Information

Players: 1-2
Play Time: 30-90 mins
Price of the Core Set: $39.95 (Guessing £29.99 in UK)

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a cooperative card game that puts 1-2 players (or up to four with two Core Sets!) in control of the most powerful characters and artifacts of Middle-earth. Players will select heroes, gather allies, acquire artifacts, and coordinate their efforts to face Middle-earth’s most dangerous fiends. By cooperating to overcome the obstacles drawn from the encounter deck, you will complete the quest before you and claim victory!

The Core Set includes 216 cards that can be used to assemble a wide variety of decks right out of the box. Included are four perilous scenarios that, along with countless combinations of settings and enemies, offer near-limitless replayability. Additionally, players can build a party from a set of 16 hero cards, and focus their decks on any combination of four distinct spheres of influence: Leadership, Lore, Spirit, and Tactics. Each sphere offer unique benefits to the party, so choose wisely!

Example Game

Example Cards

Conjecture

Hey all, thought I'd start a similar thread here to the one I have in the Warhammer: Invasion forum as I'm thinking about getting into this game too. I'll be adding quite a bit of speculation/information to this thread over the course of the day, so keep checking back, but I'll start by posting some conjecture over the example game they've shown us:

Example Game Conjecture

Please follow this link to view an annotated image of the example game: img217.imageshack.us/img217/9162/conjecture1.jpg

Shadow Card Conjecture

Please follow this link to view an annotated image of the example shadow cards: img822.imageshack.us/img822/9898/shadowconjecture.jpg

Free Peoples Card Conjecture

Please follow this link to view an annotated image of the example free people cards: img265.imageshack.us/img265/4597/goodconjecture.jpg

Card Types

Heroes - Already seen

Allies - Already seen

Attachments - I'm guessing the Horn is the discard pile in the example game is an Attachment. The fact that it most probably stays in play, and has an icon in the top left of the card similar to Allies suggests that Attachments also have a cost.

Events - I'm guessing the card on the top of both the Shadow players and player 2's discard piles are Event cards with the name of the card up the side of the card as opposed to across the top. There seems to be an icon in the top left hand corner of the card, and this icon is different depending on whether it is a free people or shadow event. From this I'm guessing events are either free, or playing events is likely to modify threat.

Encounters - I'm guessing the landscape card in the Shadow player's area is an Encounter card.

Rules Conjecture

- Damage is marked by Wound tokens, meaning there is one type of token in the core set that has not yet been explained. From Thorin's text i'm guessing the second is resource token.

- There is an area of the board for the Shadow player known as the Staging Area, where the Goblin Sniper can use its first effect.

- The text on Goblin Sniper suggests that players can take damage. Either players have a life total, or more likely the effect functions like indirect damage in Warhammer and is assigned by a player to his Heroes or Allies.

Looks interesting but I don't know that I can afford another card game. :-(

The_Big_Show said:

I'm in the same boat. Except I also must buy Death Angel. And Dungeon Quest. And Blood Bowl. And Civilization. And Cadwallion. And Dust Tactics.

Looks like I'm gonna have to sell a kidney.

The nice things about LCG is its a fixed amount both cards and cost wise every month, easily budgeted.

Do you think that since they are "starting" this as a LCC that the core set will have 3 or however many might be in a deck already; or would you have to buy 2 core sets etc. I know it says 2 core sets are for 4 players. I am assuming that any monthly pacs would be 60 if there is a limit of 3 of the same type card in a deck.

This game looks awesome! A collectible game I can play alone? And it's also co-op? And set in Middle Earth? SOLD! I'm really interested to see how threat level works.

Drakson said:

We already know the packs will be 60 cards, which is 20 cards, 3 copies each as per all the LGC lines. Core sets are not likely to be 3 of as none of the others are or have any plans on becoming.

Toqtamish said:

However, with the cooperative format it's likely that the game may contain some cards that do not have to be three-ofs (the landscape card in the example game for instance I'm assuming wouldn't be run in multiples). I wouldn't be suprised if a pack contained 3 copies of 19 cards, then 3 single cards the game only needs one of to bring it to 60 or something similar.

And while the three main game Core Set boxes aren't three-of-each-card, the Expansion boxes are being changed to the 3-of-each-card, so I remain hopeful that we may see this collation in the Core Set, but again this is entirely dependant on both what FFG want to do with the game mechanically, and how important it will be to have three of every card in a cooperative game.

Hopefully some of our guesswork will soon be fixed once Gencon gets in swing.

Yeah, it's tragic that when they finally change the expansion pack format to 3x, they release a game that doesn't need it.

too early to say for sure if 3 of is needed or not.

We should know more soon its official on FFGs main page about Gencon:

Want to team up with your friends to defend Middle-earth against the forces of evil in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game? Demo both titles in the main exhibit hall!

so anyone at gencon demo please and post to those of us stuck back home.

Since my wishes of being able to one day replace Morrigan with Cassandra in my avatar window have gone unfulfilled thus far, perhaps I could have a Galadriel avatar instead...

There is some really good info in this thread

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/551101/comments-from-someone-at-gencon-who-got-to-play-th/page/1

and here

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/552001/after-a-30-minute-demo-at-gencon-this-might-be-the/page/1