The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

Overview
LOTR is a great card game that will let you experience the dark thrill of much of Tolkien’s saga in games of 1–4 players. You each take on the role of three heroes (mostly, but not exclusively, characters found in Tolkien’s novels) and embark on a quest that touches upon the events of the books (usually, the quests take place slightly earlier than the main events of The Lord of the Rings books). The game combines varied gameplay, beautifully rendered components, thrilling experiences, a true Tolkien saga feel, and hours of fun as you team together to try to beat the game in different scenarios (called quests).

I gave LOTR a strong 9 on a scale of 10. The only thing stopping me from giving it a definite 10 was the fact that the basic game only includes three quests (which means that you have to start buying expansions quite soon) and two threat trackers (which means that you have to use pen and paper to record threat levels if you play with 3 or 4 players;

Components
The box contains two threat trackers (a kind of score boards that are beautifully made), 96 tokens of different types (used to display resources, damage, and quest progress; these too are really appealing), a first-player token (this is the only unattractive and disproportional, albeit useful, piece of the game), a rulebook, and over two hundred cards (featuring player characters, events, attachments, enemies, quests, etc.).

Game mechanics
LOTR is a cooperative game. As mentioned above, each player picks a team of three heroes (as you get more expansions, you have the option of switching heroes and building specialized decks), get the corresponding deck and starts on a quest of their choice. In the basic game, you will get four sets of heroes, each set with its own deck of card with allies, items and events. Each of the four sets has a really different feeling and varying focus, which translates to more variation and challenges. The quest differ somewhat, but have in common that you travel through different Middle-Earth locations, while trying to pursue your quest without attracting to much attention from Sauron’s minions. Each character (either the three heroes that each player starts with or the allies that they soon call to their aid) can only make one action each game round: pursue the quest, attack an enemy, or defend against one enemy. This makes for a great menacing feeling, as you always have to give something up to progress through the quest; there never seem to be enough characters to take care of all enemies and move on at the same time. Every turn the threat level of all players increase, so if you do not make progress you will soon perish..

Difficulty
LOTR takes a while to learn and play, in terms of the difficulty of the rules. There are many rules and although the rulebook is (mostly) clear you do need to play a few games and re-read the rulebook in order get acquainted with everything.

In terms of difficulty for the player characters, LOTR really provides you with many challenges. The quests are all weighted for or against the players in different ways, which means there are some quests that are quite easy and others that will prove a challenge even for experienced players. The three quests included in the basic game have different difficulty levels of 1, 4, and 7, respectively, on a scale of 10.

Will you like it?
You will probably like LOTR if you enjoy at least one of the following: the thrill of bonding together against an unforgiving game found in cooperative games, the kind of deck-building found in collectible card games, the possibility of playing solo, fantasy games of different types, or if you in any way are interested in The Lord of the Rings saga.

Pros and cons
Among the pros are the creeping menace that grips you while playing (you really have to choose among several bad options and try to stay alive long enough to solve the quest), the versatility of varying quests and the deck building capabilities, the exquisite game components, and the many expansions. Among the cons is the fact that the basic game only includes two threat trackers (since you really do not need to buy another basic game in order to play with 3–4 players, FFG might as well have included threat trackers for 4 players) and that it, with three quests, will only serve you so long before you will need to buy expansions.

Value for money
At almost $40 (MSRP), LOTR is not expensive, especially when compared how great the game is and how beautiful the components are (everything from the tokens to the cards are truly exquisite). On the other hand, you will both want and need to buy expansions in the form of adventure packs and at almost $15 (MSRP) these will put a drain on your game funds.

Summary
LOTR combines the best parts of cooperative games and deck-building games with beautiful components, a true saga feeling, and great versatility through varying quests and solo-play possibility. It became an instant hit with our gaming group for many different reasons and that it perhaps the greatest perk: there are so many things in this game’s rules, appearance, quests, cards, and feeling that most players will find something to fall in love with. I warmly recommend it.

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is one of Fantasy Flight Games Living Card games. That is, it’s like a collectible card game, except instead of purchasing randomly placed card packs, you buy expansions with specific cards in them. This can help keep costs down, but it still can get expensive. The base game comes with three adventures, one easy, one hard, and one that’s **** near impossible to beat with the cards in the base set. I only own the core set, so I can’t give advice on the expansions.

Cons:
– Steep learning curve. This game will chew you up and spit you out.
– Complicated rules. The rule book is 30+ pages long. And, let’s face it, FFG is not known for
their well written rule books. You can watch a video on the games website, however.
– Only three adventures. If you want more, you’ll have to buy some expansions.
– It’s supposed to be a 2-4 player game, but it only comes with two threat trackers. If you want
more, you’ll have to buy another copy of the core set.

Pros:
– As I said, this game is dripping with theme. The card art is beyond gorgeous.
– You feel like you’re in Middle-Earth. The funtion and theme work together.
– Inexpensive. You can pick this up on line for less than thirty bucks.

