I'm not so bothered by the current lack of synergy for Gondor (like I said, it will come) as I am that there was an EXPECTATION created by some of the published comments that led to us believing we would be getting more Gondorian love than what we have so far.

Wait, what? The expectation for more Gondor synergy was not created by user comments posted in the forum as you say. It was PROMISED in the preview articles published by FFG themselves in this page. It was not something invented here that "led us to believe" there would be more Gondor synergy. Don't blame the customers like you for the "mistakes" the company has made.

That said, I do believe (or rather hope) that we will actually see more Gondor synergy and I think we'll have more potent cards in the last two packs that will allow for some very good Gondor decks.

Here are some quick numbers:

a player card word search of "gondor" at lotrlcg.com yielded 32 results

The five gondor cards from the newest AP make it 37

a player card word search of "dwarf" yielded 50 results

That's a 13 card difference with gondor synergy being two APs and two saga expansions behind. If we can expect 8 or so cards helping gondor in the last two APs, that's only a five card difference. Not too bad

The fact that there are many (and there will be more) cards with the Gondor keyword does not equal Gondor synergy. In fact if we look at the last player cards in the packs there are lots of new Gondor allies and cards that have the trait, but they do not work together in any way. How do they expect us to make Gondor decks when they print Leadership Boromir and then Knight of Minas Tirith that only works with 3 Tactics heroes? Or you could just compare Denethor, a unique Gondor ally, with, say, the ally version of Glóin. Denethor does nothing having to do with Gondor, while Glóin benefits the players for having many Dwarf cards. That's the difference between these two traits. Dwarves actually work together mechanically, Gondor does not.

Here are some quick numbers:

a player card word search of "gondor" at lotrlcg.com yielded 32 results

The five gondor cards from the newest AP make it 37

a player card word search of "dwarf" yielded 50 results

That's a 13 card difference with gondor synergy being two APs and two saga expansions behind. If we can expect 8 or so cards helping gondor in the last two APs, that's only a five card difference. Not too bad

The fact that there are many (and there will be more) cards with the Gondor keyword does not equal Gondor synergy. In fact if we look at the last player cards in the packs there are lots of new Gondor allies and cards that have the trait, but they do not work together in any way. How do they expect us to make Gondor decks when they print Leadership Boromir and then Knight of Minas Tirith that only works with 3 Tactics heroes? Or you could just compare Denethor, a unique Gondor ally, with, say, the ally version of Glóin. Denethor does nothing having to do with Gondor, while Glóin benefits the players for having many Dwarf cards. That's the difference between these two traits. Dwarves actually work together mechanically, Gondor does not.

this!

just b/c a card says a certain trait, doesn't mean it gels with cards of the same trait.

and i really don't expect to see anything that really gels a gondor deck in the next two packs (only 4 more cards per sphere left to go). but, maybe i'll be wrong...

I'm not so bothered by the current lack of synergy for Gondor (like I said, it will come) as I am that there was an EXPECTATION created by some of the published comments that led to us believing we would be getting more Gondorian love than what we have so far.

Wait, what? The expectation for more Gondor synergy was not created by user comments posted in the forum as you say. It was PROMISED in the preview articles published by FFG themselves in this page. It was not something invented here that "led us to believe" there would be more Gondor synergy. Don't blame the customers like you for the "mistakes" the company has made.

That said, I do believe (or rather hope) that we will actually see more Gondor synergy and I think we'll have more potent cards in the last two packs that will allow for some very good Gondor decks.

Ummm... I didn't say "user" comments. I was referring to the comments PUBLISHED by FFG. The ones that were already quoted in the thread. We're saying the same thing. You are just reading my previous post with the wrong interpretation.

As for the "numbers" of the vaious races/groups. While Gondor may have plenty of cards, they just aren't as... unifying... as the Dwarven cards are. We're all familiar with Dain (even if he is overpowered), of course, but there a plenty more cards that provide wide-ranging boosts for the dwarves that Gondorians just can't touch. It seems like many of the Gondorian related cards are very specific or small in theme. Adding a resource token here or there. And the reality of it is that the vast majority of the cards with the Gondor trait are allies or heroes. Only a small handful of attachments and events. And as was mentioned above, not any real "glue cards" that really make it worth stocking your deck with a Gondorian horde. Where's the Legacy of Durin, King Under the Mountain, Durin's Song, Hardy Leadership, etc for Gondor? Blood of Numenor, Steward of Gondor, Gondorian Shield, and Behind Strong Walls are nice cards... but don't really require a Gondorian deck, and are all very specific to the character they are played on. About the best universal "glue card" they have (other than Tactics Boromir) is For Gondor, an event that grants them all an extra point of defense. And THAT card was from all the way back in the core set.

