Maik H
Germany
Frankfurt
Unspecified
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The finale combat against the Nazgul, even if just viewed as a tiebreaker, is a bit disappointing mostly because the only goal for Sauron is stalling long enough. Defeating a hero is so extremely unlikely that the damage caused by the Nazgul is irrelevant to the outcome of this last combat, and thus irrelevant to the outcome of the game.
To improve matters without radically changing the game and/or introducing a slew of new rules, simply go to the Finale rules on p. 34 and add a sentence to step 3 (Prepare):
"Each hero then shuffles all cards from his hand, rest pool, and damage pool into his life pool. Following this, he discards 10 cards plus 1 card for each corruption card he has into his rest pool. Each hero then draws a number of cards from the top of his life pool equal to his fortitude."
This gives the hero a total life of 15 + training - corruption. After drawing cards with fortitude and agility, there will be a buffer of roughly 7 cards before damage goes directly to the hand cards - tough, but absolutely not insurmountable if the Nazgul go for the throat instead of trying to stall.
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Joe Fling
United States
Texas
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this is brilliant. I like it and I think I might try it. It is lame that the Nazgul cant kill the hero. Thanks!
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Sean Doubt
Canada
Vancouver
British Columbia
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I will have to try this out!
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Paul Leigh
United Kingdom
Bedale
North Yorkshire
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This final battle always looked like a weak point to me as well. So far, we have never made it to the finale, games have always been won following mission victory conditions.
However, I can see that the rules for the possible Nazgul bash at the end seem a bit flat. Your variant will certainly spice it up and I feel sure that that is how we will do it.
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But remember the Nazgul doesn't have to defeat the hero - the Nazgul merely has to survive the battle for the Sauron player to win.
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Paul Leigh
United Kingdom
Bedale
North Yorkshire
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You're right Jools. The way for Sauron to win the final battle is to hold back to some extent and try to exhaust the hero player. However, this does not make for a very exciting battle.
I'm hoping that an expansion (let's face it, we all want one) will flesh out the finale combat into something much more exciting.
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I'm with you on that one.
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Alex Rockwell
United States
Bothell
Washington
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I like this, it would be nice if damage dealt by Sauron to the hero mattered in the final battle.
I would actually start the hero a little bit lower on life, 7 damage is quite a lot to do without effect. Putting the life total to about 3 or 4+training would make the training more important, and have this actually become relevant.
Also I think Corruption cards are already quite sttrong, they are the only (mostly) permanent negative thing the Sauron player can do to the hero during the game, and they can already be crippling. I dont know that we need to make them penalize the hero more in the final battle.
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Maik H
Germany
Frankfurt
Unspecified
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Alexfrog wrote: I like this, it would be nice if damage dealt by Sauron to the hero mattered in the final battle.
I would actually start the hero a little bit lower on life, 7 damage is quite a lot to do without effect. Putting the life total to about 3 or 4+training would make the training more important, and have this actually become relevant.
Also I think Corruption cards are already quite strong, they are the only (mostly) permanent negative thing the Sauron player can do to the hero during the game, and they can already be crippling. I dont know that we need to make them penalize the hero more in the final battle.
The aim with the stated number of cards is not to give too much of an advantage to Sauron. And I've made half a dozen dry runs of the finale combat, which led to the conclusion that although, as you've said, 7 damage are quite a lot to chew through in a normal fight, the special circumstances of the final battle change this noticably:
The hero has to defeat the Ringwraiths, so he has to bring the fight to an early conclusion before running out of cards or strength. Under the standard rules, this led to a standard battle plan where the hero with the most recklessly aggressive cards is sent into the fight, since he does not have to care about his defense. With approximately seven cards as a buffer, such reckless tactics allow the Nazgul to deal 'real' (i.e. hand card) damage surprisingly soon - I started out with closer to five cards as a buffer, but this proved to be far too harsh for the heroes.
I've included the corruption penalty more for thematic purposes, admittedly, and to make the heroes care more about late-game corruption cards (which they could usually just shrug off because of their limited impact).
I did not have the time yet to give this variant a proper test in the field, so I'd be very interested in any reports from somebody who did.
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Mindy G
United States
Portland
Oregon
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I really like the sound of this ancient idea. We just went through a final battle with the Nazgul and from the Sauron perspective, it was really unsatisfying to have to play purely defensively, since any damage done to the Hero wouldn't matter, since they have a full stack of life, so the only objective was to survive long enough to exhaust the hero. I hope I can try this next time and see how it goes.
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