The Gandalf Culture - Designer note

This Strategy-Note article was written by Tom Lischke (Senior Game Designer - Decipher, Inc) and was published first on "Lord of the Rings Online (lotrtcg.decipher.com)".

The Gandalf culture is unique. The strengths and weaknesses of most cultures can be described in terms of what mechanics the cards do and do not have. The Gandalf culture, on the other hand, is designed to be the swiss army knife. Need conditions cancelled? Gandalf can do it. Need to bail another companion out of trouble by adding a little strength in a skirmish? There are a couple of spells that fit the bill. You don't want to wait to draw Gandalf? Play a few A Wizard Is Never Late and you are in business.

 All of this power and flexibility comes at cost within the game system though. The main limitation on the culture is the lack of companions. Up until the Battle of Helm's Deep expansion, the only companion in the culture was Gandalf himself. The means that even though there are strong support cards throughout the culture, the risk of including them is increased. If you are playing a Gandalf deck and he gets killed, you are in real trouble. Not only that, but after the first turn or two, Gandalf has likely put a bull's-eye on his head by playing Sleep, Caradhras or Servant of the Secret Fire. This means that all of the best minion tricks will be aimed squarely at Gandalf.

 This means that players have to make a choice when including the Gandalf culture in their deck. With other Free Peoples cultures, when you throw in a support card, you can build in redundancy in the form of multiple companions able to drive those cards. Since the Gandalf culture doesn't have that option, support cards are much more of an all or nothing proposition. Of course, even in the decks that don't play with the support cards, Gandalf has a couple of great companion versions, such as Friend of the Shirefolk and The Grey Pilgrim that can go into a lot of decks.

Battle of Helm's Deep introduces another set of companions to the Gandalf culture, the Ents. Since they are similar in stature to Gandalf, extremely old and immensely powerful, they will share many of his characteristics, although they won't let you play the spells from the culture. You still need Gandalf himself to do that. The Ents have a lot of strength and vitality, but also have a high twilight cost. Their support cards are also strong, but expensive in terms of exertions and twilight.