By: Mark "Rogue Nine" Balderston

In every game, there are assets available to a player and his opponent. In Monopoly there is Monopoly money, In Star Wars there is simply the Force (of course it is much more complicated than that), and in Lord of the Rings there are two major assets: cards available to the player and, more obviously, the twilight pool. The twilight pool is simpler to manipulate and exploit, but card advantage is just as if not more important. Card advantage is the focus of this article series. You can manipulate the relationship between the hand and twilight pool, but I'll save that topic for another article.

What is a CARD ADVANTAGE and why is it important?

There are three ways to have a card advantage. One: you have more cards in your hand than your opponent. Two: You have more (and hopefully better) useful cards on the table than the opponent. Three: You have the ability to make cards available to you faster and in greater numbers than your opponent does. All of these also work in reverse, if you deny your opponent cards then you have the advantage, or if you deny him the ability to play cards and cycle fresh cards into his hand then that is also a card advantage. I will go into more detail on this later.

Why is it important to have a card advantage? Here is a very, very simple gameplay situation.

I have Gandalf, the Grey Wizard with Glamdring. My opponent has an Orthanc Assassin. They skirmish and I play Servant of the Secret Fire. My opponent passes his action and Gandalf wins the skirmish, wounding the Orthanc Assassin twice.

In this example, I used three cards to the one that my opponent used. I won the skirmish because I had a card advantage. Get the idea? Granted, many times this does not hold true. For example if your opponent has eight pipeweeds and four bounders on the table, but no hobbits (besides Frodo) or pipes, then I would have to say that this is probably NOT a card advantage.

Of course you have to make efficient use of your cards, but this is another topic entirely, and it is fairly easy to do. Whichever player can continually be re-supplied with useful cards and keep cards in his or her hand has an advantage. There are many ways to gain and then exploit this advantage.

Cycling cards in and out of your hand:
Now this is not really an abstract concept. With Lord of The Rings, the more cards you play during your turn, the more cards you can draw. This is good. Let's define some theoretical card types in order to understand some basic principles behind card advantage. First we should define something called a Permanent.

PERMANENT
Now a permanent is something that is played and stays on the table past the end of the regroup phase. This would be a condition, character, or possession. The more permanents in your hand, the more cards you will be able to play and thus the more you will draw at the regroup. This is not to say that having non-permanent cards in your hand is necessarily bad. Not by any means. Let's define another type of card, and let's call it A situational.

SITUATIONAL
A situational card would be a card that can only be played in certain situations. Makes sense, doesn't it? The Seen and the Unseen would be a situational card because your opponent must have a condition on the table and you must have an elf that is able to exert. Situational cards are not always bad, but when constructing a deck, make sure that these situations will occur fairly often, or that the card has another worthwhile function. This is VERY important because a situational card that CANNOT be played will sit in your hand until you can play it or until you have the opportunity to discard it.

The twilight cost of minions would be considered a situation, and should take much consideration in deck construction. Granted, you cannot play shadow cards in the Free Peoples turn, and vice versa. Therefore construct a deck that will play 4-7 cards a turn and run well off this amount of cards. A deck that cannot play cards cannot draw cards and is in deep trouble. Therefore, a deck with high-cost minions, like Nazgul needs to balance the card consumption by using events and cheap conditions, otherwise cards that cannot be used will stagnate in the hand.

By denying your opponent twilight pool, you prevent him from playing cards. This gives you, a card advantage. Vice versa, if you play many cards and leave the opponent with more pool than he can handle, you also have a card advantage because then you have that many more cards to deal with his. I think that the most dangerous ground here is, the middle!