In conclusion, if you can get past the difficulty and complicated rules, this is an excellent RPGish game to have.

If you love LotR and co-op you’ll most likely love this. Living card game allows you to know exactly what you are getting when you buy an expansion. Great with 1-4 players (3-4 suggests 2 sets of base game). Most balanced with 2 players though.

Fight through scenarios with a set of 3 heroes that can stem from 4 spheres which I’ll include specialties but are not limited to – Tactics (fighting), Leadership (hero buffing), Lore (healing), Spirit (questing)

Build a deck of at least 50 cards to help your 3 chosen heroes and fight your way through monster, location, and treachery cards to complete your quest.

Once players have their decks ready the quest is set out in between them and then the flavor text is read aloud to set the mood. Once that is read do what the card says for setup and then its on to the players turn.

Each player then draws 6 cards and decides if they like their hand. If they don’t they can mulligan once and draw 6 new cards.

Players then go into the first step of the game which is resources. Each player receives 1 for each 1 of their heroes and puts it next to them. This is because each hero has their own separate pool of money. Then the players each draw 1 card.

The second step is planning and in the phase players (in turn order) are allowed to play ally and attachment cards from their hand paying the associated costs and making sure that they pay using currency only from any of their heroes with the same sphere as the card being played. The third type of card players will use are event cards and these can be played through out the game during every phase including this one, though they normally benefit from being played in later phases.

Now the questing begins and starting with the first player, players choose which heroes and allies they will be including on the quest. Whoever is on the quest will need to exhaust (kneel/tap/turn sideways) this means that they will not be able to defend or attack later unless able to exhaust because of special effects. Based on what cards are in the staging area from previous rounds or from set up players then need to equal or exceed the amount of threat generated by those cards and extra drawn cards based on number of players (1 card per player) with that of their combined willpower from all included characters. Equaling the threat from the staging area will break even and nothing will benefit or hurt the players. For every point over the players then place a progress point on the current location, if there is one, if there isn’t then they go on to the current quest. Failure to do so will increase player threat. If a players threat ever reaches 50 the players lose.

Once the quest phase has been completed the players may choose to travel to a location if they currently have no location active. Location cards cards usually give a positive or negative effect after traveling. Traveling to a location removes it from the staging area and removes some of the threat from questing in subsequent turns, but also works as a buffer between the quest (which is the main objective usually)

Next comes the encounter phase. Each player starting with the first player can choose to optionally engage a creature in the staging area. After that any and all creatures that have engagement costs equal to or less than the players will engage them.

The combat step follows and starting with the first player each engaged creature receives a shadow cards, which is just a card from the encounter deck. Players in player order then choose 1 and only 1 character to defend each attack from creatures in front of them. After defense is made by each player it is the players turn to attack.

Starting with the first player each player can choose any number of their attackers (other players if they have ranged attacks) to attack a single creature. This is done until all attacks have been made. Any creature still standing and the end stays engaged and doesn’t commit to the threat during the quest phase but they will attack during the next combat phase.

Lastly the players do a refresh phase which they can then un-exhaust all their characters and equipped cards (equipment exhausted separately from characters). They raise their threat by one and pass the first player marker to the next player.

This game can be so much fun but it can be also very frustrating at times. Knowing what cards can come up from the encounter deck helps when trying to build a deck. Some quests are location heavy and require a lot of questing power and some quests are monster heavy and require lots of strength and defense.

I got my Lord of the Rings Core set in the mail the other day and instantly was excited. This was one game I was looking forward to playing for a while now because, at my heart, I am a CCG player. The problem I’ve always had with CCGs, however, has been the cost to stay relevant in the game – and my lack of having anybody to play where I am. So, for me, the Lord of the Rings LCG offers something in both of my problems. The non-random nature of the packaging of the game is great for my wallet, and the solo play of the game is great for me who doesn’t have a consistent gamer to play these types of games with. So, how did I think of the game? I think its fantastic, and has lots of room to grow better and better.

Again, I want to say that these observations are based on the solo game rules. So, the experience may change based on having more players around. First off, the packaging! The game comes in a rather big box – smaller in size than the Summoner Wars Master Set, but fatter than that one too. Inside the box comes two sets of cards in a ziplock bag, sorted more or less into 4 different starter decks and your Encounter deck, which serves as the bad guy. The box also contains pop-out pieces for damage, influence points, quest tracking and a threat tracker that you need to put together. The threat tracker was not hard to put together, but it was a big annoying to put it together too. I had to look under a card-board insert within the box to find a group of plastic pieces that are used to fasten the numbered dial to the card board tracker piece. Like I said, it goes together relatively easy – just takes a moment to put it together. The pieces are well put together, really, and the cards are printed on your standard CCG card stock – so they are pretty resistant. Maybe a little less durable than a Magic the Gathering card, but not by much. The art work on the cards are really very good, even if they are your standard fantasy art work. The layout of the cards are really visually appealing as well, which is great. Overall, the packaging for the game is pretty good. I also found the rule book to be really easy to read and very accessible as well.

