Dealing with the darkness

I really like this depiction of the blues.

Why do people always jump to "pot" rather than "Tobacco"?

it's funnier that way. We all know he meant it as tobacco.

Because it's associated with "dulled your wits and senses".

Sauron: After ten thousand years I'm free, time to conquer Arda!

Eru Iluvatar: Manwë, darkness has returned. Recruit for me five maiar with attitude.

Not to question your great wisdom Manwe, but have you considered simply bitchslapping the great evil?

lol 420 weed dude

because he was making a joke, and Tobacco would have been less funny. Nothing more.

Pipeweed comes from Numenor, way before the Wizards show up.

>I've sent five maiar to sort this mess out.
one of whom went bad (wow and he was one of Aule's too. what a huge surprise. Who could've seen that one coming)
one of whom just dicks around in the woods interfering with animals
and two of whom went east and were never heard from again

t-thanks, eru

You're a great person, and you should feel great.

Could be worse, the fifth could have fucked off to indulge in his midget fetish.

you know, when TWO followers of the local God of Order do a heel-face turn after seeing Middle-Earth, you know your realm is a mess and you gotta fix something

>heel-face
you mean face-heel, user

Aule isn't the God of Order. He's the god of crafting and building, and is explicitly stated to be the most like Morgoth of the rest of the Valar.

whatever

>He's the god of crafting and building
that's most order-affilated portfolio of all valar
his chief maiar, Mairon and Kurumo really liked order, one crossing over to Melko exactly because Valar were a mess, and the other setting up basically a reich. And chief maiar are a good way to gauge their vala's sphere of influence, since otherwise they wouldn't be attracted to him.

Who do you choose Veeky Forums?

Radagast was easily the best back when there was MECCG tournament play. You have 48 wilderness zones, and Eriador is stuffed with them. The ability to draw so many cards so quickly was enormously powerful.

Ironically, Gandalf was usually considered the worst, especially for Ring decks; if you want to find the One Ring, you need a 10 or better, and you really want the Wizard's Test card, not Gandalf's tap ability, to give you another roll.

The Hell do you think the two Blue Wizards were up to?

In Tolkiens notes I think he mentioned something about them being far out east raising rebellions, disrupting supply lines and making it very difficult for Sauron to raise the full strength of the Easterlings in a coherent manner.

He changed his mind about them quite a lot, as I recall. At one point they had fallen to the darkness as well.

What the fuck are you talking about?

he's right

Hey user, just starting to get into this game. I have complete sets of the Wizards, Dragons, Dark Minions, Balrog, and am part way through putting together the rest of the sets.

Where would you recommend I start with deck building? Radagast was the wizard I was thinking of going with. Are there multiple 'types' of a Radagast deck you can build, or do most Radagast players stick with a similar 'meta' deck? I was also thinking of trying something with Hobbits as I want to play cards like Farmer Maggot, Fatty Bolger, etc and Hobbits seem like a fun faction to run.

Any advise?

Warning: This will be a bit rambly, as I haven't played in well over a decade, and I only half remember this stuff.
I tend to design my resource and hazard decks semi-separately. 30 cards of each, and then when it comes time to finalize the deck, I weld a resource deck with a hazard deck. Obviously, you want to have ones that synergize well.

>Resource strategy
MECCG is a race, you shouldn't be thinking along the lines of "How awesome will I be and how many MP will I have when I play out my deck". You should be thinking "What is the fastest I can get to 20 MP"? With that in mind, you want to aim to get resources that are quick and as easy as you can. This in turn leads to two major limitations:

>Geography.
You can only move 4 regions a turn, barring spending cards to make you run faster. That means that ideally, your MPs are all close to each other, and also close to a haven or somewhere you can heal if you get fucked up.

>Minimizing hazard effects.
Mostly, that means strategies for dealing with corruption and with creatures. The latter subdivides into two main plans: Prowess, and kill a lot of creatures you come across, or stealth, and simply avoid them. If you want to go with hobbits, you should go the stealth route, as they're sneaky and not all that strong.

When I do stealth parties, I usually try to have one big guy and two hobbits; that gives you three party members but only a hazard limit of two, which makes it hard to set up combos. When you get your wizard out, he should form another two man party, with probably someone fairly big. Radagast does work well for this, as he's both a scout and a ranger.

