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The Siege of Helm's Deep

by Tom Lischke
Senior Game Designer

Now, I don't usually start design articles getting all teary-eyed over the movie that the cards are based on, but to be fair, The Two Towers contained one of the most breathtaking battles ever to make it to the big screen. Ruthless attackers, desperate defenders, and the cavalry riding over the hill in the nick of time. Just a great way to spend an hour or three.

One of the things that sets it apart is how different it is from the action in Fellowship. That part of the story is more about sneaking and evasion. Towers, on the other hand, has the opening of The War of the Ring. The three hunters are no longer fleeing through the woods, but dug in at one of the great fortresses in Middle-earth, and faced by an enemy prepared to crack those defenses.

When we designed The Two Towers, we decided that we wanted to introduce the new cultures and lay a solid foundation for the block. That meant that the mechanics of the big battle would have to wait for the Battle of Helm's Deep expansion. That's ok, as smaller sets contain a little more depth of design as players don't have more than 300 cards to absorb. There is a little more mental energy available for going deeper into a cycle of cards.

Us Versus Them

When thinking about the battle, the goal was to make sure there were cards that conveyed the differences between the running fights of Fellowship, and the entrenched battle at Helm's Deep. So what defines the differences? Defenses for the good guys, and the ability to break them for the bad guys.

As The Return of the King will have even grander battles, I wanted to make sure that the system we put in place would accommodate the Pelennor Fields as well. That meant reducing things on a mechanical level to something pretty basic that could be bent around the specifics of both battles. So, we ended up with fortifications on one side, and machines (basically, siege engines in all forms) on the other.

A Mind of Metal and Wheels

The machines allow players to build an attack over a number of Shadow phases, sacrificing in the short term for a devastating attack later. Of course, this comes with risk. If the machines are destroyed, all of that preparation is so much wasted effort and resource. I'll deal with the machines of Isengard in a little more detail in part 2 of this article next week (it will appear on the Decipher Online Gaming page on February 13). For now, just remember that you exert Uruks to add tokens to the machines, and when they have enough tokens, they are loaded and ready for action. The most basic of the lot protect your attackers or give a damage bonus, while the big one... well, you'll have to wait a week for that.

Things were going pretty well with the machines, and then one of those happy discoveries that make my job a whole lot of fun happened. While I was looking through various pictures of siege engines, I happened across a cache of pictures (remember, we hadn't seen the movie yet when we were designing Battle of Helm's Deep) of Uruks with strange helmets, no armor, and the biggest swords I'd ever seen. I looked at the shots of the ladders and realized that these guys actually ride them as they are being hoisted. They're nuts. Well, no, they're berserk!

Goatskins of Blood?!?

If you want some pretty gruesome stuff, read Richard Taylor's description of the Berserkers in Fan Club Magazine (issue 6). These guys are just nasty. So, I set out to make them reflect that, and tie them in with the machines.

Take a look at the evolution of the Berserk Slayer. He is the biggest nasty of the group. One thing to notice is that the centerpiece of the Berserkers, the strength bonus for wounds, was something that was nailed down pretty early, and was only tweaked towards the end of the development cycle. As you will see, the machines eventually evolved to mate up with these guys.

The early thought was to give the Berserkers easy ways to exert to power themselves up. However, by doing so, the Berserkers are placed at risk. Early versions of the Berserkers all had special abilities that exerted once for various effects.

When I handed the Berserkers over to Joe Alread for a round of development, he came up with the idea that since they all had 3 vitality, it would be more fun to give them strong abilities that require a double exertion and some preloading of machines to use. The Free Peoples player then has some opportunity to control his or her fate, but if they can't do it, they are going to pay. This switch also meant that the cheap exertion moved onto the machines, which was great for the feel of having to lay the groundwork for big payoff.

There Is Good Rock Here

To round things out, the Free Peoples need a yin to the yang of the machines. However, the fortifications needed to be more than purely reactive cards, or they would be weak meta options instead of proactive parts of a Rohan deck. This meant that the machine counter would have to be woven into the theme among aggressive functions.

Take a look at how Armory developed. This was one of the more interesting parts of Helm's Deep development for me. One of the original ideas to represent the state of the Rohan defenses was the number of cards in the Free Peoples player's hand. Basically, more cards equaled better defenses. Fewer cards meant that the walls were crumbling.

All of the original Rohan fortifications let a player draw a card at the beginning of the maneuver phase. The machines of that era would remove cards from the Free Peoples player's hand (put them back on top of deck, actually), and the Berserkers keyed of off low hand totals. This concept never quite worked. Too much card juggling slowed the pace of play, and we couldn't control the volatile nature that is mass card draw. That being said, we may take another crack at it for the machines and fortifications in The Return of the King.

Check back next week for part 2 of this article, where we'll take a look at the development of the Devilry of Orthanc!

February 3, 2003