The objective of the game is to complete your Quest – a set of 3 ( at least in the Core set) Quest cards that have a Questing objective attached to them. As you and the other players are trying to complete the quest, a side deck called the Encounter deck will try to stop you by summoning Locations, Monsters, Events and such to try and kill your Heroes and prevent them from succedding. One thing that is interesting about the game mechanics is the Threat system, where the monsters will attack you based on how much threat you are putting out. If your threat is high, then monsters will be more likely to attack you than if you keep a low threat. You start with threat equal to your Heroes, and then you add threat by failing a Questing challenge. Heroes come in four flavors – Tactics, Lore, Leadership and Will (its late, I’m tired and so I can’t remember the last group easy at the moment). Each sphere has its own strengths and weaknesses. As such, if you play solo you’d want to try and mix-match spheres and if you play in a multiplayer format, you can build a solo sphere deck that much easier. The rules are pretty easy to understand, but look a bit more complicated than they actually are.

The game play really is full of flavor, which I love. It reminds me, of all things, of Warcraft with the threat mechanics built into it. Having the Encounter deck trying to kill me is a neat addition to card gaming, I think, and there were a couple of times that I had a character get close to death in the easy mode Quest. Glancing over at the other quests, I can see how they can get harder and harder – with one quest even putting one of your Heroes in prison. I’ve only run through the easy starting quest so far, so I haven’t tried the more complex/difficult quests, but I do see how they’d get harder. Having the pre-constructed decks is great to open the game with, helping players who don’t understand the full system of the game yet. I love the way everything really is put together really, but with that I DO see how some players say the game can get redundant. I don’t see that happening for a while, but I think if you just go through the same quest by yourself over and over again it’d be getting old after a little. Luckily, the expansion packs come out regularly – giving you new quests and cards to play with to keep things fresh and interesting.

In all, this is a great game that really scratches my CCG itch. The LCG nature of the game makes me interested in trying the other LCGs that the company produces (Game of Thrones, Warhammer and Cthuluhu) and that’s pretty good I think. The art and gameplay is top notch for the game and I really don’t have much bad to say at all. Who would I recommend this too? Well the easy answer is fans of CCGs who are burned out over the marketing/packaging structure of the game. Fans of fantasy and Lord of the Rings may be interested in the game as well. If you like card games, then definitely check it out and if you are a lonely player then check it out for sure for the solo play of the game too. Who wouldn’t like the game? The game plays with up to 4 players ONLY IF you buy 2 Core sets, but that’s something you can probably get around with a little extra help outside. This makes it less assceible to larger gaming groups, because the cost of 2 core sets may be a bit pricey and having to come up with extra outside stuff without a second Core set could be annoying too. That’s about it really, I think there’s something in it for pretty much any kind of gamer and its definitely worth a look at if you want to try something that’s fun and interesting.

Having played this now as a 2-player and a 4-player, I really enjoy the game. It’s a co-op in which each player really has a distinct role to play which feels entirely different from the others.

We had an experienced player to teach the game to us, and that helped immensely, as we picked it up quickly and did not feel as though it were all that difficult. We had all played other LCG’s such as A Game of Thrones, so perhaps that helped as well.

Essentially, after crafting the decks to be used, each player has three heroes that form their band for the game. Each of those Heroes, while alive, generates a power token each turn which is spent to play cards from your hand, which fall into three categories. Allies, which are other characters designed to help you either attack, defend or which may have some special purpose. (Gandalf falls under this category.) Attachments, which are usually weapons and armor, but can also be magical in nature. And Events, which are generally played as a reaction to certain events and can help you or your fellow players.

There is a stack of quest cards representing what you are attempting to accomplish in the game. Each turn you can send some or all of your Heroes “questing” which exhausts (taps) them, but contributes towards the quest victory. Some decks will be better at questing than others. Legolas and Gimli, for instance, are not often sent questing. They really shine later in the turn, when it is time to kill monsters.

After the questing, there is an encounter phase in which you reveal locations and creatures from a single “evil” deck, representing things you encounter on the quest. Combat will ensue, and Allies, Monsters, and sometimes Heroes will die.

One of the neat mechanics in LotR TCG is the Threat mechanic. Heroes all have a threat value and at the beginning of the game you total the threat for all 3 of your heroes and that is your threat score to start. Each turn you will gain a threat, and failing in quests can also boost your threat total more quickly. Players with a high threat value will be assigned larger, nastier creatures than players Sauron is less concerned about. If any player ever reaches 50 threat, Sauron decides that player is far too uppity for their own good, and smacks them flat, removing them from the game entirely.

Decks fall under 4 types. Tactics, Spirit, Leadership and Lore. In a 4 player game, with one of each, it becomes very obvious the role each is designed to handle. One player will be healing damage dealt to heroes, and using attachments that bolster characters. Another will be playing gleaming weapons and polished armor on their characters, and wading into combat, with cards designed to mow through enemies. A third may be blitzing through quests with a high Willpower, but need to be protected from monsters. The synergy between the decks is well designed and very fun to work with.

