Board Game Resource Comprehensive Review – The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

The first thing to know about Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is that it is a co-operative game. While you’re building decks and stacking odds in your favor like you would in Magic or Android, you’re not playing against a human opponent, you’re playing against a pre-made “encounter deck.” After all, there is only one Lord of the Ring, and he does not share power. The encounter deck can feel as evil as Sauron himself, as it spits out locations to travel to, enemies to detroy, and dastardly treacherous events  that may doom any fellowship that’s not prepared enough.

You might be wondering how much variety LOTR:LCG can offer if it’s using a pre-made deck to play against. “Wouldn’t that get old?” The game has an aswer to this, in the form of scenarios. Scenarios are quests that you can choose to embark on, each one with its own little story, and specific objectives that need to be cleared in order to win. Furthermore, each scenario has its own custom-tailored deck, so rest assured that you won’t be playing against the same cards every time you play.

The object of the game is to beat the scenario. Every scenario is broken into multiple parts, and you’ll have to beat whatever objective is currently in front of you in order to advance to the next. The scenarios are made up of three objectives each, though some of the expansion quests may deviate from this number. Typically, advancing requires a certain amount of progress tokens (which I’ll explain in more detail in a moment), but sometimes you might just have to destroy one of Sauron’s big baddies instead. This is one thing that’s great about LOTR:LCG. Every quest is different, and the three that are included in the core are three completely different experience that do well to showcase the breadth that this game has.

To play the game, each participating player (the core set supports two) will build a deck, or used a pre-made one that the game provides for you. Each player will start with a hand of six cards drawn out of their shuffled deck, as well as three chosen heroes, and then the game begins. Each round is broken down into seven phases, and the game will go on until the players have won, or until Sauron’s minions are enjoying a fine wine over the corpses of Middle Eath’s heroes. Additionally, reaching a threat level of 40 will end the game immediately, which is measured by a dial, and will be explained more below.

The player cards consist of four types of cards, referred to as “spheres,” that encompass different types of abilities.

-Leadership is a good all-around suite that also provides plenty of useful allies to help you out.

-Tactics cards focus heavy on offense, making it easy to kill enemies, but harder to complete objectives.

-Spirit is essentially the opposite of Tactics, focusing heavily on progression and avoidance of conflict.

-Lore  is the support suite, filled with cards that can heal your heroes or provide remedial effects.

A player deck can be comprised with up to three different spheres, but most decks tend to specialize on just two. Each hero is also assigned to their own sphere. After your deck is prepped and ready, it’s time to start your journey.

The game begins with the Resource Phase. In this phase, you’ll add a card to your hand (drawn off the top of your face-down deck), and every hero collects a coin (referred to as “resources” in-game), which can be used to play cards. Although you can hold as many cards as you please, most every single one has a cost which will have to be paid to actually use it.

Once you’ve collected coins, you’ll move on to the Planning Phase, in which you can play certain cards. Ally and attachment cards can only be played during this phase. Ally cards are friendly characters that can help you progress, attack, or defend (essentially watered down versions of heroes), and attachments are cards that you can attach to said allies (or heroes) to augment their abilities.

The game then moves on to the Quest Phase, which is very important, because this is where you obtain progress tokens, which, again, is the main means through which you typically complete objectives. The Quest Phase is basically that one part of Fellowship where you see them walk over that rocky pass in single file while the iconic theme plays. You know, that one part? The part that you think of any time you ever hear the music? Your heroes are “questing” here, and if their willpower exceeds that of the threat that surrounds them, they’ll make progress.

In the Quest Phase, you’ll exhaust as many characters as you please to commit them to the quest. Beware though – once a character has been exhausted, they can’t reactivate for the rest of the round, barring certain exceptions and specific card actions.  You’ll need characters to do stuff in the later phases, so if you exhaust them all now, you’re setting yourself up to be Orc-fodder later.

Committing a character to a quest adds their “willpower” (noted by a star icon on their card) to a pot, which is compared to the “threat” of enemies and locations that appear while you’re questing. In this phase, a card will be drawn from the encounter deck, and added to the staging area, which is basically a sitting room for all the enemy cards that haven’t engaged you yet. In order to gain progress tokens, the combined amount of your committed willpower must exceed the total threat of enemy cards in the staging area.

