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In my opinion The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is very difficult for new players attempting to get into it for the first time to work out what is needed to get started.

The game itself is already ridiculously complicated.

In fact trying to work out which products to buy is a sneak preview of the amount of mental taxation that will be paid trying to learn the rules and build a deck.

Fantasy Flight Games have already released so many different packs of cards over the last 13 years, and then changed the way they wanted to package them up. There have then been re-releases, and product discontinuations, and a second core box that is a pre-requisite to playing anything at all, and then to “help” players with deckbuilding, there are four new starter packs containing random cards pulled from all different past releases.

It also doesn’t help that FFG continue to display every single release on their store page even if they are all out of stock and will never be reprinted.

As I said, It is a mess.

So,

I am not a veteran player, but I am a veteran buyer, and so I thought throwing this page up here might be useful for anyone else out there with money to spare, but not so much that they will drop ~£750 on all the content in one go¹.

There are a lot of sites out there already that give an overview (and far more), such as Vision of the Palantir, Hall of Beorn, RingsDB etc, but I feel that they contain a bit too much information, and they are tailored more towards players who started collecting the game before the repackaging and discontinuation of some products.

Does somebody brand new to the game really need to know that the archetype support for the Ered Mithrin campaign expansion is “Dale/Woodmen/Beorning/Silvan/Dwarf”?

Or is it necessary to detail the contents of a box that will never be reprinted?

Also it is worth me mentioning now that some cards will be unavailable to you. Not everything is being reprinted and repackaged. You may need to source these yourself from the usual price-gougers if you really want them.

For example, Thorin Oakenshield is a hero from the Hobbit saga expansion, but FFG have decided not to reprint that saga, and as Thorin is not included in any starter decks or other repackaged expansions, you’re out of luck there².

Revised Core

You need to buy this revised core box regardless, so it should always be your first basket addition. Do not worry about the old core set. That is discontinued and doesn’t contain as many cards as the revised edition. Just pretend it doesn’t exist, like FFG do.

The revised core box contains three scenarios:

• Passage Through Mirkwood
• Journey Along the Anduin
• Escape from Dol Guldur

It contains all 91 of the encounter cards required to play these three scenarios. That is to say that it contains all the location, boon, trechery, objective, and enemy cards needed to build the encounter deck. There are also 13 quest cards that instruct you on how to play through these scenarios.

It also contains over 200 player cards that you can use to build your deck and get started playing through these scenarios. That includes 12 heroes across the four spheres (tactics, spirit, lore, leadership), including fan favourites like Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, as well as some others that no one has heard of because FFG made them up, like Beravor, Eleanor.

These player cards will be able to build you a pretty solid deck to tackle the first two scenarios contained in this box. The final scenario, Escape from Dol Guldur, is well-known to be a difficult one, and a more advanced deck made of up cards from other expansions is probably going to be required, especially as a new player. The usual recommendation is for new players to just skip this scenario if it proves too difficult to beat with your limited card pool.

Finally, cards aside, it also contains the four threat dials, and all the resource, hit point, and progress tokens you’ll need to record the state of the game. I mean you don’t technically need these, but then again technically you don’t need any of this and can just play online or in your head, right?

So, to recap, buy the revised core set.

The Dark of Mirkwood

The Dark of Mirkwood is a scenario pack. It contains an extra two scenarios that can be played as an extension to the original three scenarios in the revised core set, if you like, or on their own.

You do not get any new player cards in this pack. Just the scenarios:

• The Oath
• The Caves of Nibin-Dum

The pair form a short campaign where you go chasing through Mirkwood after goblins. If you’ve become bored with just the first the scenarios from the revised core box, you should probably get this pack, but it’s not essential.

You can skip it if you either don’t care about these scenarios or are just after some new player cards to expand your card pool.

The Fellowship of the Ring Saga

So far, so uncomplicated. This is where things can get a bit confusing. The Fellowship of the Ring is not new content. It is repackaged content from yesteryear.

For new players, like me, that is not a problem. You just ignore all the stuff that is contained in this expansion, which means you do not need to get:

• The Black Riders
• The Road Darkens

You get these two in this single expansion box.

This saga expansion contains six new scenarios that follow the first of the Lord of the Rings books.

You also get 77 new player cards to add to your deck-building card pool. These include new heroes like Gandalf, Sam, Merry, Pippin. The heroes are very Hobbit-focused, which makes sense, as this expansion is all about the Hobbits, and we already have the heroes Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas from the revised core box.

The Two Towers Saga

The Return of the King Saga

The Elves of Lorien

The Dwarves of Durin

The Defenders of Gondor

The Riders of Rohan

TO BE CONTINUED…

« Tabletop Games

17th November 2024