It's hard to look at the raw numbers as being an objective way to compare the two groups (dwarves and Gondorians).

Ummm... I didn't say "user" comments. I was referring to the comments PUBLISHED by FFG. The ones that were already quoted in the thread. We're saying the same thing. You are just reading my previous post with the wrong interpretation.

Ah, ok then. You can't blame me though; if someone refers to "published comments" in a message board without any specification, anyone's common sense would make them think of user comments, as I hardly would think of published articles as "comments". But, ah, we're just discussing semantics.

They probably spread themselves too thin in what they were trying to do in this cycle to really hone the Gondor trait to a satisfying degree. Despite this being the "gondor" cycle FFG committed to enhancing the gondor trait along with outlands, mono-sphere, and ranger/trap deck types as well. Thats a lot of things to try and improve with only 12 cards per sphere with the 6 adventure packs. Not to mention Pippen and the hobbit cards from Amon Din; Pippen of which will already be ironically obsolete by the time he would have been effective at the release of the Black Riders. It may have been helpful to have that hero slot open to try and assist one of the many themes they're pushing.

As a result of this all these goals they're trying to accomplish, the player cards themselves are this blend of traits/styles that would have been better if they stood alone. The most grievious examples of which are Lord of Morthond and Knight of Minas Tirith. Lord of Morthond is obviously only useful for outlands but the leadership hero restriction seems either tacked on or just so it wouldnt be overpowered when combined with lore characters (which they dont evidently seem concerned with overpowering them). The Knight of Minas Tirith has a great effect and was just what Gondor decks could have used....but his ability is only active in mono-tactics which is a bummer because aside from Beregond and his defensive toys, most of the good Gondor cards are leadership especially the character whom is supposed to tie them all together, Boromir. If the Knight's ability was changed to be either all tactics OR all gondor heroes than it would be fantastic.

its no surprise that the AP with the best mix of player cards was the Stewards Fear. Each card had a defined niche. All the outland cards created really the outland archetype. Gondorian Shield was a fantastic attachment to any Gondor Hero not just Beregond. Mithrandir's advice is a really good card mono-lore. Good Harvest and Gaining Strength are all useful cards in their own right and dont try to assimilate into an archetype for the sake of doing it. Barahir's ring was soley ment for Aragorn enthusiasts.

If in these last two packs they can focus on having each individual card accomplish one individual goal than by the end of the cycle it will be a lot better

I agree completely Pharmboys, that was a great post. I also think that they're trying to do too much in this cycle, and yeah, hobbits were completely unnecesary here. And it's not like I don't trust FFG anymore, it's just that my faith in their design choices has decreased greatly since I started playing this game.

I absolutely agree. What is all the more frustrating to me, is that instead of getting Gondor cards with interesting synergies, that open up multiple deck archetypes (like Dwarves do), we get Outlands, which has essentially one way to build and play decks (allies, allies, and more allies). On the one hand, I think this is good because before Outlands, there was realistically no other way that a new player would be beating scenarios like Into Ithilien or Siege of Cair Andros without going back and buying a ton of cards. So having one AP to throw a bone to new players makes all kinds of sense.

But why does each AP have more and more help for Outlands? To make matter worse, cards like Lord of Morthond that ostensibly boost Gondor can't really be used effectively in any non-Outlands decks - it might was well have been Outlands only. Where are the interesting synergies with different Gondor cards? The more that I try to build a ranger deck with Faramir, the more that I realize how anemic this trait is. The abilities don't particularly work together, and playing the Gondor heroes together gives you such a high starting threat that you pretty much have to draw Sneak Attack + Gandalf in the first few rounds to stand a chance. Leadership Boromir is starting to look like a waste of a card; trying to build around him basically forces you to run mostly sub-optimal, or overly-expensive allies. Of all of the Gondor archetypes, the only one that I consider quality at this point is Beregond + Spear of the Citadel + Behind Strong Walls + Gondorian Shield, and we had 3/4 of that combo straight out of the HoN box!

