The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is an LCG published by Fantasy Flight Games.  And its a damn fine game!

I posted in the past about some of the problems I had with Magic.  Despite my specific problems with Magic, one of things I liked was the feeling of building your own deck from a pool of cards and then testing that deck against other decks.  This is part of the reason why I have been enjoying Hearthstone.

Lord of the Rings LCG is another great example of a game which gives me that deck construction feeling while avoiding the pitfalls that Magic has.

Land as mana
As with Hearthstone, Lord of the Rings LCG avoids the issue with having land as mana by giving you 1 resource for each Hero at the start of each round (you normally have 3 heroes although this can depend on how you build your deck).  If one of those heroes dies, then you don't get resources for that hero.

Again, this removes a major source of irritation from the game while still forcing you to consider whether you will have enough resources to play the cards you want to play.

Living Card Game
The LCG format which FFG have adopted differs from CCGs like Magic in that there is no random distribution of cards.  If you buy the main core boxed set, you know exactly what cards you will be getting.  Similarly, each expansion of the game has the exact same cards in it.

This removes one of my biggest complaints about CCGs.  I hate the idea of buying booster packs in the hope that you get a useful card.

Co-operative
And this is where we get to what makes this game fascinating for me.  Unlike other CCGs, Lord of the Rings LCG is actually a co-operative game.  You build your deck and then take it up against a pre-built encounter deck.

This is a brilliant idea and frankly, I'm surprised that this hasn't been done more often.

Each pre-built encounter designed by the developers can be designed to have a different challenge.  This also forces you to build your deck differently for each challenge as an "uber deck" is unlikely to be structured in the right way to beat a particular challenge.  At the same time, the game is open enough that you will have different ways to beat that challenge.  And the LCG format of the game means that you have the cards and options that you need to defeat the game - its just a question of whether you can build the right deck (well, you also need to actually play the deck and win with it).


Overall, another great game which I have only just started to get into.  The game was first published in 2011 so there are already a million expansions and adventure packs that I can choose from.  All I need now is time...