(See previous Days of Yuletide here.)
As announced on Day 2, Shadow of the Past (Set V1) will be released into public playtesting in the coming weeks. Today we are going to dive into some of the background and design philosophy, and to help us do that, we have Finarfin, the design lead for the set.
So who are you and what is your experience with the LotR-TCG?
Around the Council my name is Finarfin and I am the lead card designer for the PC. I have been playing this game for twenty years and can still remember opening my first FOTR booster pack back in 2001 when I was just 12 years old. I can even remember what my first rare card was, Desperate Defense of the Ring! Myself and my two closest friends have always played together and even though we are now grown up and live in separate cities, we still meet up every couple of months for a day of games.
What do you do on the Player’s Council?
My job is to come up with the concepts and themes for the set, and take cards from the first draft through to the final version that you will soon get to play with.
So what is Shadow of the Past?
Shadow of the Past is the very first Virtual Set of cards designed and produced by the Player’s Council. The VSet is designed as a supplemental set for Fellowship block and is intended to be incorporated into FOTR as if it were an extra expansion released after Realm of the Elf-lords.
The aim is to accomplish several things: firstly to fill in some gaps with cards based on moments or themes from the film that weren’t featured in the three released sets, secondly to mix up the meta and provide greater variation for the format, and thirdly to boost undervalued or under supported themes or mechanics. We aim to keep the set as true to Fellowship block as possible and only use mechanics that were present in those first three sets, so no threats, tokens or site control for instance.
There’s a lot of space to explore with new cards – why start with Fellowship Block rather than pick up where Decipher left off?
There are several reasons why we have decided to start with a supplement for Fellowship Block.
Firstly, it’s still the most popular and commonly played format; if our mission as a Council is to serve the community then it seems reasonable to focus our efforts in the same general area that the community does.
Secondly, by targeting a limited scope such as FOTR, we can build up experience in a ‘safe’ manner. All sorts of aspects go into making card sets a reality, and open questions such as “how do we design for a specific mechanic”, or “how do we launch new cards in Gemp”, or “when do we accept we made a mistake and issue an errata” are all things we have to figure out. By keeping our scope limited to a known format, we have guard rails up and can keep these problems bite-sized and solvable. Once we’ve done that, we’ll have gathered the experience and manpower to move on to bigger and more ambitious goals.
Lastly, and most importantly, it’s because we really love Fellowship block, and it’s a well-worn and familiar place to work!
So, is this a full expansion worth of cards? When are they releasing?
The expansion is 64 cards in size, so about half the size of most Decipher expansions. There are around 6-7 cards per culture.
The set was originally designed around “VPacks”, where every month we would release one Shadow and one Free Peoples culture’s worth of cards, and slowly trickle cards into the meta. But as they say, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and it’s looking more likely that we will be releasing this set all at once, or mostly all at once. We would definitely like to refine the process and try to return to the plan of one-a-month small releases for future sets, however.
What kind of themes does this first pack explore?
A common thread on the Free Peoples side is camaraderie, appropriate since it’s Fellowship. We have Aragorn and Boromir working together, emphasis on the Frodo signet for Shire, and a common push of working together with Elven allies.
Shadow is a bit more scattershot, but there’s a lot more focus there on really trying to take ideas that got a half-baked implementation (tentacles) or were omitted entirely from the original (crebain).
What’s your favourite card from pack 1 and why?
Haha that’s a bit like asking me to choose between my children, as I have spent a long time over all these cards. I guess when pushed I am really excited to see the new tentacle themed cards in use. I really hope they help to see the Watcher in the Water see a little more use in both Fellowship and Movie block formats.
When will these be available to play?
As for the official date, well, I think there might be something about when the cards will be available for public playtesting in one of the future 12 Days of Yuletide, so I suppose you’ll have to wait until then for that…
Once the cards have been in public playtesting for long enough that things have settled down and major changes no longer need to be made, we’ll call it “done” and throw a party, but it’s hard to say when that will be. You never know how people might manage to break the cards! One of the major advantages we have is in how relatively quick and easy it is to add cards or edit them once in Gemp, so we’re fully looking forward to what curve balls will be thrown our way once the community has had a chance to pick over everything, and we’ll be ready to zig and zag as needed.
Can I get involved with the design or testing process? How?
Definitely!! My title with the PC is lead designer but in reality I am also the only designer haha. Whilst the rest of the PC have been awesome at helping me out with feedback and suggestions to help shape the cards it would be really great to have some more people on the team. We have big ideas for more sets after this one and if you would like to be a part of it then join the PC Discord server and let us know:
Or on our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/lotrtcgpc
Or Twitter:
https://twitter.com/LOTRTCGPC
Many thank to Finarfin for taking time to sate (or whet?) our curiosity! Keep checking back here every day for the next 12 Days of Yuletide update!
The White Council 