By Zach "Rubber Chicken" Shephard

In previous installments of Leaving the Shire, I’ve gone into the details of basic deckbuilding. Although the construction of a deck certainly gets your creative juices (now with Vitamin C!) flowing, this is only one of the intellectual challenges of The Lord Of The Rings Online TCG. After you build your deck, you need to know how to play it.

In order to cover the various gameplay nuances of each Free Peoples and Shadow strategy, I’d need a team of dictation-taking monkeys to record my thoughts for months at a time. Being that Worlds Apart is having some complications with their primate labor distributor (return one orangutan in less-than-mint condition and you’ll never hear the end of it), I’m going to have to stick to one of the most important aspects of playing The Lord Of The Rings Online TCG: The art of the move.

We’re all required to advance our fellowships down the site path at least once each turn, so there’s very little instruction to be had there. It’s the double-move that can get really tricky, but the following analysis of factors should help you decide just when it’s safe to take that extra jump.

HOW DEEP IS THE POOL?
Twilight, obviously, is a big determining factor in choosing whether or not to double. Before you go diving headfirst into that double-move, you need to figure out just how much twilight your opponent will have at his or her disposal. Although you could certainly guess, “I think there could be around X in the pool,” crunching the numbers and doing the math will help much more than just making a random estimation. In order to do this, you need to take what’s already in the pool, add one twilight for each companion, the appropriate amount for the region you’ll be moving into, and 0-3 on top of that (for the Shadow number on the site). When performing these calculations, also take a look at what sites are already on the path. A player can only have three sites of any one Shadow number in their adventure deck, so if your opponent already has three sites showing three twilight, then you know they won’t have any more.

After you’ve determined just how deep the pool will be, try to figure out the average twilight cost of the minions your opponent has been playing. If there will only be nine twilight in the pool, and your opponent’s army seems to consist primarily of four-cost minions, you can fairly safely assume that you won’t be seeing more than two Shadow warriors hitting the table on the double.

WATCH FOR THE STALKERS
The minions left on the table can make or break the double-move. If there are two minions sitting around that you already failed to beat once, keep in mind that you’ll likely lose to them again. Can you survive an attack from both of them and their reinforcements that may be joining the fight? Furthermore, how many companions do you have that are capable of surviving skirmishes against the type of minions your opponent has been playing? Will there be so many Shadow characters that your Ring-bearer gets swarmed and overwhelmed? These are all questions that you have to think about before committing to that second move.

Let’s say there’s one big minion on the table, and you’ve only got one companion that can fight it and survive. That means that your strongest companion is already tied up on the next move, so the biggest minion that gets played will have to go to your second-strongest companion. They key is to make assignments in your head before you move again – assume that minion A will fight companion B, and so on. After you’ve already got your future assignments figured out, look at the characters that don’t have a minion on them yet. Will those characters be able to survive the inevitable battles on the following move? If not, you should probably stay put.

BE PREPARED
Sometimes, your opponent’s minions will just be too big to beat with the base strengths of your companions. In these cases, you’ll need some extra support to win or survive – be it events, conditions that discard for effects, exertion abilities, or any other one-time effect. If you’re having a hard time keeping the opposing horde under control, you won’t want to double unless you’ve got the resources to fend off the ensuing onslaught. For example, if you’re playing an archery-heavy deck, in which you aren’t likely to survive against minions that make it to the skirmish phase, you won’t want to double after your first move required every copy of Elven Marksmanship and Nocked you had at your disposal.

DOUBLING ON A FLOODED POOL
If you’ve ever used a deck that adds large amounts of twilight before moving, then you’ve surely winced as you waited to see what your opponent could do with the thirty tokens you’d given them. Sometimes, they play nothing.

Is it a bluff?

Probably not.

Once you get to a certain point, it seems fairly illogical for your opponent to bluff. With thirty twilight, most Shadows could certainly do some sort of damage to the opposing fellowship – unless, that is, they don’t have the appropriate cards available. If your opponent leaves an insane amount of twilight in the pool without playing anything, it probably means that he has a hand full of Free Peoples cards. When this happens, I double-move. Sure, there’s a chance they were bluffing and will drop a huge bomb on me at the following site, but more often than not, the risk pays off.

DOUBLING AGAINST A SMALL FORCE
Similarly to the previous tip, this involves your opponent getting draw-screwed. If your opponent plays a minion or two, but leaves a decent amount of twilight in the pool (enough to play another minion), then they’re probably out of soldiers. After all, your opponent already committed to playing two minions, they’re surely not going for the bluff – why not drop the extra minion(s) to do some more damage?

The answer is obvious: your opponent has no more minions to play. If you can determine what is (and isn’t) in your opponent’s hand, doubling becomes that much easier.

COUNTING THE RECONCILE
This is a tactic most commonly applied to the previous situation of doubling against a small force. If you’ve determined that your opponent probably doesn’t have any minions left, pay close attention to how many cards they draw on the reconcile. If they played two minions (and no other Shadow cards), left plenty of pool, and discarded, that means they’re drawing into three new cards. We can assume that at the very most, they drew three more minions – and that’s a worst-case scenario for you. If you can survive three more minions hitting the table, the double-move may be right for you.

THE GRAB BAG O’ TIPS
To close things out, I’ve got a few quick tips for those that wish to make easy double-moves. First of all, the ability to double-move starts in the deckbuilding procedure. It doesn’t matter if your fellowship is capable of beating minions in skirmishes, you have to be able to remove them from the table, to keep your companions from biting off more than they can chew on the double. This means damage bonuses, removal cards (such as Out of the High Airs), or wounding (such as Nocked).

Secondly, don’t make the pointless double. Far too often I’m sitting at site eight, waiting to single to nine on my next turn, when my opponent doubles from six to eight. Note that, if my opponent can’t increase the move limit, doubling from six to eight does nothing. There’s no way they can pass me. The game all rides on me surviving site nine or getting decimated by my opponent’s minions. If you double in this situation, you’re just giving me the opportunity to cycle more Shadow cards out, hence making my single to nine that much easier. If you have cards of your own that you must get rid of, play ‘em all on the first move.

There is, however, an exception to this rule. If your opponent plays no Shadow cards and your hand is full of Free Peoples events, you may want to double. You just have to hope that they play a minion, so you can get rid of all of the Free Peoples cards in your hand and draw into some Shadow.

Lastly, ignoring some of the above factors can be a key in the early game. You’ll likely want to single-move while setting your fellowship up, to ensure you don’t have any untimely deaths that will hurt you for the duration of the game. If you can get a decent setup at site one, then by all means, feel free to double right out of the gates. However, until your fellowship is ready to rock, by wary of running.

And there you have it: the six* keys to double-moving with ease.** So lace up those running shoes, stretch those hamstrings, and get ready to sprint down the site path.

-Zach Shephard

*Number of keys may or may not be equal to six. Quite frankly, I’m too lazy to scroll up and count.

**That rhymed.

If you ever have questions or topics you’d like to see explored in an installment of Leaving the Shire, feel free to email LeavingtheShire@worlds-apart.com with your suggestions!