All in all this was a very fun game I look forward to playing again soon.

Lord of the Rings – The Card Game is a co-operative, Living Card Game that pits the heroes of Middle Earth against the forces of darkness. The game is loosely set in the time between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and is broken down into a variety of modular quests. The game is highly customizable as both the quest and players assemble decks of cards which modify the play experience.

It’s worth a little side discussion to define a Living Card Game (LCG). A LCG is Fantasy Flight Games’ proprietary term to describe a customizable card game with a fixed distribution of cards. This simply boils down to how the cards are distributed and purchased. Rather than buying randomized cards, an LCG will provide you with a set of cards in which the contents are fixed and known prior to purchase. Once purchased, the cards can be played as deemed useful to the player, keeping the customizable element, but reducing the need to purchase blind packs of cards in hopes of finding the rare cards a player wants to play with.

Prior to playing LotR – The Card Game, a single quest must be selected by the players. The base game includes three quests to choose from and they have varying difficulties; further expansions increase the amount of quests available. With a quest chosen, players will create both an encounter deck (composition is determined by the quest), which represents the forces of darkness, and player decks (composed by the players) that represent the hero’s resources. As with most customizable card games, the cards interactions are what drive the complexity and strategy of the game and both encounter and player cards are broken down into a vast amount of sub-groups and sub-types. Quests are typically broken down into multiple stages that are revealed in sequence and the individual stages as well as the overall quests have variable requirements for success.

At the core of the player decks are the heroes that are in-play from the beginning of the game and generate the resources necessary to play the remaining player cards. As a player, the heroes and remaining cards from the player decks are used to address three conflict areas presented by the encounter deck for each quest: questing, defending, and attacking. Players can typically only commit their heroes and supporting cards to one of these conflict types at a time, so the game is essentially the management of all three conflicts with the resources available to them. A game is won when the players meet the various requirements of the chosen quest. The game is lost when all player heroes are killed or accumulate too much threat (essentially a negative resource) thematically receiving the wrath of Sauron.

I have intentionally written this review to provide a basic overview of the game, and avoided detailed discussion of deck assembly. Players familiar will collectible card games will find many aspects of deck construction comparable, but may find the mechanics to make this game co-operative innovative and exciting. Since LotR – The Card Game is based on a LCG business model, be prepared to make further investments in expansions to get the full value of out this game!

Replay: Customizable player decks and multiple modular quests are what drive the replay value of LotR – The Card Game. Played alone without expansions, the base game is slightly limited since it includes only a starting amount of cards and the depth of strategy grows with each expansion. Unlike many other collectible card games, the LCG model and co-operative play encourage a gaming group to pool funds to take full advantage of the expansions and expanded replay. The game also includes a point tracking system to rate the success of given quest, allowing players to compare final score or play again to beat their own records.

Components: The cards are standard quality, however the artwork is fantastic and completely new. While I enjoy the artwork of Alan Lee, John Howe, Ted Nasmith, the Hildebrandts, and Tolkien himself, the game has made a wonderful decision to create their own art to illustrate their vision and does not use images from the recent films either. The game also comes with a handful of tracking tokens and threat trackers for two players. As the game will support one to four players, the choice to only include two threat trackers seems odd – my full thoughts on this are included in Personal below.

Learning Curve: Medium. The rules are designed to work under a variety of quest scenario and are fairly straight forward. Basic terms will need to be learned, but the rulebook is very helpful and provides good player guidelines. As the game expands, individual card updates and errata will be released and card interactions may need to be clarified.

Defense:
Co-op card game? – While this game can be played solo against the quest, the game really does shine with multiple players. The innovation to combine the customizable elements of the player deck and a modular quest experience is amazing.
Collectible games cost lots of money – Yes, however the LCG model reduces the costs considerably and you can choose to pay for the cards you want to play with. Additionally, the co-operative game play makes pooling funds an option that doesn’t work as well in a competitive format.
Another Lord of the Rings game – I will admit that I get a chuckle out of the name “The Card Game”, but that aside I really feel like the co-operative game play and individual quests really support the theme. The game designers have done an excellent job capturing many of the elements of Tolkien’s world.

Personal:
I agonized over purchasing this game because I love the Lord of the Rings setting but worried about the execution and many of the reasons listed above. I should say I agonized until someone showed me a demo of the game – I fell in love instantly. I have a history of enjoying collectible card games, but like to be conscience of my budget so I really appreciate the LCG format.