Hobbits also work fairly well for corruption, for obvious reasons.

1/5 or 6

With that in mind, I would suggest as a nucleus the following: Starting party Cirdan, Merry, Pippin. Cirdan has a LOT of direct influence, he's a damn good fighter, and is just all around one of the best characters in the game. The three of them use up 16 GI, which is where I try to stop to have a buffer against cards like Call of Home or Muster Disperses. I like Merry and Pippin for this because if you're not going for a Ring strategy, they're just as good and less likely to be seen in the opponent's roster than other hobbits, and the 1 DI can be useful if Cirdan taps and you want to go for a faction. Minor items should support the stealth plan, star glass and an elven cloak would be my initial picks, although Cram isn't bad either.

Now, assuming you're doing a one deck game, you want to have about 25 MP worth of resources, so you can be sure of drawing one early and so you can afford to lose one or two. If you're sticking to Eriador, safe, and near havens, that gives you the following sites that you can try to pick up MPs

>Grey Havens (Elves of Lindon)
>Blue Mountain Dwarf Hold (Blue Mountain Dwarves)
>Bag End (Hobbits)
>Lossodain Cairn and Camp (Palantir/Major, Lossoth respectively)
>Bree (Rangers of the North)
>Weathertop (information resources)
>Cameth Brin (Hillmen)
>Barrow Downs (Major item)
>Old Forest (Tom)
>Ruined Signal Tower (Major)
>Dunland (Dunlendings)
>Himring (Major)
>Isles of the Dead that live (Major)
>Goblin Gate (Gollum)

2/6?

Those are all within one move of a haven, have weak auto-attacks if any, most are within one move of each other, and all are either heavy into wilderness, or in the sea where Cirdan can protect you. Most of the ones with auto-attack have undead, which is why I recommended the star-glass earlier. With that in mind,you can get your 25 MP target fairly easily. As much as it might go against the theme, I would not recommend the Hobbits for the same reason I wouldn't recommend the Hillmen. At 1 MP, they're not worth the time necessary to pick up, go for beefier factions.

This gives us an "MP Core" that would probably look something like this.
Tom Bombadil (3)
Gollum (2)
Noble Hound (1)
Blue Mountain Dwarves (3)
Lossoth (2)
Rangers of the North (3)
Elves of Lindon (2)
Glamdring (2)
Torque of Hues (2)
Palantir of Annuminas (5 if stored, 2 otherwise)
Great Shield of Rohan (2)
Sword of Gondolin. (2)

With the possibility of adding or subtracting items/factions as needed, or even adding a dreams of lore if you want. This uses up 12 of our 30 resource cards, which means the rest should be going into support cards. In our case, that's mostly stealth stuff. Concealment, trickery, halfling stealth and strength (if you've got that one in hand, just let a hobbit take a strike and become wounded and heal him back up), environment stuff (more on that later) are all good picks.

3/6

Backup characters should be Beretar, Gloin, Voteli, and if you substitute any factions, anyone who has a home site+bonus against that faction to start with. If your wizard isn't revealed, you leave yourself the option of just having them pop up in their starting site, influencing a faction, and hten disbanding the character next turn. Other characters should either be small mnded and stealthy (but probably not hobbits, it's a pain going back to Bag-End and loses you time, go for people like Eowyn, Halbarad, and Fili/Kili), or someone big to keep Radagast company. I tend to like low minded ones so he can influence factions, so I'd use people like Boromir, Elladan, Elrohir, Gildor Inglorion, etc.

Hazards.
Now, my first bit of advice when constructing a hazrard deck is to put Mouth of Sauron first and then fill in the other 29 cards. Loudmouth is the best hazard card in the game, bar none. That kind of flexibility is unmatched.

As for the rest, like with the resources, you want to pick up a coherent strategy and stick to it, ideally one that works well with your resource strategy. A nazgul heavy Doors of Night deathfest won't work if your resource deck needs Gates of Morning to run. To start off with, you should be asking yourself if you want a speedbump hazard deck, focused around stalling your opponent, and making him lose turns, or a deathtrap hazard deck, where you set yourself up over a few turns to really try to wipe out his party(ies). Given that you'll be drawing a lot of cards if you get Radagast, I tend to go for a speedbump, with a quick draw and play style, and not holding cards in your hand for a long spell. If you're playing a mostly stealth resource deck, I would recommend something with Doors of Night and big heavy hitters.

