Spacing out these polls every two months has been very relaxing to me, so I’m glad I have done so for this past Fall. I am changing things up though, with a brand new tournament for December that will be deciding what unique ally is the community’s favourite in combination with the Messenger of the King contract. More on this later, as we first have a poll to analyze!
With the announcement of the new Core last Summer, I wanted to poll the interest in this product for the current community. Would players be interested in buying a second or third Core Set for the game, or would they wait until the campaign cards were available to be printed? With the poll running for two months, we have received some updates on the product that could have swayed the poll if we had only let it run for October. So now it is time to take a look at what the 130+ members of the community think about this new product.
So the majority of the community will be picking up this revised Core Set when it launches in Q1 2022. This is good news, as it will show FFG and Asmodee that there is still interest in a new product for the game according to the established player base (even if that new content will be a repackaged Core Set with some new campaign stuff). Hopefully, this will entice them to continue repacking the cycles and maybe even expanding their plans beyond the “few cycles” that they had originally planned.
The second-most popular option, with about a quarter of the votes, is that some of the older player base thinks that the box is nice to get new players into the game, but they are not going to drop $60 for yet another copy of the Core Set. These players may already have several Core Sets or are not interested in the new tokens or the campaign cards. I can understand that, as it is quite an investment that is better spent on newer expansions or upgrades to your storage system.
I find myself agreeing with about a fifth of the community, who will rather wait for FFG to publish the new campaign cards for print-and-play. This will be a cheaper alternative to buying a complete box if you are only interested in the campaign cards. I already own 2 Cores and extra copies of Core staples, so I really do not need more encounter sets for this game. Nor do I need another 12 copies of Gandalf…
A small fraction of the community will be interested in buying the Core for its new components. This might be the new rule book (hopefully with an updated FAQ) or the updated tokens that now also come with numbers on them. I have transitioned away from those tokens for a while now with 3D printed tokens or with dice, but I can understand that you would like thematic tokens to come with your game, and also understand that you don’t want to pile those tokens up high if the new set offers an easier way out.
12 members of the community will wait and see what the components feel like and how much the campaign mode improves upon the gameplay. They will wait for the rest of the community to give their feedback and then might jump in. This is understandable, as it might be too much of an investment at first if you are not certain of the quality of the product. Hopefully, these people will join the first group at a later point.
I had also opened up the poll for custom feedback, but apparently, that was not needed. Good to know!
Tournament December 2021
Back in 2018 and 2019, I did a tournament-style poll during the month of December to find out what the community’s favourite hero and favourite scenario was. While I was too busy to do a tournament poll last year, I got an awesome suggestion for one to do this year. There are a ton of unique allies in the card pool, which can become heroes with the Messenger of the King contract. But since this about doubled the number of heroes we now have, we may not have yet determined which ally actually makes for the best hero. Many different members of the community have their own thoughts on what hero is best, ranging from the low-threat heroes like Henamarth or Ioreth to those with unique abilities that you can now start the game with, like Firyal and Faramir. So I will be pitting all these heroes together in a tournament to find out which Messenger of the King hero will be deemed best and where all the others rank as well!
This tournament will be held in the same place I held the other two tournaments, which you can access through this link: https://challonge.com/KingofMOTK. You can also find more information in the description of the poll, like the schedule and what things you can consider when deciding between different heroes. You will need a Challonge account to vote, but that is easy to set up. I will be keeping everyone informed over Discord, Twitter, and Facebook whenever a new round is starting, which will be every 3 days. I hope I can count on your vote this month and that you’ll join in on the discussion of why some allies are better than others. The results will be shared in the new year!
Vision Of The Palantir 