To be fair, I am really liking some of the new cards: Gondorian Shield is amazing, Mirlonde is very underrated, and people will come to realize that cards like Silvan Refugee are game-changing. But it definitely seems odd to me that seemingly 80% of the quality cards in this cycle have only the most tenuous connection to Gondor. I wish they would have made a Thorongil (Tactics) version of Aragorn and really gone down that road, especially since they are not bound to the timelines of the War of the Ring so they get more design freedom going into back-story. Instead I could play Outlands where half the deck is built before I even pick my other two heroes. My sincere hope is that the next cycle provides the vindication for Gondor, because I really wanted HoN + Against the Shadow to do just that.

Pippin should have been Mablung. Same stats, same ability, just replace "Hobbit" with "Ranger", and you have a thematic Secrecy deck with Mablung and Faramir (or Aragorn).

Pehaps the developers realized that they overpowered the dwarves and didn't want to make the same mistake again? I am ok with what they have done with the Gondor trait so far. We got more resource generating cards, Gondor has a wide variety of defense synergies and the new Boromir solves any problems that one player should have when attacking enemies. I hope we will get some more cards during the remaining adventure sets.

I feel that the mistake of not splitting the dwarf trait up will haunt this game for it's entire life. (I would have preferred to see at least Erabor and Grey Mountain traits for the two major dwarven factions personally).

It wouldn't necessarily have been a mistake either if other races hadn't been split but;

Elves are split between Sylvan and Noldar (with a 3rd elf type not included; which I think will prove to be a mistake if the game goes on long enough).

Humans are split between Rohan, Beorning, Dale, Gondor, (and now Outlands) - this is fine because these nations are very distinct. Although I personally think Outlands might have been better tied to Gondor (but it may be that the outlands "slither" theme works best if you create it from scratch - adding it into Gondor would have been ridiculously overpowered).

Dwarfs aren't split.

Hobbits aren't split (however they're a far smaller "nation" and have far fewer characters to draw on than the other three).

The dwarfs are always going to have an amazing card pool compared to the rest because of this decision and people will always compare to the dwarfs for power.

Another mistake in the design of the dwarfs was letting them get multiple facets to their trait (before most factions got any). Specifically I'm talking about the fact that dwarfs were developed in a certain direction (around Dain primarily) and then to make the saga expansions (that had to be all about dwarfs) varied they then had to develop the complimentary feature about having 5 dwarfs - if Dwarf have been split in two (or three) this could have been split the power for the saga between two or three traits, or the saga could even have focused on a new dwarf trait (Thorin's Company could have been it's own trait for example).

The fact that it's all locked into one trait is the real problem; dwarfs can basically do everything and it sets the benchmark incredibly high - higher I think than other traits are likely to reach.

The final mistake is just one from the game being new - Dain is amazing and too good. Leadership Boromir has a much better balanced take on the same concept (+1 attack instead of +1 attack and +1 spirit - needing a resource instead of being ready, but allies only instead of all) Leadership Boromir is good; but Dain shows him up massively.

Meanwhile the best powerhouse gondor card, steward of gondor - instead allows anyone to become Gondor. (Which does have the potential to be amazing if they make the synergy too good, since it lets the Gondor theme be far more flexible) but also means that you don't really need to pick Gondor heroes at all, and the best parts of steward of Gondor are therefore available to anyone.

rapier: good reasoning with the dwarfs

I think this is why to the malign of some players that the outlands and gondor traits were seperated. They had a concept they really wanted to do with the fiefs of gondor but would have made a single trait overly powerful creating another dwarf situation. Then again the outlands are a top tier deck now so i'm not sure how well that panned out, but imagine if they were outlands and gondor! Hopefully we will just get a few more cards to gel Gondor over a bit so its better than it is currently

As for their potential regret with dwarf design i think their remedy is just going to be ignoring dwarves for a while. Long enough that the inevitable power creep and expansions of card pools will create other really strong factions and no one will really care about dwarves anymore.

it might be worth adding that the cards were already designed by the time the current designers came on board:

"When I [Caleb Grace] started working on the Against the Shadow cycle, most of the initial design had already been done by Lukas Litzsinger and Nate French, who were working with a story crafted by the company’s CEO, Christian Petersen. My role in this collaboration was to develop all of those designs and ideas into a finished product. It was a fun challenge, and I’m proud of the set that we’ve created together. I think fans of the game are going to love each installment in this cycle."

that's not to say Caleb didn't have some input, I'm sure he did, but these cards were all designed a long time ago (around the beginning of Dwarrowdelf, I believe) and the game has changed much since then.

