This letter comes to us from ElfStone, who is having a difficulty keeping up with all of the rules and changes to Decipher’s Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game. Take a read:
Dear Havens,
I have seen the link to voice my opinions many times on Gaming Havens and finally decided it was time to make my voice heard.
Last year at the TOR.n oscar party I received two starter decks, for the trading card game, in my goodie bag and grabbed a handful of booster packs from a large punch bowl. Of course at the time i had no idea what the cards were for I just liked looking at the pictures and oohing over the foils.
A couple weeks later I decided to find out what these beutiful cards were actually for. so i took a rule book form a starter deck and sat down to read it. i even got the cards out so i could follow along. Well within a few pages of instructions I was thoroughly confused. and I know I’m not a stupid person the rule book was just impossible to follow, and I was not the only one who thought so.
Well not totally discourged yet i went and bought a few more booster packs and collected a few more cards and finally I was taught how to play. I loved It! it was fun and a great game. I began collecteing more and more cards to build more decks and attended a weekly leauge in my area.
However as more and more expansions came out and rules began to change, or get added, and cards like Sting became illegal to play, I was finding it more and more difficult to keep up with. Not only was i supposed to be learning new rules and new cards every few months but often times there were disagreements over the meaning of the card text. And soemthing that once was fun for me was no longer fun and i found myself no longer wnating to play, or even collect the cards.
And I am not the only one who found that having a life meant it was impossible to try and keep up with the game. I simply cannot put the tiem and effort into soemthing this complicated. And while I would
love to someday play again, as long as the game remains confusing and complicated there is no way that i can.
Sincerely,
elfstone
Well Elfstone, hopefully our resources here at Gaming Havens can shed some light on the cards and some possible tactics, but if you’re looking for a card game thats easier to understand but still has the same fantasy feel of the Lord of the Rings, you might want to try WarCry, which is made by the creators of the upcoming LOTR Tradeable Miniatures Game. We actually just posted our WarCry review today, it can be found here. Hope this helps!
Are you having trouble with a game? Want to share your comments with the readers here at Gaming Havens? We want to hear what YOU have to say! Send in your comments to Havens@TheOneRing.net today!
Thanks Elfstone for writing in!
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This week I had the joy of traveling to Seattle, WA, to learn about a very exciting new Tradeable Miniatures Game based in Tolkien’s Middle-earth that’s slated to hit stores shortly before Return of the King. What is a Tradeable Miniature Game? Well, unlike the existing Strategy Battle Game from Games Workshop, a Tradeable Miniatures Game will feature pre-painted miniatures that you buy in Booster Packs and Starter Sets similar to your favorite card games. The Game is being developed by our new friends at Sabertooth Games, and has been designed by Ryan Miller, who’s work you can see on their Warhammer Collectible Card Game: WarCry. The first expansion set will contain about 120 40mm miniatures including Frodo, Aragorn, and the rest of the Fellowship, and fan favorites like Eowyn, Arwen, Saruman, and many more. I asked about Haldir and Gamling, and it looks like they’re being held for the second expansion.
So how does it work? If you’re familiar with grid games like HeroClix and Mage Knight, you should take to The Lord of the Rings Tradeable Miniatures Game (TMG) quickly, but even if you’re new to this genre the easy to understand design will have you involved in no time. Unlike HeroClix or MageKnight, the LOTR TMG is played on a Hexagonal Grid, and to go along with this each figure is attached to a Hexagonal Base that fits on the grid perfectly. Each base describes the attributes of the character, and each character is given a points value based on their usefulness in battle. Aragorn, being the tank that he is, costs more than say, a Gondorian Soldier. The attributes tell anything from the number of attacks the character has, to the number of spaces he can move in a turn. The Game is played on a fold-out grid that comes with your starter box. When you lay out this grid along side a friend’s grid, it creates one massive Hexagonal Grid to deploy your miniatures on.
The Game itself will come in booster-pack form, featuring 1 Rare, 1 Uncommon, and 2 Common miniatures, and a specially designed Starter Set will include a set of miniatures that you won’t find in the boosters. Sabertooth, in their dedication to the players, wanted to make sure you didn’t end up with more copies of a miniature than you wanted, so they chose good starting miniatures to go into the Starter Set, with a rarity separate from the Rare, Uncommon, Common scheme you’ll find in the boosters. The exception to this is Minions, which will remain the same in both the starter and the booster packs, while starter packs will contain special heroes and main characters that are not available in the booster packs. The Heroes in the starter deck have a special colored slider that indicates whether they came from the Starter Set, but minions like Easterlings and Rohan Soliders will be colored normally, which makes sense since you will definitely want to find as many of them as you can to field against your friends.
While magic plays a roll in the LOTR TMG, the emphasis is on Combat and the fateful acts of the heroes on both sides. For example, Gimli being very well armored has a defense of 6, meaning that in combat the only way your opponent can wound Gimli is to roll numerous sixes to wear him down. One version of Gimli even has the ability to attack in a 360 Degree arc via a Berserk Attack that can hit adjacent models without him facing them. Archers and Ranged Combatants play a heavy roll in the game, as well as Spearmen who don’t need to be adjacent to an enemy to strike, and can add 1 attack to a friendly model it’s adjacent to that is engaged in combat. A Standard game of the Lord of the Rings Tradeable Miniatures Game takes about an hour, or longer depending on how many points you wish to deploy.
