I’ve played many card games and I am very curious about this game. If my experience can help the designer crew of the game… here are some tips for them :

1) Please try not to create too much powerfull ‘you win’ rare cards. One card should not have a too big impact on the game… better to focus on the combination of two or three cards. Keep in mind that sometime ‘You win’ cards can kill the fun of a good game.

2) Try not to forget that many players play game card in teamwork (2 vs 2). Please don’t forget this aspect.

3) All type of deck should have a weakness.

4) Please don’t create a strategy base on discarding the enemy cards from their hand (or destroying is ressources). That’s not fun!

5) A game should never be too long (max 45 min. or 1 hour for a 2 vs 2 game).

6) Creating a deck is a big part of the fun of a TCG. So multiples strategy to win a game is always a plus. Having multiples decks with each their strategy is a plus.

Hope this will help you…

Well, here’s what we know.

Rare cards are usually powerful. But you can only have 1 of each rare in your deck. Period.

Clash cards are powerful as well. 3 clash cards per deck, tops. (if it’s rare, only 1 of that type, but you could have 3 uncommon clash cards, or one of each of 3 different clash cards, etc)

Signature cards, while possibly powerful, are only usable by a certain Hero/Villain.

The game is designed to only take 15 minutes to play. (we don’t know for sure yet, as we haven’t gotten to playtest it, but this is the rough time they’ve given us so far)

Team games (2v2) might be difficult under the format. Seeing as how you have 3 cards that square off against an opponent, it would be tricky to determine how to work in an extra pair of people. Unless they do two 1v1 games, where one team can then gang up on the surviving opponent (after one opponent is down), then I don’t see how it will work. But that’s where Street Rules come in. If they don’t design for it, members of the community will find a way to work around it when the time comes.

I hope THIS helped YOU. :)

in continuation:

6) decipher is good with stategies, dont worry

3) thats what playtesting is for, to make sure nothing is too powerful (yes, among other things)

if you would like to be a playtester, post under the “volunteers” topic. (they are lacking in volunteer posts there) < – - KIDDING! (in case you didn’t catch that

im done…

Also, regarding #3 “All type of deck should have a weakness.”

I don’t think that each type of deck should have one weakness. It’s annoying when there’s one way to weaken a deck and that’s it. “Not feared in sunlight”? Sure, great if you’re playing hobbits AND if you’re against Nazgul. If you don’t know that you’re against Nazgul, there’s little reason to include it. All of those race-specific cards really annoyed me.

@ altarvo: hey! i remember that card! the only time cards like that come into use is if you want to beat a specific hobbits vs. nazgul deck, which only works if Nazgul is the ‘in’ deck of that period (remember Isengard Orcs anyone?)

cool for themed decks later on…..and great for set junk space!

This topic can be answered by thouroughly reading through the forums.In general, Decipher has a pretty good past in producing “solid” TCG’s / CCG’s.Although I am all for multiplayer gaming and multiple strategies.

And my LotR deck was Gondor Knights/Moria Orcs (although Moria went kinda underrated with the release of future fellowship cards,as well as “Power According to his Stature”).I hate Nazgul as much as I hate Hobbits ^^

i always remember playing moria orcs because that was all i could afford….and then fellowship block went under! ahh the good old days…anybody remember Mirror of Galadriel?

this is now the Official LoTR Reminiscing Thread (if i spelled that right)

I didn’t play LOTR that long, but I could reminisce for hours about SWCCG or STCCG first edition…

SW:CCG was awesome, but Tallon Rolls were such BS. I’m sorry, you could have luke in red 5 with r2 and get hosed by Tallon Rolls…. ugh. Destiny of 6 if I remember correctly… ugh.

Thats why i always kept a crowbar handy to um… pull a “trick” of my own… :p there were ways around those later on in the game and other cards to counter it. I.E. using special modifications etc…

Dude, Moria Orcs were the shiznat. You can pretty much build up a very deadly force with uncommons and commons alone! (the guy that let’s you a play a discarded weapon when you play him, the scimitar that lets you draw a card when it is played, any/all of the cheap archers, and that’s a good 16 solid cards, before adding anything else)

I used to run Hobbits/Moria archers, or Ents/Nazgul. Most of my cards coming from the earlier sets. (well, except the Ents, which weren’t around in the earliest sets)

Only rare card you needed for Moria was 4x Goblin Armory,that let you stack up minions.

1) Please try not to create too much powerful ‘you win’ rare cards. One card should not have a too big impact on the game… better to focus on the combination of two or three cards. Keep in mind that sometime ‘You win’ cards can kill the fun of a good game.

That’s something that the Yu-gi-oh! TCG does terribly, in my opinion. Maybe the designers aren’t paying attention, maybe they thought that easy monster destruction balanced whatever sick abilities they gave the monsters, or maybe they just want people to think, “Wow, this card is so powerful! What a great game!” But with every set, they manage to release some pretty broken cards. Don’t believe me? Well, try this on for size. With the current banlist, it’s possible to make a deck that CONSISTENTLY wins on the first turn. That’s broken.