For every point of threat that your willpower exceeds, you’ll gain a progress token. Should the threat exceed your willpower, your threat dial will move up by the corresponding amount. Remember that reaching 40 will end your game, so you’re essentially forced to quest, which becomes a delicate balancing act; you’ll have to use up characters to quest, and you’ll have to save some for combat later.

Next up is the Travel Phase, which is a moment where you can “explore” a nearby area. Mechanically, this means that you’ll take one of the location cards in the staging area, and make it into the active location. If a location is made active, it no longer contributes threat. In order to make it easier to gain progress tokens, travelling is essential. Unfortunately, most places in Middle-Earth are dangerous, and travelling can hit you with some nasty side effects. It’s a double edged sword – you need to explore to reduce the threat level, but it can also punish you.

After this, you’ll reach the Encounter/Combat Phases, which is where you’ll engage Sauron’s minions. In the Encounter Phase, enemies in the staging area will engage you, depending on their threat level. If it’s too high, they’ll stay up there until you’re at their level, but you can optionally take them on if you want to get rid of them prematurely.

Once you’ve engaged an enemy, you’ll have to choose a hero or ally to defend against their attack. Enemy attack power is compared with your own defense level, and you’ll receive a hit for every point that their attack exceeds your defense. Unfortunately, you’ll also have to exhause a character to take a hit. This means that characters that defend cannot attack, so you’ll have to take all of this into account when you decide what to do with your characters. This gets sticky when you have, say, three enemies engaged with you and only four characters. You’ll have to quest, attack, and defend against every hit with four exhausts. You’ll be lacking in one of those areas, and that’s where Lord of the Rings can become a real challenge.

With any characters you have left, you can perform attacks against the enemy, and damage is calculated in the same way. One attack exhausts your character, but fortunately, you have the option of exhausting multiple cards to team up their damage against one enemy.

Finally, you’ll taste the sweet nectar of the Refresh Phase, which is where the round ends, and your characters can refresh from the pains of exhaustion. All of your characters are reactivated (though they retain any damage they may have received), your threat increases by one point, and you begin the round anew. Rounds will continue on in the same fashion until the game has ended.

One thing I haven’t mentioned are the “event” cards, which are basically action cards. While attachment and ally cards can only be played in the beginning of the round, these can be played at any moment, and knowing how and when to use these is one of the most important parts of the game. Some cards can halt enemy attacks, while some can reduce your threat level. Others can augment your heroes’ attack power, while others still can heal damage.

The important thing to remember here is that this is a card game, so every single step above could be dealt with in about a billion different ways depending on how your deck is configured. There are so many cards that it’d be a daunting task to attempt to list them all, but it suffices to say that you will have fun pulling cards out of your deck and playing them efficaciously to get through these phases as cleanly as possible. It suffices to say that you won’t be lacking for options in LOTR:LCG, and even if you’ve cleared a scenario before, doing the same one with a different deck can be just as rewarding.

The last point to make is that, thus far, everything I’ve explained has applied to solo play only. Everything functions more or less the same way in a two player game, because the game scales with the player count. For example, in the Quest Phase, two cards will come out with two players instead of one. Players can take on certain roles – one player can exhaust most of their characters to quest, while the other can engage most of the enemies, or you might choose to play where both players have a healthy balance. Either way, the game essentially just doubles up on however much it throws at you, but all the main rules stay the same.

I could, of course, go on and on and on about the finer details of LOTR:LCG’s gameplay, but at that point, I may as well be writing the entire rulebook. Let’s move on.

Well, let’s just get one thing straight: this is a Living Card Game, and will appeal to people who enjoy building decks. That being said, you don’t have to have any experience in building decks to enjoy LOTR:LCG. In other words, if you’ve never tried a CCG/LCG, but you don’t hate the idea, you can have plenty of fun with LOTR:LCG. If you actively dislike LCGs, CCGs (collectible card games), or deck-building, LOTR:LCG probably isn’t your thing

That being said, LOTR:LCG is definitely a different type of card game due to its co-operative aspect. I love this, because it gives you the enjoyable mechanics and depth of a collectible/living card game, but without the stress of having to keep up with a metagame. The thing about LCGs is that they’re kind of a huge investment in both time and money, and if your opponents are keeping up with all the latest releases, you pretty much need to either keep up with them, or else play with a fraction of the resources that they have access to. In this sense, LCGs/CCGs are essentially hobbies unto themselves. Are those bad things? Not really, otherwise there wouldn’t be millions of loyal card-players out there; it certainly has appeal to certain people. The point I’m trying to make is that LOTR:LCG gives you all the mechanics of an evolving card game, but allows you to play it on your own terms. This makes the game highly accessible for people who would like to play a game that has LCG mechanics, but don’t have the room to keep up with a competitive one.

