Getting Started With The Lord Of The Rings Trading Card Game

Im Tournament Director, dAgent, International dAgent, Rider of Rohan (LOTRTCG), Lord of the Rings TCG Player.Play active LOTR TCG and RPG about 4 years. Run over 80 Tournament sanctioned Decipher TCG tournaments in my area, usually in partnership with a local retailer.Run 5 Pre-release turnaments,3Premier series event,and one Territoral open championships. What Is a Trading Card Game? Most card games have just one deck of cards that never changes, but a trading card game (or TCG) has hundreds of different cards you can collect and trade. (Another name for a TCG is Customizable Card Game or CCG.) You choose cards from your collection to make your own deck for playing the game.

Since your opponents do the same thing, each game you play is different and exciting. Each player needs his or her own deck to play. We provide starter products just for new players like you, with a playable deck and a beginner rulebook. After you've played a few games with your starter deck, get some booster packs to expand your collection. Add new cards to your deck to make your games more fun and competitive, and you'll be on your way to becoming an expert player! Once you've gotten a little experience, enter one of our tournaments to see if you're the best. Our world championship events offer thousands of dollars in prizes!

Interesting for play send comments or e-mail About Strategy decks and cards read in next days.

Starting with play

Turn 1 Shadow Phase It is now the Shadow phase and it's Jack's turn to play cards from his hand. Since Sara is the Free Peoples player, he is the Shadow player. His opening hand was an even split of 4 Free Peoples cards and 4 Shadow cards. He can only play Shadow cards when it is not his turn, so he ignores the Free Peoples cards for now. Jack has 4 tokens in the twilight pool to work with.

Jack has a "Morgul Skulker" in his hand and he chooses to play that. In the lower left-hand corner of this card is the site number 6. That is the site that this Shadow minion is native to. If this card is played to a site with a lower site number, Jack must remove an additional 2 tokens from the twilight pool as a roaming cost. (The reasoning is that this close to the Shire, you don't normally see Sauron Orcs walking around.) Thus, Jack has just enough. Jack removes 4 tokens from the twilight pool, and places the "Morgul Skulker" in the middle of the table between the two players. Jack also plays a "Blade Tip" to his support area. This is an area of the table between himself and his fellowship. This is where cards such as allies, conditions, and some artifacts and possessions are played. Since this has a twilight cost of 0, he can play this. Since it's a condition, it stays in play until any player cancels it. Some conditions have special abilities that can be used multiple times and some are discarded to have a single effect. It's often a good idea to play cards out of your hand when you can so you can draw more cards up later when you reconcile your hand. Jack has no more Shadow actions, so the Shadow phase is over. Sara : Turn 1 Maneuver Phase The Free Peoples player always gets the first chance to perform an action in every phase except the Shadow phase.

Sara has no maneuver actions as indicated by cards that have the timing keyword "Maneuver:" on them. Jack also has no such cards so both players "pass" consecutively on performing actions in this phase. Sara : Turn 1 Archery Phase Sara has no companions with the keyword "archer" and no cards with the special ability action "Archery:" in them. Therefore, she passes. Jack has no minion archers in play either and no archery actions to declare. When it's time to compare archery totals, they would both be 0. Thus, this phase ends with consecutive passing. (Note that Jack has a companion with the keyword "archer." You'll see how this works when Jack is the Free Peoples player.) Sara : Turn 1 Assignment Phase It's now time to defend the Ring-bearer! There is a "Morgul Skulker" in the "Breeland Forest" and he's itching for a fight. Sara can now decide which of her three companions will step up and skirmish (our word for "fight") this minion. Neither side has any cards with the timing keyword "Assignment:" so there are no assignment actions. Sara now proceeds to "assign defenders." Sara announces that she will assign "Aragorn" to the "Morgul Skulker." She pushes "Aragorn" up in front of the minion. She may not then assign any more companions to this minion. The Free Peoples cards do not "gang up" on a single minion. Since all minions have been assigned a companion, this phase ends. Sara : Turn 1 Skirmish Phase It's now time to skirmish. The skirmish phase consists of multiple skirmishes between assigned Free People and Shadow characters.