The only issue I have is the starter box card distribution and threat trackers do not fit with the larger LCG concept. The game allows a maximum of three copies of a single card in any player deck, however the starter box provides only a single copy, or two copies of some of the more “powerful” player cards where as all the expansions provide three copies of every card. Combined with the inclusion of only two threat counters, it’s as if it was intended for players to buy two starter boxes, but you end up with useless extra quest, encounter, hero, and many player cards. It would make more sense to me to provide three copies of every player card, and if the price point needed to be managed, split the starter into two parts with two quests and two player spheres each half. This would keep with the overall LCG concept of only purchasing what you want to use. Based on their website, FFG’s deluxe expansion, Khazad-Dum, (which kicks off the next story block) has learned from this issue.

GOOD STUFF

This game is hard. SUPER hard. And that’s a good thing. It challenges you to keep trying over and over to accomplish the quests. Of the three quests, I’ve only been able to complete the first quest with my brother-in-law. And we only did it once among the three times we played it. One other great thing about this game is that there’s a solitaire version to play. And it plays just as hard. I get demolished every time I play the level 4 quest. I haven’t even begun to attempt the level 7 quest.

Fantasy Flight Games has produced another great chunk of coolness by creating this card game. And it isn’t an ordinary card game. Most card games [think Magic: The Gathering] have rarity built in, which only the elitist of players are able to achieve by spending oodles of cash on the rare cards to make their decks stand out among the best. This isn’t like that at all. In fact, this is specifically called a “Living Card Game” which will grow over time, based on small and inexpensive expansions. The game is initially pretty affordable at $39 [possibly cheaper online] and the expansions are only around $14. And there isn’t a rarity involved. It’s just straight up cookie cutter cool. And with the expansions, it adds a series of new quests to tackle, all thematic. The first one involves the hunt for Gollum, and is a part of a series of 6 different Adventure Packs.

The last good thing about this game is the cooperative mechanic. I’ve done some cooperative games before, but this flows really well, giving you a sense of pride when you accomplish even a small portion of the quest.

BAD STUFF

Some might think the game is too difficult to tackle. They’re probably right. I personally love the challenge, but hard-to-win games are a big turn off to some people. I’m afraid they’ll pick it up and think that it’s worthless to even try, and will stay upon their shelf for years collecting dust. And the game really only caters to hardcore Lord of the Rings fanboys/girls AND to game geeks. My wife loves…LOVES the book and loves the movies, but when she saw the game…meh. The rules are a bit of a complicated mess to get through, which apparently is typical for Fantasy Flight Games.

Another problem is that the box has a terrible insert. There’s barely room for the stuff it came with, and certainly no room for the future expansions which will only be about 60 cards. What to do? I dumped the crappy cardboard insert, bagged all of the bits, separated the cards into their respective categories and types and bagged them too.

I continue to be a sucker for theme, and Lord of the Rings the LCG certainly has theme. It is very evident that the game designer has an appreciation and understanding of Tolkien’s works. Obviously some artistic license has to be taken, but they really seem to have done their best to work this game into the narrative established by Tolkien.

The components are excellent, with beautiful artwork on the cards and a heavy, durable threat indicator (which you will use a great deal). There is bit of a learning curve, but after a few practice playthroughs, the game moves along smoothly. The gameplay, although at times a bit abstract (you are representing dangerous quests and fatal confrontations with enemies using cards, so what do you expect?), does an excellent job of presenting the hardships and dangers faced by the heroes of middle earth.

The novels seemed to represent the various races as always on the brink of being swept away by the encroaching wilderness or the rise of dark forces, and this is certainly how it feels in the game. It can be extremely challenging and what appears to be imminent victory can quickly turn to ignominous defeat with the aopearance of a few well-placed treachery cards. The game also appears to scale well, presenting an enjoyable solo experience as well as a fun cooperative game for multiple players.

The addition of affordable monthly expansions should keep the game fresh, and that, along with the prospect of experimenting with a variety of deck builds provides for a great deal of replayability. There are complaints that multiple core sets will be needed for more extensive deck-building, but for the more casual enthusiast like myself, this probably won’t present much of a problem.

I would recommend this to any gamer who enjoys Tolkien’s novels, as well as to anyone who likes LCG’s. The rich artwork and the obvious appreciation for the subject matter, coupled with a solid, enjoyable solo and multiplayer game, really make this an excellent game to own.

It is not breezy. The lore is rich and detailed and getting to know its beauty involves lots and lots of reading and commitment. There is lots to remember and you might find yourself going back to refresh your memory to make sense of things. But if you make the effort, if you allow the fascinating, genre-defining world to engulf you – there is no two ways about it. You will love Lord of the Rings and the above applies as much to the Living Card Game as to the books.

How it works:

LOTR LCG is a cooperative customizable card game (because of the endless possibilities for expansions it is labeled as a “living” card game). Each game is a scenario that is played out in Middle Earth as 1-4 players embark on a selected adventure. The core set comes with three such adventures of varying difficulty.

Each player begins by selecting three heroes that will comprise their team. Heroes belong to one of the four Spheres – different fractions that offer distinct sets of abilities. For example, the Tactics sphere focuses on combat, while Lore is more about healing and obtaining additional information. Heroes represent a mix of well-known characters from the novels (Aragorn, Legolas, Gloin) and original ones that fit very well into existing narrative (you could meet them in other FFG games – like Thalin or Eleanor). Each hero has a set of RPG-like characteristics as well as unique special abilities.