What makes Lord of the Rings fun, then, is being able to play with these card game mechanics as much as you want without depending on another player. You can build a deck, play a scenario, fail, change your deck, play it again, fail again, change it yet again, and just keep going. You could even replace “fail” with “win,” and you’d still be getting mileage out of the game. Your success in LOTR:LCG is contingent upon how well-built your deck is, and that, to me, is what the game is all about. It’s not necessarily about how you play your cards (although that is obviously immensely important), it’s about building a deck that can’t lose. 

“Isn’t that the point of any LCG?” Well, yeah, you’re not wrong. The thing that makes LOTR feel different is that it challenges you to experiment with a variety of decks. In a competitive LCG, many players make an optimal deck that is sort of a “one size fits all” deal that can weather most challenges, perhaps with some modification here and there. With Lord of the Rings, you’re playing against the game itself, and every scenario requires a deck that’s totally different.

It’s sort of like the difference between a single player video game, and an online multiplayer one. In single player, you might prep your character up for a boss fight, and your loadout is completely optimized to kill that one boss. This might not work in online multiplayer, where you’ll need to be optimized to handle a variety of scenarios at any given time. LOTR:LCG is that single player game. You’re able to build decks, but these decks are built to complete specific objectives, so it challenges you to build decks in unique ways that you likely would never have tried against human opponents.

The second scenario, for example, pits you against a nasty troll right at the very beginning of the scenario. It suffices to say that the troll is an absolute nightmare to bring down, and if you can’t kill him within two or three rounds, you’ve already lost the game. You have to build a deck, then, that can kill that troll within one or two rounds no matter which cards are drawn. The third scenario, on the other hand, robs you of one of your heroes for a while. Now you have to build a deck that works specifically to fill in the gaps that are left by your missing hero. The decks in both of these scenarios is likely to be completely different. That’s the kind of thing that I love about Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and it ends up making the game feel like it’s one-of-a-kind.

One criticism I have about the game is its difficulty. I hesitate to use the word “flaw” here, because difficulty is highly subjective, but know that LOTR:LCG can be very, very hard. If the word “unforgiving” was translated into board game form, it would take the shape of LOTR:LCG. The encounter deck seriously is evil, and there are games where you’ll be doing fine the whole time, and then suddenly your entire party is dead within a round.

Unfortunately, there is an element of luck that comes as a natural cost to an encounter deck. The goal of the game is to optimize your deck against anything that could come out, so it’s sort of to be expected, but sometimes you simply do just have bad luck, plain and simple. The game is well-designed to the point where it’s hard to get grievously bad luck, but it’s impossible to completely avoid when you’re relying on the luck of the draw. Remember that troll I mentioned? There’s one more in that deck; an example of plain ol’ bad luck would be pulling that second troll on one of the first rounds. At that point, you may as well just give up to save yourself time.

Luckily, the scenarios come at different difficulties, so even if certain scenarios are infuratingly hard, you have the option of getting some easier ones and then boom, problem solved. LOTR:LCG comes with three scenarios – the first one is pretty easy; once you have a grip on the game, you’ll most likely beat this one on a regular basis. The second is in the “middle.” I use those scare quotes because the second one is pretty freaking hard, and then the third one is at the top of the difficulty scale, which is something straight out of Frodo’s nightmares. There is a multitude of expansion scenarios that remain on the lower eschelon of the difficulty scale, so know that LOTR:LCG is a game that can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be.

