farmer maggot prepare for war 1.0

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• 1.0

Have you decided not to use (MotK) Pippin for thematic reasons?

right. the deck would be better with (MotK) Pippin but i cannot title it this way without (MotK) Farmer Maggot ;) and i want use maggot because of his dogs

Have you considered the option of using Keep It Secret to make it easier to play the Secrecy cards?

to be honest i do not know, how exactly this contract work. what means "secrecy level"? secrecy is a keyword, that reduce costs if your thread is max 20. the number (level?) show how much the cost will be reduced.

so each card becoemes secrecy +1?

the other words let me asume that with "sercecy level" is the number that in standart secrecy is 20, so you can stay longer in secrecy.

then the flippside with the action for 3 or more player let me asume this card is more for multiplayergames. so, its more i do not know how this card work ecactly than i do not want to use it.

The "secrecy level" is normally set at 20, with this card you can raise it in increments of 1 (at the cost of reducing your threat elimination level by 2 each time). In this way if you are at 22 threat but you used the Action of that card twice you are still considered to be in secrecy, so Secrecy X applies.

The Response is indeed for multiplayer games, but the Action can be really good in solo/2 players too. For more rules about the Player Objectives you can check the ALeP website.

if it work as u describe, i do not think of it as appropiate. this way, the contract should be used by everyone who uses secrecy. there is nearly no risk to use it 1-3 times (you barely get to thread of 44 starting in secrecy...) so for me it does not fit the normal challenge of deckbuilding, the original rules implies, like the free-guarded-attachment contract. i will not use them intentionally in my deckbuilding. in my opinion its worse than attach Steward of Gondor to eagles or ents.

so and additional, even if not having this opinion about these cards, i could only have 1 contract, and for this deck, (MotK) Farmer Maggot was mandatory part of the theme.

The cost of Keep It Secret lays in its opt-in cost, as in you have to permanently increase the threat in the staging area by 1 for each player who decides to opt in to it. But yeah it was meant to bolster an under-used archetype that is to say Secrecy decks, so each one of them might want to consider this card for it, though it's not without costs. Note that, while it's displayed as a contract on RingsDB for technical reasons, it is not a contract but a player objective a new card type ALeP introduced in The Shire's Reckoning,

Of course you are free to not use them in your decks.

the way it seems to me lately to boost some strategy seems very uncreative to me. i see very big differences between boosting the eagles, beornings, hobbits or gondor in their themfull and creative adjustments, the flat "gives bonus through contract to in this case guarded- and secrecystrategies is not what i like about this game, but if there are many who like it, then enjoy it, me not. it gives me the feeling, that it would simplify things the way the both contracts go. but perhaps there are many who like it more simple...

@doomguard While I understand your points, I hardly think the contract is simple. You put The One Ring in a bunch of your decks, even though it just increases the deck's consistency and power without much real cost.

The One Ring is original content, and its is very themfull part of middle earth. giving a guarded attachment basicially for free, or making secrecy a lot easier is not the same in my eyes.

perhaps it sounds unfair, but the one feels far more original to me than these 2 alepconstructs.

and perhaps it is, because the riddle-thing have the power and range of the most important artifact in middleearth. such things should be reserved exactly for that and not usable by/for every random guarded attachment. to have something from the start for no ressoursse IS very powerfull in this game and shuld not be such repeatable and in worst cases doable by every player at the table, the The One Ring is unique.

Just as a side note The Riddle-game is very specifically a unique card, so no it cannot be used by each player at the table.

@doomguard If that's your opinion, you are totally free to have it. However, most of the situations where I see The One Ring used are hardly thematic. It seems to be included whenever a character needs a bit more defense for Inner Strength or a deck needs more healing for Well Preserved. Regardless, I don't think The One Ring being famous is a fair excuse for it being an auto-include in many decks.

its not about the theme, its about the powerlevel. the most important "thing" in the 3rd. age can have this might like The One Ring and can anjust to every deck to make it better, but (in my view of the game and the middlearth of tolkien as i understand it) not a randomly created contract that should improve a randomly decided gameplaystyle (secrecy) or nearly all (riddle-contract). i rate the riddle-contract as impectfull as the one ring and i think that should not be and perhaps Alep overstep its bounderies and allows to much powercreep.