Lord of the Rings The Card Game

Rivendell

Welcome to my second article in as many days about Lord of the Rings (see my review of The One Ring 2E), its pretty specific content, but I’ve been gearing up for the second season of The Rings of Power and enjoying all things Tolkien lately, with that in mind, enjoy!

More Lord of the Rings…

I recently discovered The Lord of the Rings The Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games. And of course by recently I mean I found it a little over a year ago and played a few games through the website DragnCards. This site allows you to play everything currently available in the game including out of print adventures and the extra fan made campaigns.

I thought gee this is great now I’ll never have to buy the physical stuff. Well my dear readers it turns out that this can only satisfy the itch for so long. As much fun as it was exploring the game and the starter campaigns, I wanted to be able to share the experience with my play group. We have a hard enough time getting together in person, I cannot imagine trying to schedule time to play games online with them.

I bought the Revised Core Starter Box, along with the preconstructed decks and the Mirkwood expansion. I waited until I got a great deal on the evil empire (amazon, boo, but you know sometimes its all a person can do when your LFGS tells you he does not carry the game and will not order it for me, I’m still not sure what that is about, maybe he hates LotR?).

So the boxes and packs arrive and I sort through the cards and get things set up for my group. a few of them are going to be missing tonight so I have two of them to teach how to play, that should be easy enough.

We got half the rules wrong and had an amazing time! I played a few days later with one of the other local guys who was unable to get to game night. WE got a few rules figured out and a few more wrong… It was amazing again regardless!

Next week: game night, I play with 3 people in a 4 person game for the first time, again still learning the rules and nuances we again enjoyed ourselves very much.

Next week. Again it has been so much fun getting to know the game and rules. I think we are finally in a better spot with the rules and are becoming fairly proficient with the game.

I am hooked!

So What is it?

Lord of the Rings The Card Game is a living card game, meaning the game releases on a regularly scheduled basis but does not hide cards in secret making you purchase and chase specific cards (cough cough, Magic, cough cough).

you create decks of cards based around Lord of the Rings heroes based on their circles of influence, Tactics, Leadership, Lore, or Spirit. You build a deck with the special skills in mind of each hero and you can metagame the hell out of it looking for the most powerful trios or you can go completely based on theme and build the most gnarly Dwarf deck possible (or what have you).

Sounds amazing right! That is because it is.

“What is the downside?” you might ask.

Well the downside is that I have discovered this game a little late in its life. 13 years to be exact. The life of the game is actually waning and coming to an end from the side of the official releases. In fact the real bummer is that you cannot purchase most of the game anymore due to a large number of the scenarios being out of print, unless you want to pay exorbitant prices on eBay and the like.

Do not fear though, you are not completely out of luck at this point. FFG has seen the light and are rereleasing a limited amount of the game for those of us that are late to it.

The core box has been rereleased in a set that will allow to build the base of the game.

They have released four preconstructed decks that give you access to Elven, Dwarven, Rohirrim, and Gondorian heroes with supporting decks that are playable right from the get go (with access to additional cards in case you want to change some things up with different heroes and sphere types!) These cards comprise a large portion of the player cards that are not being reprinted from out of print cycles that will probably never be reprinted.

There are three cycles that have been rereleased and will give you access to portion of some of the best adventures found in the game, supposedly. though it appears there are a few cycles that are not being reprinted that are also beloved. so this hobbit has mixed feelings about this news.

If you are like me and love the books and would love to play through those events I can tell you that you are in luck and the Sagas for the Lord of the Rings books are also being reprinted (and as of the writing of this post Fellowship and Two Towers are released and The return of the King is set for release in October of this year!)

There is a lot to access even this late in the life of the game. And if that wasn’t enough there is an amazing community of people whose love of this game have been creating additional adventures that can be printed and played introducing new player cards (heroes and the like) as well as adventures to be played through.

Where to Start

While the game seems to have been abandoned by in large by its publisher it has a new life carrying it on forward. There has never been a better time to jump into the game and start experiencing the heart stopping fun of being chased by Nazguls and waging war upon the evils of Middle-earth. Jump in and give the game a shot. Learn how to play with some of the many videos available on YouTube (this playlist is my favorite for all things learning about the game and how to play, from TheGameLocker.

Give the game a shot on DragnCards, it is literally free to try. Then when you’re ready to dip your toes and learn more, look up Cardboard of the Rings, you’ll find me in their discord as I learn as much as I can about the depths of this one of a kind game. Listen to their podcast that has been going on for what a decade or so… Anyway there are well over 200 episodes to explore and there is even a list of them that they created for new people joining the game (you’ll have to check their discord for that list).

Other Resources worth a damn

Halls of Beorn All of the info about the game, a huge database of information for your perusual.

RingsDB Deckbuilding site customizable to what you have for cards available, over 10K decks have been created by users already!

Vision of the Palantir/ A site devoted to articles all about the game.

While this list is not exhaustive it was the first few places I visited when discovering this game.

thanks again for reading and I hope that if this has excited you at all you take the time to look into the game and join me soemtime for a quest.

Derek Bizier, the Halfling “Deckbuilding” Master

LotR not your thing, they also have a living card game for Arkham Horror and Marvel Champions, wither of these may be more your style, and the communities around them are also pretty active from what I gather, though neither is as exciting to me as the LotR game.