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Top 10 Collectable Card Games Of All Time

In the early 80’s there were three games that really defined what would become the tabletop gaming hobby. Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer 40k, and Magic The Gathering. Magic The Gathering of course is the grandaddy of collectible card games but fast forward over 40 years later and CCG’s have become a sub-hobby all on their own.

I don’t talk about CCG’s very often but in the last decade, CCG’s have gone through something of a renaissance and with each new CCG that has come out, the genre is making leaps and bounds for the better.

In today’s list, I will pick my top 10 collectible card games from the awesome past to the wonderful present. Enjoy the list!

10. Legend Of The Five Rings (1st edition)

Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition by Alderace Entertainment falls into what I like to call the “Hardcore CCGs” category from the 90’s . This was a fairly robust game from a robust gaming era that was very heavy on the theme and backstory and for fans out there, it wasn’t just a card game but much like other early CCG’s like Magic The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings was a lifestyle game.

I think what separated LotFR from other LCG’s was that it was part of a multifaceted franchise that covered gaming as part of a spectrum. You had Legend of the Five Rings RPG which in the 90’s was competing against heavy hitters like D&D and Vampire The Masquerade. You also had a miniature game line called Clan War which competed against the Gameswork shop heavy hitters like Warhammer Fantasy. Finally, you had a huge library of novels dedicated to the story of this amazing game world, books which when released coincided with card set releases so that when you read a book about a certain part of the history of the game, you then got to play it out in the card game.

Unfortunately despite very modest economic success, Legend of the Five Rings in all its forms was never terribly popular and never reached anything beyond its extremely niche audience.

Fantasy Flight Games picked up the rights to the Legend of the Five Rings and revised the game in a second edition, but this too saw only minimal success and ultimately faded out of existence rather quickly.

This game was made for fans and it catered very heavily to this niche audience. In my humble opinion, this is one of the all-time classics that rightfully deserves to be on this list even if it’s at the tail end. It is an amazingly rich and complex game with tons of great lore to support it and without question, some of the best art ever put on a gaming card. Awesome, albeit retired CCG.

9. Magic The Gathering

I was hesitant to put this one on the list at all because I could file a 500-page novel worth of complaints about it, its design, the company that runs it, and the endless stream of bullshit that makes this a game I have no desire to play at all.

Still, there was a time when I lived and breathed magic and it wasn’t a short time, most of the 90’s by my estimation. Like other games from the 90’s Magic The Gathering was a lifestyle game and equally as all games in the 90’s, it was mostly broken as fuck!

Yet, Magic The Gathering endures and by all accounts it’s still one of the most popular CCG’s on the market today and this has been so since its inception. No CCG ever has nor likely will come even within a light year of the success Magic The Gathering has seen. Magic The Gathering sells more cards in a year than all other CCG’s combined sell in a decade. In a word, there is no such thing as “competition” when it comes to market share, Magic The Gathering rules undisputed.

How? Why? It’s a good question. Mechanically Magic The Gathering has a lot of design flaws that would never be put into a game today. It’s a game where you can build a legal tournament deck in which you can win a match before your opponent ever gets a turn to play. You can build decks that spawn an infinite number of monsters, or do an infinite amount of damage. The amount of stupid shit in this game is endless but I think the reason people like it and perhaps rightfully so is not despite these things but because of them.

There is something uniquely clever to a game that has so much depth and interaction, that if you study it long and hard, you can completely unravel it.

I crap on it, but it is the granddaddy of CCG’s and this list would be incomplete if I did not put it on the list so here it is, but frankly, I can think of a 100 CCG’s I rather play than Magic The Gathering. It does however have its charm, I can’t deny that of all the games on this list, I have played Magic The Gathering the most and so its place in CCG history and this list is secured.

8. Vampire Eternal Struggle

Vampire Eternal Struggle is to me, everything you think you want to have in a great CCG, which results in an overcooked game to a point where the game is nearly unplayable. Its a effectively a game that appears to be designed by Vampire The Masquerade fans that kind of don’t know what they are doing, but fully understand what a Vampire The Masquerade CCG should feel like, if that makes any sense. This was not all that unusual for a card game in the 90’s, making stupidly complex card games was kind of a thing back then, but even so far as complex CCG’s go, Vampire Eternal Struggle stretched the definition.

This was a game that could take upwards of 3-4+ hours to finish a single match, there was a ridiculous amount of rules weight and card interaction and in a lot of ways it mimicked the obscene level of detail that was customary in The Vampire The Masquerade RPG.

As overcooked as it was, however, there was true magic in the way the game executed because it did what White-Wolf RPGs were famous for which was to tell an amazing story. This was a game that even though I haven’t played it for 20 years, I still remember specific matches I had. All-nighters where me and a couple of friends effectively created our own little micro-universe for an evening in the world of darkness.

It was a unique game in a couple of ways. First and foremost it was best played in multiplayer, rather than head-to-head which separated it from most of the CCG’s out there that had modes for multiplayer but weren’t designed for it. The second thing was that you had this amazing world of darkness behind it, a setting so fleshed out and so recognizable to fans that each card had impact and meaning that went well beyond anything you would expect to be able to put into a card. Above all else, however, it was a brutish and harsh – take that – kind of a game, with ruthless mechanics that brought a lot of emotion and player interaction that went well beyond the mechanics of the game, much like the RPG on which it’s based.

This was a fantastic CCG and recently the game was revised and reprinted so it is still very much available today for people to explore. I would caution however that this is a game made for Vampire The Masquerade fans, by Vampire The Masquerade fans. If you don’t know what that is and why it’s awesome, this game is definitly not for you, if you do, you probobly already know about this game and don’t need me to tell you how awesome it is.

7. Arkham Horror LCG

Arkham Horror the card game was released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2016 during a period when FFG was producing CCG’s under the Living Card Game strategy where rather than having random booster packs, you would have pre-constructed expansions. It was also not a competitive card game but rather a cooperative card game in which players would effectively go around a dynamically constructed game board based on a location and solve mysterious while fighting monsters using decks they built.

I own and love this game, I actually think it’s pretty fantastic but generally speaking I also think it has one major flaw which is that it’s a cooperative game where once you complete a “quest”, it’s a bit like a legacy game where a lot of the hype and excitement disappears and the game starts feeling like your watching a scrooby-doo re-runs.

The format just lacks sustainability and while I still love picking this game up every long once in a while and playing a few rounds, it lacks freshness unless you are constantly buying the latest expansions. I did that for a while until I realized that I would effectively play each expansion once and then never go back to it because I knew the story, I knew the mystery, I had figured it all out.

It’s a very fun game mechanically but it almost feels like it would have done a lot better if the “quest” creation was turned over to the community and the game was a digital card game rather than a physical one. If you had an endless stream of new challenges that you could play on a daily or weekly basis, I think the game would have a lot more longevity.

Needless to say, even with this one flaw, I think this is a brilliant game and deserves to be on this list.

6. Warhammer 40k Conquest

I have to admit I only played this game a few times and never actually bought into it and there is good reason for it, but still the few times I played it, it made a big impact on me and I always think of it whenever the subject of CCG’s comes up. Like Arkham Horror this was one of many Fantasy Flights LCG’s (Living Card Games), but it was a 2 player competitive game. I think this is one of the most underrated competitive card games out there today.

The theme and franchise appreciation here is important as the card game and the cards themselves capture the Warhammer 40k universe perfectly but what I think really made this game stand out is that the interaction and speed of play was balanced perfectly. It’s a tight game where players are making impactful decisions with each card play and games are almost always definined by decision rather than deck or card draw, it really is a game of pure strategy and I think that is actually kind of rare in card games. Most CCG’s are defined by deck building as much as strategy but this one is one of those games where what deck you played mattered considerably less than what you do with it at the table.

Above and beyond that however I think the asymetrical factions really shine here, each faction had its own thing going on and FFG made sure every faction of the 40k universe was covered before the game went end of life so its a self contained and very complete feeling card game set. The fact that it went out of print and is no longer supported doesn’t matter and thankfully they printed so much of this game its actually quite easy and cheap to get a hold of a complete collection.

Really fun game, I think this is still well worth getting today even if its out of print. Just a very good, self contained, head to head experience built around an awesome franchise and a great theme. A game made for 40k fans.

The only reason I have personally never bought into is that in my gaming group, at the time, we had a lot of stuff going on gaming wise and it was a rare situation where economically I had to make some tough calls. I regret that, I wished I owned the entire set and plan to some day soon purchase it for my collection.

