Mormegil's Ratings 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

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Mormegil's Ratings

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1. Premise

2. Rating Philosophy

3. Ratings

4. Stats and Discussion

5. Closing Notes

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1. Premise

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"So, how good is this card?"

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Variants of this question are omnipresent in pretty much every card game, with the Lord of the Rings LCG being no exception. In fact one could argue that this question is even more prevalent in our cooperative card game, with all cards being options all the time, compared to a competitive game in which only a subset of cards are relevant for the current meta and are generally more frequently cycled out, changed, errataed or banned.

Assessing a cards value is also a lot of fun, at least to me. I therefore started this project of rating and all cards in the game sorted by type and sphere, after which I proceeded to order them and create lists reflecting said order. Once finished, I thought that other people might be interested in it as well. Some of you might find like to discuss these ratings (and, let's face it, probably disagree somewhere), however my main target group here are actually newer players and deckbuilders.

Having a rough orientation on player card power and utility helped me a lot as a beginner, so this should ideally also be a guide of sorts if the card you are unsure about including into a deck will actually be worth it. Furthermore, embedded in the fist word of each card review is a link to decks running that card in my expanding deckbox to hopefully provide some inspiration. While not all cards have been used in the deckbox up to this point, I still hope that it can give some orientation.

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2. Rating Philosophy

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Rating a card is almost impossible to get right. The amount of variables involved is mind-bending, the number of interactions between cards after 10+ years of released content (not to mention the different challenges quests throw at you) insanely high. So just upfront: There will be no completely right rating. Here are however a few key points I rated by as an attempt to provide insight into my thought process instead of just referring you to my individual experience and gut feeling.

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1. Each card receives a value of 0.5 (lowest) to 10 (highest) points. Inside each "point-tier", the cards are also ranked individually from top to bottom, top being the strongest card and bottom being the weakest. Each list contains the same rankings of cards twice, the first including just the card names as an overview, the second being identical in order but also containing a written review, with the first word of that review being a link to a growing assortment of decks utilizing that card. Please note that any form of Gaussian distribution is explicitly not the goal here, as the card pool itself is not normally distributed in my view.

2. All player counts are accounted for equally. This means cards such as Campfire Tales or Gríma received a high rating, even if they clearly favor higher or lower player counts respectively. On the flipside, neither of them received full marks since there also player counts where they are a rather subpar.

3. A card is judged in the context of the full official cardpool. Fan-projects (even though I endorse and enjoy them) are not taken into account. Also, a card like Glóin is not judged in the context of a core-only environment but in a modern carpool (which includes cards like Well Preserved or Song of Healing that he majorly benefits from).

4. A card is judged strictly on gameplay utility. Theme, jank-potential, artwork ... there are endless ways to judge a card, all legitimate and deserving of a list. Additionally, these ratings are not meant to reflect my enjoyment of a card (I really don't enjoy a card like A Test of Will for instance), but should be an as-objective-as-possible guide covering playability and strength (thus A Test of Will still receives top marks as potentially the strongest card in the game).

5. A card's efficiency (and thus rating) was judged by versatility and impact. Everybody has different criteria to judge a card by. I tried to rate by two questions: "How likely is this card to make and improve a variety of competitive decks?" and "How high is the ceiling for this card?". The goal was to account for both in a balanced manner, meaning a card like Daeron's Runes (which is insanely versatile though not a game-winner by itself) received top marks, as did a card like Vilya (which only goes into very few decks but has an almost unparalleled ceiling). This is just my personal philosophy for ratings, I understand if your philosophy differs.

6. Multiple experienced players have weighed in on these lists. While these lists were ultimately compiled by me and reflect my opinion, I garnered as much feedback from experienced players as possible. I have to mention my good friend Jban in particular, who I was voice-chatting with while compiling all lists. He is a brilliant player who I frequently collaborate with and without whom this project would have been of a much lower quality. In addition, I sent the lists to a few other people who I consider excellent players (and good friends!). They contributed with invaluable opinions and influenced my ratings (sometimes quite significantly). So while true objectivity is very hard to achieve, I tried to make these opinions as educated as possible.

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3. Ratings

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In this segment, you can find the links to the individual lists sorted by sphere and type. All lists are finished and already set in relation to one another, however I will release them here bit by bit since not all the writeups are yet completed (and they take a lot of time). So look out for this this section to grow in the future until all links are active.

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Heroes

Allies

Attachments

Events

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Heroes

Allies

Attachments

Events

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Heroes

Allies

Attachments

Events

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Heroes

Allies

Attachments

Events

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Heroes

Allies

Attachments

Events

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Side Quests

Contracts

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4. Stats and Discussion

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• N (cards): 164
• Mean: 5.5
• Median: 5.5
• Standard Deviation: 2.5
• Interquartile Range: 3.5

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If you are interested in stats and discussion about the specific types of leadership cards (i.e. heroes, allies, attachments and events), check out the individual lists for those types where I provided both. Here are just a few short thoughts on the leadership cohort as a whole.

Comparing between spheres, I was struck by how much higher the mean (6.86) and median (6.5) was for leadership heroes compared to heroes of all other spheres of influence (neutral not included of course ^^). I talked about this a lot more in my list on leadership heroes, so be sure to check that out, but wanted to make note of it again here: There are just no terrible heroes in leadership, with the lowest still receiving a rating of 3, thus raising mean and median considerably for that cohort.

When it comes to non-hero player cards in leadership, I was most surprised by how close these rating came overall to a normal distribution. Events and allies were on average a little lower rated than attachments, with the cohort as a whole having a mean (and median) of exactly 5.5. The slight difference between attachments and allies/events is mostly due to the lower rated cards, with many leadership allies receiving straight upgrades during the course of the game (prime examples being Silverlode Archer or Guard of the Citadel) and many events being rather niche.

Neither of these points are true for leadership attachments, which are seldom as irrelevant or niche. Additionally, they are also the cards with the highest sticking power in general, events being temporary by nature and allies being susceptible to damage.

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5. Closing Notes

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Thank you for your time, I hope this project is of interest to you and can provide some inspiration in terms of deck building and card evaluation. I do look forward to feedback and discussion, my opinion is not set in stone and I am very open to your perspective on whatever card or aspect of this ranking.

Thank you again to the people who directly contributed to the project, especially Jban who was ever-present during the almost 2-year process of compiling and optimizing these lists. As I said above, without their input, this project would not be of the same quality.

Thank you also to the people behind ringsdb.com for providing such a good platform for projects like this one - I am aware of some of the great work done by Seastan, Beorn and Alsciende in that regard but am probably missing a few people. What an awesome resource for the entire community!

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ENJOY!!!

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