Ultimately, LOTR:LCG tried something new and bizarre with its co-op LCG model, and I’m happy to say that the risk paid off. LOTR:LCG is a fun time, and a veritable challenge. As someone who just doesn’t have the time to commit to a competitive LCG, I absolutely love that I can play this game that has the same mechanics, and not have to worry about anyone else. LOTR’s twist on the LCG genre is well-done and inspired, and I’m glad it’s here to give filthy casuals like me a taste of deck-building goodness.

How on earth could I nail this down to a ballpark playtime? LOTR:LCG’s playtime differs immensely depending on which scenario you play, the quality of your deck, and to what degree you’re afflicted with analysis paralysis. I would advise, however, to put aside at least an hour to play. I’ve completed some scenarios in half an hour, and others have taken upwards to two. It really just depends, so put an hour as your baseline estimate and see what happens.

This also, of course, depends on how much preparation you’ve done beforehand. The hour figure implies that your deck is already ready. This shouldn’t be news to anyone who has played a deck-building LCG/CCG, but deck preparation, assuming you want a capable one, is usually something that’s done as its own activity, rather than being a component of your game night. My suggestion would be to either make your deck beforehand, or, when you make a good deck, to write it down so you can easily build it up next time you play.

Setup is pretty harmless with LOTR. Assuming you’ve got your deck, it’s really just shuffling a bunch of cards. I’d give it a couple minutes. Though, speaking of setup, the amount of cards in the box can be pretty daunting, and the time it takes to prepare the game will be greatly expedited if you’ve taken some time to organize your box, like I’ve so haggardly done with mine.

First off, I want to say that LOTR:LCG is definitely easier to learn from someone who knows the game already. While it all makes sense once you’ve learned it, I bought the game having no experience with it, and thus had to learn the whole thing from the rulebook. While I’ll elaborate more below (in the Rulebook section, of all places), let’s just say that this wasn’t the easiest game I’ve learned from a book. I made several (rather significant) mistakes and even played with them for several rounds before consulting online communities and getting clarification on the rules. The rules can seem arcane at first, but they’re quite digestable once you know how stuff works.

If you’re teaching the game, or having it get taught to you, it’s a lot more manageable. Most learners I’ve taught take onto it slow in the beginning, and their understanding exponentially increases the more you play. If you’re teaching, expect to answer a lot of questions, but also expect that yout player will have a good enough grip on the game by the end of the first session to not have to be babied  This isn’t the easiest game to teach, but it’s a far cry from being “hard.” Just answer questions as they come and you’ll be set.

It’s a co-operative game, what else is there to say? The game makes it necessary for you to work together, which will require good teamwork and synergy. I suppose one thing that makes LOTR more interesting than the rest in this category is the deck building. If two players want to tackle a scenario, they’ll have to use decks that complement each other. This can be approached in two ways – either both of you build a deck and work together, or you create decks beforehand and you simply hand them out when new players join in. The choice is yours, but know that player decks work with, not against each other in LOTR:LCG.

Aside from that, I would just advise players to be aware of their friend’s cards. Aragorn, for instance, has the “sentinel” trait, which allows him to defend against enemy attacks made to the other player. Good interaction will comprise of players who can recognize what their friends have, and work together to bring out the best of their hands.

You get a heaping dose of both strategy and tactics in LOTR:LCG. There’s the strategic aspect of building a fine tuned deck, and then the tactical game of playing your cards right. Although building a strong deck is the biggest key to success in LOTR, it would be a disservice to the game’s design to say that it doesn’t demand wise decision-making in the actual gameplay.

As far as deck-building goes, I’ve found that  you want to make a deck that will be effective no matter what cards are drawn. The random factor is huge in any card game, and therefore you want to maximize your odds of cards coming out that complement each other well. Just as with any deck-based game, the trick is to not dilute your deck with cards that don’t strongly contribute to your overall purpose.

An example would be the deck that I created for the second scenario. Let’s talk about that troll again. This guy is a beast. He has a ludicrous amount of HP, can insta-kill half the characters in the game, and you can’t even chump block him (playing a cheap/expendable ally to take his hit and die) because every amount of excess damage that the troll does that’s not negated by defense raises your threat level. This means that, in just a few turns, the troll will likely either kill you, or make you lose from threat. Let’s talk about one deck-building strategy you can use to deal with this jerk (note that there are plenty more strategies that could be used).