5. Star Wars Destiny

Heading into the top 5 on my list, it would be criminal to exclude Star Wars Destiny, without question one of the best Star Wars franchise CCG’s ever produced. It suffered from a rather poor business model and went extinct rather quickly, which was a real bummer, but it remains in my collection and I’m to this day always ready to pull it out and play.

This CCG is quite unique in that it uses dice as part of the card play mechanic and it also makes use of a very tight deck which makes deck building a really light element of the game which is great for beginners. That said, I actually think the nuance of this game is difficult to grasp and many veteran card players felt the luck element of this built in dice mechanic made it a less competitive experience. That might or might not have been true, but to me, competitive is not a reason to or not to play a game, I think as long as the game is fun, that is all the juice it needs. Destinty was certainly that.

I think Fantasy Flight Games should have stuck to their LCG model for this game because one of the things that really killed this game is the fact that you often needed 2-3 cards (with coinciding dice) in order to make a certain card playable, this was especially true about heroe’s so what you ended up with is a lot of cards and dice that you really couldn’t put in a deck and remain reasonably balanced for the general power level of the game. This mixed in with the fact that most of the hero/villain cards where uncommon and rares, made collecting the right cards a pain in the ass and more a frustrating than fun experience.

In the end FFG also had a lot of trouble balancing this game and their were quite a few broken and OP cards as well as a lot of junk cards you would never use for any reason. I’m not sure if the issue was with a lack of testing or what but at the end of the day the game did have a few issues.

Nonetheless, I consider this one of the all-time great CCG’s, just a super fun, tight little game that was very approachable albeit probably one of the most expensive to collect, in particular if you were going for competitive play. These days you can still find it in bargain bins and I say it’s still well worth getting a collection going.

4. Android Netrunner

Netrunner is a unique entry on this list for two reasons. First, it’s the only game on the list that is truly asymmetrical, yet managed to be a well-balanced competitive one on one CCG. I can’t think of any card game in the history of card games that does this, it’s a white elephant in this regard. Secondly, this is the only game in the history of card games that I can think of that died at what I would consider to be the height of its success. Quite literally this game got better and better with each expansion and when it was cancelled they had released what I would consider to be the best expansion ever released for the game. How and why it was discontinued is just a complete mystery to me.

The wonderful thing about Android Netrunner was that it was one of those rare cases in which deck building, while important, was not the defining factor for victory. How you used your cards, how you approached each match and your knowledge of the game had far more impact than the strength of your deck. More importantly, it was about the fairest playing field in a CCG ever put out mainly because, like most Fantasy Flight Games of this era, it was a living card game so everyone was building decks from the same set.

I played this game exclusively with the same opponent for several years online using tabletop simulator so I never actually purchased a single card, but I consider those games to be among the card gaming experiences I ever had.

This is an auto-buy in my book, one of the best card games ever made with some of the best card art ever printed.

3. Game of Thrones The Card Game (2nd Edition)

We are now reaching what I consider to be the creme de la creme of card games. Game of Thrones the card game is without a doubt the king of multiplayer games, one that captures its theme with perfection both mechanically and visually.

I love this game, but like many CCG’s I’m a dabbler rather than a committer, but this is more a result of economic self-preservation than anything else. There are many collectible games out there, I buy into and pay obscene prices for many of them, and at the end of the day you have to make some hard choices, one can’t expect to be able to buy into everything.

That said I have friends who went ape shit and we have more than enough cards in the gaming group for us to have an occasional crack at this one and I consider any such opportunity an absolute pleasure.

This is a fantastic CCG that captures the momentum of the Song of Ice and Fire story, ensuring that characters are at the heart of the game, with thematic powers that result in play resolutions that truly tells a Game of Thrones story.

Of all the games I recommend on this list, this one comes without caveats, even if you are not a Game of Thrones fan, this is such a great card game that even without the appreciation of the theme, this is a great design. Good games like this come along only once in a while and they are not to be missed, this is an auto-buy in my opinion for card lovers.

2. Star Wars Unlimited

Star Wars Unlimited dropped like Thor’s hammer into the CCG scene, stealing the show and proving that there is plenty of fresh ideas and new life left to bring to the genre. This is without question my new love. I never thought anything quite as good as Star Wars Destiny would ever come around again and bring Star Wars to the CCG table top, but I was wrong, Star Wars Unlimited is perfection personified.

As of this writing, only the initial core set for the game has been launched with the first expansion only 24 hours away as of this writing, so it’s hard to predict the game’s future. That said, the first release was absolutely perfect blend of deck building, competitive play and precision design. This game is so good and I know I’m not the only one who thinks so because it is absolutely impossible to purchase unless you pre-order and anything that is in stock in seconds after it drops. It’s that good.

I will never proclaim a Magic The Gathering killer, because I don’t think any such thing will ever come along, but Star Wars Unlimited is objectively a superior game to Magic The Gathering in every measurable way, yet has the same addictive deck-building quality and card interaction that made MTG such a landmark game.

I don’t care who you are if you are not playing Star Wars Unlimited, you are missing out on the single best competitive CCG ever made by a massive margin, there is absolutely nothing in the same league with this game. It’s a modern masterpiece.

1. Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game

I will be the first to admit that Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game is a personal taste thing more than a perfectly designed game. This is my number-one choice, not THE number-one game. That honor goes to Star Wars Unlimited. Still, with that said, I love this game above all others for a single, indisputable reason and that is that it captures Middle Earth with such perfection, such epic scale and so much thematic joy through its gameplay and art that I honestly could not bare to ever put any CCG above this one. It’s not just the perfect CCG, its a perfect game.

Like most Fantasy Flight Games, this is a game from the Living Card Era which I think is perfect for a cooperative deck-building game. For me the reason I love this game so much is that it’s every bit as good playing solo as it is playing in a group. Its perfect with experience CCG players and complete newbies who have never played a card game before. Its scalable with quests that take 15 minutes to epic sagas that take weeks to complete. It has deep, strategic deck-building elements or can be used with default theme decks. In a word, every conceivable gaming situation you have, it has you covered.

Love this game, there is nothing in the world of tabletop gaming I can recommend more than Lord of the Rings the Living Card Game. It’s perfect.

    Board Game Reviews, Gaming Articles

    Lord of the Rings: LCG revisited

    Lord of the Rings the Living Card game turned 10 years old not too long ago and as part of that celebration we not only got a new revised edition of the game, but a sort of guarantee that the game will continue to remain in print.

    Now so far as Living Card Games go, that makes Lord of the Ring LCG, quite unique, currently one of the oldest of its kind at the moment still in print.

    As a super fan of this game with a nearly complete collection barring all the nightmare stuff in which I never found much appeal, this is kind of a big deal. I thought I would throw a few words down for those of you out there considering getting into this one, let’s call it a do’s and don’t list with some pitfalls and suggestions that I can offer.

    1st Edition vs. Revised Edition

    Just a quick note here because this question comes up all the time. Is there a difference between these two editions? The answer is no, they are exactly, word for word, card for card, the same game. It is just a second printing of the same game and while the core sets have different quantities of card, the Revised Core Set has been revised to have sufficient cards for 4 players, they are for all intense and purposes the same game.

    As a rule, you don’t need more than 3 copies of any card as this is all that is legal to put into a deck, but of course, many players support more than their own decks, as such, it’s nice to have more copies of certain key cards. If you already have an original core set, you might still consider getting the new Revised Core Set anyway just for this reason.

    Buyers Guide For Newbies

    Core Set

    If you are fresh and own nothing, the obvious first thing to do is to purchase a core set. Now it’s still possible to get the old core set, but I would advise against it and recommend getting the new revised core set.

    The primary reason for this is that the original core set left a lot to be desired when it came to the card list. Many “staple” cards, meaning, cards you will often put into decks don’t come in sets of three in the original core set and this means when you are trying to optimize your deck you often can’t get exactly what you want.

    The new revised core set sticks to the minimum 3 cards per card type and it gives you a lot of extras of the more commonly used cards like Gandalf (x8) and Dark Knowledge for example.

    The revised core set also comes with the Campaign Mode cards which is the only new thing in the revised edition of the game which really enhances play. It effectively lets you run campaign mode as you do with the Saga sets, but for the core set adventures. It also has sufficient components for 4 players which might not matter to you but with the original core set you barely have enough for two players while the revised set gives you more than enough for 4 players.

    In a word, it’s just a better core set. Back in the day most people resolved card shortages in the core set by buying two of them, but with this new revised core set you don’t have to do that.

