DECIPHER.com > The Lord of the Rings > Expansions > Shadows

Loaded Weapons

by Evan Lorentz
Decipher Game Designer

From damage +1 and archer to defender +1 and fierce, loaded keywords have been an important part of The Lord of the Rings TCG since before anyone even knew they were called "loaded keywords." Along the way, we've picked up some new ones, including the rather popular "ambush" in the Tower block, and "enduring" in the King block. For Shadows, to kick off the new block with a bang, we decided to add not one, not two, but three new keywords to the game.

In case we were coming on with a bit too much too fast, we decided to provide italic "helper text" for each of the keywords being added to the game, to ease everyone's learning curve. And to avoid the past confusion brought by the likes of Goblin Marksman and Uruk Savage, we made certain that every card in the set to use one of the new keywords received the helper text. For those of you mumbling about "training wheels" and how "real gamers don't need that stuff" and so forth, can you really claim that you've never had to explain to anybody what even just one of the other loaded keywords means? If yes, then maybe you should be sharing your love of the game with more of your friends – no better time than Shadows to start!

But enough preamble. Let's make with the preview cards:

Lurker was born of the realization that there was some untapped potential strategy surrounding the skirmish phase. The assignment phase is arguably the most strategically deep segment of a turn, but once you've figured out the nuances of who must skirmish who, the rest is often easy. You just resolve the skirmishes left to right, right to left, alphabetically – in whatever order suits your fancy.

In Shadows, we wanted to create more minions than we've seen in the past where the order mattered, minions with text to make you want to resolve their skirmish first, or last. And you'll see a hint of that peppered into the set. But very early on, the idea struck – what about a skirmish you wanted to resolve first, but couldn't? And so lurker was created.

The Emboldened Orc (part of the new Orc culture, naturally) is a great example of how lurkers ended up. With his strength higher for each unassigned companion you have, you'd love to resolve his skirmish first, but unfortunately you can't have it that way. At the same time, Emboldened Orc is a rather unusual example of a lurker. Most lurkers work best when the Shadow player has other minions in play – skirmishes that must be resolved before the lurker's. This Orc actually works just as well when he's the only minion in play. Either way, he's a menace to a large fellowship.

What if there's more than one lurker out at a time? No problem, just resolve all the non-lurker skirmishes first, then move on to resolving the lurker skirmishes in any order.

Toil is an interesting keyword, in that it allows players the freedom to sort of "write their own card" on the fly. You want an Elven condition you can discard in the archery phase to add 2 to your archery total? You have some choices: it can cost 6 twilight, or 4 twilight and 1 exertion, or 2 twilight and 2 exertions, or 3 exertions. You don't even have to decide when you're building the deck. Maybe you'll use it all four ways during a single game.

Not all Toils are created equal. The number after the keyword defines how big a twilight discount an exertion will buy you. The culture you need to exert changes as well, always matching the culture of the Toil card itself. In the rulebook under toil, you'll also find this important bit of clarification:

"You may exert multiple characters of the same culture. Each different character you exert reduces the twilight cost by the number specified. You may exert a given character only once when playing a toil card."

Or, bottom line for the rules-savvy among you, this is an exception to the way the "for each" rule normally works.

The more you build your deck around a single culture, the more easily you'll be able to play a toil card for "all exertions and no twilight." Of course, if that's not your aim, then you can mix and match from several different cultures – again, Toil is all about flexibility.

The last new keyword of Shadows is muster. Personally, I think it's the most subtle of the three. It certainly had a "slow burn" among our playtesters, with many not deciding they liked it until after they'd used it for many weeks. Still others never grew to like it all, but then not every card is going to appeal to every player equally.

So why should you take interest in muster? Because it's one of the most powerful tools ever for setting up your next turn. Players have always used reconciling for this purpose, taking advantage of the one card they get to discard before drawing back to eight cards. All players have learned that it's smart to discard a Free Peoples card when heading into a turn as a Shadow player, or to discard a copy of a unique possession you've already been able to play, or to discard a card that wouldn't have much effect on your opponent's strategy. At the highest levels of play, many games are decided by a card draw a player gets only because they're willing to discard something a lesser player might stubbornly hold on to. Because seeing as much of your deck as possible in a game can be key, selective discarding is also key.

Muster is a mechanic that lets you push this aspect of strategy even farther. It may even be that to really take advantage of what it offers, you'll need to shift your deck designs in a new direction. Muster may be the tool that allows you to stock that one extra copy of Glamdring for Gandalf, or that copy of Gríma, Wormtongue in case of "possession pile-up." Maybe it'll simply help along the process of building an all-minion hand for a Ring-bearer swarming strategy. Or maybe you'll have still other ideas; if you've ever dreamed of that perfect three- or four-card combo that seemed just a little too out of reach, muster might be the extra juice to make it more reliable.

Muster also carries an important clarification in the rulebook: "You must discard all at once." It offers this example: "If you have two muster characters, you cannot choose to discard a card, draw a card, then discard another card and draw a card. You must instead choose to discard 0, 1, or 2 cards, then draw that same number of cards." The power of muster proved to be quite sufficient without allowing players to repeatedly discard and refill the same "slot" in their hands all in one regroup phase. (Though actually, the "start of regroup" timing of muster does already allow you to do this, in combination with normal reconciling.)

Lurker, as you might expect, is found only on Shadow cards, but toil and muster show up both for Free Peoples and Shadow. Nevertheless, all three have the potential to make a strategic impact on both sides of the game.

How will they impact your game? Find out this November.

October 1, 2004