The The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game

The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game (a.k.a. "LOTR TCG" or "LOTR") is a trading card game produced by Decipher. Released in 2002 it is based on the Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and the J. R. R. Tolkien novel on which it was based. In addition to images taken from the films, in 2004 WETA Workshop have produced artwork depicting characters from the novel absent from the films for use on cards.

It is a game for two or more players, each of whom uses their own deck consisting of equal numbers of Free Peoples and Shadow cards. On a player's turn they are considered to be the Free People's player and their Fellowship is 'active'. They use their Free People's cards to attempt to traverse the site-path and destroy the One Ring. Each of his or her opponents, the Shadow Players, use their Shadow cards to prevent this by killing or corrupting the ring-bearer, or forcing the Fellowship to slow down. At the end of each turn the position of Free People's player rotates to the next player in turn. The game is won by the first player to survive to the ninth, and final, site or the last player whose Fellowship is left alive.

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 People's player plays a card, tokens are added to the twilight pool equal to the cost of that card. The Shadow players, however, must remove twilight tokens equal to their cost to play their cards. Thus the more protection the Free Peoples player plays for his Fellowship, the greater the threat from the Shadow players.

Cards are sold in eleven card booster packs consisting of one rare, three uncommon and seven common cards. In approximatly one in six packs a common is replaced by a foiled version of a random card from that set. Sixtry-three card starter decks containing three random rares and sixty fixed commons/uncommons (or sixty cards, all fixed) are also produced.

To date eight sets have been released:

1. The Fellowship of the Ring (November 6, 2001)
2. Mines of Moria (March 6 & 13, 2002)
3. Realms of the Elf-lords (June 19 & July 3, 2002)
4. The Two Towers (November 6, 2002)
5. Battle of Helm's Deep (March 12, 2003)
6. Ents of Fangorn (July 2, 2003)
7. The Return of the King (November 5, 2003)
8. Siege of Gondor (March 10, 2004)

And at least a further eleven are planned:

1. Reflections (May 12, 2004)
2. Mount Doom (July 2004)
3. Shadows (November 2004)
4. Black Rider (March 2005)
5. Bloodlines (July 2005)
6. The Hunters (November 2005)
7. Rise of Saruman (March 2006)
8. Treachery and Deceit (July 2006)
9. The Great Eye (November 2006)
10. Shelob's Lair (March 2007)
11. Age's End (July 2007)

In addition there are a number of boutique products:

• The Fellowship of the Ring Anthology (July 23, 2003)
• The Countdown Collection (August 25, 2003 - December 22, 2003)
• The Two Towers Anthology (February 25, 2004)
• The Return of the King Anthology (September 2004)

An online version of the game is also available.

External links

• Decipher's LOTR Site
• LOTR Online TCG
• Decipher Homepage

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