4/6?

(Fuck, I dropped my copy-pasta because I'm a tard, going to re-write the next bits up)

This I think works better than going the other route; which is to start with something really big but hard to play, Dragons, Nazgul, nasty undead, etc. and then stock up on cards that let you play them more frequently. Because your deck strategy is ocused around moving quickly and drawing lots of cards, chance are you'll clutter up your hand too quickly to be able to use half of your hazards; that sort of strategy tends to work better with Wizards that let you hold more cards, not draw them fast.

That would lead my initial inclination to do an orc heavy deck. Orcs can be played almost anywhere, and you can discard them freely if you don't have the environment set up against a prowess party, since there are always more that are almost the same. Include 3 of each of Doors of Night, Minions Stir, and Clouds in order to provide some beef to the lineup. Your staple creatures should be orc-warband, orc patrol, orc warriors, and orc patrol. Back them up with Hobgoblins and Orc-Lieutenant for heavy strikes, and think about including Host of Bats or Two or Three Tribes present to enhance your ability to throw an entire pile of orcs on someone.
5/6

Another tack you could do, which works well with Radagast, is to play Fog (resource, not a hazard) and stock up on big deep wilderness creatures, drakes and their ilk, backed up with things like Lure of Nature, Lost in the Wilderness, and anything else you can think of to fuck over people traveling through the trees that you'll make them do.

Either way, you'll definitely want 3 twilights, either here or in the resource deck, and you'll probably want at least a few corruption cards to keep your opponent from assigning three items to the same dude and making a super-man. Especially if you're going with the fog, Lure of nature is an obvious pick, as is Despair of the Heart if you're confident of your ability to wound enemy characters. Avoid Lure of Power since you're using factions reasonably heavily yourself.

Actually, that's really kind of it, unless you have some questions. I doubt I've explained all this very well.

He did, which is why Iluvatar sent the Ring to the midgets too. Remember, it was specifically stated that Bilbo finding the Ring was not coincidence, there was purpose behind it, and that purpose did not originate from Sauron.

I know he did, that was the joke.

Actually, one last thing. At least how I designed my decks back in the day, I didn't usually build them around a wizard. If nothing else, you're putting a lot of eggs in one basket on the risk that your opponent draws said wizard first and plays him, thus pre-empting you.

Usually, I'd design them around a geographic area or a racial theme (dwarves and dunedain work better than hobbits, IMO) and then think about which wizards support it better. Usually, I'd put 2 wizards in, so I'd always have a possibility of playing someone. That Eriador stealth deck I sketched out works best with Radagast, but Pallondo is pretty good for it too.

Also, if you're absolutely heart-set on playing Radagast, use decks that center around Rivendell. Rhosgobel is one of the most dangerous places on the map, being a Free Hold in a Dark Domain surrounded by wilderness areas. While your opponent is unlikely to have those cards in a single deck, you do NOT want to be the guy who faces an assassin, a Nazgul and a winged fire drake all on the same turn.

They were described as cultivating magic orders and rebellions in the east, and were implied to be spirits of the Orome the huntsman. They probably leaned even more towards swords and daring deeds than Gandalf, and they originally showed up in the early to mid second age with Glorfindel, with a specific mission to go east and fuck Sauron's shit up. It's only much later after the reshaping of the world that the other three show up, and they're a spirit of the forge, of mercy, and of nature respectively, not the combatant sort like the Blue wizards. In his later versions of their involvement Tolkien seemed to settle on them not being corrupted, and lingering in the world a good ways into the 4th age before returning from the east.

...

Why is there always at least one buzzkill.

>Sauron wipes out nearly all the remaining Noldor
>destroys Eregion
>wipes out the Ent Wives dooming the species
>conquers or wins the allegiance of nearly all men in the east and south of middle earth
>destroys Numenoreans by proxy
>repeatedly ravages middle earth
Then only after all this the Valar decide to send five maiar to clean up the fucking mess they precipitated by letting Sauron wander free after the defeat of Melkor. No fucking wonder Eru created elves and men, his first children were complete fuck ups.