The Lord of the Rings Tradeable Miniatures Game is planned to hit stores in November, and we’ll have all the details for you as we get closer to the release date. If you have any specific questions, or even just comments that you’d like us to hear, then shoot an e-mail to Havens@TheOneRing.net and you just might find it posted in our Lord of the Rings Tradeable Miniatures Game Mini-Site!
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Warhammer has been challenging hobbyists for years, the lore and world behind it has been carefully protected by the master designers at Games Workshop, so trying to create a Customizable Card Game based around this game of Elves, Dwarves, and Orks is a project that promised to challenge even the most seasoned game developers. So Games Workshop summoned the Designers at Sabertooth Games, Seattle based Development company behind the Warhammer 40,000 CCG, as well as the upcoming Lord of the Rings Tradeable Miniatures Game. Shortly after, WarCry was born.
If you’re familiar with card games, you’re also familiar with the pages and pages of rules that accompany even our favorite games like Decipher’s Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game and Magic: The Gathering. Well when I opened my Grand Alliance starter box, the rulesheet that unfolded in my hands is only one double sided page, slightly longer than your average sheet of printer paper. These short easy to read and easy to understand rules explained what each characteristic of a card did, and how to understand the tactics described on my action cards. Thanks to a demo from WarCry Designer Ryan Miller, I walked away with a basic understanding of the cards, so to make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s take a look at some of the great features that WarCry has to offer.
Just the Starter Box alone is a tribute to the great artistry behind WarCry, when you take your Grand Alliance Starter Box and set it next to your Hordes of Darkness Stater Box the combined artwork on the two boxes create one grand scene of Men, Elves and Dwarves going to battle with Orks, Dark Elves and the armies of Chaos. Inside the Grand Alliance Starter Box is 30 Unit Cards, the heroes and soliders of your army, and 30 Action cards, which when luck sides with you can tilt the tide of battle in your favor. Let’s take a look at one of our hero cards, one of the more stunning cards in the set, also happens to be one of the rarest.
Imrik, Dragon Prince of Caledor is a favorite Miniature of many a Warhammer Hobbyist, and also happens to be a very beautiful Foil card in WarCry. Starting off, Imrik is a Flying Unit, which allows him to block cards regular Infantry and Calvary cards cannot. Imrik’s Strength is 5, a very respectable value, he has 6 Tactic Points, and a Leadership Value fit for a Prince: 5. Not only will his 5 Strength allow him to start off ahead of your average Infantry and Calvalry, but with 6 Tactic points you will be able to play numerous Action Cards to put more of a scare into your opponent. Lets take a look at some of those Action Cards.
Strength of the Forethought is an Action card that fans of our man Imrik will greatly appreciate. Basically, this card rewards you for using it alone as your Combat Tactic. It costs 1 of your Tactic Points to play, and gives the unit +1 Strength for each Unspent Tactic Point at the end of the Tactic Phase. On our bud Imrik, if you only play Strength of Forethought during your Tactic Phase, you can get +5 Strength just by playing this card and sitting back sipping your Starbucks. How does combat work? What is Strength and why do we want to keep our strength as high as possible?
The Combat phase is a very unqiue and very special element of the WarCry Collectible Card Game. On the table is a strip with the icons for the dark, and light side strength bars, when you begin a combat, you move a counter up towards your opponent or closer to yourself depending on the strength of your unit, verus the strength of your opponents unit. As you play Action cards the token can move either way, as strengths rise and special abilities play out, this is an amazing way to simulate the struggle of battle and a feature that sets WarCry appart from other games of its kind. So our man Imrik, in a battle with the Dark Elf Flyer the Archon of Twilight, would start off with an advantage of 1, as Imrik’s Strength is 5, and the Archon’s strength is 4. From there action cards can make Imrik bend the Dark Elf to his will, or leave Imrik wishing he’d stayed out of the battle. As soon as both sides have played out their action cards, each player “rolls” by drawing the top card of their action deck. There is a die logo on the bottom left corner, you add your die roll, and the total strength of your unit, against your opponents, and the higher player is victorious. A tie ends with the slaughter of both units.
Overall the WarCry CCG is a great easy to learn Collectible Card Game that really captures the struggle of war that Warhammer Hobbysts demand, yet still be an experience that new fans to the Warhammer way can easily enjoy again and again. Designers Luke Peterschmidt, Ryan Miller and the rest of Sabertooth Games really built a great system that anyone can pick up and enjoy for hours at a time. You can pick up WarCry in your local Gaming Shop, and when you do shoot us a line with your thoughts on the game and we’ll post em up right here on Gaming Havens at TheOneRing.net.
until next time…….
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This is it! The last day to vote on Houghton Mifflin’s LOTR cover for the LOTR Gift Set. With 43.9% of the vote, it looks like Rivendell will be taking the cake, so to speak, but it is not to late for Minas Tirith or Frodo to come back! And don’t forget, place your vote and you could win the gift set for free! [Vote]
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Each week, I scour Ebay looking for the hot Tolkien items up for sale. I post the most interesting here for you to bid on! [More] [Shop]
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Irascian writes: July SFX magazine has 7 pages of ROTK pictures they claim this is an “SFX exclusive” although this mainly seems to be a printed copy of all the photo’s recently posted by TORN. There’s no real news – just the pictures, the same issue has coverage of the recent Readers Awards ceremony where LOTR won lots of categories and features a picture of Brian Sibley collecting his award for “Best SF-Related Non Fiction Book”. [More]
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