    Initial Expansions

    I think most players want to get a good start with their collections and there is a notion that you should start at the begining with the 1st cycle but the reality is that the first 3 full cycles of this game were only so-so and in some cases actually quite bad.

    This is evidenced by the fact that when FFG started with re-releases (repackaging) of the original game cycles they started with Angmar Awakened and Dream Chaser cycles. This is because the first three cycles (Shadows of Mirkwood, Dwarrowdelf & Against The Shadows) left a lot to be desired.

    Older sets like Heirs of Numenor were extremely difficult to the point of not being fun, but as you become really good at the game, some of these old challenges can actually be fun to go back on. I wouldn’t discourage their collecting, but its good to know what your getting into.

    So far as adventures (quests) go, Shadows of Mirkwood is without a doubt the weakest cycle in the game, rather boring to be honest and I would argue can be skipped entirely. Dwarrowdelf is just ok at best and Against The Shadows is horrifically unbalanced, hard to the point of not being fun. Now all these cycles have great player cards and that is reason enough to collect them at some point but the really good (fun) adventure sets start with the Ring Maker cycle and just get better and better with each release afterward and the player cards in the cycles that followed are also a lot more interesting, allowing for far more diverse player deck building possibilities.

    I would also avoid buying under the old format (packaging). It has been rather frustrating to try to collect (and complete) each cycle buying the individual packs, in fact even today I have a couple of cycles where I’m missing a pack and can’t it track down. When I say frustrating, I mean it, it annoys me to no end.

    The new format allows you to buy the player cards and adventures separately and when you do buy the adventure pack, you get the entire cycle in one go. It’s more expensive than any single pack, but altogether the price is about the same. Player & adventure expansion together is about $115, and buying the separate cycles is about $120, so same stuff, slightly cheaper and with considerably less hassle trying to collect everything.

    The fact that they started the repacked cycles with Angmar Awakened and now Dream-chaser is just icing on the cake as these are the first two I would advise you to pick up either way. These adventures (quests) are both fantastic throughout, and the player cards and heroes they come with are far more diverse and interesting than anything you get prior.

    Sets like Dream Chaser introduce entirely new sub-mechanics to the game that offer new challenges and call for completely unique ways to build decks. This expansion really shows off the diversity of this game and are really great investments.

    I would honestly not try to go back and collect the first three cycles at all unless you can find complete sets in one go and in either case, I would not bother with the first cycle (Shadows of Mirkwood) at all. You can just skip that one, it really was not very good at all and is regarded in the community as the most skippable cycle in the collection.

    The Saga Sets

    After picking up the two repackaged sets that are available now, you might have your eye on the Saga set. Originally this was broken down into 6 boxes for the Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers and Return of the King story and two sets for the Hobbit.

    In the repackage they are being released in 3 sets covering each book. The price and content is the same, but as of this writing Return of the King is not yet available or even announced, though you can count on it being released sometime in the future while the original releases are still quite readily available.

    The Saga expansions are I think, an intrical part of the Lord of the Rings LCG experience, but I would not rush to it. It’s sort of like the end game content, which, if attempted too early, can be quite frustrating, but if done when your ready is pure magic.

    The saga’s are really great, they use the campaign format which used to be unique to the Saga sets, but is now available with all of the repacked sets including the revised core sets. It allows for a sort of leveling up of characters and deck improvements as you go through and given the difficulty of the Saga sets, this is actually quite crucial to success.

    While these are all fantastic sets, the difficulty of the Saga sets is quite high, in particular when trying to complete the entire Saga in campaign mode. I would only caution getting the Saga sets last simply to avoid having it and being frustrated because you don’t have the card pool needed to successfully complete them.

    When I say hard, I mean, super hard. You WILL need a pretty wide collection to complete the Saga set with constant deck adjustments and frankly, without some homebrew rules adaptations I don’t think it’s very solo-able, this is definitely at least a two-player (or double-fisting – 1 player playing two hands). I would argue however this is best with 3-4 players for that epic feel.

    I would consider these must have’s for your collection, they are quite fantastic and in a sense really are what the game is about. You want to do the lord of the rings core story and while all of the adventure sets have fun narratives, the nostalgic visit to the original story in card form can’t be beat.

    Do’s & Don’ts

    Over the years of collecting and playing this game, there are quite a few things I have learned that will do wonders for your experience and your wallet.

    Do’s

    Always and I mean always with the exception of the core sets, look into the 3rd party market when tracking down cycles/sets. You can find used stuff dirt cheap and often buy a complete collection of a cycle in one fell swoop which even if you have to shell out a few nickles is going to be better than fussing about trying to find a single missing pack.

    More importantly, you can often find stuff not available through retail for the game as many adventure packs have been released under the “limited release” tag as part of convention events which you are definitely going to want.

    Your collection will grow over time and there is quite a bit to collect, but buying this game at full retail is not only expensive but rarely an option as any given cycle is rarely ever available at the same time. In the 3rd party market its quite easy to find complete sets and in my mind this is the best way to collect.
    Do’s

    Do pimp out your game. There are lots of really amazing accessories for LotR LCG and they are well worth it. Most notably a good playmat and a good storage solution are quite important. I would also recommend sleeving your decks but not doing so for the rest of your collection as there is a lot of shuffling and handling of cards in this (duh) card game.

    Don’ts

    Don’t ever pay full retail for anything, even recently released sets. You can always find discounted stuff if your patient and it can make a huge difference. For example, the Revised core set retails at 70 bucks, but if you sniff around a bit, you can pick it up for 10-20% discount on that price. In fact, I don’t recall ever paying full price for anything for this game, you can always find discounts.

    Don’ts

    Don’t buy the limited edition collectors edition or the online version of this game. It’s the worst deal in Lord of the Rings and people have been trying to make it sound special and expensive, when the reality is that all you get is a shitty mat, a poorly produced MP3 soundtrack that is freely available, a crappy plastic ring, some poorly produced art prints and a two-player limited edition of the game that has less stuff in it than the core set.

    This was a raw deal and mostly a money grabbed designed to promote the digital version of the game which quite literarly had absolutetly nothing to do with the paper version. These are two entirely different games, in fact the LCG has more in common with Arkham Horror LCG and Marvel Champions than it does with the digital version. Avoid it like the plague.

    More to the point though is that the digital version of LotR LCG is a completely different game, than the paper version. These two games have only the name of the game in common and the entire production of the digital game is just a massive cash grab for what really is one of the shittiest CCG’s anyone ever scraped together. It’s a hard pass.

    Don’t

    Don’t bother with the nightmare decks. Generally speaking, they don’t really add much to the game and even if you find that you have become so good at the game that you need more challenge there are many free game variants for increased difficulty available that are far more interesting than the nightmare decks.

    I’m not saying these are bad, just saying they are not worth it.

    You don’t get any new content with the nightmare decks, all it is-is the same cards you already have with slightly higher stats on monsters for the most part. They are not worth the 5-7 bucks you will pay for each one.

    Don’t

    Don’t bother with the Starter Decks. You are eventually going to collect all of the cards anyway and for 22 bucks for 1 starter deck which is half of the cost of a repackaged expansion player box, it’s about the most expensive way to get these cards you can find. What’s worse, there are repeated cards in these and you don’t always get 3 sets of each card so you end up with an incomplete collection even if you get them all. Worst still is that you are going to collect all the sets most likely anyway so you end up with duplicates of stuff you don’t need. There are no unique cards in these sets, all cards are released in other sets.

    If you are just dabbling into the LCG, this can be a great way to get some great cards right out of the gate, but if you plan to collect, this is the most expensive and inefficient way to get these cards available.

    As a side note, most of these decks are actually not that great, so far as “good deck building goes” they are also pretty mediocre.

    Tips & Tricks

    Lord of the Rings LCG can be a pretty frustrating game, you are going to lose… a lot and this can’t really be helped, but there are a few things I always recommend to players to keep themselves engaged.

    1. Fail It Forward
      One thing I really recommend is that you try to complete each quest in a cycle 2, max 3 times and if you can’t beat it, move on to the next one. You can always go back to take a crack at it again, but playing the same adventure over and over again endlessly until you beat it will take a lot of steam out of you and you may end up giving up before continuing. There is no shame in realizing there is a quest here and there you can’t beat, these are future challenges and eventually, you will build better decks as your game improves. Don’t let yourself get stuck.

    2. Easy Mode Recommended
      I would strongly advise new players to make extensive use of easy mode when first starting out. I know that it stings but it takes a fairly long time to get good at the game and when you initially get the game (core set) you won’t have the necessary card pool to beat even the core set quests. In fact, the 3rd quest in the core set is universally considered among the hardest to beat even for veteran players with full collections.

