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Dogs of Isengard:
Developing Wargs and Their Riders

by Michael Reynolds
Game Designer

The Realms of the Elf-lords expansion introduced Isengard Orcs to The Lord of the Rings™ TCG. Though under the same cultural umbrella as Uruk-hai, Saruman's Orcs are essentially played separately. They try to minimize wounds they take until the regroup phase when they exert for potent special abilities, not maximize their strength and ferocity.

The riders of the vile wolf creatures called wargs are featured in the Battle of Helm's Deep expansion and are the next installment of Isengard Orcs. When developing these, we had the challenging goal of linking warg-riders and Realms Orcs, yet giving warg-riders a satisfying identity. We wanted strongly identified warg decks to emerge, yet offer cards that helped a deck centered around Realms Orcs.

The basic function of an Isengard Orc is to minimize wounds he takes. This sets Isengard Orcs apart from most other minions. It is not enough to merely survive archery and skirmishes, the Isengard Orc must do so with extra vitality in order to threaten the fellowship. So how would warg-riders, with or without the direct help of wargs, find this identity? At the same time, Geoff Snider, after playing The Two Towers video game, suggested that wargs in some sense ride the Orcs, that is, the wargs be the dangerous component of the warg/warg-rider combination, and that warg-riders be wimpy without them. Intriguing...

From the beginning of development, wargs have given their bearer a vitality bonus. We thought this fundamental nature was unique, fun, and consistent with vitality preservation. Initially wargs could play on any Isengard Orc however, not just warg-riders from Helm's Deep. Playtesting soon revealed that any vitality bonus was too powerful with Orthanc Commander and Isengard Smith from Realms. This was disappointing because we were counting on wargs to enhance Realms Orc strategies. We needed to go back to the drawing board.

In the meantime, the Orcs from Helm's Deep were strength +1 for every point of vitality, which fit nicely with wargs, but was cool alone. However, playtesting revealed that the strength calculations were tedious and not enjoyable. So the next iteration had the Orcs receiving a fixed strength bonus when they not exhausted, which was a lesser version of the same problem, but a problem nevertheless.

Around this time, a couple of playtesters pointed out that an entire Shadow strategy was needed to threaten permanent fellowship skirmish enhancers. Cards like Trust Me as You Once Did from Realms and Filibert Bolger from Mines of Moria are a problem. Wargs (and their riders) were ready for the challenge, but they couldn't also make their bearer fierce. So how do we make warg-riders fierce, because, if anything, guys on wargs should be fierce, right? Voila, we put fierce functionality on the riders themselves... and key it off their vitality, replacing the onerous strength bonus! It would be unlikely that a rider without a warg would be a huge threat, even if fierce, because his strength is low.

With the nature of wargs and their riders established, we returned to the question of how to link the new cards with Realms Orcs. Wargs and vitality bonuses were not the answer unfortunately. The next place to turn was Saruman himself. An earlier version of Saruman made Isengard Orcs damage +1 during a fierce skirmish. This was a bit overpowered and totally didn't help Realms Orcs, so we welcomed the excuse to change him. The final Saruman heals each Isengard Orc when the fellowship moves and downloads any Isengard possession. In addition to Saruman, we decided not to link wargs and site control too strongly in order to allow a deck to combine a commitment to site control with a strong Realms Orc presence.

Everything else that fell out of the Isengard Orc subculture was spice. Pure warg-rider strategies feel much like Nazgûl. The fellowship tends to face 1, 2, or 3 large fierce minions with no damage bonus. But Filibert won't help much.

Stay tuned for the Ents of Fangorn expansion in July which features a third set of Isengard Orcs, the defenders of Orthanc.

February 11, 2003