The players then have to construct their deck. Initially the pre-made decks from the core set function very well, but eventually you become comfortable enough with the rules that you will want to mix and match cards from different spheres to create a custom powerful deck. The player cars represent allies you can bring with you on adventures, items to outfit your adventurers or events that help you or hinder your enemies. The “feel” of the cards fits very well with their respective spheres – e.g. the sphere of Spirit will have allies that are great explorers and events that allow players to avoid or deal with hazards they encounter while travelling.

The scenario you picked will dictate the make-up of the deck you are playing against as well as victory conditions. The game itself consists of a cycle of players sending their characters to explore, making progress towards the current goal, encountering hazards and enemies along the way and overcoming these through wit and combat. Each obstacle card – be it a perilous location or a nasty Warg, create a certain amount of Threat and you have to overcome that threshold by sending adventurers to explore. Fail and the threat can overwhelm you – each player has a counter that rises with each unsuccessful quest, higher threat making you susceptible to negative effects and eventually causing you to lose.

You have to be careful not to over commit characters to exploration though – you have to keep some available if you want them to fight off the baddies. You start with just your heroes but each turn they generate a certain amount of resources that can be used to bring into play cards from your hand, expanding your options and growing your team, allowing you to take on tougher challenges.

As you progress through the stages of the quest by defeating monsters, finding objective cards and exploring locations – you get ever closer to victory. If you manage to achieve the win condition of the scenario you are playing (which can be as simple as defeating a monster or as complex as finding an object and exploring wilderness) – the players win. If your threat reaches a certain level or all your heroes are dead – the game is lost and other brave souls will need to give it a shot another day.

How it plays:

There are two distinct ways to play the LOTR LCG. One is a simple game with pre-constructed decks – just pick a sphere and begin playing. The other invites you to customize your decks and mix heroes from different spheres, thinking about how their respective powers help each other. This is a much more in-depth approach to the game and you can easily spend a good 20 minutes planning and deck building before even starting a game.

The “simple” way to go works quite well for the times when you want a quick game, but the customized decks are more powerful and if you want to tackle the harder scenarios – you will want to give that a shot. At least the introductory scenario in the core set is perfectly playable without the deck building and lots of enjoyment can be found even without going into the deep end.

The core set claims to be fit for 1-2 players but there is no objective reason for it not to be playable with 3 or even 4, if everyone sticks with a single Sphere. The game’s complexity does increase with more players as you have more effects to keep track of, so beginning solo or with two players is advisable.

Solo games go very quickly, often fitting into 30 minutes, especially for the less complex scenarios (or ones so brutal they just kill you outright). More complex games featuring more players can easily stretch into the 90 minutes maximum game time – it all depends on the scenario you are playing. With the three scenarios contained in the core set it is only likely with 3 or 4 players.

The flow of the game depends greatly on the familiarity with the mechanics. There is usually a lot of intricacies to take into account and it takes some time to get a hang of everything and double-check that your reading of the rules is correct. The player interaction comes mostly through discussion of who does what and how well you are going to be able to handle the hazards before you. While not technically a part of the game – this interaction does engage players in a shared experience and at no point does the game feel like a group solitaire. It does, however, work very well as a solo option, even if it reduces the range of options available to you and forces you to create teams that can do everything as opposed to spreading the responsibilities across several players.

The alpha player problem is also not particularly strong – the cards players have are not visible to others and the number of suggestions that to make is limited. Analysis paralysis is not really a problem because most of the time everyone does their thing simultaneously, so it’s not like you’re waiting for the other player just to take your turn.

The flow of the game, unfortunately, is sometimes interrupted by an intricate entanglement of the rules that requires clarification before a certain sequence of events unravels. Experience with the rules helps smooth these over, but expect to keep the rulebook handy first dozen or so games.

How it feels:

Exactly like reading Tolkien. You keep wondering if all this reading is worth the effort and then something so awesome happens that it does not leave a doubt in your mind – yes, it is totally worth it!

The basics of the game may appear over-mechanical in their execution but after playing a few games you start “getting” what story elements are transmitted by abstract notions of “progress tokens”, “shadow cards” and “engagement checks”. The game is built on a sequence of tiny little systems that intertwine with each other, creating a rich variety of scenarios they can depict and tactical options to tackle the obstacles.

Furthermore, by tweaking each of these tiny sub-systems, a game can change, sometime dramatically, and the system smartly uses these changes to tell a story. For example in one scenario, the heroes sail on a boat along a river, while a growing horde of monsters chases them along the shore. That means that the orcs will not be able to attack you for this stage but once you clear it and hit the shore at the beginning of the next one – you will have to take on all of the baddies at once!

