What a week it’s been. We’ve been exposed to the beginning onslaught that will be the Two Towers explosion, we’ve seen the Deluxe DVD Card inserts, and we’ve been exposed to another interview from your friendly neighborhood havener. Where to begin this second installment of Week in Gaming for the week of July 7th-13th?
Two Towers Preview Cards Exposed
So let’s say you were lucky enough to have attended Origins and watch the Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game take home Best Game of 2001 and Best Graphical Presentation, you were already pretty stoked right? Well the good folks at Decipher also brought forth from the vault two exclusive images from their upcoming Two Towers expansion that will hit stores this November.
I know I can’t wait to find out how to get my hands on these Premium Promotional Cards, all we know is it will be some time before the Two Towers expansion hits stores in November. Welcome to the months that last ten years!
The Three Hunters pathfind their way onto DVD
Speaking of Premium Cards, been wondering what LOTR TCG Cards are going to come packaged with the Lord of the Rings Special Edition DVD Boxed Set? Well now we have our answer! Origially released in the Fellowship of the Rings set last November, Aragorn: Ranger of the North, Gimli: Son of Gloin, and Legolas: Greenleaf are being re-released with an alternate image in the DVD set!
Still haven’t pre-ordered your copy of this special edition DVD? Then jump on it now here.
Tom Lichke Interviewed
Flinch: Of the characters in The Two Towers, who do you look forward to working on the most? Which aspects of each individual personality will play a role in the strategy and story line of the game?
Tom: I am a huge Faramir fan. His nobility and wisdom should translate to some fun cards. The Ents should be a blast. Hopefully we’ll be able to replicate their unique speech patterns and have some fun with that. It seems like a great place to immerse players in the story.
July 20th your crew here from Gaming Havens at TheOneRing.net will be taking over the Westminster Mall in Westminster California and bringing fans from all over A Day in Middle Earth! Featuring Lord of the Rings Trading Card Demonstrations held by Havens writer Lao of Gondor, demonstrations of the Lord of the Rings tabletop game brought to you by Games Workshop, and tons of great Lord of the Rings prizes! So if you’re in the Southern California area drop on by from 12 noon to 6pm Saturday July 20th for a day that won’t soon be forgotten!
Not in the area? No worries! Next week’s Week in Gaming will be dedicated to our Day in Middle Earth! We will bring all of the Lord of the Rings Gaming to your desktop in just seven days!
Got an upcoming Event? Had a good time at a local retailer that sells Lord of the Rings games? Just wanna talk about Gaming? Then drop by #havens by logging into Barliman’s chat server at irc.theonering.net and typing /join #Havens, or just drop us a line by e-mailing havens@theonering.net!
Flinch: First off I have to congratulate you and the entire team on winning the Nigel Award this past February! It’s been well deserved and couldn’t have gone to a better game. What have your initial thoughts been surrounding the popularity of the game and how it’s been received among both the classic Tolkien fans and those that have been inspired by the films?
Tom: Thanks for the kind words. We were thrilled to be recognized by the kind folks who award the Nigel.
We’ve all been very satisfied with the reaction to LotR TCG. I wouldn’t say we were surprised, as we would have been disappointed if the reaction had been too much different. While we working on the game, we started to suspect that we had something unique and fun on our hands, so the release was a lot like waiting for Christmas morning. We knew we were getting something good, but we didn’t know how big it was going to be.
Flinch: When developing a game on a property such as Lord of the Rings was it difficult to maintain the balance between what the classic fans would ask for, and what would be more appealing to the movie fans?
Tom: Well, it was an added requirement for the project. I think I may have approached this a bit backwards from some of the other guys. I figured that if we gave people a great game that continuously pulled people back into the work and the story, it would be easier to handle the sticky points between the movie and the book. Fans just wouldn’t mind as much if we had to downplay a story element, as the game would always bring them back to a fun place. I focused pretty heavily on the core game engine not producing story problems. I can’t imagine a more rewarding and fun challenge!
Flinch: Of the characters in The Two Towers, who do you look forward to working on the most? Which aspects of each individual personality will play a role in the strategy and story line of the game?
Tom: I am a huge Faramir fan. His nobility and wisdom should translate to some fun cards. The Ents should be a blast. Hopefully we’ll be able to replicate their unique speech patterns and have some fun with that. It seems like a great place to immerse players in the story.
