[WW] Fellowship of the Ring II - Conclusion

[Remus West]

Simple fix - give Team Evil the option either capture or kill. Only kill wouldn't work on hobbits. This way free people can be captured too.

Capturing is the problem. Everytime Evil captures anyone all it does is shout "Hunt Orc today, Fellowship. Oh, and btw, here is someone you no longer have to worry about as Evil." Capturing is a scan that the entire fellowship gets the results of without outing anyone of their own important pieces.

[theohall]

Why change it? Had evil Imprisoned Mr Bubbles when they knew his role and chosen not to go after anyone, because they don't have to capture/kill every journey, the Fellowship would have been screwed and forced to send Scouts until they found Saruman. Team Evil KNEW after Journey 1 yet waited to Imprison him. IMO, this was a colossal screw up by Team Evil, not a rules flaw.

[bb2112]

This is more balanced than it appears, IMO.

I agree. This particular game was more on how lucky the good guys were, and how unlucky the bad guys were, than imbalance. It was the perfect storm against evil.

If we played the game 10 times, I'm sure we will never get such a perfect result for good again. And that being said, there was still a pretty good chance for evil to snatch a victory at the end.

[bb2112]

 bb2112 
 

[tru1cy]

Simple fix - give Team Evil the option either capture or kill. Only kill wouldn't work on hobbits. This way free people can be captured too.

Capturing is the problem. Everytime Evil captures anyone all it does is shout "Hunt Orc today, Fellowship. Oh, and btw, here is someone you no longer have to worry about as Evil." Capturing is a scan that the entire fellowship gets the results of without outing anyone of their own important pieces.

I see your point and I agree, but couldn't it be used by evil to nab one of their own? Potentially clearing an evil as a hobbit or free person? Just speculating now

[rshetts2]

First off, Theos scan would not have even come into play if it hadnt been for a fortuitous block. All of that information would have been lost. Second of all, evil found Frodo on day one and left him free. Imprisoning him would have changed this game completely, switching the Fellowships actions to scouting, while evil would have then been free to hunt hobbits at will. I think Theo has it right. Evil could have had this one almost sewn up if they hadnt delayed on their imprisonment of Frodo. The servants claim the mechanics are borked but in a way, they caused the situation that borked them. The one role that truly seemed broken was Boromir. Until Frodo was exposed he had a scan but nothing else. Once Frodo was exposed he had nothing. He needs some kind of steal ability. You could perhaps also alter the capture/kill mechanics for the servants as you mentioned LL. Those two changes alone would have a major shift in balance.
I mentioned before, that I dont feel the game was all that imbalanced. With every thing that happened, it wasnt a forgone conclusion that the Felllowship would win, in fact the odds were against us even though we had things going our way. Ive played a number of games where the end was pretty much determined by mid game and you just played it out to its inevitable conclusion. This time, in spite of several advantages good still needed some luck at the end. I thought the end game was quite exciting.

[Grundbegriff]

Try not to capture Hobbits. It seems counterintuitive, but it is the best strategy for Evil.

We were trying not to capture Hobbits. There is no mechanic other than capturing them for Evil to know if they are Hobbits or not. That's why our actions helped the Fellowship more than us.

This goes back to the assumption that I made -- and that at least one other player made -- that results from the Witch-King's scan would be available prior to resolution of events later in the night. In other words, one way to beef things up is to have the resolution sequence occur in steps with feedback.

[theohall]

Try not to capture Hobbits. It seems counterintuitive, but it is the best strategy for Evil.

We were trying not to capture Hobbits. There is no mechanic other than capturing them for Evil to know if they are Hobbits or not. That's why our actions helped the Fellowship more than us.

This goes back to the assumption that I made -- and that at least one other player made -- that results from the Witch-King's scan would be available prior to resolution of events later in the night. In other words, one way to beef things up is to have the resolution sequence occur in steps with feedback.

Even with that they knew Mr Bubbles was Frodo before the Fellowship had any kind of clue, yet for reasons unknown chose not to Imprison him until later. That oddity bugs me, because earlier Imprisonment would likely have changed the flow of this game considerably.

[Newcastle]

Well we found him on night 1, we imprisoned him on the dawn of day 3 pretty much. Thing was also, that was our biggest nuke that we had; it would have been optimal to use it on the final day to seal in our win 100%. I dont think it was a collosal failure.

I also thought that it best to let things muddle around. Why alarm the fellowship that we knew what we knew right then? Its better to lie in wait at times. Yeah it would have changed the game; but why use our best weapon right away? It would have been better to use it to lock in our win. Once people were in a state of aggitation, it would have been harder to figure out who was who.

One thing that bugged me on the whole was the ability to have so many cleared villagers so early. Think bout it...7 players were known by day 3. Theoh, his 3 scans, Truicy, BB, and then Grund came forth. That doesnt leave too many hiding places for team evil.

I really think the game needs some serious tweaks on the whole for balance issues. Since right now...as we just played....it was tilted too far in the fellowships direction.

[Newcastle]

I felt we had a lot of things break right; if you think bout it...we knew EVERY SINGLE TURN where teh ring was.....but we really couldnt do anything to switch possession. Which is another mechanic should be looked at. We also had spotted the seer (night prior to the attack) and had tenatively identified Boromir & gollum.

We also had teh ring in our "posession" for 3 of the 7 turns. (2 via Q's imprison & 1 via BB's capture ..which was semi luck)

At the end it was a 50/50 shot for me to get the ring (bubbles or grund) while rshetts had a 1/3 shot in finding the person to block it.

-I just think the capture mechanic (which proves hobbits) imbalances the game
- the fact that evil cant really ever gain posession of the ring (have to have some method of switching owneship)
-i think being able to self prove as a normal (grund's maneuver) unbalances the game as well; since there were 3 hobbits known by then...who was going to challenge that? It was a smart play on him, but it creates less hidding room for evil.

One idea I had was that maybe you should just make everyone fellowship in future games.

[theohall]

Well we found him on night 1, we imprisoned him on the dawn of day 3 pretty much. Thing was also, that was our biggest nuke that we had; it would have been optimal to use it on the final day to seal in our win 100%. I dont think it was a collosal failure.

I also thought that it best to let things muddle around. Why alarm the fellowship that we knew what we knew right then? Its better to lie in wait at times. Yeah it would have changed the game; but why use our best weapon right away? It would have been better to use it to lock in our win. Once people were in a state of aggitation, it would have been harder to figure out who was who.

One thing that bugged me on the whole was the ability to have so many cleared villagers so early. Think bout it...7 players were known by day 3. Theoh, his 3 scans, Truicy, BB, and then Grund came forth. That doesnt leave too many hiding places for team evil.

I really think the game needs some serious tweaks on the whole for balance issues. Since right now...as we just played....it was tilted too far in the fellowships direction.

There is a balance issue. It's called having to pass the Ring and Gollum. Early Imprisonment forces earlier Ring passing which increases the chance Evil gets the Ring. Waiting and waiting gives the Ring the chance to move more under the Fellowship's control rather than at the behest of Evil. What happens if the Ring is Imprisoned earlier? We don't know who the Hobbits are (outside of the Imprisoned fellow and 1 Captured Hobbit) and all it takes from Boromir, Gollum, and the rest of the Evils is to claim Hobbitude, so if the Ring-bearer is eventually freed from Imprisonment, the Ring-bearer has to guess. No one would be proven other than that initial capture and he couldn't hold the Ring for more than one turn. That's balance. IMO - evil didn't take advantage of that balance preferring to hold a weapon which could seriously imbalance the game in the other direction.

[shieLazz79]

in!!!!