Post by animalmother on Jan 11, 2007 17:54:08 GMT 1
The incentives to break the Fellowship immediately are so strong, it makes keeping Companions with the Fellowship an aburdity from turn one. Why was the Fellowship formed if all the inducements are to break it up?
Arguments for keeping the Fellowship united: 1) absorb corruption hits with Companions; 2) three Character Cards and one Combat Card are usable only if FSP is united with certain Companions; 3) Gandalf the Grey's extra Character Card draw ability.
The arguments for splitting the Fellowship and reducing it to Gollum, Frodo, Sam immediately are much much stronger: 1) reduce number of Eye Dice in the Hunt Box to one, weakening the Hunt, and forcing the Shadow effectively to discard all other Eye Dice rolled in the Action Dice Roll, thereby effectively reducing Shadow Action Dice by one-sixth. 2) Early deployments of Gandalf the White and Aragorn, Heir of Isuldur, yielding extra Free People Action Dice. 3) Twenty-six Event Cards heavily reward or encourage the splitting the Fellowship, while only four Event Cards favor keeping it united. 4) The Activation rules and Combat Leadership rules favor splitting the Fellowship.
See my last posts under "Calendar" for more details on this. This is why I favor giving the Fellowship the right to move through two enemy-free Regions per point of advance on the Fellowship track, and giving Gandalf and Aragorn, while with the Fellowship, the power each to negate the presence of one enemy unit for purposes of determining whether a Region is "enemy-free" when counting from he FSP's last declared Region to FSP's newly revealed or declared Region. This would be a powerful inducement to keep the Fellowship united much longer, and especially to keep Gandalf and Aragorn as Companions. The Fellowship would have much more power to distract the Shadow, especially when kept united with Gandalf and Aragorn.
Arguments for keeping the Fellowship united: 1) absorb corruption hits with Companions; 2) three Character Cards and one Combat Card are usable only if FSP is united with certain Companions; 3) Gandalf the Grey's extra Character Card draw ability.
The arguments for splitting the Fellowship and reducing it to Gollum, Frodo, Sam immediately are much much stronger: 1) reduce number of Eye Dice in the Hunt Box to one, weakening the Hunt, and forcing the Shadow effectively to discard all other Eye Dice rolled in the Action Dice Roll, thereby effectively reducing Shadow Action Dice by one-sixth. 2) Early deployments of Gandalf the White and Aragorn, Heir of Isuldur, yielding extra Free People Action Dice. 3) Twenty-six Event Cards heavily reward or encourage the splitting the Fellowship, while only four Event Cards favor keeping it united. 4) The Activation rules and Combat Leadership rules favor splitting the Fellowship.
See my last posts under "Calendar" for more details on this. This is why I favor giving the Fellowship the right to move through two enemy-free Regions per point of advance on the Fellowship track, and giving Gandalf and Aragorn, while with the Fellowship, the power each to negate the presence of one enemy unit for purposes of determining whether a Region is "enemy-free" when counting from he FSP's last declared Region to FSP's newly revealed or declared Region. This would be a powerful inducement to keep the Fellowship united much longer, and especially to keep Gandalf and Aragorn as Companions. The Fellowship would have much more power to distract the Shadow, especially when kept united with Gandalf and Aragorn.