Legends of Norrath Preview: Item Card Type

Legends of Norrath Preview: Item Card Type

by Paul Dennen, Sr. Game Designer

Today is the last day of Card Type Week -- yeah, I know it's weird ending a week on Monday but the first article of the series was on Tuesday! -- and to celebrate the conclusion, today is a "double-shot" day to finish off the card types.

We finish up with the simplest two of all card types. There are not many new rules to show off here but, at the same time, both of these card types are very important to the game and to competitive decks.

Items

First up, we have items. Like abilities, items are played onto your avatar and provide support in a variety of ways; they can provide extra defense or attack, or grant miscellaneous non-combat effects to bolster a particular strategy. Unlike most abilities, items are not applied to quests. Thus, items are generally permanent and remain in play until destroyed by a card effect. Items represent all sorts of things: armor, weapons, magical baubles, tomes, you name it. Today, we take a look at a scout item. It's technically armor because it has the armor trait, but it doesn't provide protection for your scout avatar. No, these boots were made for walking, stalking, and generally causing a large pain in your opponent's butt. Take a look:

Take a look at that game text. To players like me who like to play with tricky tactics and strategies as opposed to brute force, that game text is pure gold and I hope you're excited by it.

Just like the other cards, this card has a card type icon in the top left on which is printed the card's cost. The archetype icon in the top right is, in this case, a scout icon. Underneath the name we have a trait: armor, which as we've said before carries no intrinsic value but it is something that other cards can refer to. On that same line, on the right side, is something new. "Feet" is a term that we call a restriction. EQ and EQII players are quite familiar with item slots, and this is basically the same concept: you can only have one item in play for each restriction.

You are allowed to upgrade your items for a particular restriction, however. For example, if you draw Boots of the Slickfinger early in the game but later in the game you draw Journeyman's Boots, another item with the Feet restriction, you are allowed to play the Journeyman's Boots. When you do so, two things happen:

1. Your old item is destroyed (sent to your discard pile from play).
2. You draw a card. This bonus card draw is a counterbalance to the fact that you had to lose your old card to play the new card.

These rules mean you can stock multiple copies of your favorite item without feeling that you are going to be stuck with useless extra copies in your hand.

And that's really the only new mechanic related to items.

Tactics

Tactics are even easier to understand. These are simply cards that you stock in your deck to affect key combats during the game. You can only play them during combat. When you do play a tactic, you simply execute its game text and then discard it.

Let's take a look at a tactic card. So the mage players won't feel left out, it's time to show a mage card:

There are two interesting things to note about this card. First of all, note that it has no printed cost on the tactic icon in the top left corner. That means it's free, no power needed to play! You will find that it is a good idea to stock your deck with some of these no-cost cards because the power resource is a premium commodity: you probably won't be able to generate enough power to play all your cards if they all cost power.

The second thing to point out about this card is the sword icon at the beginning of the game text area. That icon simply means that you can only play this in combat while you are on the attack. This makes sense when you read the rest of the card, because the card is only useful when you are on the attack -- if you could play it while you are defending, it would do you no good anyway.

Swarm of Bats is a solid card for a mage avatar who doesn't want to be afraid of a large group of opposing units during the quest phase. The more defenders there are, the more useful your bats become!

Every Ending is a New Beginning

That wraps up Card Type Week! If you've read along since last Tuesday, you now know just about all there is to know about the cards in the game. We will continue to spoil preview cards as the beta test proceeds, and we do have some interesting twists to reveal, so stick around if you are interested in even more details about Legends of Norrath.

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