The Lord of the Rings

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The Story

As most people know, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is a series of books written by J.R.R. Tolkien in the 1930's-1940's. Nominally, they are the story of a young Hobbit named Frodo Baggins as he travels across Middle Earth bearing the evil One Ring. His mission is to cast it into the fires of Mount Doom in the land of Mordor before the Dark Lord Sauron takes it back and becomes an unstoppable evil force dominating all the races of Middle Earth.

On this journey, Frodo is assissted by several other characters, the so-called Fellowship of the Ring. They help him survive the first part of the journey, but are sundered as the temptation of the power of the Ring begin to poison their minds. From this point forwards, Frodo and his faithful friend Samwise Gamgee carry on alone, while the other characters go off into the rest of Middle Earth to do what they can in the battle against Sauron's military forces.

Strategy Articles

Two Towers & Open Format Decks
The Two Towers block and Open format blocks revolve around the Two Towers movie. Fellowships tend to be larger, as does the Shadow Pool. Minions are bigger, and more powerful, as is the concept of site control: an obnoxious last minute add-on to a game if I've ever seen one.
Anyway, I have played only a limited amount with the newer cards, but have found a couple of strategies I like. The key one involves a large mixed Fellowship (though no Gandalf, which is unusual for that style) utilizing the Hunter's text and Unbound Hobbits (Merry and Pippin), set up across from Isengard trackers. The basic deck outline is here along with some details on how to play it.

Among other things in TTT environment, I have tried Rohan and Dunland cultures. Dunland should not exist, and might as well not with archery, and is, in my opinion, the new Moria. Rohan on the other hand is quite useless, as their people are constantly giving up unreasonable amounts of Shadow and are hard-pressed to win fights against even the modest 8 or 9 strength minions that make up the low end of the range now. Overall, I have not been impressed with them. Don't bother.

Fellowship Block Decks
The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game, in the Fellowship Block form, focuses on the first book, with the concept of the Fellowship protecting Frodo as he journeys towards the end goal: taking the Ring to Mordor. The goal of the game is primarily about either allowing your Frodo to reach the last site or ensuring that no one else's Frodo can accomplish the same feat first. This is important, but it turns out that the game actually has two primary points with which each card interacts, and these are not killing Frodo or keeping him alive. These are more or less inherent to each card, as all of the Shadow cards, either directly or indirectly, work to hurt the Fellowship and therefore the Ring-bearer, and all the Free Peoples cards do the opposite. Rather, the game focuses on two other aspects: the Shadow Pool, and card cycling.

The Shadow Pool is the most important element in the game. The less Shadow tokens that a the Free Peoples player adds, the less they can be hit with from the Shadow players (unless, of course, the Shadow players have methods for adding Shadow). As a result, the game has been balanced such that a Fellowship should only be hit with Shadow strength that is relative to the strength of the Fellowship. There are however breaks in this trend. The strongest strategy against a small Fellowship in a two player game is a Moria swarm deck, as it can capitalize on even a small amount of Shadow. The strongest Shadow side that I have found against large Fellowships is actually not a minion strength strategy. The end result of a large Fellowship is that it is difficult to utilize all of the Shadow they generate during a two player game. In multiplayer it is less of an issue, but in two player, the best approach to stopping a large Fellowship is through direct damage, burdening, and/or movement limitation. This is most effectively managed through a combination of Sauron Orc and Uruk-Hai, although I have considered trying a variant with Isengaard Orcs. For an idealized Shadow side for Moria swarm, click here. If you would rather look at ideas relating to stopping large Fellowships, click here.
Of course, the Free Peoples side also has strategies relating to the Shadow Pool. The best approach I have found is a Shadow denial approach relying heavily on the two companion Fellowship concept. It has been quite successful in both two player and multi-player games. Of course, it has also had its losses, but what's the point of a game in which you are guaranteed to win? For a deck outline of my current Shadow denial deck (Ranger Running) and a description of a game played with it, click here.

I will address card cycling second, as it is affected directly by the Shadow Pool, but does not affect the Shadow Pool directly. If the Shadow Pool is not of sufficient size, then a deck cannot cycle effectively, as Shadow cards become stuck in a player's hand. Deck cycling is critical, as it allows a player to more fully utilize either the Free Peoples or the Shadow strategies within the deck. If a deck does not cycle well, then there is less chance of being able to employ either strategy well enough to defeat an opponent. Again, the strongest overall culture with regard to deck cycling is Moria Orcs, making them an extremely common and somewhat unbalanced culture within the game, as they have significant numbers of cards that are both useful and stay close to the foci of the game, as just described. However, the Realms of the Elf-Lords did improve the ablity of the Isengaard culture to cycle, as it provided some cards that help Uruk-Hai to dump cards from the hand, as well as providing the Isengaard Orcs, who depend signigicantly on low-cost events that can provide easy cycling for that race as well.
Click here for a Moria cycling deck. For ideas on card cycling within the other cultures, visit this page.

Alternate Play Approaches

My roommates and I sometimes feel like the LotR TCG is getting close to played out, that the general game is too simplistic or too unbalanced. As a result, we have come up with a couple of potential modification approaches that can be used to make the game a little more complex.

The most simple approach is to slightly extend the Adventure Path. Our approach to this is to use two site 4 locations and 2 site 7 locations, balancing extensions of the path with Sanctuary locations. This allows players slightly more flexibility in picking decks, as they will have a little more time to cycle and use things against opponents. The sites were chosen because they are not as traumatic for the Fellowship to move through, hence probably not overextending the Free Peoples abilities. Despite this, both Site 4 and 7 provide significant abilities for the Shadow side to activate special abilities or trigger defensive actions that can make it a little easier to stop the Fellowship. These sites play as if they were normal sites, and players, to avoid confusion, should play with some indicator about which one should be hit first and which hit second.

Another variant is solid Shadow/solid Free Peoples decks. The rules variations for such a game type are more completely detailed here. This variant can be played either in one-on-one play or in multiplayer.

The Movie

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie is, in my opinion, one of the best movies produced. Period. Overall, I was extremely impressed with the landscapes and Peter Jackson's use of the New Zealand countryside to create a convincing Middle Earth that was, by turns, both foreboding and beautiful. In addition, the CGI effects to create such features as the Pillars of the Kings at Argoneth and the Dwarven City of Dwarrowdelf were seamless, creating wonders in the world that were breathtaking but had an air of reality about them.

I also appreciated the fact that most of the cast were relatively obscure actors, as this made the characters more convincing. One didn't have to think that this was "Harrison Ford playing Jack Ryan which used to be Alec Baldwin," but could accept the character more completely as "Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Isildur's Heir" or the like. For the most part, even the more recognizeable actors, such as Liv Tyler, Ian McKellen, and Cate Blanchett were well costumed, put in a fitting setting, and cast well enough to the role they played that they did not detract from the film either. The one exception to this was Hugo Weaving, previously of fame as Agent Smith in the Matrix, leading to the humorous but distracting crossover quote "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson."

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