“None can foretell what will come to pass, if we take this road or that. But it seems to me now clear which is the road we must take.” –Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

Click on the above thumbnail to download the FAQ (pdf, 13.7 MB).

As a cooperative Living Card Game®, The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game functions differently than competitive LCGs. You work with your friends against an encounter deck, or you play by yourself. This means that, as a The Lord of the Rings player, you interact with a different sort of metagame than you would while playing a competitive card game. This cooperative metagame isn’t driven by players’ relentless and creative efforts to gain advantages in a tournament environment, but by your desires to enjoy clarity and a sense of adventure as you endeavor to overcome the challenges of new scenarios.

For the most part, then, the metagame for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is self-policing; if you don’t like how a card works or interacts with the scenarios that you’re attempting to beat, you can simply choose not to play it. However, as the game grows, issues sometimes arise that merit further clarification or balance. It is to address these situations that the developers have updated the game’s FAQ (pdf, 13.7 MB).

The Developers on What’s New in the FAQ?

The design team for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is deeply grateful to all of you who play our game, and it is our goal to provide you with many rewarding gaming experiences for years to come. To that end, we have updated our FAQ to answer some common questions, clarify a few rules, and issue some necessary errata to a small handful of cards.

It has been nearly one year since our last FAQ update. In that time, the game has grown significantly, and a number of rules issues have arisen that deserve closer attention.

In order to address some of those rules issues, we have issued errata to nine cards. While this may seem like a lot, the vast majority of these changes were made only to clarify how the card is intended to function. For example, the treachery cards Counter-attack (Assault on Osgiliath, 106) and Impenetrable Fog (The Morgul Vale, 157) both received errata to add the word “either” to their effects. This was only to make it more clear their effects give players a choice. Likewise, the word “then” was edited out of the second line of The Power of Mordor (Heirs of Númenor, 61) so that players would still be required to reveal encounter cards for the second part of the card’s effect even if the first part was not fully resolved.

Sometimes, though, in order to preserve the long term health of The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, it is necessary to restrict a card’s effect, and this FAQ issues errata to a few cards in order to balance them within the context of a growing card pool.

Will of the West (Core Set, 49) is the backbone of every endless loop in the game, and while the design team acknowledges how much fun it can be to discover endless loops when deck-building, we also recognize that they can cheapen the game by taking away meaningful decisions. In order to balance Will of the West and keep as much of its original effect as intact as possible, it is now removed from the game after it resolves. This way, players can still use its effect to recycle their decks, but only once per copy of Will of the West.

A Elbereth! Gilthoniel! (Shadow and Flame, 132) is another card whose potential uses exceed its intended effect. Formerly titled O Elbereth! Gilthonial!, A Elbereth! Gilthoniel! has received errata to its title as well as its game effect. Its ability to place an enemy that just attacked you on the bottom of the encounter deck is an exciting way to deal with a Black Rider (The Black Riders, 39) or a Mumak (Heirs of Númenor, 54), but it was never intended to allow players to get rid of “boss” enemies like the Witch-king or the Balrog. As a result, the design team has edited A Elbereth! Gilthoniel! to work only against non-unique enemies. This simple edit allows the card to continue to function the way it was intended, and without warping the game.

The ability provided by A Watchful Peace (Heirs of Númenor, 12) to recur locations that should go to the victory display upsets the balance of various scenario designs. Therefore, A Watchful Peace now reads: “Response: After a location worth no victory points leaves play as an explored location...” This change ensures that when a location with victory points is explored, it will be added to the victory display.

Finally, Blue Mountain Trader (The Dunland Trap, 6) was designed to be an interesting card in multiplayer because of its ability to change control from one player to another. However, as written, its action allows players to move resources from hero to hero in an unlimited fashion that makes managing your heroes’ resources almost inconsequential. As a result, the design team has added the limit of “Once per round” to the Blue Mountain Trader in order to prevent its abuse while still allowing players the ability to trade control.

In addition to these errata, the FAQ tackles a number of other rules issues in the Rules Clarifications and Q&A segments. The design team is confident that these updates will improve each player’s understanding and enjoyment of The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. Thank you for playing!

–Caleb Grace and Matthew Newman

Thanks, guys!

The new FAQ for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is now available on the game’s support page, as is a low-res printer-friendly version. Download your copy today.