Hello everyone! Fall is finally here and is already moving along at quite a clip! Before time gets ahead of this busy, busy Took I wanted to announce a new contest on the blog. Read below for more:

This time last year I did a little post about some of the darker pieces of art in our card game. Filled with spiders, haunted hallways, and menacing shadows, the post was about everything evil and unsettling. Wanting to make it a somewhat regular affair, I decided, this year, to turn it away from me and onto you all, the readers (with some reward at the end, of course).

The idea is simple. At the bottom of this post I will lay out a series of illustrations from various Lord of the Rings artists. All you need to do is pick one of the pieces and turn it into a custom card. The twist is the custom card must be an encounter card, whether you decide to make it a quest, enemy, location, etc. is entirely up to you! If you have the ability, feel free to use photoshop or a program such as Strange Eons to generate the card.

Once you made the card, send the image along with any explanation you may have, to secondhandtooklotr@gmail.com with the subject line “October Art Contest.” I will accept e-mails until Monday, October 24th around 6:00 Eastern Standard Time. At that point I will post all of the images on facebook and from there I will institute a voting system (either through number of likes or strawpoll) to determine the winner. My goal, whatever the voting system is, is to announce the winner on Halloween which is Monday, October 31st!

UPDATE: I quickly realized that a lot of people would want to submit multiple entries. After all, who doesn’t love creating custom cards? To keep a long story short, feel free to submit 1, 2, or several custom cards however you see fit. I will work on my end to make sure the selection process is fair but I mostly want people to just have fun!

So what is all of this for? What do you get out of it?

A Custom Play Mat!

Jake Murray, who I’ve covered on the site before, is working with me to create a custom piece of Lord of the Rings related artwork to be printed onto a play mat. I was a big fan of his depiction of Gollum from Dungeons Deep and Caverns Dim Nightmare. Going off of that and a few other ideas, here is the final product:

To pull a couple words from Jake as he worked through creating this piece, this depiction “explores a different situation and deeper characterization” of the tragic villain. Gollum is the only thing in full detail, with everything else quickly fading into obscurity. As Jake said “the scariest things are always the things we can’t very well see at all.”

The play mat will be standard size, so you can use it for your Lord of the Rings, Magic, Game of Thrones, and similar games as you see fit.

Now, onto the contest art. Below I’ve posted the individual illustrations, the artist’s name, the title of the piece, and where you can find it (if able). Remember, all of these artists have done work for Lord of the Rings, so if you like what they do go check them out! Also, at the bottom of this post I will list the artists with links to their page on Hall of Beorn so you may see what cards they’ve done!

Grenzo, Dungeon Warden by Lucas Graciano – From Magic: The Gathering



El Huesped de Dracula (The Guest of Dracula / Dracula’s Guest) by Sebastian Giacobino



Death by Ryan Barger – From Magic: The Gathering



Land of the Living Skies by Joel Hustak



If you have any questions about the contest, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me on the address I posted up above. You’re also welcome to ask questions in the comment or on my facebook page (basically however you want to reach out).

Before I post the Artist’s Hall of Beorn links I wanted to take a moment to say thank you, again, to this wonderful community. WordPress was kind enough to remind me today that it’s been another year since I’ve started this blog. So much has happened in my life, professionally, personally, and everything in between (all mostly good!) that it’s crazy for me to think that it’s only been two years since I decided to ramble on about the Lord of the Rings: Card Game. Because of the blog, and this game, I’ve gotten to meet a few very wonderful people and as the community grows I’m getting to know even more! I’ve said this before on similar posts (and it’s a thought that’s been echoed on many other blogs and podcasts) but we are fortunate to have one of the best communities around. We’re not the largest, and that may be a contributing factor, but the type of player that is drawn to this game is the type of player that makes me proud to be a gamer. So, taking advantage of the coincidental timing of this post, consider this contest a “thank you” to the community and to all the wonderful people who play this game. Ok, enough cheesiness.

Check out the artist’s links below and good luck with the contest!

Lucas Graciano

Sebastian Giacobino

Ryan Barger

Joel Hustak

A.M. Sartor

Dimitri Bielak

Crystal Sully

John Stanko

Carolina Eade