      Easy mode turns the impossible into the possible, as you get better, again, you can always go back on any of these and take a crack at them again.

    3. Find a partner or two
      While LotR LCG is infinitely solo-able and it’s a lot of fun, it’s not balanced for solo play and generally speaking, solo play is kind of for experts as you must build very specialized decks to find any measure of success. Some get around this by playing the game two-handed (called double-fisting) but, naturally, the preference would be to have a partner.

      This game is best played with 2, 3 or 4 players. I would not recommend more than that. 4 player games can be a bit slow, I think 2-3 is the sweet spot.

      More than that though, LotR LCG has a tendency to be a very fun experience as there are so many ghastly failures and triumphant successes, it’s something to be shared in my experience.

    Final Words

    Lord of the Rings LCG is a great cooperative game, but it’s quite expensive to collect and the producers of the game know the pinch players feel when invested in a game and new content comes out. In the end, the instinct is to collect everything but I can assure you this is neither necessary or worth it.

    One thing to keep in mind is that a typical quest (one quest) for 2-3 players is basically an entire evening of entertainment. As such if you collect say a single cycle which has 9 quests, that is enough content to fill 7-9 sessions of gaming. Point here is that you don’t need a lot to keep you going for a long time. I have collected everything released and I estimate it will take me the better part of a decade to get through it all.

    You can safely skip some of the old stuff and focus on collecting the new stuff. Sure your collection won’t be complete, but the reality is that 1 good quest is worth 10 bad ones and a lot of the older stuff before the Ring Maker cycle can be safely skipped.

    Of all the cycles I have played through there are three that I think stand out. The Dream Chaser, Haradrim and Angmar Awakened cycles. Since these are being re-released in the new re-packaged format there honestly is little reason to look back as it seems everything will be re-released in this new format after the Angmar Awakened cycle.

    I would argue the Ring Maker cycle and perhaps some of the special release stuff like Murder At The Prancing Pony are exceptions, but I think as new players coming into the game, it’s best to simply look forward not backward.

    Now whether you want to track down some of the older releases, pre-re-release is up to you, but if you are going to do it, I highly recommend pretty much everything after and including The Ring Maker cycle but cautioning that you should be ready to wait to finish collections. Very often you can get one or two things from one or another cycle, but rarely is everything available at the same time and as time passes some of this stuff is going to be harder and harder to find. You may end up not being able to finish any given of the older cycles.

    There is some debate among the community whether or not Voice of Isengard is a good expansion or not, FFG seems to think its skippable given they started their re-release schedule with the Angmar cycle but personally I think this is a really good one, worth picking up.

    Looking at the production schedule of FFG, there is absolutely nothing coming from the old sets, so what is out there today may be all that will ever be available. They seem to be very focused on the new stuff, which makes sense of course. They might still surprise us but I would always approach collecting with the information you have at hand.

    What Makes It Tick

    What Makes It Tick: Lord of The Rings LCG Solo : Part I

    The what makes it tick series has become one of the most viewed elements on my site and its also quickly become my favorite type of article to write.  Today we begin yet another What Makes It Tick series on Lord of the Rings the Living Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games.

    Now this is a game I really struggle with and its because it is a brutally hard game, in a sense, anyone playing it is an eternal noob as there seems to be no good way to truly master it.  This is without question what draws me personally to this game and since like so many out there I too am always looking for any tid bit of information, advice or just tips, I thought why not pass on what little I have learned.

    As with all the articles in this series I’m going to assume you are familiar with the game, this series has always been intended for existing players rather than “I want to learn what this is” type of thing.  We are going to start right in the middle with our first article and tackle a tough and common topic of discussion.  The already infamous Adventure Quest “Conflict At The Carrock”

    This is one tough quest and I struggled with it for a very long time before not only beating it but figuring out what the hell your even supposed to do to succeed.  Let’s get right into it!

    Very important note here.  This series is about SOLO play, unaltered, straight up solo play.  Much of this advice would probably be quite different if I was making the assessments for 2 or more players.

    The Lay Of The Land

    Possibly one of the toughest quests in the Shadows of Mirkwood Cycle. It’s all about bringing the beat down on some Trolls!

    Conflict At The Carrock is a 2 stage quest, though this is incredibly deceiving because there is so much more to it then that.   The two stages are Grimbeorn’s Quest & Against the Trolls.   The first stage of the quest, Grimebeorn’s Quest is mostly benign and non-descript.  You set aside the 4 Trolls you will be facing later and to complete the quest you simply need to attain 7 progress.  In the second quest you basically need to defeat these 4 trolls.

    The first quest (Grimbeorn’s Quest) is simple enough but this is where the bulk of the work to be successful in the quest must be completed.  Its not about what it says, but about what it does not say.

    The clue is in the title of the first quest, you want this guy, you need this guy, this guy is your best friend in the Conflict At The Carrock!

    Grimbeorn’s Quest 1
    Setup:     Add The Carrock to the staging area. Remove 4 unique Troll cards and 4 copies of the “Sacked!” card from the encounter deck and set them aside, out of play. Then shuffle 1 “Sacked!” card per player back into the encounter deck.

    Forced: After placing the 7th progress token on Grimbeorn’s Quest, The Carrock becomes the active location. Discard the previous active location from play.

    Against The Trolls Quest 2
    When Revealed: Place the unique Troll cards previously set aside into the staging area.
    Players cannot defeat this stage if there are any Troll enemies in play.

    The core difficulty of Conflict At The Carrock is that the Trolls that drop into the staging area in the second quest, when faced simultaneously are all but impossible to defeat and because they have the same Engagement Cost, if your threat is above theres they will all drop on you simultaneously.  If this happens, In all but the most rarest circumstances, you are probably going to lose in the very round they drop on you.

    Hence the obvious strategy here is to control your threat so that when stage two begins, they remain in the staging area.  While this is definitely part of the strategy, its far from the whole picture.

    The Real Stages of Conflict At The Carrock

    I mentioned that the first quest, Grimbeorn’s Quest, is all about what it doesn’t say though there are some clues given.

    To truly defeat and control Conflict At The Carrock with any reliability you need to accomplish 4 things prior to completing the first stage of this quest.

    First, you must find Grimbeorn the Old and claim him on your side.  He is your 4th hero, a powerful one, especially equipped to help you defeat the Trolls.  Without him, completing Conflict At The Carrock is very difficult to say the least.  Finding Grimebeorn however requires you to go through the Encounter deck and get Bee Pastures to the table.  This brings our second element.

    This is the key to getting your best asset needed to defeat the trolls in stage 2, one of the many hidden “stages” of the first quest.

    Secondly you must control the Encounter top deck.  Whatever deck you build, its vital that you know what the top card of the Encounter Deck is and have the ability to get rid of it.  This is because there are several really tough cards in the Encounter deck that can end your game rather abruptly.  There are various approaches here, the one I ultimately used was Denethor.  This is because he can both look at the top card and move it to the bottom deck if you don’t like it and then in later stages, help defend with his 3 defense.  There are plenty of other ways to do this, suffice to say you must have some encounter deck control.  If you leave it to chance, bad things will happen.

    Kind of a bad guy in the original story, there is nothing bad about him in the game. He was the key to victory for me.

    Cards like Muck Adder can surprise you and take out one of your heroes easily if you are not prepared.  A poorly timed A Frightened Beast can dramatically raise your threat, which is something you really need to control given that you must stay under 34 threat to ensure the Trolls can’t engage automatically when stage 2 arrives.  In fact its more reasonable to say you need to be well under 34 to be successful as you will gain threat during the big fight as well.  Finally you really need to avoid the Sacked & Roasted Slowly combo, its going to end your day in an instance.  Those are just the cards from Conflict At The Carrock to, there is all manor of death in the other decks that are part of the quest including Hill Troll who can do a lot of damage to your threat.

    Instant effects like this would be a lot easier to control if you didn’t have to deal with shadow effect cards. One bad draw and things are going to die.

    The third element needed for success is a good army.  You really need a lot of stuff on the table ready to fight and quest.  Some utility here is also a good idea to assist with all other elements.  You want the units to be cheap, so that you can get them to the table, but fighty so that they can put some damage on the board.  The choice here is wide open, though I personally found that the Leadership and Lore Spheres worked the best here.  You have lots of allies that are cheap enough (2 or 3 resources) and offer great utility like card draws and boosting effects.  The most important part though is getting a good solid force so that you have both some sacrificial lambs and can do sufficient damage to take out one Troll per round which typically means doing about 12-14 damage.  That’s a big damage requirement but between hero’s and Grimebeorn, you should be about 2/3rds of the way there, so your army needs to fill in the rest.