The Saga Expansions - which were Caleb's - I think are much better. So, I look forward to the upcoming Sagas and a cycle that Caleb has been involved with from the beginning!

nice point, i think we're really going to see the pinnacle of his design process with these saga expansions. Black Riders just looks so darn good

Absolutely. On the Doorstep in particular gives me great hope for where the Sage Expansions are heading. The Battle of Five Armies scenario is so epic and perfect, right down to having the Eagle objective ally save you at the last minute. Now that we are seeing what they can do with Saga expansions, and we know that 6 more are on the way for the Lord of the Rings, I have great optimism for the future. Who knows, maybe later sets (Siege of Osgiliath/Battle of the Pelennor Fields/Cormallen) will fill in the holes of Against the Shadow and many of these cards will be given a new life. That's certainly what I hope for.

nice point, i think we're really going to see the pinnacle of his design process with these saga expansions. Black Riders just looks so darn good

To be honest im not sure about it. Yes art is amazing but the quests themselves.....? Will see will see i hope they ok.

From both Hobbits box only 2 quests is interesting Riddle in the dark and Battle of the 5 armies. All others boring baby play.

I hope BR will be more interesting.

Well from your perspective, I'd be surprised if they met your specific expectations. FFG can't market or design solely towards the hardcore because they don't make up a significant fraction of people buying the product. Especially with these saga expansions which seem ideal for newer players to easily climb aboard and play.

I'd think maybe 1 of the 3 quests has a very high level of difficulty but to make all 3 the equivalent of a siege of cair andros would put off far more people than it would satisfy

It would be a complete mistake to market the saga expansions at that difficulty.

They've just established a tool for creating harder quests (Nightmare expansions). This tool is better than the easy mode version (take cards out) because it generates extra revenue. While I expect the saga to have standard + easy mode, I'm sure we'll see PoD nightmare saga expansions at some point in the future. (Probably in the order of the quests release - which is the current release schedule, so we might see the first half of the hobbit saga after the Darrowwelf cycle - or in 7 Nightmare expansions time )

Its reasonable to ask the harder mode to cost more because it's more time involved (designing new content) and the hardcore players will be most willing to invest more into the game.

It would be a complete mistake to market the saga expansions at that difficulty.

They've just established a tool for creating harder quests (Nightmare expansions). This tool is better than the easy mode version (take cards out) because it generates extra revenue. While I expect the saga to have standard + easy mode, I'm sure we'll see PoD nightmare saga expansions at some point in the future. (Probably in the order of the quests release - which is the current release schedule, so we might see the first half of the hobbit saga after the Darrowwelf cycle - or in 7 Nightmare expansions time )

Its reasonable to ask the harder mode to cost more because it's more time involved (designing new content) and the hardcore players will be most willing to invest more into the game.

Here are some quick numbers:

a player card word search of "gondor" at lotrlcg.com yielded 32 results

The five gondor cards from the newest AP make it 37

a player card word search of "dwarf" yielded 50 results

That's a 13 card difference with gondor synergy being two APs and two saga expansions behind. If we can expect 8 or so cards helping gondor in the last two APs, that's only a five card difference. Not too bad

The fact that there are many (and there will be more) cards with the Gondor keyword does not equal Gondor synergy. In fact if we look at the last player cards in the packs there are lots of new Gondor allies and cards that have the trait, but they do not work together in any way. How do they expect us to make Gondor decks when they print Leadership Boromir and then Knight of Minas Tirith that only works with 3 Tactics heroes? Or you could just compare Denethor, a unique Gondor ally, with, say, the ally version of Glóin. Denethor does nothing having to do with Gondor, while Glóin benefits the players for having many Dwarf cards. That's the difference between these two traits. Dwarves actually work together mechanically, Gondor does not.

This is obviously true. And rather sad. And I'm afraid it won't get much better when the cycle's over. Especially for Leadership Gondor decks. In the next pack we do get the Gondor willpower boost, and Tome of Atanatar (mono-Leadership booster). So then there will be one pack, two Leadership cards, left. I hope to see at least one more Gondor Leadership ally, to synergize with the beautiful Boromir hero card.

visionary leadership will help a lot, but like you say, at least 1 more gondor leadership ally is critical. if they had made the knight of minas tirith leadership rather than tactics he would have been perfect. I'm hoping we see someone who has 2-3 atk power and some kind of effect. dont even care if he costs 4 resources, it would be a necessary addition

visionary leadership will help a lot, but like you say, at least 1 more gondor leadership ally is critical. if they had made the knight of minas tirith leadership rather than tactics he would have been perfect. I'm hoping we see someone who has 2-3 atk power and some kind of effect. don't even care if he costs 4 resources, it would be a necessary addition

I don't agree (with the knights of minas tirith part). I think that all traits should aim to be multi-sphere by default with exceptions being made for specific themed traits (Eagles only tactics makes sense to me - I'm expecting Ents not to get all 4 spheres).