The odds of you directly engaging the troll head on and surviving aren’t good. So there’s two options – either negate his attacks, or prevent him from engaging you. Fortunately, the troll has a pretty high threat number, so he can’t engage you unless it matches  the amount of threat that you have on your dial. You’ll start off with a certain amount which is determined by the heroes you’ve chosen (more powerful heroes start you off with greater threat). With a lower starting threat, you usually have a few turns to prep before the troll engages you.

One of the strategies, then, could be to build a deck that prevents the troll from engaging you at all. This is how I beat the scenario, using a Spirit/Leadership deck. I designed the deck to have a high likelihood of cards that would decrease the threat level, and that would give me high questing power (something that comes in handy for the next objective of the scenario).

Gandalf the ally card was an absolute savior here, who has high attack, high defense, high questing power, and can perform one of three powerful actions when he enters play, two of which include reducing total threat, and immediately dealing undefended damage to any enemies in play. The catch? In true Gandalf fasion, he shows up for the round that he’s played, and then goes into the discard pile. The Galadhrim’s Greeting can reduce your threat by a hefty six points, which means that you effectively have six more rounds to wait until the troll attacks. Drawing even one of these can practically guarantee you enough time to build up enough of a force to crush the troll. A Sneak Attack allows you to play an ally for one turn, and then have them immediately return to your hand. This allows you to play Gandalf multiple times, which in this scenario, is a huge boon.

By drawing a Galadhrim’s Greeting, you could reduce your threat and give you plenty of time to draw more allies. With a Sneak Attack and Gandalf, you can play Gandalf once, deal four free damage to the troll, play him again for real the next round, engage the troll directly, have Gandalf take the hit , and then use your heroes and allies to combine together to deliver a mighty blow which will leave him to the sport of Saruman’s crows in one round.

The above scenario is, of course, an ideal combination of cards that come out, but keep in mind there is still an entire deck of hypothetical cards I haven’t accounted for. Eventually, I was able to refine the deck to the point where I could play the scenario every time without taking a single hit from the troll.

Aside from the deck-building, you’ll have to play your cards wisely in-game to stand a chance. For a player who has no idea how to use their cards, the best deck ever made won’t do diddly-squat. The thing about Lord of the Rings is that there are a lot of problems to worry about at once, and efficiently allocating your resources to deal with them all is your only chance of success. Multi-taskers would probably enjoy LOTR:LCG.

Exhausting characters for willpower, attacking and defending, keeping track of a rising threat level, and making sure that monsters/locations don’t stack up in the staging area are all among your priorities. As if keeping track of everything on the table wasn’t enough, you also have to account for the things you haven’t seen. So, you’ve got enough willpower to deal with the enemies above, and you have enough characters in reserve to defend and attack against the baddies that you’re engaged with. But, what happens if another enemy pops out? How will you deal with him? What if it’s a surge card, which makes you draw another one out of the deck? What if The Necromancer’s Reach comes out, and deals a hit to every single exhausted character? How many of your allies will die? Are your heroes prepared for that? The truth is that, in Lord of the Rings, you should always prepare for the absolute worst, because that’s usually what you get. If you’re hoping for the game to be kind, I hate to spoil it for you, but that’s not really Sauron’s style.

This is one of those games where there are so many options of what you can strategically and tactically do, that writing a fifty page university thesis on the matter probably wouldn’t cover all the options, which can likely be said about any LCG/CCG on the market. It suffices to say that, if you want a game with deep strategic and tactical depth, Lord of the Rings won’t let you down.

This is an LCG. I suppose there are two camps when it comes tot he luck factor. Camp One might argue that there’s too much luck, because everything depends on what cards are randomly drawn from shuffled decks. Camp Two would argue that this is an inherent part of the design, and that a skilled player should build a deck that’s prepared to handle any situation.

Both sides are right, to a degree.

LOTR:LCG comes with as much luck as anyone would expect from a deck-based game. As far as your own deck goes, it’s up to you to decide how effective your deck is. If you put some work into it, you can make your odds pretty good. If you put a lot of work into it, you can practically mathematically guarantee that some sort of winning combination will always be available to you. As far as drawing your own cards go, I don’t see a lot of room for complaints; this is a game where you build and use a deck, it’s what you signed up for.