    The final element is what I like to call “fishing for cards”.  This is usually done through different types of utility allies or cards, but you must find the threat control cards in your deck like Gandalf for example to keep that threat down.  Remember you MUST be under 34 threat when you go to stage 2, going there with a threat higher than that is pointless, odds of you getting wiped out in short order are almost 100%.    Hence getting threat control into your hand is a priority and that means drawing cards effects & other effects that allow you to pull cards or filter through them.

    Spirit decks are also very good at controlling threat, I can see using the spirit sphere here with great success as well.

    Ok so you can see why this particular quest is so difficult.  A lot has to come together in order to succeed.

    The optimal position you should be in when going into stage 2 of this quest are as followed.

    1. Below 34 Threat (preferably 30 or bellow)
    2. Sufficient Allies & Heroes on the board to do 12-14 damage per round when attacking.
    3. Grimebeorn is a must in most cases, it helps with the above, but more importantly he can take a lot of damage for you without being sacraficed so your forces aren’t being diminished.

    How I did It

    I’m reluctant to simply post my deck.  I understand that this is a common practice in the community but as I was trying to defeat this quest, I didn’t want someone to just hand me the answer for the test.  This is a game of discovery, its part of the fun and I’m not going to spoil it for you.  I will however give you some tips on cards that where key in the success of this quest.

    I used Leadership and Lore for my two spheres.  While I believe there are many hero’s that can successfully traverse this quest, I believe Denethor was the key to my success.  Really I think this is one of my favorite heroes to use for any tough quest because the truth is that if you can control the Encounter Top Deck, you have given yourself a massive advantage.  It requires him to exhaust however so I always make sure to put something in the deck that allows me to ready him in an emergency.

    Gandalf is was also key to my success mainly for his threat control but he is expensive.  This is partially why I used Leadership, so that I could get Steward of Gondor and ultimately have enough resources to pay for Gandalf.  Its also an important card to get Grimbeorn the Old into play. One alternative is of course to use Sneak Attack to bring out Gandalf.  This is a dirt cheap way to leverage Gandalf but requires the drawing of two cards at the same time, not exactly a reliable way of doing it.  Steward of Gondor is a reliable card that helps with Gandalf and a lot of other things, so with Leadership to me its just an auto add most of the time anyway.

    Finally I think Henamarth Riversong played an important roll, it was just that extra measure of control, Forest Snare can be helpful, though I didn’t use it for the Trolls, but more for controlling the board during the preparation portion of the quest in the first stage.  By the time your fighting the Trolls you shouldn’t need the snare, if you do, something has gone terribly wrong.  Burning Brand was also really important, the Trolls are tough enough without Shadow Effects.

    The Victory

    Beating this quest was not easy, my final score was 182, not exactly a massive victory, but the satisfaction of logging this quest was pure bliss.  It was a tough challenge, even with all the right moves the final stage is still tough.  Those Trolls are tough to beat and you still have to contend with the rising threat, questing and adds that can appear as you fight them.  In the end it was about keeping that threat under 34 and killing the Trolls one at a time.

    As if Conflict At The Carrock was not tough enough, you can use these nightmare version of the Trolls!

    The bet advice I can give when it comes to approaching any quest in Lord of the Rings but in particular this one, is that you have to pay close attention to your loses.  What is the root cause.  Is it threat, is it monsters, is it questing.  Identify it and then adapt your strategy to strengthen that portion of your deck.  I ultimately beat the quest because I didn’t “start over” with an entirely new deck each time I lost.  I simply went back to the deck and made small adaptions.  In the end it took over 15 attempts before I beat the quest, but now I’m certain I could beat it at least half the time which is about as good as it gets with a tough one like Conflict At The Carrock.

    It was a fantastic experience, without question one of my favorite quests so far.  I hope you found this article helpful, good luck in your questing!

    Board Game Reviews

    Lord of the Rings Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games 2011

    Designer: Nate French

    Final Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star Quarter Star(4.25 out 5 Stars)

    Of all the games to make my collection Lord of the Rings the card game might quite possibly be the least likely candidate I could imagine. For one it’s a cooperative game, my least favorite of all table top game genres typically. Secondly it’s a pure card game which is usually not my thing, again generally not always and it’s a collectable card game which is definitely not my thing pretty much always. So how does a game like Lord of the Rings even get a chance from me let alone meet the stringent requirements of my personal collection given it has everything working against it? It’s a long story, but that is what this review and coincidently what the Lord of the Rings the card game is all about.

    Overview

    Lord of the Rings the card game by famed card game designer Nate French can be described as a thematic, progressive collectable card game with a focus on challenging puzzles in the form of quests, challenges that are met through optimized deck building and clever problem solving during game play. Now that is one boring way to describe it, alternatively one can say it’s a card game that lets you play out the entirety of the Lord of the Rings fairy tale by J.R.R Tolkien, and then some, quite possibly one of the most epic fantasy stories ever told through an ever mounting series of mini adventures and expansions.

    Without question the most immediate impact of the game is it's visual appeal, it's stunning.
    Without question the most immediate impact of the game is it’s visual appeal, it’s stunning.

    In Lord of the Rings you build decks around a small group of hero cards that will be the key resources for your group as they take on the adventures right out of the middle earth storylines. You will do everything you might expect from searching for Gollum, escaping Nazguls, fighting at Helm’s deep or facing Sauron in the two towers. Each game of Lord of the Rings consists of taking on a quest, typically as part of a series of quests that achieves one of the core story elements from the book, expanded universe or just the creative minds at FFG. For example in the first adventure series “Shadows of Mirkwood” players are tasked with finding Gollum over the course of six separate adventure packs. Each adventure pack is a separate purchase (of course), hence the collecting, but in addition to providing you with a new quest and quest encounters, you gain new cards for deck building that are thematically linked to the adventure.

    The main difference with Lord of the Rings the Card game and other Living card games from fantasy flight is that it’s purely cooperative but more importantly it can be played solo without losing any of the quality of a multiplayer game.

    Since the game is cooperative, the challenge comes from the quest cards. Collecting these quests is the key to the thematic story element of the game.
    Since the game is cooperative, the challenge comes from the quest cards. Collecting these quests is the key to the thematic story element of the game.

    The game was originally released in 2011 and I actually had an opportunity to try it way back then. I recall noting it was interesting with potential but really needed to be expanded. Well, expanded it has been, in fact it may be one of the most expanded products in the FFG lineup at this point, there is tons of content for this game and its popularity has steadily grown since its humble beginnings. The only question now is whether it’s a game for you.

    Components

    Verdict: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
    Tilt: christmas_star

    Pros: The art work is absolutely stunning and consistent, card and component quality is everything you expect from FFG, top notch.

    Cons: The core set is a bit light on content, you get just enough to capture your interest but not enough to maintain it, expansion is necessary and fairly expensive.

    Take a visual franchise like Lord of the Rings and put it to a company with a near perfect reputation for producing amazing components for games, especially card games and it should come to the surprise of no one that Lord of the Rings the card game components are the highest of quality. Visually the games novelized artwork could have a museum of its own, it’s nothing short of stunning, as is the case with all of the living card games FFG produces. Each card has the appearance of an oil painting, meticulously created to bring it to life. It’s an amazing achievement that FFG is able to maintain such high quality of art work over the course of such an expansive game with so many cards. In fact, I find it mind boggling that anyone can do it with any game, I don’t think people realize how difficult and time consuming this is to do until you actually try to design a game of your own. It’s clearly a big investment on FFG’s part to produce this game and it may explain their dedication and support of it long term.

    The support for Lord of the Rings card game by FFG is exceptional with expansions still rolling out with regularity 5 years after release.
    The support for Lord of the Rings card game by FFG is exceptional with expansions still rolling out with regularity 5 years after release.

    If there is anything to complain about it’s the fact that the game is spread out across dozens of expansions that nickel and dime you to death to gain access, but such is the nature of collectable games. Fortunately with the Living Card Game concept you go into knowing you will never have to buy more than one of anything. You’re not getting abused by the randomness of booster packs, instead with each adventure pack you get everything you ever need from the pack. While each expansion is very reasonably priced for today’s standard, if you’re a completionist be ready to spend hundreds of dollars and continue to spend money regularly to keep up. At some point the game will probably see it’s end of life but even at this point to buy everything you are talking some serious dough.

