SevenSpirits
Nazgûl
PlayTester
Sauron meant no harm. He only wanted to draw the extra cards...
Posts: 283
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Post by SevenSpirits on Oct 12, 2007 21:44:09 GMT 1
Right now I am going through and typing up what all the cards actually do. I'm looking mostly at the master docs ("MD") + FAQ for this. Some things in the MD still surprise me greatly. I want to know whether people think we should go with them in these cases or what.
Servant of the Secret Fire: According to MD, only affects combat roll, not leader reroll as it says on the physical card.
Anduril: According to MD, does not have condition for playing. This means you can play it without Strider/Aragorn to bluff, and it doesn't do anything.
Dead Men vs Faramir's rangers: This one is driving me to brink of insanity. The FAQ says that Faramir's Rangers can't kill minions because it's not a battle. However, Dead Men is also not a battle, but it apparently DOES kill them. So what is the difference between the two cards? Both say to score hits on the Shadow...
The only difference is that while Faramir's Rangers is an "attack" (for political purposes; it starts with "Attack"), Dead Men ISN'T. And yes, this could matter. What the heck?
Here is what I am thinking its wording should be:
Adding more as I go through all the cards...
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Post by magicgeek on Oct 13, 2007 0:28:18 GMT 1
The real difference is the idea of the forced retreat from the dead men. That retreat is the only forced retreat in the game.
The retreat needs to clear all of the army's bad guys (tm) out of the region. Just killing all their troops and leaving them in the region doesn't work. Minions are bad guys, so get out.
Faramirs rangers is exactly the same as Power Rangers, spirit of mordor, ordinary Spells, maybe one or two others. I think it was a very bad call to decide that none of those kill the characters at the head of the army.
(btw we play they die in all of the above statements, and Ents. That and Gollum working immediately are the only actual changes we play with. Obvious changes like Servant of the Secret Fire actually doing what it should and says so on the card, isn't really a change. Trying to play as the master docs says is interesting but inherently a bad idea. It comes down to is Mr Weasley sexy because his cards have virtual crayon on them? Especially when I cant even read the original text because it aint even there! And besides what rules are we playing online? Does virtual crayon exist?)
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Post by mrweasely on Oct 13, 2007 3:30:59 GMT 1
That's it. I'm flip flopping. I used to advocate for the master text. No longer. Taking wild turns for absolutely no reason other than the fact that Francesco thought it was that way but wrote it down wrong, screw that. The Three Musketeers aren't maintaing this system, and they haven't done a good job at making minimal changes in the past. The only ones that can read their minds are themselves, and they do a crappy job at communicating it to us. Servant of the Secret Fire indeed. (I saw this before but unconciously suppressed it, it was so lame)
At this point, I suggest that we put together a fan-made "Spirit of the Game" master doc totally out of Nexus' control, that stays as close to the printed cards as possible, ignoring wild departures in the master text, and occassionally clearing up grey areas. For an example of a grey area: Spirit of Mordor, Rangers, Ents etc are attacks. They just are. Anything that causes hits should kill minions. Period.
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Post by rafamir on Oct 13, 2007 7:31:38 GMT 1
The Collector's Edition, with rules rewritten by Veldrin, offers an opportunity to get this right. A "Spirit of the Game" document might serve as a petition for Veldrin to put to the 'Three Musketeers' and present a case for logic and consistency in the rules -- call it field-testing. If they or Veldrin don't buy off on it, we can have two schools: Nexus/MasterText and Spirit of the Game. (Admittedly the schools would need catchier names... After The FAQ? Captains of the Text?)
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Veldrin
Lord of the Nazgûl
Posts: 1,305
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Post by Veldrin on Oct 13, 2007 17:19:03 GMT 1
The reason that "Dead Men..." kills of the Minions is that it actually is a battle being fought, but one where all the dice rolled by the Shadow misses (therefore it is abstracted into only one attack roll by the FP since any wise Shadow player would retreat if able), which means that if the Shadow army units are killed in one round so are the Minions/Nazgûl.
My proposed card text for these cards all state what happens to the Minions/Nazgûl if the attacked army is wiped out. The result will still be that "Faramir's Rangers" cannot kill Minions/Nazgûl while "Dead Men..." can. No change but at least it is clearly written on the card what happens (if my version makes it to the printers).