However, I hesitate to call LOTR LCG and elegant game. There is A LOT to it and I can honestly say that players have to be comfortable with complexity to tackle this one, especially if custom deck-building and further expansions are of interest. This limits the audience for it, but those who do stick with the game will be rewarded with rich engaging stories in a beloved world.

The difficulty of some of the scenarios can also be significant and players should be comfortable with a healthy number of defeats, some due to an uncontrollably ****** card draw. There are ways to mitigate it in game, but sometimes things will go terribly, rocks will fall and everybody will die – be prepared for it. If luck as a factor is a deterrent for you – steer clear. Finding that approach that finally cracks a scenario that felt impossible does make for some triumphant fist-pumping, that much I can tell you.

A word on structure:

While I think LOTR LCG is a very good game – it is certainly not for everyone and I hope this review explains why. However, the Core Set of the game offers a great way to dip your feet and get a good feeling of whether you would like it or not. If you don’t – you can stop right there and if you do – there is lots and lots (and lots and lots) of expansion materials available – to date there are 62 additional adventures you can buy, each introducing new heroes and player cards that you can use to help you with the old scenarios and the new. The game keeps growing, justifying the “living” name, and there is a vibrant community around it. For example, I highly suggest visiting the Tales from the Cards blog for tactical advice and guides on both playing and purchasing the expansions. It can certainly get pricey, but you can be sure to get significant mileage out of every purchase.

Fantasy Flight Games, offering excellent fan support, even has an online hub to track your best scores and gaming stats.

A word of thanks:

I have to admit that the complexity and level of abstraction in LOTR LCG initially left me lukewarm. I have to offer my sincere thanks to my friend @Cyberman for inviting me again and again to return to this wonderful world that I am now fully committed to. Thank you, Eric!

In Conclusion:

The LOTR LCG rewards those who are willing to put in the effort. If you enjoy Tolkien’s works and appreciate an in-depth, multi-layered game that is highly customizable – give it a shot. Manage your expectations and at worst you’ll play a game you don’t particularly enjoy and at best – will open a whole new gaming universe that you will spend many hours enjoying.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this review please consider visiting Altema Games website for more neat board game materials.

Originally posted at menwithdice.com – used with permission.

But this I will say to you: your quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true. – The Fellowship of the Ring

Among licensed properties for games, the Lord of the Rings has to be one of the most coveted. You can almost picture gaming execs in their boardrooms wringing their hands and saying, “We wants it, my precious.” And there have been several fairly successful adaptations of the license to boardgame form, most notably in War of the Ring but also in games as varied as The Confrontation and Middle Earth: The Wizards. The last is of particular interest, because it was the first attempt to adapt the written works to a card game form. I played it quite a bit during its heyday in the late ’90′s – it was one of my favorite two-player games at the time with a wide variety of strategies and approaches. The primary problem of the game was that it only marginally felt like playing a Lord of the Rings game – the One Ring was so ridiculously hard to get into play and keep in play that a player had to choose to focus entirely on dunking the Ring or ignore it entirely.

This is what I loosely think of as the problem of the Ring for games based in Tolkien’s world: how do you address the importance of the Ring to the narrative without the game becoming scripted? Generally speaking, it seems that games have followed one of those same two paths: it’s either central, or it’s so peripheral as to be ignored. The Wizards is the only game that I can think of that leaves that choice up to the players. War of the Ring makes it central – the primary means of victory for Free Peoples is to get the Fellowship to Mordor, and while FP military victories happen, they are relatively rare (as they should be). FFG’s Lord of the Rings LCG takes the opposite approach. The game is set in the period of time between Bilbo finding the Ring and the Birthday Party, when he passes it on to Frodo. Mechanically, it’s an interesting approach. It fairly nicely dodges the question of what to do with the Ring entirely. Thematically, it’s a bit odd. It’s clear that the game is not supposed to represent an alternate scenario approach to the books – it’s more about filling in the gaps of the story where Tolkien chose to write little. A lot of familiar faces show up; some unfamiliar ones do as well, such as the characters from Middle Earth Quest, which is set during the same period.

The game revolves around completing scenarios, which are represented by a quest deck and an encounter deck. The quest deck is small, thus far no more than four double-sided cards, arranged sequentially. Encounter cards are grouped into sets; each quest will indicate a collection of encounter sets that are shuffled together to form the encounter deck for that scenario. Players attempt to complete scenarios by placing enough progress tokens on each quest card to reach the Quest Point total for that stage, as well as accomplishing any additional objectives listed on the quest card. Of course, the encounter deck will continue to churn out a mix of enemies, locations, and treachery cards to hinder progress and thwart the quest, along with occasional scenario-specific objectives that can be claimed if the right conditions are met. Enemies and locations are played to a central staging area, from where they contribute their threat value to the total threat of the quest. From there, players can travel to locations and engage enemies to eliminate the threat, but they’ll open themselves up to injury or delay.