    Theme

    Verdict: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
    Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_star

    Pros: From evolving campaign arcs to mini stories, from the amazing art to the clever mechanics the Lord of the Rings theme is vibrant.

    Cons:  To really get the full sense of the thematic nature and continuity of the games ongoing story you must expand your set.

    Lord of the Rings is one of those franchises that would be hard to screw up thematically but in my humble opinion most card games, despite having unique artwork on hundreds of cards usually fail to capture themes. Art work is a fantastic start to present a theme, but for a game to feel thematic it needs to have gameplay that is reflective and immersive, especially for a card game which can feel so benign. You really need something that draws you into the theme and urges you to read and explore the game capturing your imagination.

    Thankfully Lord of the Rings the card game does exactly that. Theme really shines in two separate but connected forms here. First, it’s the episodic nature of adventures that take on the form of quests with unique challenges suited to the story it’s portraying, something consistently done throughout the expansions, adventure packs and saga adventures. Each quest is a story and to resolve it, to overcome the challenge, there is some unique mechanic or element that drives it you must leverage or overcome through clever deck building and play. Whether it’s defeating an iconic enemy like a Hill Troll, or tracking down the famed Gollum, every quest in the various adventure packs is unique in some way. Which drives the second part of the games theme, continuity and progression.

    In large part the theme of the game hangs on the progression of the story, but to get that, you have to buy expansion packs and adventure packs. It can get pretty expensive in particular for completionists.
    In large part the theme of the game hangs on the progression of the story, but to get that, you have to buy expansion packs and adventure packs. It can get pretty expensive in particular for completionists.

    There is a sense as you play through different adventure cycles and expansion packs that urges you to play on to see if you can take the next step, and the next. One is a connection to the latter, you move forward through the story and progress through the game as you develop an addiction for it. If you like the game you’ll find that common pull towards buying more of it as you would with CCG’s but it’s not because you are collecting but rather you want to progress your game to the next stage of the games timeline thanks to the wonderful theme and chaining of adventure stories.

    The introduction of Saga expansions and campaign mode have in particular done wonders for this games theme driving the bigger more epic moments of the books more directly. You can play out the hobbit saga or the classic Lord of the Rings Saga and as of this writing they are still continually producing side quests, adventure cycles and deluxe expansions in addition to the continued support to complete the main Saga.

    Simply put the theming here is fantastic and well supported. Whether or not that theme really comes through in the card play is always a question of how you see things. For me personally when I play a card game, in particular a deck builder, my focus really narrows down to abilities on the cards and strategy of play rather than theme. It’s there, the connection of characters and abilities, quests and mechanics all drive the game. The relevance of the theme however in the case of Lord of the Rings is more about the progressions of the quests and the story’s behind the various packs and expansions. If you follow along, play them sequentially there is a lot of fun story to work through. During play though you are likely to be bunkering down on the mechanics and focusing on winning rather than drawing some element of story out of the game.

    There are of course periodic movie moments, in particular if you theme your deck to the quest your running and that is something players do for fun. Typically though you build decks and make decisions to win rather than for theme.

    Gameplay

    Verdict: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
    Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star

    Pros: Easy to learn, impossible to master, LotR LCG offers creative challenges and addictive gameplay.

    Cons:  The core set challenges are bi-polar ranging from introductory adventure to near impossible to defeat quests.  Makes for a poor introduction.

    Lord of the Rings the card game is a unique card game because of its cooperative play, but for me personally this would have normally been a major strike against it. Simply put, I don’t like most cooperative games, in fact, after 20 years of playing and collecting board games I have a grand total of one cooperative game on my shelf beside this one (Fury of Dracula). Typically what I don’t like about cooperative games is that they are usually fairly scripted, a script written by the player who has the greatest knowledge of the game. Often referred to as Alpha gaming, most cooperative games are basically single player games that people play together, making decisions together, and effectively acting as one. I HATE that.

    Cooperative games like descent are essentially 2 player games masquerading as group efforts but in the end there is often that one guy who knows the game and you effectively get your marching orders from him. Alpha gaming is a big problem for many cooperative games.
    Cooperative games like descent are essentially 2 player games masquerading as group efforts but in the end there is often that one guy who knows the game and you effectively get your marching orders from him. Alpha gaming is a big problem for many cooperative games.

    Thankfully this simply does not exist in Lord of the Rings the card game, in fact, most of the cooperation of the game takes place before you actually start playing during deck building. What takes place during the game is cooperation with minimal information, so you make decisions together about what’s on the board but you don’t really know for certain what people are holding in their hand and since you’re not allowed to talk about it by the rules, Alpha gaming is severely hindered.

    The core cooperation really happens when players must construct decks in preparation for the adventure and here you build the synergies, make tactical decisions and strategy of your combined effort. Once the game starts however, everyone is kind of on their own. There is little help you can get in making decisions during the game because no one knows what cards you have and no one is allowed to know. So while you have built synergies into your decks and can assist each other through card play, when and how they are executed is something that happens dynamically by individual choice.

    There is quite a bit of competition in the Living Card game genre even in something as specific as cooperative, progressive, story based living card games. For many I think it will come down to a preferred theme, but Pathfinder is definitely a great contender in the genre.
    There is quite a bit of competition in the Living Card game genre even in something as specific as cooperative, progressive, story based living card games. For many I think it will come down to a preferred theme, but Pathfinder is definitely a great contender in the genre.

    For me personally though I love Lord of the Rings for the fact that it can be played solo and in a big way it’s why it got a second chance with me. Good solo games are hard… one might say nearly impossible to find. In particular thematic games that offer a real challenge in the long term and don’t lose anything because you don’t play it with other people. Lord of the Rings however is as fun to play with a friend or two as it is to play alone. It’s very portable as well which is great for a working/traveling stiff like me who spends a lot of time on trains/planes and hotel rooms.

    Now how is the gameplay? Well to summarize, this game is hard as fuck. Not hard to learn, not hard to play, but hard to win. This is a game made for veteran card players looking for a true challenge and while that doesn’t speak to me directly, what I do like about card games is a semblance of balance. Not necessarily as a game but a type of balance where there are no “useless” cards and there is no counter building, rather every card has a purpose and when leveraged in the right synergy can be game changing and Lord of the Rings has that in spades. Every card is meticulously thought out and combinable in a variety of ways and discovering how to use cards is a big part of the fun. Really, it’s a requirement because each new quest brings new challenges that will require you to go back to your card pool and look for cards that can help you. Coming up with clever ways to defeat quests that often seem simply impossible is part of the challenge of this game.

    Deck building is a critical component of any good collectible card game but you will appriciate the fact that in Lord of the Rings you will build specific decks for specific quests, so there is no "winning deck", there are quest challenge that will always require specific builds to overcome keeping the game fresh and progressive.
    Deck building is a critical component of any good collectible card game but you will appreciate the fact that in Lord of the Rings you will build specific decks for specific quests, so there is no “winning deck”, there are quest challenges that will always require specific builds to overcome keeping the game fresh and progressive as you try to figure it out.

     

    It’s just a perfect fit despite my general genre and game style objections because I love to find a game I can’t beat and have to think and fiddle with it to try and figure it out. I love it when a game occupies my brain space, I find a great deal of satisfaction in solving a good puzzle and I love it when a victory is well deserved. The fact that a game that does that turned out to be a cooperative, collectible card game is weird, but I can’t deny the strength of the game. It’s icing on the cake with Lord of the Rings that when you finally figure out that quest and beat it, there is a hundred more quest puzzles to solve waiting to challenge you.

    Lord of the Rings the card game gameplay is a relatively simple fair even though it has some complexity in how the phases break down. In short during play you will be committing characters and allies you have put into play to either quests or to fighting. While each quest goal is a unique puzzle to solve, the games challenges are always dynamic as the encounter decks, a blending of different challenges, is constructed for each specific quest but resolved in a random sequence each time you play. For example one quest might be to simply produce progress tokens and defeat a specific enemy at the end. However the encounter deck will be constructed from certain location and monster decks, so what you actually face will vary from game to game as well as the order, creating unique obstructions to the default quest. It’s really all about manipulation, judgement calls and timing during play, but the resources you bring with you are the key. As such, it’s as big part of the game to prepare, aka, deck building as it is to actually play the game.