Flinch: In developing the character cards it is noted that the standard card game element of putting the main characters up as rare chase cards is not an issue with the Lord of the Rings TCG. How did the decision come about that there would be editions of the cards that were common, uncommon as well as rare for each of the highly sought after Fellowship Cards, and the anticipated characters like Elrond, Arwen and Galadriel?
Tom: Well, it really just flowed from our philosophy on this game. We wanted to make this the most player friendly TCG that Decipher has produced. With that as a guideline, we looked at the policies of our past games, as well as those of other TCG companies. Most of the best data was from our own games though, as we have the most experience in the industry with licensed TCGs. We just asked ourselves what we, as players, would need to be convinced to stay in the game once we tried it. Obviously, the Fellowship characters scored very high.
Flinch: Having Worked on Trading Card Games in the past, what was the strongest influence on what paths wouldn’t be walked with a game such as this where the expansions won’t follow the same set of nine locations and won’t have the same flavor of event cards as the film before it would?
Tom: Hmmm, not sure there is any one “best” example. We did something a little similar in SWCCG with Death Star II and Endor, and I learned some things from that. Most TCGs that are around for a while have to adapt to changes like this.
Flinch: Of all the accomplishments and innovations accompanying this game, which element are you most proud of?
Tom: Two things really. The Twilight Pool is pretty cool, but enough has been said about that I guess. I really like the integrated site path. It is the element which allows each player to have their own Fellowship, while still feeling like they are in the same game. It is the glue to the game, and let us sidestep what was a major issue, uniqueness of characters. How much would the casual fan have wanted to play if they couldn’t have Frodo, or the Ring? Also, originally each player had their own site path and this created a real mess for the footprint of the game.
Besides, it is a great scoreboard, and allows the players to show a lot of creativity. The guy I played in the tournament last week had a tiny catsup bottle for his marker. I still don’t get it, but it made me laugh.
Flinch: Again I must congratulate everyones accomplishments in making this game the highest sought after card game available today! Thanks for talking with me and I hope to hear from you in the future as this game develops and we get closer into Two Towers and Return of the King!
Blockbuster in Brazil has made the 2-disk DVD available for pre-order, and they now also sell a sludge of the official action figures.
Also, Telef’nica do Brasil (quite the misleading name, since they only operate in the state of São Paulo) released, in around February, a collector’s set (there is 300,000 of each, and they’re all numbered) of 10 movie-themed phonecards; all of which feature LOTR scenes. I have all of them, and as soon as I can get my hands on a scanner will send them in, but until then I thought it’d be nice to let other people know. The images on the cards are, in no particular order:
– A head-and-torso (I don’t know the technical names…) shot of Aragorn wearing the Lothlorien cape and the Mallorn brooch, with a smaller inset of the boat scene from Lothlorien in the bottom.
– A Boromir head shot with some background I can’t really make out.
– Legolas about to let loose an arrow, with Gimli and Boromir in the background, and a close up of the Middle Earth map in the bottom.
– The Pillars of the Argonath movie poster with the inscription “A Lenda Ganha Vida” (The legend comes to life, in Portuguese)
– A shot of the four hobbits in Weathertop.
– The Frodo-holding-the-ring-in-his-hand-and-looking-at-it movie poster.
– The other Frodo-holding-the-ring poster, in which he looks straight ahead.
– Arwen and her, er… battle wound from the flight to the ford, with a shot of the Black Riders about to cross the ford in the bottom.
– Gandalf with his staff in Moria, and to the right, Gandalf holding the ring after picking it up from the fireplace at Bag End.
– The cast-shot-that-dubs-as-yet-another-movie-poster.
Most of the cards feature the good old “One Ring to rule them all” couplet written in the Tengwar running down some side, and all of them have the movie title on them. The back side of all the cards is also identical – the shot of the company’s silhouettes, with Sam leading Bill that has been seen in many places before; and below it a short little teaser blurb: “O pequenho hobbit, Frodo, herda a missão de salva a Terra-média do perverso Senhor do Escuro. Para isso, ele precisa conduzir o Um Anel até a Montanha da perdição e destru’-lo para sempre,” which translates into: “Little hobbit Frodo inherits the mission to save Middle-Earth from the perverse Dark Lord. For this, he needs to take the One Ring to Mount Dom and destroy it forever.”
