We Have Work To DO
Designers' Notes for Realms of the Elf-lords

By Joe Alread
Decipher Game Designer

Culture: Isengard
Goal: To create new Uruk-hai and to create a new 'subculture', the Isengard Orcs.

...create a new subculture?! This was my first set of design for Lord of the Rings™. I was still studying up on current cultures and what gives them definition, and now I had to create an entire subculture?

One of the first things I needed to figure out was a general 'numbers' scheme for the Orcs. What their general strength/vitality numbers would be, and so on. These Orcs obviously weren't the strongest minions of Middle-earth, so a low strength/high vitality theme seemed to be the way to go. But if these guys couldn't win skirmishes easily, how were they going to be viable in a deck? How could they inflict a large amount of wounds?

It was a long and drawn out process, but like with so many things in this set, we came back to the regroup phase. Theorizing that the Orc 'rabble' could inflict mass wounds during the regroup phase if you were unable to get rid of them in a skirmish seemed to be a good way to go.

Regroup: Exert this minion to wound a companion (except the Ring-bearer).

Didn't work. Direct damage is bad! Next try:

Regroup: Exert this minion to exert a companion (except the Ring-bearer).

Directing the wounds was still bad, especially if you packed a few Hates in your deck as well Next try:

Regroup: Exert this minion to make the Free Peoples player wound a companion (except the Ring-bearer).

The big question here was "Why does it say '(except the Ring-bearer)'?" At first I didn't think I needed Frodo to be a pincushion to these guys. Well, this (obviously) got quickly out of control, so then we came up with:

Regroup: Exert this minion to make the Free Peoples player wound a companion.

This stuck, and in many ways become the cornerstone of Isengard Orc strategy and theory.

Culture: Gondor
Goal: Create new cards that interact well with existing Gondor cards, as well as on their own.

I don't need to tell most of you that Gondor cards are strong. Trying to make cards that were desirable yet not over the top for these guys were gave me a headache day in and day out. In an earlier article, I talked about how the Citadel of Minas Tirith was supposed be a new theme for Gondor, where Gondor abilities would cause Men to do 'something', and the Citadel would give whatever that 'something' was back.

'Something' = Discarding a Gondor card from your hand.
Citadel Text: Each time a [Gondor] Man wins a skirmish, you may take a [Gondor] card from your discard pile into hand.

Getting recursive events back into hand every turn was really, really bad. We kinda knew that right off the bat, but in design sometimes you have to see it to believe it. Next try:

'Something' = Discard top 3 cards of your draw deck. Do something X times, where X is the number of [Gondor] cards discarded.
Citadel Text: Each time a [Gondor] Man wins a skirmish, you place a [Gondor] card from your discard pile and place it on top of your draw deck.

Yeah this was a mess. I wanted to do something different but this was just too much! Next try:

'Something' = Remove a card stacked on Minas Tirith to do X.
Citadel Text: Each time a [Gondor] man wins a skirmish, you may stack a [Gondor] card from hand here.

Things were spiraling out of control quickly, as you can see. I had an idea but I couldn't apply it correctly. Finally we came back to:

'Something' = Exert a [Gondor] companion to do X.
Citadel Text: At the end of each turn in which none of your companions took a wound, you may heal a [Gondor] companion.

In the end I was happy, although I wish we could have gone with something more unorthodox. It's all right though, because some of the unorthodox thoughts that went into this process are going to be perfected with the next set after RotEL...

June 7, 2002