    The game sequence is important as each decision is a commitment of resources without knowing what unique elements might arise in the next sequence. So you might commit two of your heroes to questing, only to discover that the encounter deck produced two monsters that will attack that round, now your short a hero and will suffer for it. Alternatively if you don’t commit the heroes you might end up increasing your threat levels, the sort of game timer that will cause you to lose after you reach a certain point. The end result is trying to prepare for the unexpected, choosing which cards to play now, which to save, which heroes and allies to commit to which task and of course to a degree gambling a little on the limited knowledge you have about each different encounter deck a particular quest might have. The wonderful thing is that there is a card for every problem and as such again, building a deck to compensate for each hurdle is the key. Naturally you can’t prepare for everything but through clever deck building you can successfully complete even the most impossible quests.

    As if the game wasn't tough enough already, those seeking even greater challenges can get the upgraded versions of quests lovingly called "Nightmare Decks".
    As if the game wasn’t tough enough already, those seeking even greater challenges can get the upgraded versions of quests lovingly called “Nightmare Decks”.

    In essence your deck is your main resource for overcoming quests and challenges, you only have what you bring with you. Hence playing a quest for the first time is especially tough, but once you have lost to it two or three times, you’re going to go back to deck building to try to create a combination of heroes, allies, weapons and event cards that will allow you to succeed. Typically most quests you will be able to unravel after a half a dozen or so plays, for the real tough ones it might take you more or less and in some cases quests remain challenging no matter how many times you play them regardless of deck building because of the many dynamic elements in the often tough encounter decks. It’s also worth noting that if you play the game progressively, meaning you play each adventure pack in order and with the cards available to you up to that point, the game is considerably more fun and challenging as you have to work with resources limited to what is available to you in your card pool. It typically gets easier to beat old quests if you use cards from further down the release chain. So for example beating the first adventure cycle using the second adventure cycles cards is going to be much easier than using only cards from the adventure cycle you’re playing in or even tougher if you only use cards from the core set and up to the adventure cycle of the specific adventure.

    At the core of gameplay in Lord of the Rings the card game is discovery, learning about what challenges are in a quest then trying to create a deck that can beat it.

    The end result is a game of making decision before and during play, tough ones. It’s a game that will continually surprise you and cause you to re-think and adapt both during play and during deck building.

    Game-play in Lord of the Rings the card game is challenging, progressive and very thinky as such It’s not something everyone will appreciate, I really do think it caters more to the hardcore gamer crowd that really likes a deep challenge, which fits me just fine, but casual gamers will probably feel overwhelmed and frustrated with the difficulty level.

    There are some pretty sizeable gameplay concerns which I think might turn off a lot of people. For starters, the core set while absolutely necessary, is probably the weakest thing in the game, at least that will be a typical observation. Many reviews reflect this, often referring to the 3 core quests and player cards you get as unbalanced and impossible to beat. The thing is that, this is simply not true. When you approach in particular the 2nd and 3rd quests, they are really going to challenge you and they are in fact very tough to beat but with experience and clever deck building these challenge can be overcome pretty consistently using nothing but the core set cards. It’s something however you will discover long after it frustrates the shit out of you and if you judge the game purely on those early experiences the result is the common consensus about balance issues in the core set most reviewers will mention.

    It's likely new and casual gamers will find the core set quests seemingly impossible to overcome, but if you become dedicated to the game with experiance you are likely to learn to appreciate the challenge.
    It’s likely new and casual gamers will find the core set quests seemingly impossible to overcome, but if you become dedicated to the game with experience you are likely to learn to appreciate the challenge.

    That said I do agree that perhaps the core set should have been made more approachable, in particular when you consider that the first cycle of quest revert considerably. The first expansion in the Mirkwood cycle “The Hung For Gollum” for example is easier then all three of the quests in the core set. It almost feels like a step back in difficulty of the game globally. Then things get more difficult as you progress. Suffice to say I’m not going to invalid the complaints about the core set other than to say as you become more experienced with the game you will learn to appreciate having quests that are in fact very challenging rather than a bunch of freebies that you can beat with your eyes closed.

    As for deck building with the core set, there is some to be had, but deck building doesn’t really emerge fully until you get a few adventure packs so the game feels a bit narrow and closed with just the core set In terms of what you can do with it. Expanding the game in the end is vital to get the full effect of the gameplay, without it, as a core set deck building in Lord of the Rings the card game runs out of steam pretty quickly.

    That said, it’s a foregone conclusion that if you are going to pick up the core set you will buy expanded content and really I would say unless you’re ready to at least purchase the first adventure cycle you can probably skip the game all together. The core set alone does not carry gameplay or give you enough value if that is all you plan to buy. It’s at best an awkward introduction to the game and it will hit and miss with people for that, but the truth is that for a first time introduction I much rather use the first quest of the first adventure cycle than anything that comes in the core set. The Hunt for Gollum is a really great quest to learn with and its difficulty is very manageable.

    Playing the game solo is quite different from playing it cooperatively but both are excellent ways to experience the game. Few games out there can claim that.
    Playing the game solo is quite different from playing it cooperatively but both are excellent ways to experience the game. Few games out there can claim that.

    All and all though I find Lord of the Rings gameplay to be fantastic and I highly recommend it if you are a gamer looking for a good solo game in particular, this really is the best I have played in years. I would also recommend it for Lord of the Rings fans, or fans of cooperative games but be advised that this is a very gamy game, so it’s not something that falls anywhere near the casual arena of games. It would be tough to bring it to a gaming group and say “let’s play” because without deck building the game’s difficulty ramps up considerably, in particular in the core set and teaching someone to play and then promptly asking them to build a deck is asking a bit much of your gaming group. As such the game is a bit less approachable and that’s definitely a strike against it. The core set really should have focused more on making itself casual player friendly to make it easier on fans to introduce it to their gaming group. That said I think most gaming groups that get together regularly won’t find this to be much of an issue.

    Replay ability and Longevity

    Verdict: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
    Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star

    Pros: The game has incredible support from FFG with tons of expandable content for you to choose from.

    Cons: Replay ability hinges on you expanding your set which can get expensive.

    When it comes to replayability Lord of the Rings really hinges on expanding the game. There is definitely some fun to be had with the core set, but given it’s price tag and limited deck building options, I think most gamers will find it runs out of steam pretty fast. Thankfully there is plenty to expand your game with and the content really gets better and better as you progress through the different expansion packs. More importantly though is as you expand the game it opens up new doorways to old quests that you might have trouble with. So as you expand, going back to old content becomes as interesting as starting with the new stuff. There are also a lot of really fun quests in there and everyone will eventually find their favorites that they love to re-play. For example for me The Murder at the Prancing pony is one of the best quests, a stand-alone expansion that I’m happy to replay over and over again. In fact, if you buy no expansions ever, get The Murder at the Prancing Pony because this quest alone is almost a self-contained game worthy of owning Lord of the Rings the Card Game. I personally think it should have been included in the core set, as it is newbie friendly, has some clever mechanics and manages to be fairly challenging but not impossible. It’s really fantastic

    While replay-ability hinges on collecting, there is a lot to collect and if you really get into it, going back on old quests with new cards from different sets opens up new doorways to solving those quest puzzles you couldn't manage to complete before. There is a sense of renewal of the entire game each time you add to your collection.
    While replay-ability hinges on collecting, there is a lot to collect and if you really get into it, going back on old quests with new cards from different sets opens up new doorways to solving those quest puzzles you couldn’t manage to complete before. There is a sense of renewal of the entire game each time you add to your collection.

    There are also many different ways to play the game and as such I think there is a lot of replay ability there. For example trying to beat an entire adventure cycle with the same three heroes, or with the same deck can be a lot of fun. For a real challenge you can link all the quests together into one long game and of course there is the campaign mode introduced in the Saga expansions and nightmare mode.

    As far as replay ability goes I think Lord of the Rings has plenty, but you won’ get it out of the core set in the long run alone and for this reason this score hinges on the assumption that you are going to expand your game. If you don’t mind spending on a collectable game though which is of course the intention of Lord of the Rings the card game, there is a tremendous amount of content to keep you going indefinitely.

    Conclusion

    Lord of the Rings The Card game as far as I’m concerned is a hit and a big surprise to me because I would not have expected to like it as much as I do. It’s relatively simple to teach but difficult to master, it offers a wide variety of challenges both as a deck builder and as a game and it has a great adventure theme that any proper gaming nerd can get behind. I would highly recommend it if you love challenging deck builders and cooperative games and if you are looking for a solid solo game. As a Lord of the Rings fan I think you need to be careful because while your favorite theme is here, it’s really important that you like the genre and game play style here, the theme while fantastic and present in the game is not the core of the game. It’s not a story game despite all the questing and adventure, it’s a pretty tough deck building game.