Since there is only one assignment in this game so far, there will only be one skirmish. Sara gets the first chance to play a card from her hand or perform an action with the timing keyword "Skirmish:" on it. She looks at the cards on the table. "Aragorn" has a strength of 8 to the "Morgul Skulker's" 7. Aragorn will win this skirmish as it stands right now. She chooses not to play the Free Peoples card in her hand and passes on performing an action. Jack plays "Enduring Evil" from his hand, which costs 0 twilight. This card lowers the strength of a character skirmishing a [Sauron] Orc by 1 for each burden Jack can "spot" (see active and in play) on the Ring-bearer. Since there are two burdens on Sara's "Frodo," "Aragorn's" strength is now 8-1 = 7. "Aragorn" is now losing this skirmish since his strength is lower than or tied to the minion strength. In this case, he's tied and thus losing. Sara doesn't want him wounded yet, and decides to play her skirmish event "Swordsman of the Northern Kingdom." This makes a ranger ("Aragorn" has the keyword 'ranger') strength +4 when skirmishing a roaming minion (which the "Morgul Skulker" is since he's at site 2).

"Aragorn" now has a strength of 11 to the "Morgul Skulker's" 7. It is now Jack's turn to play an action, but he has nothing to play. He passes. Sara, winning the skirmish at this point then passes, and the skirmish resolves. Having lost the skirmish, the "Morgul Skulker" must take 1 wound. The loser from a skirmish always takes 1 wound. There are other situations (such as damage +1) that can increase that, but we'll deal with that later. Jack places 1 red wound token on the "Morgul Skulker." Sara slides "Aragorn" back into her fellowship. The skirmish phase is now over. Sara : Turn 1 Regroup Phase It's now the regroup phase. Sara has no actions or cards with the keyword "Regroup:" on them so she passes. Jack has no regroup actions either, so he passes. At this point, since both players passed, no more regroup actions may be played. Jack, as the Shadow player, may now reconcile his hand. This means he may discard 1 card from his hand and then draw until he has 8 cards in his hand. (If for some reason Jack had more than 8 cards, he would discard down until he had 8, while drawing no cards.) Since Jack has played 3 cards, he chooses not to discard any and draws 3 cards so he now has a full hand. Sara now has a choice. The default "move limit" is 2 sites per turn in a two-player game so she may move her fellowship to site 3 (which would play from Jack's Adventure deck) if she wishes. Alternatively, she could stop her turn here and she would get to reconcile her hand. Should she decide to move on to site 3, here's what would happen: She does NOT get to reconcile. Thus, she would go into site 3 with 6 cards in hand, none of which were Free Peoples cards. The "Morgul Skulker" who survived skirmishing at site 2 (but has 1 wound) would pursue the fellowship to site 3 and would have to be skirmished again. When she moves, she would put tokens into the twilight pool for the Shadow number of the next site, plus 1 for each companion.

Since she's not allowed to look at the next site until she decides if she's moving on not, she wouldn't know how much this might be. The next phase after moving would be the Shadow phase, NOT the fellowship phase. The fellowship phase is skipped over on subsequent moves in a turn past the first one. Moving additional times per turn can be very risky. Thus, Sara must consider it carefully. Since Jack just reconciled and now has a fresh hand, and there's already a minion on the table, she opts to stop right there. Sara reconciles her hand by discarding 1 of her 6 cards, and drawing up 3 more. Since the fellowship has stopped moving during the regroup phase, all minions on the table are discarded, including the "Morgul Skulker." Sara's turn is now over, and Jack is now the Free Peoples player. Sara's Free Peoples cards are now considered "inactive" and they may not be spotted, cancelled, or affected in any way. Jack's Shadow cards that he played ("Blade Tip") are similarly inactive when he is the Free Peoples player.

Jack : Turn 1 Shadow Phase (Sara is Shadow Player)Jack : Turn 1 Maneuver PhaseJack : Turn 1 Archery PhaseJack : Turn 1 Assignment PhaseJack : Turn 1 Skirmish PhaseJack : Turn 1 Regroup Phase
Sara : Turn 2 Start of Turn PhaseSara : Turn 2 Fellowship PhaseSara : Turn 2 Shadow Phase (Jack is Shadow Player)Sara : Turn 2 Maneuver PhaseSara : Turn 2 Archery PhaseSara : Turn 2 Assignment PhaseSara : Turn 2 Skirmish PhaseSara : Turn 2 Regroup Phase

...etc. There you go! There are other aspects to The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game that we did not get into in this article for sake of brevity. Once you get started though, you'll learn the additional rules very quickly, and soon be having your own adventures in Middle-earth!