The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game (often shortened to LotR TCG) is a card game produced by the company, Decipher Incorporated. Released in November 2001 & then concluded in June 2007, 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. This is a game for two or more players, each uses their own deck consisting of equal numbers of Free Peoples (Good) and Shadow (Evil) cards, with a minimum of 30 of each, as well as 9 site cards & the Ring Bearer & the One Ring. 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 complimenting 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 opponents 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 opponents 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. Over the years of the game's production, it was divided into different blocks, or formats, of play. From the start of the game until November 2004 were the 'Movie' Block sets, each representing a main base set (named & released shortly before each of the Lotr films), followed by 2 smaller expansion sets. After November 2004, the later sets were grouped into the following two blocks - War of the Ring & Hunters Blocks. During the game's run it introduced new cultures (or factions) for both Free Peoples & Shadow sides, as well as new mechanics. Some of these were not always successful & over time required erratas to be released, as well as some cards being put on the X-List, or banned for official tournament format games. By June 2007, once the game had been discontinued, it had amassed a total of 20 different sets, consisting of 5 separate base sets, 10 different expansion sets & 5 promotional sets including cards printed in the Elven Tegwar language. The total number of cards for the game was 3462 cards. |
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