Seems like a logical addition and hopefully one that won't be too far down the pipeline.

Actually thinking about it, it wouldn't be difficult to play with one with the rules out of the box. The imperial would draw a hand of the same number of cards as the light side and then simply play the required cards from hand as would have been drawn from the deck. Difference they're now chosen from a pool in hand by someone. 

spirit said:

LotR players are already complaining rightfully that the game doesn't scale properly, i.e. quests can be impossibly hard for a single player and a cakewalk for four players. Getting the balance right for cards that are meant to played either by a (dumb) AI or a player? That strikes me as very difficult to achieve.

LOTR doesn't scale well because it gets easier with more players. This would indeed make it harder. Exactly what's needed for a games that's too easy. But we're not talking about LOTR, we're talking about Star Wars and at the moment... who knows? Also I'm just thinking off the top of my head. 

 I think this could be done with specalized 'raid' decks. If any of you have played the WoW TCG the raid decks are sets with their own special rules which are made to be multiplayer 1vsMany fights. I'd think LotR could do this too. 

jhaelen said:

Not to peck too hard at this, but who's saying this AI is going to be dumb? It could be set up in such a way as to adapt its gameplay to whatever the players are up to. I don't see it being a random thing. Because the very term "AI" implies intelligence, albeit artificial. Besides, Emperor Palpatine was one of the most brilliant tacticians the Galaxy has ever known. It would do him unfairly to represent his Empire with poorly conducted AI. :)

Darksbane said:

ug, please don't give that crappy game credit for anything.

SeerMagic said:

*shrug* did another card game do it first? I don't recall any.

Anyway I'm not really concerned with who pioneered the idea, but I think it could be adapted to work as a pvp version of LotR and possibly SW depending on how it works.

Warlord is the first I know of that had special decks that bent rules, and made the game tough like a boss fight.

 Yeah you're right, Warlord slipped my mind because the decks were never actually packaged and for sale IIRC. From what I remember you had to win a tournament and beat a overlord which would get you a chance at the one of a kind Medusian Lord. If they did do something like this I'd hope it would be something mass market though and for sale. 

Didn't V:tES do sort of the same thing in tournament events?

MarthWMaster said:

WotC's 'Castle Ravenloft' boardgame doesn't require a 'Dungeon Keeper' because it uses an 'AI' in the form of hardcoded, ordered strategies (starting with the specific down to the generic) for monsters along the lines of "if 'x' do 'y'" which is slightly more 'intelligent' and might work for a Star Wars LCG, too.

Compared to a human being playing the opposition every AI is 'dumb', though. But we'll see.

jhaelen said:

I suppose you're right. Not because a humanlike level of intelligence would be unachievable; indeed, the best players in any CCG are the ones who play consistently with their deck design in every situation. But because even when making all the right moves at all the right times, humans are unpredictable, and there is no way to say which choice a human player will make when both options available to him are equally promising. To simulate what it's like to face a human opponent, there needs to be some sort of randomizing factor to account for such situations.