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DECIPHER.com > DecipherCon
2003 > The Daily News
Previews, Templates, and Mechanics:
Volunteer Summit Revelations
Each year at the major conventions, Decipher hosts a volunteer
"summit" for any and all Decipher product champions in town for
the convention, whether they're volunteering at the con or just in town
for the fun. DecipherCon 2003 was no exception, with staff and PCs gathering
in the Grand Central Station conference room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on
Thursday night. It was a chance for volunteers to put faces to some of the
Decipherian names they've heard of but not met before, as well as for a
few sneak peeks at some upcoming preview cards, promotions, and mechanics.
While I don't have any visuals for you, I can at least pass on a few details
from these revelations.
By now everyone's probably heard about the Denethor promotional
card, a Return of the King preview card which we're giving away at
major conventions beginning with San Diego Comic-Con last weekend and including
Spiel Essen in October. But that's not the only ROTK preview card you can
expect. First, there's the Return of the King "Release"
card, Gandalf, Defender of the West. While there won't be any pre-release
tournaments for Return of the King, the Release card will be used for first-weekend
events and release day parties. Two cards will be released in connection
with the Lord of the Rings Online TCG; although details of the promotions
aren't available yet, you can look forward to Aragorn, Captain of Gondor
and Legolas, Elven Stalwart from that direction. And last but certainly
not least is a Resistance 12 Frodo, Resolute Hobbit, which will be distributed
in conjunction with the launch of The Return of the King motion picture.
Star Trek CCG designer Brad DeFruiter showed off the
templates for the two new affiliations in Star Trek CCG: Call to
Arms, simultaneously spoiling Ikat'ika and the Calibration Drone and pointing
out the significance of some of the artwork details: the background around
the Dominion text boxes is the texture of the Jem'Hadar's scaly skin, while
the Borg text boxes themselves have a background of stretched "skin."
In addition, for anyone wondering if it will be possible to have First Edition-compatible
Borg without subcommand icons, the answer is yes: the 1EC "bar"
in the frame will be colored to double as a subcommand icon for that purpose.
Weyoun and Locutus of Borg have appeared as "featured cards" on
our home page over this DecipherCon long weekend; if you didn't catch them
there, watch for more Call to Arms cards to start appearing on decipher.com
very soon, and see the detailed artwork for yourself!
Finally, Lord of the Rings TCG designer Joe Alread
spoke briefly about a couple of new mechanics you can expect in The Return
of the King. The first is a concept called "Initiative." During
each turn, if the Free Peoples player has 4 or more cards in hand, he or
she has initiative; 3 or less, and the Shadow player has initiative.
Various cards (mostly Shadow) will key off the possession of initiative.
For example, a Sauron orc that's normally 2-7-2 might be Strength +8 if
the Shadow player has initiative. Might be a good incentive not to dump
your whole hand on the table!
The second new mechanic is "Threats." These are
a card-based token placement something like wounds, except that the tokens
are placed on your dead pile. Then, when one of your characters is killed
and goes to the dead pile, you must convert all the threats to wounds and
assign them to your fellowship.
Kathy McCracken
Web Writer
July 25, 2003
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