    In addition to adventure packs, deluxe expansions and saga expansions there are many stand-alone special quests from past events that offer a wide variety of unique challenges from moments in the books.
    In addition to adventure packs, deluxe expansions and saga expansions there are many stand-alone special quests from past events that offer a wide variety of unique challenges from moments in the books.

    I don’t think I would recommend this game to casual players. I think the games difficulty is too high for casual players and they will likely find themselves playing a frustratingly difficult game they always lose. It really requires out of game thought, some personal commitment to understand and study the game to have a chance to win a few games.  In addition, if you stop collecting at the Core Set, I think you will be disappointed, the core set is a beat shallow on content and oddly bi-polar in it’s difficulty range.  For casuals I think this will be a much bigger problem then for card game veterans.

    I think it’s a fantastic cooperative game but I think most cooperative gaming is by design created to be a lot more cooperative than this one. What I mean is that, for most games of Lord of the Rings while you can help each other out a bit, it really is a game about making your own decisions. Alpha gamers will be very frustrated with this game as helping someone make a decision is extremely difficult if you don’t know what cards they are holding and often what appears to be a big mistake is actually a good play because of the cards they are holding. So someone will often take an action and it’s like “oh shit you just lost the game for us”, then suddenly they whip out a card and you realize. “ah.. great move”. After a while you just realize with this game that you have to let people make their plays and sort of build up a cooperative trust.

    This is a fantastic element of the game, but debunks a bit of that cooperative part.

    Needless to say I have developed quite an affection for Lord of the Rings, I find myself playing it quite often and if this continues this will probably end up being one of my most played games of the year. I got into it kind of late, but I actually kind of love the idea that there is tons of content already available and I can pick and choose as my leisure. All of the expansions released today are still in print and available and FFG continues to release new ones.

    Board Game Reviews

    War Of The Rings By Ares Games 2004

    Designers:  Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi, Francesco Nepitello

    War of the Ring is a two player game (though there are some gibberish rules for 3 or 4 players) that depicts the epics story that is The Lord of the Rings.  One player takes the side of the free people’s of middle-earth on a quest to defend the realm while the fellowship of the ring attempts to carry the one ring of power to Mount Doom while the other player takes on the evil forces of Sauron trying to crush the people of middle-earth and re-claim the ring of power.  In a nutshell you are effectively re-writing the history of the Lord of the Rings story in the form of an epic board game with every finite detail from the books and movies imaginable built into the mechanics.

    To say that War of the Ring is anything but one of the most thematic games ever made would be a major understatement.  It IS the story of the Lord of the Rings and every mechanic, every card, every action and every nuance of the game reeks of the middle-earth theme.  I have played many Lord of the Rings board games, card games and miniatures games but none come even close to capturing the story with as much gusto and detail as War of the Rings.  War of the Rings however isn’t just an amazing re-telling of the story in board game form, it’s actually mechanically one of the most intuitive two player board games I have ever played.  The game is epic in scale, which means that you can expect a game to last at least 4 hours. There is no question that to tell a story like that of Middle-Earths great conflict depicted in the Lord of the Rings books and movies, nothing short of epic board game would do it justice and as such it’s one of the very few long games I think is worth every moment of time spent playing it.

    A collectors edition exists for true fans, though the hefty price tag will likely have you running for the hills.
    A collectors edition exists for true fans, though the hefty price tag will likely have you running for the hills.

    There are many clever way’s the story is depicted mechanically in the game, most notably the all-important story of the fellowship of the ring.  From movement of the fellowship itself, with the evil forces always at their heels, the corruption of the ring and how each character and villain is represented with his own card and figure, all making plays as the fellowship moves towards Mount Doom.  You have a clear sense of the journey, an important part of the story.  These characters are used to support the fellowship itself in various ways but can leave the fellowship for various tasks like rallying the people of middle-earth or even directly leading critical battles on the game board.  Suffice to say that these mechanics, the characters, they all do what you hope they could in this game, giving the characters of the Lord of the Rings story as much relevance in the great war as they do in the books.

    Then there are the amazing event cards, each depicting scenes and story elements of the books and movies, tied to the mechanical advantages they yield to each player, ones that feel thematically correct, each more epic than the last.  These cards not only help to tell the tale but there use is critical to each side winning the game as they depict important events in the story, they also bestow powerful advantages.  Often despite the great war happening on the army filled map of middle-earth that is the game board these cards turn battles with a single play and sway the flow of power.

    Finally there is the amazing use of specialty dice, the precious resource that determines what sorts of actions will be available to you from round to round.  While sometimes unwieldy, the dice themselves shift the focus of the game and allow for maneuvers, tactical and strategic decisions that give each game despite being setup identically each time a completely unique feel.  Each play of the game ends up being definitively a different version of the story as a result.  It’s often like watching the movies but with alternative story arches that pull you towards unique side story’s you would not expect, but still fit like a puzzle piece into the story and the game as a whole.  It’s amazing how in each game I have played different area’s become the focal parts of the story.

    You also have events being tracked via the very important political tracker, which is a critical element to the game making things much more difficult for the free peoples player.  In essence most of the nations in the game are reluctant to join the war and this political track represents this element of the story in the game.  This basically means that despite the evil player being able to quickly push his forces to war and start raising armies, as the free people’s player you must first rally all the nations to the cause before you can take advantage of the weight of their armies.  This is difficult and forces the free peoples player to make hard choices between using his companion characters to protect the ring, or to send them out to rally the nations to war (yes just like in the books!).  Yet another wonderful mechanic that puts the players to making endless streams of important decisions while always thematically bringing out the Lord of the Rings story.

    The question of balance (equal chance of winning) is often discussed in this game and I will grant the nay sayer’s that the Free People of Middle Earth side is a bit tougher to win with, at least in the sense that the war itself is obviously rigged. The free people have a limited amount of time to succeed in getting the ring to Mount Doom before they are crushed by the forces of evil militarily.  The evil forces outnumber you greatly and have an unlimited re-supply of combat units that floods the board turn after turn.   It so happens now and again that the evil player blunders by mismanaging his resources opening the window to make a rare military victory but in most games the free people must get the ring to Mount Doom and they must do so under the overwhelming forces of evil.  It’s tough, perhaps tougher to win for the free people but the more you learn about the nuances of the game the less impact this slight imbalance has on game play.  Two veteran players of the game stand a pretty equal chance of winning in my opinion, the divergence comes largely from inexperienced players as the actions of the player controlling the evil forces of Sauron has more room to make errors than the free peoples player.

    I think the main difference between playing the two sides is that one player, the free peoples player dictates the direction of the game for both players.  Another words  if the free peoples player focuses on moving the fellowship, his opponent must respond, if the free peoples player gets aggressive with cards, the opponent must respond, if the free peoples player gets aggressive in the war, again, his opponent must respond.  In a way whenever the forces of Sauron lead the action by pushing a strategy not opposing the one the free people’s player is deploying, they are at a disadvantage as any action that isn’t a direct response to the tactics of the Free People player will typically result in him having a very easy time of executing it successfully.  As such one side is more responsive while the other directs the action.

    A good example is moving the ring.  The Sauron forces player must dedicate his action dice to the hunt, if he does not, the result can be that the Fellowship moves very quickly to Mount Doom unharmed.  If he does however commit action dice to the hunt, he gets fewer actions which in turn buys the people of middle-earth time to rally their forces as the free peoples player can simply choose not to move the fellowship if it’s too dangerous without affecting his action dice resources.  As such, the evil forces must be wary of what the good people of middle-earth are trying to accomplish and making smart decisions when to try to block a strategy and when to recognize it as a rouse to buy time.

    The strategic elements and choices players in the course of the game make create an amazing array of cause and effect, it’s almost a game that combines bluffing and miss direction at times, where you make sacrifices to get your opponents attention in one place as you sneak it an action that will help you win in the long term.  The subtlety and nuances of this game take time to pick, it’s very likely that if you play against someone who has played before you may play several games before you can beat him.  It’s worth the trip however, as the game rewards you over and over with amazing story’s of that time when you played War of the Rings.

    If it’s not only clear that this game gets my highest recommendation, than let me re-affirm it, if you love the Lord of the Rings as much as I do, this game belongs in your collection.  There are no better games on the market that depict the Lord of the Rings story, in fact, this one is so far ahead of the pact you will find that once you play this, all other Lord of the Rings games seem very flat by comparison.

    One game to rule them all, War of The Rings.