enough of a challenge after multiple hundreds of games that it continues to be our most played game. I definitely would not call it "very easy". And I wouldn't write off a combo just because it's harder in solo. EVERYTHING is harder in solo and a lot of things are clearly not even balanced for solo play. I've heard many times that the game is balanced mainly with 2 player in mind, which usually does feel the most balanced to me.

The problem with errata to Horn of Gondor, Legacy of Durin, Born Aloft, etc is that drawing tricks alone might eventually lead to the Wealth of Gondor thing (or worse) again down the road with future cards.

I think I partially agree with Glaurung. Things like this will keep cropping up unless they put a cap on card drawing.

Simple solution …

How about a rule that says:

"Each card may only enter play, or be put into play, once per phase."?

Thus, once a copy of Erebor Hammersmith has entered play and been returned to your hand, you can't play it again that phase. The only way you could play another Erebor Hammersmith would be to have another one in your hand - which in turn could not be played a second time once having been played out and returned to hand.

This would prevent any future infinite loops and still leave card drawing available for those lucky enough to play be able to Sneak Attack two Gandalfs in one round, etc.

So if someone really thinks we need an errata the only thing that needs to be done: Make Will of the West a "once per game" card or a "remove from game after use" card.

That solves all our "game breaking" combos because so far all of them rely on WotW to keep them going.

muemakan said:

Agree with you. Will of the west is most broken card what i saw in any card game. Show this card to MTG player, he will be shock.

Ellareth said:

the game is not easy with number of players. Yes in SOM cycle it was like this but now with HON is going more difficutl with the number of players.

I've been thinking about this situation over night and, despite my two proposed solutions above (1. limit Born Aloft to once per phase or 2. institute a rule saying each card may only be played or enter play once per phase), I've reached the following conclusion …

What does it matter?

Computer games include cheat codes and nobody complains if you use those cheat codes in single player or even multiplayer co-op. So given this is a co-operative game, what does it matter if this combo exists? If people want to use it, let them. You don't have to if you don't want to. What's the problem?

The only problem I see is any potential competitive tournaments with players competing to get the best score against a given scenario. And if/when that happens, just ban the combo. Have a rule saying that in competitive play, you can't play Born Aloft on Erebor Hammersmith more than once per turn.

Simple.

"God mode" exists in single player computer games, but not in online play. I don't see why we can't have the equivalent for this game, too.

Glaurung said:

Glaurung said:

Sorry but I really don't see that as a valid argument at all. I've played twenty CCGs/LCGs in my time and I don't think you can compare the cards from any of them to those of another - different games require different cards and different standards.

Hell, one really obvious example - the Babylon 5 CCG allows players to choose their starting hand. No, really, it does. Too powerful for LotR, right? But it's perfect for Babylon 5 and the game would be terrible without it.

Saying Will Of The West would shock an MTG player is completely irrelevant. :-)

What matters is whether or not it works for this game. And I think it does. Other than the prospect of uber-card drawing, which I think it's fair to say was never FFG's intention with any combo, why exactly would Will Of The West be too powerful? It wouldn't …

Yeah, kind of agree on Will of the West as well. It has been a lynchpin in both this and the Zigil deck. Making it go out of play after you use it would stop the infiniteness of these types of combos. Though, you could still draw your whole deck in like a turn, which probably still isn't great for the game.

I'm sorry, "very easy" was not the word I should've used.

What I was trying to say was that 2~3 player games allow players to 'specialize', which allows players to do reasonably well against most scenarios without the need for extreme specialization (such as spirit/lore draw + wotw deck given in this post, or infamous Hama pure tactics lock down deck); if you are able to with with these extreme measures, you are probably skilled enough to win without them too….. but I said them in very poor manner.

And like what others said above, every broken combo arises from Will of the West. Fix that card, and always set limit per phase or round to repeatable card draw and that should be good.

Stenun said:

Yes you right on certain points but….. any card game is need draw. When draw is unlimited is always bring to unbalance. If in 1 action i can shuffle all my dsicard pile back is really powerful. When i saw this card first time i was shock. And all the time on this forum i say will of the west, Beravur and Protection lf Lorien should to be ban or get errata. Now Beravur and Protector get already waht they deserve now is time for Will of the west. And also i still beliive we need to limit draw per round and sure we need to limit hand size.

Rather than have a draw limit, which requires keeping track of the number of cards drawn, I think a "hand cap" is better. A limit to the number of cards you can have in your hand keeps you from drawing too many cards all at once. It won't fix everything, but it is a good start, since it makes these combos slower and less reliable.

In one game I play, a hard hand cap was recently set at 16. The end-of-turn hand cap has always been 8 for that game. But the end-of-turn hand cap was not effective on its own, as 17 years of draw abilities made it possible for players to draw obscene amounts of cards in one turn. Once they instituted a 16-card hand cap, it GREATLY reduced the number of people attempting broken combos.

FFG could easily do something like this in LoTR LCG. Have an end-of-turn hand cap of 6 cards, and a hard hand cap of 12 cards otherwise. Or some other numbers that they thought was fair.

Bryon said:

same story was with previous Lotr card game from Decipher. From the begin Decipher game also have unlimited draw but very quickly come crazy powerful combos and they issue the rule of 4 ( cannot draw more then 4 cards every turn in felowship phase). Felowship phase is the same like a planing phase for FFG game.

Yes, I remember when Decipher announced that rule. It made sense. So did giving eratta to Far-Seeing Eyes to make it unique, which I think was announced at about the same time. The "Rule of 4" just felt a little clunky, since you had to keep track of how many cards you had drawn that phase. Thankfully, 4 is a rather small number, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

I still prefer a hand cap, since you don't have to keep track of anything in the past. You only have to count the cards in your hand at the exact moment you activate a draw ability and see if you are allowed to draw.