…The encounter cards, on the other hand? Okay, I’ll complain a little. The simple fact is that LOTR is designed to be hard. To make a good co-op game, it has to be a challenge, and I don’t envy the difficulty that the designers have to face of making a co-op game that provides a challenge while being neither too easy nor too hard to play. For the most part, the game succeeds, albeit leaning a little bit towards the “hard” spectrum. That being said, the design isn’t infallible, and sometimes, the right (maybe wrong would be a better word) cards come out to create a situation that’s just a little too ridiculous, and sometimes otherwise successful games can be lost because the cards that came out were just too hard to deal with.

Because you’re not playing against a human, the deck you’re playing with isn’t custom picked by a player. The deck is designed for that specific scenario, so the cards will be the same every time. I’ve gotta give it up to the designers; the deck does a good job at balancing itself out the majority of the time. There are dastardly cards that are cripplingly powerful, but in most encounter decks, they’re separated by plenty of cards that aren’t quite as evil.

Something that deserves mention are the shadow effects. Any time an enemy attacks, a card is drawn from the encounter deck and flipped over to complement their attack. Many cards have their own shadow effect on the bottom, which only applies to this specific moment. If there is no shadow effect, the attack proceeds as normal. If there is one, the effect is added accordingly. While these can be a huge pain to deal with, it’s actually a clever design mechanism that prevents certain cards from being played regularly. There are plenty of powerful cards that you may never run into if they happened to be drawn as shadow cards. Going back to that troll example I just love to use, there are two of those guys in the deck. If one ends up being a shadow card, then you can rest easy knowing that the other troll won’t be invited to the party for the rest of the game.

The fundamental design stacks the odds well enough to where, most of the time, the game as about as hard as you’d expect. But the game can’t completely escape from luck, and in the rare case that three or four super powerful cards are drawn one after another, it can really turn your game around in a bad way, and it might even leave a bad taste in your mouth.

The occasional bad luck of the encounter deck is something that should be known about LOTR:LCG going in. If you’re aware that sometimes, despite your efforts, you might just get screwed, you’ll be able to accept it as the exception and not the rule.

I have not run into balance issues in Lord of the Rings. As I’ve mentioned, the game is hard, and I’ve yet to find a broken strategy. If there’s a deck made out of core cards that can cleanly and consistently beat Escape From Dol-Guldur (the third scenario), then I sure would love to see it. I can think of some cards that are powerful, but not to the point of being overpowered. I would argue that, if you’re able to construct an awesome deck that can beat the scenarios, then you’ve done what the game is challenging you to do. It’d be another story if there was one all-powerful deck that could topple ANY of the expansion scenarios with ease, but as far as I’m aware, such a thing does not exist.

Given that this game is focused on the core set, if you’re worried about a broken game, then worry somewhere else, because LOTR:LCG on the whole feels very well designed.

Well, you can play LOTR:LCG solo, and it’s fantastic. I LOVE this game, because it’s not only a solo game, but it’s a very good solo game, and I think everyone going in should know that. Honestly, I love just pulling out my cards and relaxing at night, playing a game of LOTR and then tooling with my deck for a little bit afterwards as a solitary activity. It’s a great thinking challenge, it’s a fun game, and it just works. The other great thing is that the game is designed to be playable solo; it’s not like many other co-op games that can technically be played solo on the virtue that one person is controlling two “players,” no, this game is literally designed to be able to support one player.

Solo play isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Technically, solo play mandates that you use one deck, and the game scales accordingly. I personally prefer playing with one deck, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t have some drawbacks. With a solo deck, the third scenario is agonizingly difficult, and almost impossible. Most players who play the game on a regular basis recommend two decks (simulating two players albeit in a solo setting) if you’re to take on Escape From Dol-Guldur. I was able to beat this with a solo deck, but it reaches a point where you basically have to have a certain threshold of good luck to succeed. This one definitely feels designed for multiple people, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing; you can either play as a buddy or just pull a dual deck. And that’s the great thing about solo play in this game. You can play “one player,” or you can simulate two players by yourself and both end up being an awesome experience. I just want to make it clear that, if you’re a fan of solo play, don’t be afraid to play two decks if the scenario is too hard for one alone.