So yeah, don’t do what they did. Don’t release powerful cards because it’s “cool.” If there are powerful cards, make them hard to use or give them disadvantages that aren’t easy to work around. Cards should provide an advantage only slightly greater than the disadvantages required to use it. Otherwise, you have broken cards, and that makes the game no fun to play.

One more thing: There should be no “meta” (popular deck types that are significantly better than any others). The cards are there to be used. If you have thousands of cards but any good player uses less than 200 of them, you’re completely missing the point of a customizable card game.

I know I’m asking a lot, but hey, this is supposed to revolutionize trading card games, right? Let’s make it work.

lets see, Goblin Swarms let you stack the minions, Goblin Armories let you draw a card each for each weapon played…

Goblin Runner was the common that when you played it you added 2…(deploy cost 1) net add of 1…

Mines of Moria Expansion released the goblin archers, along with Goblin Archer from FoTR (he was the one that made fellowship archery minus 5 if you spotted an elf right?

basically you did nothing until site 4…(maybe played some nazgul, then when fellowship moved to 4 you could have 3 twilight and play 10 orcs and a Cave Troll…

ahhh the good old days, (anybody still paying attention?)

I’m paying attention. And thinking about rebuilding a few decent LotR decks, and convincing people near me to learn to play the game. :)

Moria decks RULE! I used to play Goblin Runner, the Goblin Scimitar, whichever goblin it was that let you play weapons from the discard pile, the two types of goblin archers (bowmen and marksman? something), the rare goblin that gave a +1 to the archer total (had 2 of him), and then any condition that could help goblins. Goblins PWN.

runs to find LoTR binder

goblin scavengers let you play a weapon from your discard pile when you played the minion, Goblin Archer cost 5 and made the fellowship archery total -6 if you could spot another orc…

i remember an Archery goblin deck and a major swarm deck, with 4 Goblin Backstabbers (damage +2 when in same skirmish as another orc) and a Goblin Spearman with Spear when i was feeling really crafty…

my favorite nazgul was nertea (uncommon) that let you play a minion from your discard pile for each character over 4…

though at that time the major Fellowship deck was multi-culture with that Gandalf event to add 1 to the move limit…

if only i could remember my LoTR online password, (ill just use my dads…)

If thats how you wanna do, then we really should talk about the great starwars decks of old, blowing up hoth with the deathstar? having an epic jedi dual with yoda and vader? oh that game was soo great!! i hope FK lets me track destinies (joke).

SWCCG was before my time…(i was 4 when it came out in ‘95 (i think it was?)

every once in a while me and my dad pull out his cards and make decks, (starting with premier, add a set every time i beat him (he went to WORLDS, back when there was only 100 invintations…

lets just say we’ve been playing for the better part of a year and we are on Hoth…

@Masteryoda: Dang, you’re young. I was at the Hobby Lobby the day they got BB Premiere in stock and bought a pack. My first rare was Obi-Wan’s cape, but I was far more excited about my Red 1 card… :p

I have a stack of Star Wars CCG cards here somewhere… Bought a box of like, 1 deck and 12 random boosters from different sets. (bought it for the Young Jedi Naboo deck and Duel of the Fates booster, got Star Wars CCG and Jedi Knight cards as well, never enough to do anything)

My favorite card is my holographic Blizzard 1 Scout. (an AT-ST) :)

I started YJ, but it never was challenging enough for me. I bought tons of SWCCG it was my favorite CCG by far. I only stopped buying new sets whent hey introduced episode 1 stuff, but I still bought up old sets. My fav cards are Wampa, One-Arm, and Yakkle Gakkle (sp?)

@Wampa_Dan, How old are you? I’m about the same age as masteryoda, I thought that was the target age group.

At one point, I was like, 6 rares shy of having the entire first 3 sets of YJ. Never could find Duel of the Fates (outside of that one booster) or Boonta Eve Classic.

I liked it because you could have a very simple deck structure (mine was usually Obi-wan and Qui-gonn), but a lot could happen based on a few simple choices (like the order your guys fight in, when they use weapons, etc) My favorite things about it really were the “advanced tactics” I got good at using, such as surrendering aggressively. :) (would win planet one, get close to losing, surrender planet two, and my opponent would deck out because his fighting force to kill me with was on planet two still)

@AlphaCenturion: Yeah I liked it at first too, but I quickly lost interest after the first few sets and focused on SWCCG and STCCG. It had it’s moments though…

@Sweet_Stuff: I’m 25, and for a picture to go with the poster try http://myspace.com/wampadan

EDIT: I reeeeeeally hope I didn’t somehow just become the “old guy” of the boards…

@Wampa_Dan

No, you are not the “old guy” of the boards. :-)

—William
(CGO)