An example of my draft against mirror of the Galadriel

Here is an exemple of a draft I made. If you are interested I will present my draft in some future events:

• lure of middle earth in germany in 20-22 february
• fellowship of the cards in france in 23-24 may

Until that here is an example of what I can get through my own format, which overall follow all the official rules but only add complexity over the deckbuilding part of the game. But the complexity isn't the main goal (it is for me a pleasant part though) but diversity is. You absolutely can't build the same deck twice. And you will build almost everything that is possible to build (with any heroes) over the time.

Did I have your attention? Here is how I proceed: I gather a pool of cards. It is a tremendous work of compiling, either need a full collection of player cards reserved for or a gigantic work of proxying. I recommand you not to do that if you just want to try. Rather gather a bunch of random (or ones you like) LOTR cards, and pretend for the rest of this explanation it is my pool. For the reference here is a link to see my pool list: http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/269591 or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bI9MZM9-SwZXMoVCIXFJNW1Wi4bUR1QHARIcmmFOsC4/edit?usp=sharing

Then I gather some players. The main mode of my draft, used for those decks, is for 2 to 4 fplayers. Give them some drinks or snack to get them stick to their chair. Now I deal one hero face up to each. No obligation to play it, as for any other cards you receive it is only a proposition. Then we start to draft. We each at the same time "draw" three heroes from the hero pool, we take one for ourself and give one to another player. The third one is returned to the deck box and removed from the draft. The specificity is that any card you take for yourself is face-down, only you know it, but every card given to another player is face up, so everyone know it and it is easier to direct our future choices based on that. My advice is not to talk about the draft while doing it, so you make your choice based on your guess of what people want for their deck, and those players have to rather build from what people gave them and not what they would have wanted to take. Of course the well-being of the table is the most important things so this strategic tension shouldn't cost anyone to had a bad time and I usually talk way more when showing it for the first time. Find your own balance ;). You do so 4 times (alterning right and left side for the cards given if there is more than 2 players). So each player now have 9 heroes. Each heroes goes with several signature cards as noted in my files. After that, still without revealing all the concealed cards you go to the players cards.

Each player receive now player cards from the pool. For my experience of 50 cards decks with my constructed pool it is 80 cards. I rather give 40 cards for a first experience with 30-cards decks and if you take just random cards and not a constructed pool you should add +50% of cards because there will be less polyvalent cards. Then you all draw 5 players cards from the pool and choose: -2 to keep (still facedown) -1 to return to the box and removed from that session -1 to give faceup to the player on your right -1 to give faceup to the player on your left (so that was 2 to the only other player in 2 player exemple)

Once every player finish those 5 cards you go to the next 5. And repeat until all cards dealt are drafted. Now you should have 101 cards (64 from the draft, 27 from signatures cards from the heroes) and 9 heroes to build a deck with. You just follow the regular rules of the game, 1 to 3 heroes and 50 player cards minimum. You can play any heroes, faceup of facedown, play a hero without their signature cards, or signature cards but no the hero linked, or part of signature cards only. There is only one rule exception: if you happen to draft multiple copies of a card usually "limited once per deck", you are allowed to play all of them. It is still balanced because it just mean the others players don't have any of it ^^. And because you can't just assemble sheningans combos since you don't get to choose what you receive. I mentioned it mainly because the deck 1 play 2 gather information (then we realize it is in a scenario where you can't go to side quests xD).

This mode to play the game is basically how I have played the game since the end of the official game. I have revisited every quest of the game, nightmare, Alep and POD included though it. Usually even doing two or three times each new scenario with separate gaming partners. It forced you to find some interest in narrow cards, in cards that are okay but a bit worse that a good cards that you will alway play and get astonishing interaction. Or often just a stack of allies with decent stats and useless abilities and ways to draw and pay them ^^. I love also the fact that I was knowned for optimizing and playing all the same cards over and over, and then flip to playing more crap cards that you will probably never do ;).

About this specific playthrough it is a draft with my regular draft partner. So we draft also contracts, which is not recommended at your first drafts because 2 times out of 3 your contract is incompatible with your heroes of thematic and must be ignored or else people do bad decision and you end up with an unplayable stack of crap cards (for exemple people give you cards from all sphere for a bond of friendship... but you don't have heroes for all the 4 sphere so you can't play it). I also have errated some contract to make them playable for the draft. Like the two involved here. For the into the west I didn't have enough 4 and 5-cost cards in the pool. So it now need as much card from cost 1, 2, 3 and 4+. For grey wanderer it is too complicated to explain ;). We end up with those two deck: one leadership / tacticts rather fight oriented (my deck) and one spirit / lore (with splash with grey wanderer) rather quest oriented. We made it during new year eve, drunked at 4am while we wait for the first public transportation. We then decide to play it against a scenario with the reputation to be the hardest in the game (not so sure about it though). So I'm pretty happy we almost make it first try: we calculate to kill sauron on turn 5, get wasted by treacheries and things only get worse from that. But I trust our chances to get it next time with even more boons.

I hope this was interesting for you. I was only intended to create those decks for my personal use for then I get excited about showing it to the community. Don't hesitate to contact me for question. I will be more than happy to answer any.