At two players, the game is similar, only now with teamwork. Certain rules change slightly when there are more players, and they can make a difference in your game. For example, the “first player” (this switches off every round) has to do the travelling in the travel phase. Sometimes this is associated with certain card effects that may or may not effect him alone. Also, enemies engage players in a specific order; careful planning will have to take place to determine who engages which enemy, and if it will be necessary to voluntarily engage a foe to prevent it from attacking your friend.

There are also certain cards which change in nature depending on player count. “Ranged” characters can attack enemies in your friend’s area, and “sentinels” can defend against them. These are keywords that have no meaning in single player (unless referenced by other cards). And then there are cards that make use of multiple players. “Wandering Took” allows you to lower your threat level, but only if you pass it to another player and raise theirs. With no other players, this effect becomes unusable in single play and reduces the card to a normal ally.

The core set is only designed to accomodate two players, though the game itself can support up to four. If you acquire another core set, you could play a game with four players, and the single scaling mechanism in the game (the number of cards drawn during the Questing Phase) would adapt accordingly. Technically, there’s no reason why you can’t play with more players in the core set, as really the only stipulation is that each player has their own deck. The game comes with four pre-made player decks (each suite being its own), so there’s enough cards to do it. While this is an option, it’s hard for me to imagine a scenario like that where the game wouldn’t feel watered down. Sure, you could make three or four decks, but at that point they probably won’t be very good. Not to mention the fact that the game only comes with two threat dials. This is an easy homemade fix (I mean, you can just write the numbers down), but the core set was definitely designed for two players (or one), so that’s where you’re likely to get the most out of it.

For the sake of transparency, I want to mention that I’ve never played with more than two players. If you’ve had great experienced with higher player counts, I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments!

The great thing about LOTR: LCG is that you can play the core game extensively without getting bored. Comparing it to other FFG games, it’s not like X-Wing, which basically necessitates expansion purchases, but it’s also not quite Imperial Assault, which can practically be played forever with just the core contents. It’s somewhere in the middle, but I’ve ultimately found that you’ll get a lot of enjoyment out of the core game.

First off, the deck-building will allow you to create a near-infinite amount of combinations, so there’s that. You don’t need me to tell you that having 120+ cards to combine together will give you a lot of combinations. “But, what about the scenarios? There’s only three, after all.” You’re right, there is only three, but I got a lot of mileage out of them. The first one will likely challenge you for a little bit until you figure the game out, in which you’ll probably start beating it every time. The second one is significantly more challenging, and my failures have still exceeded my successes, both in solo and two-player games, and then there’s Escape From Dol-Guldur, which I’ve personally cleared a whopping one time. If you like being challenged, these scenarios offer a lot of longevity indeed.

Furthermore, it’s not like the scenarios get old after you’ve beaten them once. I admit that I wouldn’t want to play the same one over and over and over again, but you’ll get a lot out of the three that are included. I’m going to use my favorite example, and go back to the troll! Remember the troll? I’ve mentioned him once or twice, right? Admittedly, a rather easy way to handle him is to use a “Forest Snare,” which can immobilize him, allowing you to essentially ignore him until you’re ready. For me, though, that was the obvious strategy, and I wanted to pull off a non-conventional win, so I could feel like I did it myself, instead of resorting to online resources. I formulated the deck that I mentioned in the strategy section, no Forest Snare to be found, and I eventually found a way to beat the scenario.

If you like imposing challenges on yourself, boy, does LOTR:LCG give you room to do that.

So, that’s talking about the core experience? What if you want to expand? Well…

With expansions, you will never, ever, ever, ever get bored of this game. In the next section I’ll go into depth about what’s available to expand the game, but it suffices to say that, if you like the game, well, congratulations, you’ve just found a new drug. I just hope that you don’t like having money.

GOODNESS GRACIOUS, DOES THIS GAME HAVE A LOT OF EXTRA CONTENT.