Eru didn't create the Valar I think.

Pallando looks like he's the head Wizard chef at a medieval themed restaurant.

Not him, but he did. The Ainur were created before he makes the world.

> before.

They were created before time began...

Wow, thank you so much for such a detailed response!

I've mostly just been messing around with the pre-made challenge decks, but want to move into making my own decks. This gives me a good place to start and a lot to think about!

Also a rules question that I haven't been able to find a answer for anywhere online. When cards say they are a 'manifestation' of another card, what does that mean? Is it just flavor text, or is that a mechanic that effects how it is played?

No, Manifestations are a legal game term, although to be honest I don't remember where in the rules (I think it was in the DM expansion rules packet, but I"m not 100% sure). You can only have one manifestation of a given thing in play at a time. If your opponent plays My Precious the agent, you can't play Gollum the Ally. And if one of them is eliminated from a strike or something, you can't play either.

I'm not as familiar with the LE and ATS stuff, but the ruling would be clear. While you can include 3 of either The Lidless Eye or Sauron in a deck (they're not Unique), you wouldn't be able to have both of them in play. And if your opponent is playing a baddie and puts one of them in play before you do, you can't play either. (Well, unless one of them gets discarded, but offhand, I can't think of a way to do that.)

DUDE

Wait, I'm stupid, you can't play either unless your opponent is playing a wizard deck, but you get the general idea.

By the way, I found the definition, on page 3 of this PDF

meccg.net/netherlands/meccg/rules/medm.pdf

>Certain entities (e.g., the Balrog, Gollum, Lobelia, etc.) have several different manifestations, each represented by a different MECG card.

If one manifestation of such an entity is already in play, you may not play another manifestation of the same entitiy.
If an attack from a manifestation is defeated, the manifestation is removed from play and you may not play any further manifestations of the same entity.
Exception: Different manifestations of the same unique Dragon may be in play at the same time.
Note: If one card says it is the manifestation of another card, these restrictions apply to both

I kek'd so hard. Any drawfags wanna get in on this?

Oooo helpful rules find! It's interesting that they let dragons be the exception to the manifestation rule.

It's quite simple. The Dragons came out before they had the manifestations rule, and thus they didn't want to have to backtrack a bunch of ways around the fact that each of them has a Permanent event form as well as a creature form.

IIRC, there's something in TD's rules anyway that states that if a Dragon is defeated, you can't play any of the other forms and its home site has no automatic attack anymore anyway, which gets to the guts of the matter.

Is that why Blue Mages tend to be middle-eastern in Final Fantasy? Or is that a Zoroaster or a Hindi thing or what exactly?

Wheres the wizard with bird shit on his face?

I really did not like that depiction of him.

gay midget fetish

ftfu

The vague hints we've had of 'Asia' in Tolkien's worldbuilding has always implied some heavy sword-and-sorcery themes to me; I've always wondered what more would have been done with the area if he'd been more interested in it. (Even more so than Far Harad, since my ideas of that area have long been corrupted by later people's ideas (especially MERP) of what goes on there.

You know, while Tolkien clearly had tobacco in mind when inventing 'pipeweed', it has long been pointed out that tobacco is a crop of the New World, while various forms of marijuana have been accessible to Europe since ancient times.

They clearly got to not!Japan and settled down with some sweet, sweet waifu action.

Though that abomination Shadow of Mordor game says they just got killed.

And they had potatoes, so tobacco isn't a surprise.

...Every time I consider giving that game a chance, I learn something new that reminds me to never fucking touch it.

Were they mentioned in the book?

yes

So basically...

That's probably Amano's doing.

Yup. There are also other legit sources (like the letters) that say things like tobacco came from Numenor, so potatoes and tomatoes were probably Numenorean too.

youtube.com/watch?v=Ect-kgxBb4M

The funny thing is that the original edition of the Hobbit (which is rare as balls these days), had even more new world anachronisms, which got edited out. Why he went halfway on that I'm not entirely sure.

The true hero of Middle Earth