The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game (a.k.a. LOTR TCG) is an out-of-print collectible card game produced by Decipher, Inc. Released November 2001, it is based on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the J. R. R. Tolkien novel on which the films were based. Decipher also had the rights to The Hobbit novel but did not release any cards based on it. In addition to images taken from the films, in 2004 Weta Workshop produced artwork depicting characters and items from the novel absent from the films for use on cards. In 2002, LOTR TCG won the Origins Awards for Best Trading Card Game of 2001 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Card Game 2001. Decipher's license to The Lord of the Rings expired on July 30, 2007, after which all official promotion and distribution of the game stopped.
The game also had an online version that maintained identical gameplay as well as a market economy. However, since the game's print run has ended, sales for online cards have been stopped and the servers closed in June 2010.
Game concept The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game is a game for two or more players, each of who uses his or her own deck consisting of equal numbers of Free Peoples and Shadow cards, with a minimum of 30 of each. On a player's turn they are considered to be the Free Peoples player and their Fellowship and Free Peoples cards both in their Support Area and on their characters are active. A player uses his Free Peoples cards to attempt to traverse the site-path and destroy the One Ring by reaching the ninth site. Each of his or her opponents, the Shadow Players, use their Shadow cards to prevent this by attempting to kill or corrupt the ring-bearer, or by forcing the Fellowship to slow down long enough for their Fellowship to race to victory. At the end of each turn the position of Free Peoples player rotates to the next player in turn. The game is won by the first Free Peoples player to survive to the ninth, and final, site or the last player whose Fellowship is left alive or when you corrupt the opposing fellowships ring-bearer.
An innovative mechanic called the twilight pool is used as a costing mechanism for cards. Each card has a numerical cost (which can be zero). When the Free Peoples player plays a card, tokens are added to the twilight pool equal to the cost of that card. The Shadow players, however, remove twilight tokens equal to the twilight cost of their cards in order to play their cards. Thus the more powerful cards the Fellowship the Free Peoples player plays, the greater the threat from the Shadow players. Each Free People and Shadow card belonged to a specific culture such as Gondor, Gollum or Isengard with cards within a culture complementing or even requiring one another, but players were free to construct their decks with a mix of cards from any culture.
Throughout a game, a player will play companions (or Free People characters) to help defend the ring-bearer. When it is his turn to play as the Shadow player, he then can play minions (or Shadow characters) to attack the opponent's companions. The Free People's player (the defender) has the opportunity to choose which of his companions will fight in one-to-one duels, called skirmishes, with the opponent's minions. This is called assignment. Since the Free Peoples player wants to defend his ring-bearer, the only way a Shadow player can attack the Free Peoples player is by playing more minions than the Free Peoples player has companions, thus allowing the Shadow player to assign extra minions to any companion he chooses, including the ring-bearer, or by using minions whose game text allows the Shadow player to assign them to the ring-bearer. The character in a skirmish with less strength takes a wound, but if the total difference in strength is double or higher, the losing character is killed immediately instead. Other types of cards are possessions that character can bear to gain additional bonuses, conditions that retain their effect until they are discarded and events, which are discarded immediately after being used.
However, the Ring-bearer does not only face minions on his journey to destroy the Ring. The Ring-bearer has to resist the temptation of the Ring. In the trading card game, when the ring-bearer succumbs to the temptation of the Ring, burdens are added and most versions of the One Ring enable the Ring-bearer to take burdens instead of impending wounds. Each companion has a given resistance stat, and whenever a burden is added, each companion's resistance is lowered by one. Once the ring-bearer's resistance reaches zero, he is corrupted by the power of the ring and the player is eliminated from the game.
Game sets and distribution When the game's run had ended in mid-2007, nineteen sets in total had been released. Three of expansions (Expanded Middle-earth Deluxe Draft Box, The Wraith Collection, and Age's End) were not available in booster packs.
The movie years For the first three years the game's releases followed the movies. A 365 "base set" was released each November containing material from the upcoming movie. These were followed by two 122 card expansions at four-month intervals. Each base set and the following two expansions formed a "block" named for that base set.
Cards were sold in eleven card booster packs consisting of one rare, three uncommon and seven common cards. In approximately one in six packs a common was replaced by a foiled version of a random card from that set. Each set also had two sixty-three card starter decks containing two copies of a promotional face card, three random rares and sixty fixed commons/uncommons (sets 5 and 6 had sixty card starters with three alternate image rares in place of the random rares).
Between the second and third expansions of The Return of the King block an extra set, Reflections, was released. This consisted of 52 new cards, all foiled, half of which were designated rare plus and half rare. The new cards took material from all three films and material produced by Weta specifically for the game and did not belong to any block. Reflections boosters contained two of the new cards (with one R+ every 2.4 packs) and sixteen repackaged random cards from the first six sets. One of these old cards was always non-English.