For a game where you’re playing against pre-made scenarios, there’s definitely a concern about whether the game will have longevity. Assuming you’re willing to spend a little bit, then the answer is a big fat resounding YES. There are 67 additional scenarios available right now, more than 20x the amount that you get in the core set. These are spread out across many different types of products, most of which also include new player cards. The available expansions are as follows:

Deluxe Expansions

These are the “big-box” expansions for the game, and retail for $20-$25 online, and $30 MSRP. Each one includes three new scenarios, two heroes, and a host of player cards and encounter cards. Every Deluxe Expansion is sort of its own little story, and thus each one is the beginning of a “cycle” in the expansionary release timeline. After the Deluxe Expansion is released, add-on content pertaining to that expansion follows, which brings us to Adventure Packs, detailed below. There are currently four Deluxe Expansions available, with another one on the way.

Adventure Packs

These are the bread and butter of your expansionary content. At $10 – $13 online and $15 MSRP, these are individual decks that you can pick up. Each one includes one scenario, one hero, and more player/encounter cards. It’s worth noting that each Adventure Pack corresponds to a deluxe expansion, so you’ll have to own the base of whatever “cycle” it’s part of to play it (along with the core set). Every cycle has six corresponding Adventure Packs. One of the Deluxe Expansions, for example, is called The Voice of Isengard, and its six respective Adventure Packs that are part of The Voice of Isengard cycle will require its purchase. The core set acts as the beginning of the cycle, so the six Adventure Packs in the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle can be played with just the core. There are currently 30 adventure packs out, with six more on the way.

Saga Expansions

All of the scenarios above are unique stories created by FFG to have fun in the Middle Earth universe. What if you bought the game because you wanted to play Lord of the Rings? The Saga Expansions are the answer to that. The Saga Expansions directly re-enact the stories of Lord of the Rings. Each book has two corresponding Saga Expansions. So far, they’ve covered The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers. The Return of the King has its first half on the way, and the second will presumably follow afterwards. These are similar in size and scope to the Deluxe Expansions, and come at the same price. Some of the differences is that Saga Expansions don’t have a defined number of new heroes – some come with one or two, while others come with four or five. Other than that, they include three scenarios, and of course, player and enemy encounter cards. Saga Expansions also don’t have Adventure Packs, so every book can be experienced with just two purchases each.

Saga Expansions also introduce a “campaign mode,” where you can choose to retain your deck throughout all three scenarios, and receive permanent upgrades (or disadvantages) referred to as “boons and burdens.” So far, I have only played the packs for The Fellowship of the Ring, but I thought they did an extraordinarily good job of translating the stories into gameplay. The first one, for example, has you playing a team of Hobbits and actively discourages you to fight; you’re instead running and hiding from Nazgul, and if they become aware of your presence, it might as well be game over. You might be wondering how this is translated into a card game, but trust me when I say that the designers have found very clever ways to subvert the game’s mechanics to offer new and unique experiences.

Nightmare Decks

As if all of that wasn’t enough for you, there are Nightmare Decks available if you’re some kind of insane, pain-loving masochist. These decks, priced about the same as Adventure Packs, provide cards for currently existing scenarios to make them even harder. There doesn’t seem to be a consistent order to the way these are released; they’re sort of unevenly dispersed across several Adventure Packs, Deluxe Expansions, and Saga Expansions.

Standalone Scenarios

Getting overwhelmed yet? There are also seven standalone scenarios, which seem to have been promos released during GenCon. FFG has made these available for mass consumption, and they can be found online, in stores (this is not a guarantee), or through Print-On-Demand, which can be done through FFG’s website.

All in all, the extra content for this game is just staggering. I only own a few extra packs, and it already feels more than what I know to do with. Want something that will hold your attention for years on end? The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game has got your back.

The Lord of the Rings core set retails for $40 MSRP, and can be found at the excellent price of $28 online. In my opinion, this is a wonderful price for a wonderful game. At just a few more bucks than, say, X-Wing, this is a collectible game that will give you plenty of value out of the core set. If you end up loving the game, the core won’t last you forever, but I can guarantee it has plenty of longevity packed inside. Plenty of games are far more expensive than this, so I assert that the core set is a great value for how it’s priced.

I went over the pricing for the expansions in the previous section, but long story short is that bigger expansions with more scenarios and cards are $30 each (~$20 online), while Adventure Packs (single decks with one scenario) are $15 (~$11 online). This may seem like a lot, but if you love putting time into the game, each deck will add plenty of content for you to work with. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t wish these were cheaper, but I also don’t feel like it’s outright extortion (like some 5-6 extensions which shall not be named…).