The announcement that there will be two DVDs for The Lord of the Rings was a great and welcome surprise to many, many Tolkien fans. Of great interest is the special extended collector’s version of the DVD to be released on November 12. Contained in this special four-disc DVD is a neat surprise for all The Lord of the Rings TCG fans: three special collector’s cards that will only be available in this set!
The three cards: Legolas, Greenleaf; Gimli, Son of Gloin; and Aragorn, Ranger of the North from The Fellowship of the Ring™ set for The Lord of the Rings TCG will be inserted into the collector’s edition of the movie. In addition to the cards being foiled, all three will have their original image and lore altered to reflect the scene at the end of the film, when “The Three Hunters” set off to rescue Merry and Pippin.
“The Three Hunters” cards only will be inserted in the Collector’s Set DVD release for the United States and Canada.
All game text on the cards will be identical to the cards found in the starter decks and booster packs from The Fellowship of the Ring set. The only difference will be the images and lore.
A lot of people have emailed me over the past few days in reply to my newspost about the premiere being held in Paris, so allow me to set a few things straight.
First of all it is not a certain fact that the world premiere will be held in Paris, it is however ninetynine percent certain that the European premiere will be held in Paris. As for the world premiere, well, we reported a while ago that it might very well be held in the Embassy Theatre in Wellington (and having been there I’d say that it more then qualifies for a world premiere), and I still think it will be.
Now as for the premiere in Paris, it seems I was a bit hasty with reporting that it would be held in the Odeon because several people have emailed me to tell me that the Odeon isn’t really a theatre meaning that they don’t show movies there but plays, so it’d be kin of hard to hold a premiere there, not even mentioning the fact the the Odeon theatre is going to be closed for two years starting this autumn (owh common, I’m a bit rusty on my French, how was I to know?)
But it seems that big blockbuster premieres in the past have been held in the various theatres on the Champs Elysées (which is a very nice location indeed), and in specific the Rex, the Normandie or the Cine-Cite Bercy. Now only the Normandie is right on the Champs Elysées so could that be the location for the European premiere of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ?
Anyway, thanks to all the people who put me back on the right track!
There’s quite a number of fans who have dreamed of going to New Zealand to actually stand where the LOTR movies were filmed and see the awesome landscapes for themselves. Red Carpet Movietours reports that the people most forward in turning their dreams into reality are the official fan club members from LA, who are planning a large group visit to coincide with the opening of either TTT or ROTK in Wellington.
Also showing a lot of interest are the Taiwanese. In May, Vic James of Red Carpet took a Taiwanese pop star and a media entourage around NZ to visit the LOTR film sites and film themselves in the process. Since then a group of Taiwanese tourists have signed on to do a ‘quickie’ tour in late August tailored to their specifications, mixing their LOTR interests with general tourist fun. So on the first day they’ll visit the Hell’s Gate thermal mudbaths in Rotorua, then visit the site of Hobbiton. Next day they’ll fly down to the South Island, where they can visit the dramatic site of Edoras. Next day, they’ll fly in a small plane over NZ’s highest mountain – so they’ll get to feel like they’re following Gandalf’s ride on Gwhaihir…from the air, passing the Southern Alps, the ranges below the snowline will look like that amazing aerial shot in the FOTR’s prologue where we hear how Gollum takes the Ring under the Misty Mountains . Later that day, they visit the Pelennor Fields. The tour closes with some general fun stuff in Christchurch, visiting the Antarctic museum and so on.
Other people are taking up the offer of tailormade tours for individuals. Vic’s taking one party for a tour starting in Wellington. These people are mixing business with pleasure; they get to visit the Weta Workshop and Weta Digital for a tour; after an overnight stay in Wellington they’ll visit the chief Black Rider and his magnificent, highly-trained horses in the morning, followed by a look at River Anduin en route to a night at the Powderhorn Chateau in Ohakune, where the cast and film crew stayed during the filming of the Mordor scenes on Mt. Ruapehu. (They will have Elijah Wood’s room!). Next day they’ll either helicopter over the mountain film locations or drive to Whakapapa, which overlooks ‘Mordor.’ Then on to Rotorua. Next morning, they get a look at the Hobbiton film location in the Waikato and then they finish off their tour in Auckland. So all round, a pretty exciting batch of tours for LOTR fans.
Anyone wanting to make plans along those lines should email victorj@ihug.co.nz