In order to progress through the quest, players will need to balance multiple priorities during the turn, typically without sufficient resources to handle them all. Each player starts the game with one to three heroes in his or her party. Heroes are important for two reasons: first, if all of a player’s heroes are killed, he or she is out of the game; and second, heroes generate resource tokens every turn, which are used to pay for other cards such as allies, permanent attachments, and one-time events. A player’s heroes determine the kinds of cards that he or she can pay for. Each hero belongs to a particular sphere, and resources from that hero’s pool can be used to pay for other cards from that sphere. Different spheres are better at different aspects of the game – Spirit, for example, is the best questing sphere, while Tactics excels at combat.

Each turn, players will need to commit characters to quests, attempting to commit more willpower than the quest’s current threat. Enemies and locations that have been played from the encounter deck to the staging area add their threat to the total. If the players commit less willpower than the current threat, then their personal threat total is increased by the amount that they lacked. A player is eliminated if his or her personal threat level reaches fifty. In addition, enemies in the staging area will attack players once the player’s threat equals or exceeds the enemy’s engagement cost, possibly resulting in injury or death for a player’s characters. Because characters typically can commit to one task in a turn without the assistance of other card effects, players need to plan carefully. How many characters should be committed to the quest this turn? Progressing through the quest is the route to victory, but overcommitting leaves the party vulnerable to enemy attacks; on the other hand, undercommitting too often can raise the threat level dangerously. Defending against attacks is important to the long-term survival of the party, but attacking can eliminate the enemy permanently – typically, a character can’t do both.

As a co-op game, LotR succeeds fairly well. Because players are working together against the game, the AI has to work well enough to present interesting decisions while not overwhelming players with more than they can handle. If the game is too difficult, then it becomes an exercise in frustration; too easy, and it’s not worth the effort. The encounter deck system is ingenious – it allows the designers to create interesting scenarios by swapping subsets of cards, giving the encounter deck a semblance of customizability and extending replayability significantly. The decision tree for enemies is also well done – because enemies will only engage a player once that player’s threat hits a particular level, managing threat becomes a key part of the game to avoid becoming overwhelmed. On the other hand, because players can choose to engage enemies at will, players must decide whether enemies are more problematic as threat or as attackers. And the Treachery cards that the encounter deck generates add a level of unpredicatability, causing direct damage or ongoing effects that hinder progress, preventing players from simply min/maxing their way through a scenario. These elements combine to create an experience that surprisingly doesn’t feel scripted, but instead feels dynamic and challenging. It’s one of the best engines that I’ve seen for a true co-op game.

It’s not a perfect implementation, though. I don’t think the encounters scale all that well. The game’s balancing mechanism for more players is drawing one additional encounter card per additional player during the Quest phase. This, in theory, increases the difficulty of the quest proportionally to the number of players. In practice, the increased efficiency of having two or more players, each focused on specific roles, more than makes up for the increased productivity of the encounter deck. This is particularly true if playing the stock decks from the core set. Monosphere decks are at a severe disadvantage in this game when played solo. Because each sphere focuses on certain mechanics, they simply lack the versatility of multisphere decks. Multiplayer games also generate significantly more resources than a solo game, allowing far more cards to hit the table in the course of a game. Two players, each running a monosphere deck, will see far more of their decks than one player playing a dual sphere deck. That’s not to say that the game isn’t enjoyable as either a solo or multiplayer experience – the game engine scales well. Particular quests, however, seem to have an ideal number of players at which they’re best. Passage through Mirkwood, for example, is laughably easy for more than one player, while Escape from Dol Gulder is frustratingly difficult solo.

Some players will want to grab decks out of the box and simply play the game. And the game will accommodate that, but I’m not convinced that there’s a ton of replayability there – the game is clearly designed with deckbuilding in mind. A simple method for deckbuilding with the core set is by simply combining two of the spheres into a single deck, removing cards until the deck is the desired size (sticking as close to 50 as possible is ideal), and choosing the most effective set of three heroes to complement your strategy. This actually extends the replayability of the core set significantly – players can try different combinations of spheres and heroes and comfortably expect to get at least a few dozen plays out of the box. The former CCG player in me wants more options, so I do find the lack of a full playset of cards in the core set to be somewhat frustrating. Some gamers will find that to be a dealbreaker – personally, while I’m not exactly jumping up and down in excitement about it, I enjoy the game enough that a second core set was a good investment for me.

Is LotR:TCG the one game to rule them all? Probably not. For my money, the best game out there that gives me an immersive sense of being involved in the narrative of the books remains War of the Ring. The thematic focus in this game doesn’t quite feel like the books, which is I think by design – but it doesn’t connect with me in quite the same way. The scalability difficulties make this a game that plays very differently at various player counts. Still, the game presents very interesting challenges and some innovative mechanics that come together to form a complex but worthwhile whole. As a solo game, it succeeds remarkably well; as a co-op, with the right scenario it offers an engaging and challenging experience. Given the variety that the expansion packs to date have already introduced, I think it’s safe to say that this game is one that will continue to get better as the cardset continues to grow.