[glow=green,2,300]Veldrin[/glow]
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SevenSpirits
Nazgûl
PlayTester
Sauron meant no harm. He only wanted to draw the extra cards...
Posts: 283
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Post by SevenSpirits on Oct 13, 2007 18:15:48 GMT 1
I thought a battle was when two armies fought over rounds and played cards. If Dead Men is a battle, why isn't Faramir's Rangers?
More importantly, why is Dead Men not an attack?
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Veldrin
Lord of the Nazgûl
Posts: 1,305
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Post by Veldrin on Oct 13, 2007 18:44:59 GMT 1
"Dead Men..." is an event card used to represent the Army of the Dead's attack on the Shadow troops threatening Pelargir. In the book they drove the enemy away and Aragorn rallied Gondor soldiers to man the black ships.
The card does a good job of respresenting that in that they actually kill Shadow units (and one might assume that the army of the dead can pose a threat to the Nazgûl, that is why any Leaders present can be killed even if it is unlikely). It is not a "battle" or "combat" in the way the game defines them but they represent a battle/combat from the book.
"Faramir's Rangers" represents an ambush by Faramir and his group of rangers. They can (if lucky) hurt/kill a few Shadow units but not injur the Nazgûl/Minions leading them.
I think both these cards are thematically good but in the rules sense they are difficult to see the difference between.
As to why "Dead Men..." doesn't count as an attack for political purposes I don't know.
[glow=green,2,300]Veldrin[/glow]
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Post by Goodgulf the Grey on Oct 13, 2007 20:15:30 GMT 1
Servent of the Secret Fire MD makes no sense.
Sean - Why would "Dean Men..." matter politically? When would an SP army be there that isn't At War?
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SevenSpirits
Nazgûl
PlayTester
Sauron meant no harm. He only wanted to draw the extra cards...
Posts: 283
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Post by SevenSpirits on Oct 13, 2007 21:25:44 GMT 1
Michael, if would matter if Sauron captures Pelargir, and a Southron army gets attacked by a Gondor army and retreats there. At that point they are still one step from war and can be Dead-Men'd.
Of more concern to me is how inflexible it is with regard to different scenarios that might exist in the future. It's missing text that it should definitely have, just because it's unlikely to matter.
Veldrin, I can attack a size one Shadow army with one regular and kill 8 Nazgul, Saruman, The Witch King, the Mouth of Sauron and the Balrog if I get one hit.
I can also attack a size three Shadow army with Faramir and kill three times as many orcs. I guess this is hundreds or thousands of orcs. But for some reason Faramir spares the Nazgul and Minions, while my regular doesn't.
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Post by magicgeek on Oct 14, 2007 6:38:51 GMT 1
Ah, nope.
The southrons can't retreat into Pelagir, until the Southis at war.. Doesn't matter that it is controlled by the Shadow, Pelagir is still in a Free Nation.
The hair splitting between attack and battle is pointless and does not work in "English", or the rules.
Cards that could remove units also move the Political track. Those cards will not remove Nazgul, Minions or Characters. Ents state who they kill. Dead men states what must move.
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Post by magicgeek on Oct 14, 2007 6:51:09 GMT 1
I too have been looking through the Master Doc's. If I can't be arsed reading through the FAQ by now, surely noone else has. (About half way through a rewrite and compression) I think I have been a bad boy regarding "I will go alone". I bludgeoned someone that read me the text with the example of "there and back again". My bad. The FAQ talks about it going wrong in the "English Revision". Also, no elite if no regular when Aragorn goes with the Grey Company! Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!
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Veldrin
Lord of the Nazgûl
Posts: 1,305
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Post by Veldrin on Oct 14, 2007 9:37:12 GMT 1
Veldrin, I can attack a size one Shadow army with one regular and kill 8 Nazgul, Saruman, The Witch King, the Mouth of Sauron and the Balrog if I get one hit. I can also attack a size three Shadow army with Faramir and kill three times as many orcs. I guess this is hundreds or thousands of orcs. But for some reason Faramir spares the Nazgul and Minions, while my regular doesn't. I can't argue with that. Unfortunately I don't have the power to change the rules, only suggest a better way to write them to avoid misinterpretation. [glow=green,2,300]Veldrin[/glow]
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