DECIPHER.com > The Lord of the Rings > Expansions > Siege of Gondor

Zeroing In

by Geoffrey Snider
Game Developer, TCG Studio

Old quotes from Star Wars flash through my mind when thinking of the process the Corsairs of Umbar went through during their lengthy development. "Stay on target... stay on target" and "Almost there... almost there" are just two of many... and there were many. The Corsairs began their evolutionary process as a new version of the Dunland culture... but with a bit of a Moria-esque flair to them... and they needed to have the ability to work with possessions... and they needed to incorporate the new keyword Enduring... and they needed to have an element of telepathy... and they needed to kind of be like the Corsairs (meaning that they were raiders that rode in boats and got smashed by the Army of the Dead). That's a tall order for a new subculture if you ask me! In the end, however, I think we got exactly what we needed out of them: new ways to play with initiative and threats... with a couple twists that incorporated those initial goals of a Dunland/Moria/telepathy/possession-filtering hybrid.

In their initial stages, the Corsairs were a bit confusing to work with. They had so many different functions that they couldn't really focus on doing one thing extremely well (to me, the focus of a Shadow culture is so very important because if they can't do at least one thing reliably, they're not worth playing over an older more developed strategy that's already out there). We rambled through a few inconsequential playtest versions of these guys... and a few more. Time was beginning to run short on them, and the prospects for a new and exciting Raider sub-culture were looking grim. Needless to say, as developers, it was up to Kendrick Summers and me to fix all this.

I took the reins on revamping the Corsairs and flung our testing into utter chaos! This is not something I'd ever want to do again, mind you. If we were confused even a little by the initial versions of these cards, we were riding completely blind now. I had basically taken design's initial work and twisted it around to look a bit more tempting. At this point there were probably ten cards in the Corsair file that your average player would categorize as 'completely busted.' At least I'd gotten everyone's attention and gotten them to play with the Corsair cards, right? Wrong! I'd pretty much thrown the baby out with the bathwater. However, I'd poured an entirely new bath with a new baby... or something like that. In other words, something good would come out of this in the long run. Initiative and threats were a major focus of my revamp for the Corsairs, and that was a big step towards what they were going to look like.

At this point, design decided to take another stab at things. Prodded by the injection of initiative and threats that had become a major focus of the Corsairs, another version of the culture reared its head. It was still nowhere near where it needed to be... until one day in December. Kendrick Summers and I were sitting around staring at this new batch of cards, and one in particular, Corsair Freebooter, caught our eye.

How brilliant is that? This guy is a true pirate. He steals... and gets something out of it. It's not like the Dunlendings who just steal stuff and throw it away. It's not like the wanton destruction caused by Uruk-hai. It's not like anything. Immediately we saw a ton of possibilities with this card and decided to expand it into an entire culture. These minions could take your stuff and get something for it! It all fell into place. Steal tokens! Steal allies! Steal possessions! Steal conditions! Steal mounts! Steal companions! Steal artifacts! Steal cards from your hand! The list goes on, obviously, as with the Corsair Marauder.

Only a couple minor questions remained. These guys steal your stuff and get tokens. What do they do with the tokens? They put them on their 'boat' cards like the Corsair War Galley.

They can store up tokens to get something out of them later on. They can help the rest of their Raider culture brethren in the process (there's not a lot of sub-cultural enforcement here). Their other 'boat' cards will probably have a more profound effect on things, but this card was the first of its kind, and probably the most interesting.

What happens if these minions steal too much stuff? What's a pirate do with too much booty? Burning extra tokens is the third function the Corsairs got.

In testing, minions with this ability, like Corsair Gunners, were called Lieutenants (not the Captain, obviously, whose name is •Castamir of Umbar, and not the 'grunts' that get your booty stocked on your boats). They were the 'middle men' of the culture that directed their attacks against the Free Peoples player's companions. They do things for your minions once you've got enough tokens stored up, or once you've taken initiative with your 'boat' cards.

I'm going to cut this article short. Judge the cards for yourself. You've seen the future, and it is yellow.

February 6, 2004