Stance and engaging enemies

[Seosaidh]

Now I want a deck of official adversary cards with Jon's artwork on each...

I really hate to say this... but I would almost certainly buy this. I love the artwork in TOR. I even spent a couple of hours going through the Revised Core rules (the only book I have so far) and copying out every single image and then pasting it into MS paint and saving it as a png. The images that were not embedded (backgrounds), I took screenshots of. If there were cards with adversary artwork and whatnot. I would almost certainly buy them.

[jamesrbrown]

Yes, generic adversary cards is all it would take and you wouldn't be infringing on C7. All I am suggesting is the title, Parry rating, and a list of the special abilities. Nothing else. No artwork or full stats. Actually, you could leave out the list of special abilities too (you would have the books or cheat sheets of adversary statistics anyway). The reason to list Parry is so the player-heroes don't have to keep asking. The same is true for listing Parry rating on the personalised stance cards for each player-hero; the Loremaster won't need to ask each time.

Of course, if C7 wants to create official adversary cards with artwork, I think that would be awesome!

For me, the adversary cards would replace the need for minis to keep track of engagements. However, with the stance cards already created, minis are great for keeping track of engagements. I have numbered wooden tokens to represent the adversaries. To show engagements, I would just place those tokens on top of each player-hero's stance card in front of him at the table. This works well too because there is only one player-hero per engagement anyway.

In this case, at the top of each round, players would choose a stance card and play it on the table in front of themselves. The tokens/minis representing the adversaries they are engaged with would be placed in front of them too or on top of their stance cards.

[Glorelendil]

And the best part is that when you needed extra cards for big battles you'd have an excuse to buy new decks!

Which of course just got me thinking about a Magic: the Gathering kind of card game based on Middle Earth and TOR rules.

Dom: when you decide to do that, please please please let me participate in design.

[Hermes Serpent]

There's not that much wrong with the LotR card game except it's produced by FFG and follows their business model of screwing every last cent out of everyone who wants to play the game. The artwork is nice and the gameplay seem OK but the stress on buying more and more cards is not a cycle I'd want to get into.

[Seosaidh]

There's not that much wrong with the LotR card game except it's produced by FFG and follows their business model of screwing every last cent out of everyone who wants to play the game. The artwork is nice and the gameplay seem OK but the stress on buying more and more cards is not a cycle I'd want to get into.

I own the base set of this game, and all 6 of the mini-decks from the first line. If I remember properly, my brother owns the base set, the first 'major' expansion, and at least part of the second set of mini-decks associated with the 'major' expansion he has. I would definitely say that it is a fun game, and would recommend it. It gets easier as you increase the number of people playing, which is a common theme amongst most co-op games where it is the players vs the game system (ex: LOTR card game, LOTR board game, Shadows over Camelot). However, I stopped buying the cards, since they aren't cheap, and I had enough to play with as it was. I would definitely say that you don't need to keep on buying cards to play the game, since you know what is in each deck before you buy it. But if they release a new deck with a shiny new hero/companion/event/quest than it could be hard not to buy it. Especially since each mini-deck gives you an entirely new quest, which has new nuances and methods of beating it. But since all the mini-decks require one of the 'major' expansions in order to use the quest/adversaries (with the exception of the first 6 mini-decks), it can get expensive quickly.

Edit: Actually, on further thought, saying that you what is in each deck before you buy it is slightly misleading. Each given deck has the same exact cards as every other of that given deck. So there are no random cards. You cannot tell what each of these cards are without first buying the deck, since FFG does not list the cards in the deck. They tell you how many of each type (hero, player, adversary, quest), but not what they are. However, if some kind soul bought a deck and posted online, "I just bought deck X, and it has Frodo(a blue hero), along with a bunch of Rohirrim cards that focus on completing quests, and some cool new swamp type adversaries", then you know that if you buy deck X, you will also get Frodo, the Rohirrim allies, and the swamp adversaries, since the decks are the same. In that sense, you 'know' what you'll get before you buy the deck.

[zedturtle]

Here's a first pass at Adversary cards. Making them form-fillable will have to wait until after the weekend, but maybe someone will get use out of them.

Feedback, as always, is highly appreciated!

[Seosaidh]

I like it! My only suggestion/preference would be to make the gray in the diamond and perhaps top banner red. I do like the layout. It allows a LM to show the players the stats like Endurance or Hate if he wants, but if he wants he can just leave them blank so the players can't see them.

Out of curiosity. How did you make these? Did you use pre-done images for the banner/diamond/background, or did you draw them yourself? What tool did you use to assemble the parts and write out the text? Really good job! I really, really like these!

[zedturtle]

I like it! My only suggestion/preference would be to make the gray in the diamond and perhaps top banner red. I do like the layout. It allows a LM to show the players the stats like Endurance or Hate if he wants, but if he wants he can just leave them blank so the players can't see them.

Yeah, my only concern was that it would be too close to the Forward stance option; I might play with it.

Out of curiosity. How did you make these? Did you use pre-done images for the banner/diamond/background, or did you draw them yourself? What tool did you use to assemble the parts and write out the text? Really good job! I really, really like these!

The images come from my collection of things, a lot of the things are clip-art or vintage stuff, some is found-work. I use the Adobe Creative Suite, for example the eye of Sauron is my own design, drawn in Illustrator (and drawing inspiration from both WETA's design and C7's). I do the assemble work in InDesign, which is industry-standard for this kind of work. Here's a full page layout, from my expanded magic rules I'm working on...

[Seosaidh]

Very nice. I'm not artsy at all but that doesn't stop me being interested in how it is done. I have to say, you do really good work.