I was thinking about game balance and house rules whilst convalescing today and came up with the following:

New Fortunes

The Aid of the AinurPersistent effect: Each turn, during the movement phase you may try to counter any spells. Roll a die before the effect die is rolled. On a 3+ the spell is countered. If a 1 or 2 is ever rolled then no further spells may be countered. Might may be used by the target unit to increase the die rolls.
This fortune is free and does not count towards the limit on the number of fortunes an army may take. It may only be taken if your army has fewer levels of magic casting than the opponent.

Hurin’s Vengeance
Intervention: You may call a free Epic Strike with any one Hero or Epic Hero.
This fortune is free and does not count towards the limit on the number of fortunes an army may take. It may only be taken if your army has fewer Epic Heroes than your opponent.

New Fates

Melkor’s CursePersistent effect. Each time a spell is cast you may ask the caster to re-roll the effect dice. If the re-roll is the same as the original then the effect is no longer in play. The caster may use Might to increase or decrease the second die roll.
This fortune is free and does not count towards the limit on the number of fortunes an army may take. It may only be taken if your army has fewer levels of magic casting than the opponent.

Ambitious Captain
Persistent effect: One normal captain counts as having Epic Duel (see Aragorn and or Boromir).
This fortune is free and does not count towards the limit on the number of fortunes an army may take. It may only be taken if your army has fewer Epic Heroes than your opponent.

These are intended to depress the number and levels of spell casters and Epic Heroes. As a corollary, they might increase the appearence of Captains and Shaman.
Comments?

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"We may have cared about many things in life, but what will we have in our last moments.”
St. Teresa of Avila

Interesting... very interesting. My personal opinion, based entirely on guessing, is that it would lead to both extremes (especially with the Magic); players would either take no Magic/Heroes, or take loads in order to counter these rules.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings