2014BracketMORIA — As we reported yesterday, the bracket is finalized and the match-ups are set. Our annual Middle-earth March Madness is now underway!

A note on voting: This is a tongue-in-cheek attempt to ‘crown’ a victor of Middle-earth. Each one of you will participate in your own manner. Some may take it very seriously and do your homework to try and scholarly determine who would actual win the battles. Some of you will simply vote based on popularity. Heck, some of you will vote randomly! However you participate, we encourage you to have fun with it.  We encourage you to make your case for a certain combatant in the comments, our forums, Facebook or twitter.

For those of you confused by some of the names, educate yourself by simply googling the name. We found that Wikipedia has a plethora of information on each character/object.

Voting ends at 10pm ET on the final day of the round. In this case, voting for the first round match-ups will end on March 20th. We will then calculate the winners, and post a new bracket on March 21st.

Need a bigger version of the bracket? [Click here]



The Lonely Mountain – Round 1
March 17th – March 20th 2014










Bag End – Round 1
March 17th – March 20th 2014










Erebor – Round 1
March 17th – March 20th 2014










Mirkwood – Round 1
March 17th – March 20th 2014











A note on the selection process. TORn staffers got 32 votes to distribute as they saw fit across nearly 100 names. Some staffers are very fond of Silmarillion, some of the Hobbit and others of LOTR, and voted for their favorites. From the results was born the list of 64, who were then distributed across the 4 hobbit-centric areas, as you see. Unlike last year, Legolas did make the cut this year!