The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

Like other games in Fantasy Flight's Living Card Game line, it has deck construction and regularly released expansions similar to a collectible card game, but without the randomized card distribution.[4]

Unlike most card games of this type, it may be played either solitaire or with a group. Although a core set only supports up to 2 players, the game can be played by 3 or 4 with an additional core set. Unusually, players are not opponents but cooperate against an "encounter deck" which represents the forces of Sauron and produces the obstacles that the adventurers have to conquer.

Each player has their own cards: their heroes (up to 3) which start in play, and a deck of at least 50 cards, composed of Allies, Attachments (such as weapons, armor, and other items) and Events. Although the core set comes with pre-constructed decks, deck construction is a major aspect of the game, and many players build their own decks, utilising cards from the various expansions.[5]

The Lord of the Rings Living Card Game has an active following, with multiple podcasts and blogs dedicated to discussing gameplay, strategy, deck-building and news, as well as providing custom content.

Podcasts: Cardboard of the Rings[6] The Grey Company[7] The Mouth of Sauron[8]

Blogs: Tales From the Cards[9], Hall of Beorn[10], Master of Lore[11], Dor Cuarthol[12], Vision of the Palantir.[13]

There are several types of expansion to this game. Each Deluxe Expansion (and the core set) contain 3 quests and begins a new cycle, which usually share a mechanical or story driven theme. These releases are supplemented by 6 Adventure Packs for a total of 9 quests per cycle.

The Saga Expansions follow the story of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The latter introduced a mode of play called Campaign mode allowing for some degree of permanence between the quests telling the story. Players can earn powerful "Boon" cards, which can be used in following quests, as well as "Burden" cards which make future quests more difficult.

The Standalone Scenarios are one-off quests released without any player cards. Fantasy Flight Games usually releases one to coincide with their Gen Con event and their Fellowship (in house) event. They have often been more difficult than a standard quest and allow the designers to experiment with ideas outside the confines of the main game.

Adventure Pack Cycles continue the story of Deluxe Expansions, or, in case of the Shadows of Mirkwood Cycle, the Base Game. Each Deluxe expansion provides three scenario's, and each Adventure Pack in the associated Cycle provides one more scenario, along with several Player and Monster Cards. An Adventure pack consists of 60 fixed cards.

Fantasy Flight Interactive developed a digital version of the game for Microsoft Windows, which was released on 28 August 2018.[14] The game, still in an early access phase, was made free to play at its full release.[15] An Xbox One version was announced at E3 2019.[16] In June 2019, it was announced that the release of a PS4 port was planned for 8 August 2019 [17] The release date was pushed to 28 August 2019 for PC, Mac, Xbox One and PS4 versions.[18] The Nintendo Switch version was released on November 5, 2019 in Europe.[19]

• Official Website
• Lord of the Rings: The Card Game at BoardGameGeek