Shadows and beyond In November 2004 the new base set, Shadows, marked an overhaul to the game. All sets would contain sixty rare, uncommon, and common cards each, in addition to a varying amount of fixed cards, only available in Starter Decks. Instead of foiling every card, each expansion would only have eighteen pre-selected rare foil cards that would be randomly inserted into one out of every seven booster packs. Shadows also had four, rather than two, different starter decks. The material used for the cards would also cover the entire trilogy instead of being tied to the films' releases.
Additionally, a system of rotation was announced to be introduced to the game. Starting in March 2005, the entire Fellowship block ceased to be legal for use in the Standard tournament format. Then, each November, the oldest block remaining would also be "rotated out". Decipher claimed this helped keep the card pool down to a manageable size and would keep established players buying new cards. Detractors claimed it was a money grab and did not like being forced to purchase what they felt were inferior cards.
Set list Where two dates are listed, the first date refers to starter decks and the second to booster packs:
The Fellowship of the Ring (November 6, 2001) - The first base set that introduced the core mechanics of the game. The cards were divided between [Dwarves], [Elves], [Gandalf], [Gondor] and [Shire] cultures on the Free People sides and [Isengard], [Moria], [Ringwraith] and [Sauron] cultures on the Shadow side. The set is notable for having the largest number of Ally type of cards, characters who did not travel with the Fellowship and only provided aid through special abilities. Each subsequent set would see increasingly fewer Ally cards released, until they were completely phased out. It was sold in 50-card starter decks and 11-card booster packs. Mines of Moria (March 6 & 13, 2002) - The first game expansion introduces the Artifact type of cards, which functioned similarly to possessions, but did not suffer penalties from cards directly targeting them. This expansion significantly boosted the [Dwarves] and [Moria] faction, most notably featuring the Balrog, which posed a significant danger to the Free People at the unavoidable "The Bridge of Khazad-dûm" site. Realms of the Elf-lords (June 19 & July 3, 2002) - This set significantly boosted the [Elves] and [Isengard] cultures by adding a large number of Elven allies, introducing Isengard orcs in addition to the Uruk-hai and featuring the first playable versions of Saruman. The Two Towers (November 6, 2002) - The second base set brought the first significant overhaul of the game scene. The set contained no cards of [Moria], [Ringwraith] and [Sauron] cultures; instead new Shadow cultures of [Dunland] and [Raiders] (which combined the Southrons and the Easterlings) were added along with the [Rohan] Free People culture, and each culture now contained cards which could contain a number of that culture's tokens. The site path from The Fellowship of the Ring was completely replaced with the new sites from The Two Towers, and sites could now be controlled by Shadow Players and liberated by the Free Peoples. Battle of Helm's Deep (March 12, 2003) - This set brought back the [Sauron] culture and also introduced the new [Gollum] culture, which reflecting the character's duality consisted of both Free People and Shadow cards, which could alternatively reinforce or combat one another. Ents of Fangorn (July 2, 2003) - This set brought back the [Ringwraith] culture and introduced new versions of the Ents which were more pro-active in combat than the previous versions, which had specific requirements to be allowed to skirmish. It also contained new cards of the [Moria] culture, including a version of the Balrog who could be played on sites other than Underground. The Return of the King (November 5, 2003) - In addition to completely replacing the site path once again, the third base set added the new mechanics of threats (tokens that had to be assigned as wounds when a companion or ally was killed) and initiative, which either Free Peoples or Shadow player had based on the number of cards in their hands. This set contained no cards of [Dunland], [Isengard] and [Moria] cultures, but added Minas Morgul orcs to the previously Nazgûl-only [Ringwraith] culture. Siege of Gondor (March 10, 2004) - This set significantly boosted the [Raiders] culture by enhancing it with the Corsairs of Umbar and added the Dead Men of Dunharrow to the [Gondor] culture. It also introduces Shelob as the only other minion for the [Gollum] culture and featured characters with the powerful keyword enduring, who increased in strength after gaining each subsequent wound. Reflections (May 12, 2004) - Released in between two expansions of The Return of the King block, this special set was the most innovative at the time. Characters from the Prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring such as Elendil and Gil-Galad were introduced for the first time and characters from the books that were absent from the movies such as Glorfindel and Tom Bombadil were added through the designs created by Weta Workshop specifically for the game. Most importantly, characters other than Frodo were allowed to be the Ringbearer for the first time, featuring versions of Galadriel, Boromir, Smeagol and others who could bear the One Ring instead. More alternative Ringbearers would be added in later sets.