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The Lord of the Rings | ||||||||||||
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he Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game from Decipher is based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic trilogy of books, but the cards feature stills from the upcoming movie. The LotR TCG can be played by two or more players. In TCGs, unlike in classic card games, each player needs his own deck. Everyone must buy a starter deck to get the required base cards. The other cards in the deck can come from booster packs. Thus players choose decks to suit their preferences.
The decks contain both Free Peoples and Shadow cards. Each card represents either places, characters, artifacts or events. The players take turns moving their Free Peoples characters from the first location to the ninth by playing their Free Peoples cards, while the other players try to stop them by playing their Shadow cards. When the Free Peoples player can do nothing more, play passes to the next player.
Every player starts with a Frodo card. As the ring bearer, he’s the one who needs to make it to area nine, even if all the other characters in the fellowship fall by the wayside. Besides taking wounds, however, Frodo also carries burdens. If he accumulates 10 burdens, then he has been seduced by the ring and the player loses. The game starts with players bidding burdens for their Frodos. The player who bids the most goes first.
The central mechanic in The LotR TCG is the shadow points. Most TCGs sharply restrict the number of cards a player can play each turn, but here the Free Peoples player plays as many as he likes, each one adding a fixed number of points to the shadow pool. The balance is that those shadow points control the number of Shadow cards the other players get to play. In other words, the more help the Free Peoples player gives their ring bearer on his own turn, the more darkness the other players can bring down on him.
One game to rule them all
The evil characters that every player is going to want in his hand right from the start will be the Nazgul. They’re powerful and they’re cool. Unfortunately, they are also "unique," which is a TCG term meaning that there can be only one of each of the nine on the table at a time. If the player to the left has already laid down the Lord of the Nazgul, then the other players have no choice but to keep their lords in their hands. Particularly because it is such a good multiplayer game, LotR seems to reward decks that minimize unique cards.
In other TCGs, one of the primary ways to hurt another player’s chances of winning is to force him to discard from their hand. Because of the limits on drawing cards from the deck, forcing discards can really limit a player’s options. In LotR, discarding is almost a good thing, because all the discards can be replaced each turn. Players need to recognize that forcing players to discard is actually letting them use more of their deck and build their own decks around other effects.
Despite the movie stills on the cards, the game appears to owe most of its detail to the books. The card for the One Ring, for example, refers to it as "Isildur's Bane." In addition, many of the character cards are locations-based. That means they cost more the farther they are played from their "correct" area. This really affects players who want to play Elven decks. Particularly with their archery, elves are dangerous in their home areas, particularly the Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, card because not only is he powerful in himself, but he can heal other cards as well. Dwarves, on the other hand, travel pretty well and are strong in combat, but they lack some of the dirty tricks that make Gandalf and Shire decks so nasty in the right spots. Gandalf, in particular, is very flexible, and there is no need to rush the change from Gray to White. In game terms, the White version isn't that much better.
It is impossible to match the experience of the Lord of the Rings books, but it is possible to experience Middle-earth in different ways. The LotR TCG is a very quick and fun way to do so, and is particularly inspired in letting you play both the good guys and the bad guys all in the same game. — Eric
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