The concept of the Knights of Minas Tirith is obviously tactics. I think it would be a mistake to make a card like that in any other sphere. (I'm happy to debate the logic of it requiring mono-tactics for it's response- on the other hand it's a rocking good card for 3 cost even without that). If it was leadership it would gain synergy with leadership Boromir (good for the Gondor Trait) in return for obviously buffing leadership and nerfing tactics (due to stealing a clear tactics ability associated with direct attack on the enemy) which I think would be bad for the game.

We shouldn't aspire to having better trait synergy at the expense of removing sphere distinctiveness. Having both spheres and traits to build around greatly expands choice in deck building and card design and is therefore much better for the game.

In any case Dain and Boromir both clearly gain power as number of players increase (which I happen to think is a flaw with both card designs from the point of view of balancing the game and future card design. All Gondor cards now need to be balanced assuming they get +1 attack, all dwarfs have to assume that you'll get +1 attack and +1 spirit). So you can have your cake and eat it providing you play two handed or with friends.

As for the general comment that we need more Gondor cards - honestly we always need more cards for every trait. That's the lifeblood of the game. So I would like more Gondor allies too, but not leadership cards that should have been tactics. (I would love more gondor allies to get the rule from Citadel Custodian, I really think that reflects the wealth of Gondor concept well - even though currently we lack the cards to run him well - also his lack of another rule suggests they think this is too strong to be a core theme).

I should have clarified my statement a little. I do value sphere distinctiveness, I was just trying to say how a Gondor ally that requires 3 heroes of the same sphere for an effect (regardless of what that effect is) would be a much greater help to the Gondor trait if it was leadership rather than tactics. Say for example if KoMT had the same stats but the ability was "if all heroes you control have the printed leadership icon, place 2 resources on a Gondor hero" it would help out the trait much more while retaining the essence of leadership.

Such a card would be acceptable (well, maybe not giving 3 attack to the Leadership Gondor ally, it would probably be 1/1/1/3 for leadership). I do agree that a card like that might have been nicer, for Leadership Boromir. (Although Gondor is currently split on 2/2/2/1 for hero sphere distribution, with spirit at 1).

I think a better question is whether tying the cards into mono-sphere this early is a good idea. I think I'll start a new post to discuss that point.

To move back to the main topic though:

I actually think that the card distribution in Against the Shadow is very good. I can see how it's disappointing for people that were really keen to play Gondor (And how they would feel mislead by FFG's statements). However I think the excessive focus on Dwarfs (mainly caused by the hobbit saga) is bad for the game. I think if the designers had tried to do 'only' or 'mainly' Gondor we would have a game where some decks are forced to be used and most are not viable.

A more even distribution of new cards for each trait to match the even sphere distribution is much better for power creep across different traits (and therefore makes it possible to design quests that can present difficulty while being doable by multiple different deck builds) is far better than what we got with Dwarfs everywhere. - Which was everyone has to play dwarfs. I hope we avoid getting dwarf cards until other traits have caught up with them for several cycles. (I think this problem was caused by saga's getting the greenlight + Khazad Dum being dwarf heavy. AoS was much more even in supporting multiple traits).

I don't mind the excessive Outlands trait support because it's taking a trait from nothing and making it something (like the Eagles). I actually think that the distribution of the Outlands cards (front-loaded onto the first pack) was a huge improvement compared with distribution of the Eagles (which required collecting at least 4 but probably all 6 packs before you could really try the eagles out).

Overall I would said that the distribution has improved, this cycle has shown us a glimpse of the intended Gondor play (lots of resource generation and I suspect expensive cards/allies), it's also opened up the theme of the Rangers (traps and staging area combat), and given us Outlands (allies of all different spheres coming together for the common good against the shadow).

We've also got the meta-theme of supporting mono-sphere which I'm not entirely sold on but has definitely been worked in better than secrecy was for cycle 2. (Even though I love the idea of secrecy and hope it gets revisited/improved).

It would be a complete mistake to market the saga expansions at that difficulty.

I agree here. I think the Saga expansions should and are markets to a more casual player. Focus is on theme and story. I expect the Saga packs to be fun thematic quests that provide a neat experience, and the AP cycles to be much more difficult and aimed at the more serious players and then for the few they have the nightmare packs.

My bet is that this will be the order of things.